Swordbone

[New novel coming at the end of 2026: Borrow Me a Piercing Cloud Arrow. Please add it to your collection!] Yun Xiao has a secret. On Holy Immortal Festival, a day of celebration when the whole nation offers deer as sacrifices and fire talismans as gifts, she holds a memorial for the God of Slaughter. The imperial family has many children, and Yun Xiao's mother is a low-ranking consort who offers her no love or protection. She scrapes by as she grows up, carrying a deep-seated grudge. The Holy Immortal Festival is the God of Slaughter's death anniversary. Yun Xiao offers fruit, praying that the God of Slaughter will answer her plea and throw this world into chaos. One day, a ghost tells her, "You have the bones of a sword cultivator." Yun Xiao thinks the ghost is insulting her. Later, she learns that the ghost is none other than the God of Slaughter. The God of Slaughter says, "Those with the bones of a sword cultivator are tough and hard to break. Why throw the world into chaos? Why not save it instead?" So the God of Slaughter is a bodhisattva after all. - During the chaotic age of the Five Emperors, Zhongli Zhan of the Xi Clan carved a bloody path through the fighting, saving his people from disaster and rescuing the world from peril. The Xi Clan could live for a thousand years. At just two hundred, he was already revered as the Xi Emperor and Human Sovereign. He upheld justice, established laws, promoted new ideas, brought change, and united good people everywhere to ease the suffering of the common folk. The Human Sovereign Zhongli Zhan's name spread far and wide. Then he went mad. A million corpses piled up as he plunged the people into chaos, burned palaces, and destroyed temples, like a demon descended upon the world. Fortunately, the Holy Immortal answered their prayers, and Zhongli Zhan died on his two-hundred-and-eightieth birthday. But his curse came true. The Xi people's lifespans grew shorter and shorter, and their kingdom fell two thousand years ago. He had once been the Human Sovereign, but was also known as the God of Slaughter. Imprisoned forever in an underground palace, he endured the world's scorn for thousands of years. Until one day, someone threw a peach onto his grave. She said, "I offer a flat peach as tribute. Please kill my father." Zhongli Zhan pursed his lips, forced to remind her, "I don't like peaches." [An actual villainess pretending to be a little white rabbit x a falsely maligned God of Slaughter] PS: Slow burn Theme: Both truth and sincerity matter.