Heart of Ashes

Also known as: The Heavenly Dao Won't Let Me Lie Flat

[Sharp-tongued, soft-hearted, resilient spirit princess vs. reserved heir to an enemy clan, switching between black and white]

*Plot: Six hundred thousand years ago, the ancient god Sang Jin died, and her power was sealed inside the Lingxi Jade, which the spirit clan has guarded for generations.

Six hundred thousand years later, the spirit princess Luo Xi went on a killing spree by the River of the Underworld, broke open the Lingxi Jade, and claimed Sang Jin's divine power for herself.

The gods joined forces to seal Luo Xi, freezing her in the Nine Nether Cold Pool for a thousand years. To avoid being implicated, her relatives expelled her from the spirit clan. When her sentence was over, Luo Xi had lost all her spiritual power and had nowhere to go, so she wandered from place to place.

People said the spirit clan's Luo Xi was cruel and ruthless, and deserved her fate. Luo Xi ignored them, wanting only to live in peace. But enemies who wanted her dead kept coming one after another. So when she went to the mortal realm to gather the souls of kindred spirits and revive her elder brother Luo Feng, she only wanted to be a cold and heartless goddess.

But once the goddess entered the game, she was the first to soften...

Because of her soft heart, some people used her along the way, some abandoned her, and others protected her.

The Buddha once told her, "When you understand the heart of a mortal, Luo Feng will return to the Three Realms."

But she could not see the meaning behind his words. Luo Xi never understood, and the final soul remained out of reach. Just then, the ancient god Sang Jin, rumored to want to overthrow the Three Realms, awakened within her...

[If the Heavenly Dao sees her as a pawn, she will fight against her fate, even if she is an ant trying to shake a tree.]

*

Romance: Rumor had it that the spirit princess Luo Xi was profoundly powerful and had killed countless people. She was so arrogant that even after killing thirty thousand heavenly soldiers, the Heavenly Emperor could do nothing to her.

No one expected someone like her to choose an utterly ordinary mortal as her husband.

At first, Luo Xi approached him only to make better use of him. Who knew the mortal would be perfectly happy to go along with it?

Luo Xi: "Wandering the world is so boring. Why don't you fight for the title of prince consort, so I can play at being a princess?"

Feng Wuyu gave a concise reply: "Fine."

He agreed to every request she made, making her a princess in the mortal world. He even fought his way through every obstacle to reach the pinnacle of power. At that moment, Luo Xi seemed to have become the evil consort who brought calamity to the mortal world.

A mortal lifetime passed in the blink of an eye. When their love came to an end, he went on to his next life while she returned to being an immortal.

Two hundred years later, Luo Xi was fighting an enemy clan on the battlefield when she accidentally injured their heir. He followed her home to demand compensation, then took advantage of her distraction and pinned her to the bed. "Do you know a way to make a wound heal faster?"

"What way?" Luo Xi asked.

A Jiasi kissed her forcefully. "Dual cultivation."

A Jiasi didn't know that, after Luo Xi met him, Feng Wuyu began appearing in her dreams.

This novel has a lot of original worldbuilding. The plot comes first, romance second. It's a satisfying mix of angst and catharsis, with both sweetness and heartbreak, and a happy ending.

Aside from the first chapter, the story is told in chronological order. The balance of plot and romance is 7:3 in the mortal arc and 4:6 in the god-demon arc.

Theme: Saving others is like saving yourself