Turns Out the Junior Sister Is the White Moonlight of the Cultivation World

Everyone's favorite | Identity reveal | Widower romance | Rivalry for the heroine |

[Saintly on the outside, mad on the inside widower hero × universally adored heroine who plays the pig to eat the tiger]

A despairing, broken, crazed widower's long journey to find his wife...

Fu Xiang, the demoness everyone wanted dead, died on that bitterly cold snowy night.

Born with a pure Daoist constitution, she was a genius beyond compare. Her master, the Venerable of the Beiwei Immortal Sect, cherished her, and her senior brother, a peerless swordsman, doted on and protected her. Her childhood friend, the young master of Wushan, was a jewel of Yingzhou and her perfect match.

Fu Xiang was showered with love, the sect's precious darling.

She remembered everyone's likes and dislikes, and would hold a lantern for them at the mountain gate on moonlit nights.

Unfortunately,

she was nothing more than a foil to the heroine of an old-fashioned, everybody-loves-her novel.

Only after she was imprisoned in an ice cell and her spiritual veins and bones were crushed did she understand. She was a substitute, a puppet, and fatally poisoned, with little time left to live. Yet she was surrounded by wolves, and they had schemed to take every last piece of her...

All for the sake of the "white moonlight" in their hearts.

Her life had never been worth anything.

Beneath the Soul-Slaying Formation, Fu Xiang thought that if she had another life, she would never again be blind in both eyes and heart. Fortunately, Heaven had a conscience. She opened her eyes and found herself reborn more than twenty years in the past.

Fu Xiang: ?!

What was she waiting for? Run!!

*

A shocking event recently rocked Yingzhou.

They said that the useless disciple of the Jixi Immortal Palace had taken first place at the Immortal Sects' Gathering. After that, she found sacred relics, pacified haunted realms, and saved countless people from danger. Everywhere she went, crowds flocked to see her.

But what people loved gossiping about even more was her tangled web of romantic entanglements.

They said the Venerable dug out a pair of glassy eyes for her and fell into demonic corruption; her senior brother abandoned the sect's legacy; the young master of Wushan destroyed his own golden core, seeking her forgiveness; and the young lord of Zhongtian made an enemy of the Mystic Sects for her sake.

But the craziest of them all was the Emperor Lord hiding behind a secret identity.

*

Ji Yuanlan made his name at a young age. He attained sainthood at eighteen and became famous throughout the cultivation world. He was the supreme ruler of Yingzhou, and a man whose wife had died: a widower.

In public, he carried himself like a saint, gentle and benevolent. But every family in the Mystic Sects knew that on the night his wife died, the usually composed Emperor Lord had suffered a demonic deviation and nearly slaughtered Yingzhou. This lofty ruler had clutched her corpse like a helpless child and cried himself blind.

Afterward, he shared a coffin and a pillow with his dead wife every day, painting her eyebrows and arranging her hair. He sank into his own fantasies. Only when the corpse finally decayed beyond recognition did Ji Yuanlan come to his senses.

He settled all his affairs, then smiled as he put on his wedding robes, kissed her cold lips, and went to join his wife in death.

But he couldn't die.

Later, the immortal sects presented beautiful women who resembled his wife, hoping to curry favor. He tore out their tendons, flayed them, burned them, and had them executed. After years of searching obsessively for his dead wife's soul without success, Ji Yuanlan seemed to admit and accept reality. He became calm, repressed, and sinister.

At first, Fu Xiang was a vessel for his dead wife's return. Whenever he gazed at her face at night, the bond mark in Ji Yuanlan's soul would hurt as if it were scraping bone. He ran his fingers over her delicate neck, murderous intent in his eyes.

Later, he gazed at Fu Xiang's peaceful sleeping face and bent down to listen as she murmured his childhood name in her dreams. Emotions churned in his eyes, like a beast on the verge of losing control.

Later still

He pinned her between the bed and his body, holding her tightly by the waist. Looking at his wife, who had lost her memories and was wary of him, Ji Yuanlan restrained his urge to lock her away. His eyes were bloodshot and terrifying, but his voice was gentle as water. "Where are you going? To find your senior brother?"

Ji Yuanlan gently stroked her earlobe, but when he buried his nose in the hollow of her neck, his arms tightened until the veins stood out.

After a long while, he smiled. "Don't be out too late. I'll come pick you up."

Extra scene one:

A young immortal disciple asked, "Emperor Lord, how did you feel when the Venerable didn't remember you and had a whole group of rivals around her?"

The mad and unpredictable Emperor Lord: "My partner is so outstanding, of course people like her. Naturally, I was magnanimous and composed." His face grew increasingly twisted.

The young disciple asked again, "Then how did you win the Venerable's favor again?"

The Emperor Lord smiled. "Naturally, it was the love engraved in our souls."

Fu Xiang: "Liar! This old widower faked his misery and played the victim! I felt sorry for him, and he got what he wanted by throwing a tantrum and rolling around on the ground!!"

Extra scene two:

"After twenty years of mourning, I never expected my wife to have three fiancés..." Candlelight shone on the entwined figures behind the curtains. Ji Yuanlan slipped his long fingers between her lips. "Men out there are all so good at seducing people. It's all their fault..."

"But what makes them so good?" He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. Bending over, Ji Yuanlan thrust hard and asked breathlessly, his voice warm, "I'm better, aren't I? What do you think?"

Fu Xiang's head kept bumping against the pillar. Ji Yuanlan shielded her head with his hand. She gazed dazedly at his shadowed eyes and stammered, "Why... are you... taking your temper out on me again?"

The next day, Fu Xiang picked up her brush in sorrow.

"This damned old widower got his wife back, but he's always afraid he'll lose her again, so he goes mad every other day. I'm being worn down in bed until I'm nearly dead... My friend, what should I do? Please advise!"

#He finally finds his wife, only to discover she has n fiancés#

#The legitimate wife's status, the mistress's behavior#

#When we first met, you called me your enemy. Later, you said I was an old friend. But you never knew that by the Sishui River, beneath the parasol tree, we had once vowed to stay together in life and death.#

Reader's guide

* Single-couple romance, one-on-one, happy ending, author indulges their kinks

* The sects from her previous life get their comeuppance; an ensemble power fantasy

* Not a strong-female-lead story. My heroine is universally adored, with lots of one-sided crushes pointing her way

* All the male characters are brooding, crazy, morally bankrupt, and abnormal; they all compete and fight over her

* Not traditional xianxia, with lots of original worldbuilding

* Not a multiple-choice romance; the male lead won't change. The author just loves widowers. The essence of a widower is fragility and madness, humility and control, a man who stays faithful to his dead wife... so satisfying!

Theme: Live in the face of death.