Chapter One: Rebirth Through Sacrifice

In the fifth year of Taijian, during the third month, Emperor Xuan of Chen, Chen Xu, personally led a great army to campaign against Northern Qi, with Northern Zhou joining the expedition at his invitation. The decline of Northern Qi had become apparent, yet the Prime Minister of Northern Qi devised a plan: the monarch would offer the eldest princess and fifteen cities as a bride price to Northern Zhou. The princess was famed for her beauty, and the Emperor of Northern Zhou, delighted, sounded the retreat.

The eldest princess captured the emperor’s heart, and so bewitched was the Zhou sovereign that he entered into an alliance with Northern Qi, agreeing to jointly campaign against Southern Chen. For a time, the southern borders of Chen faced grave peril; imperial forces were besieged, surrounded on all sides by the enemy.

Northern Qi and Northern Zhou pressed their advantage, sweeping south and seizing city after city. Emperor Xuan was struck by an arrow and fell into a coma, while anxiety and dread gripped the army and the entire nation.

At this critical moment, Empress Jiang, eight months pregnant, could only entrust command to her brother, Jiang Jie, heir to the Duke of Wei, ordering him to lead three hundred thousand troops northward. Jiang Jie did not fail in his duty; his army swept through the recaptured cities one after another in a decisive campaign, rescuing the emperor from dire straits. However, Emperor Xuan’s wounds were too severe; upon his return to the capital Jiankang, he remained secluded in the inner palace, rarely seeing anyone except the Empress.

The following month, Empress Jiang gave birth to the emperor’s legitimate son, Chen Qing. Emperor Xuan was overjoyed, naming the prince crown prince, bestowing further honors upon the empress and the Jiang clan. Even the newborn heir of the Duke of Wei, young Jiang Lan, received imperial favor.

Many within the court sought to curry favor with the Jiang family under the pretense of celebrating the heir’s first month, but the Jiangs closed their doors, cancelling the banquet long prepared.

Many speculated that the Jiang family feared attracting undue attention. As expected, half a month later, the twenty-five-year-old Jiang Jie submitted a memorial to the throne, surrendering all military authority. Emperor Xuan, unwilling to lose him, repeatedly tried to dissuade him, but Jiang Jie was resolute. Before long, he departed the city under cover of night with his wife, infant son, and the Duke himself.

Three months later, however, grave news arrived: Jiang Jie and his wife were slain by bandits disguised as Northern Qi soldiers while traveling. The Duke, Jiang Wu, managed at the cost of his own leg to rescue his swaddled grandson.

When the news reached Jiankang, Empress Jiang collapsed in grief. In the end, Emperor Xuan dispatched his most trusted guards to escort the Duke and his grandson home. Moved by the decimation of the Duke of Wei's household, the emperor soon issued a decree naming the orphaned Jiang Lan the new heir and betrothing him to his own young daughter, Princess Ningyuan.

Emperor Xuan’s loyalty to old friends was lauded by all.

In the winter of the seventeenth year of Taijian, Emperor Xuan’s old illness returned, and he died suddenly. His twelve-year-old son, Chen Qing, ascended the throne. Remembering the boy’s youth, Emperor Xuan had appointed Prince Anping as regent and the Jiang family as counselors.

Prince Anping was a man of great ability; the transition was smooth and orderly, and the nation passed from the Taijian era into the Qingyuan era.

In the third year of Qingyuan, heir Jiang Lan, by accident, wandered into the residence of the visiting Princess of Liang, there for a marriage alliance. Mistaken for an intruder, Jiang Lan suffered grave wounds; by the time he was carried back to the Duke of Wei’s mansion, he was barely clinging to life.

When Yin Xun awoke, the sunlight was so piercing she instinctively raised a hand to shield her eyes.

A hiss escaped her lips—

Her bones felt as though they had been shattered; her breath was weak, and she realized her entire body had been stabbed more than a dozen times.

But wait—

How could she feel pain?

After drifting as a spirit for tens of thousands of years, this was the first time Yin Xun had felt pain. She was startled, unsettled by the unfamiliar emptiness, and recalled that the last time she had felt pain had been in that great battle so many millennia ago...

There had to be a reason for this; she could not have come to this place for nothing.

Suppressing the agony, Yin Xun forced herself to sit up on the bed. She glanced around—the room was filled with lifeless objects, beautiful to look at but utterly devoid of spiritual energy.

Could she have returned to the mortal world?

Noticing a robe draped over a screen, she gritted her teeth, slipped on her shoes, and threw the robe over her shoulders. Scanning the room again, she finally spied a yellowish mirror.

What an ugly face!

Yin Xun frowned. In her prime among the Six Realms, though perhaps not the most beautiful—no match for the famed daughter of the Emperor of Qingqiu—she had been a renowned beauty among the idle and dissolute. This face, however, was truly disappointing.

Sallow and thin—she looked positively malnourished.

Yet the household seemed wealthy. Was she perhaps a concubine’s child, mistreated by the legitimate wife?

As she pondered, her hand reached up to scratch her head. In her years wandering the human realm, she had read her share of storybooks; who would have thought she would one day end up in such a situation herself? How unfortunate.

As she lifted her arm, the wide sleeve slid back, revealing a black mark on her skin.

“A reincarnation sigil, born of sacrifice? Tsk, the craftsmanship is terrible—this dragon pattern is particularly unsightly.”

Yin Xun tried to wipe it away with her sleeve, but no matter how hard she tried, it would not budge.

Suddenly, she heard a sound. Yin Xun’s brow furrowed.

“Come out,” she commanded.

No sooner had she spoken than a fiery red ball rolled into view, tumbling and rolling. Seeing it was about to crash, Yin Xun kindly intervened, kicking it straight into the wall, where it became embedded.

“A short-tailed fox,” she scoffed. In the fox clan, the greater the number and length of tails, the stronger the magic; yet, even after her kick, this fox had manifested only one stubby tail to defend itself. Either it was formidable beyond belief and hiding its strength, or it was simply weak.

Could it truly be that powerful, hiding so completely? Yin Xun doubted it.

She walked over, pulled the fox from the wall, shook the dust from its fur without the slightest gentleness, and tucked it into her arms.

“Your magic is unimpressive, your tail is short, but your fur is quite comfortable.”

Had the little fox not looked up at her with such aggrieved, accusing eyes, Yin Xun might have believed she was genuinely paying a compliment.

“Could you be the little immortal assigned to this sacrifice?”

Yin Xun sounded as if she were asking, but in her heart, she was already certain.

“Still, you don’t look much like an immortal…”

At once, the fox’s fur bristled like a hedgehog, and Yin Xun, frowning, tossed it to the floor without mercy.

“I once kept a short-tailed fox too—white and small, named Ruoruo. Compared to that one, you’re rather plain.”

The fox puffed out its triangular nose, planted its hind legs and, arms akimbo—well, body akimbo—shouted, “How could a true celestial in training be compared to an ordinary mortal’s pet! I am a bona fide trainee immortal of the Heavenly Realm!”

Watching this indignant, puffed-up little creature, Yin Xun quickly surmised the situation. This “trainee immortal” must have taken the wrong soul by mistake.

With a solemn cough, the fox conjured a little cloud, rummaged through it, and finally produced a golden ledger.

“State your name.”

Yin Xun settled herself comfortably on the couch, propping herself up with both hands, intrigued by the fox’s manner. In the past, no immortal had ever dared speak to her like this. The timid ones, swayed by tales of her reputation, would flee at the mere sight of her, dropping dead if they could not escape. There was that one time she snuck out to watch the second prince of the Heavenly Realm’s wedding, and word got out—the chaos that ensued remained vivid in her memory to this day...