On the arena stage of the Xuantian Sword Sect’s grand tournament—
Annette Misthollow stood in plain blue robes, clean and sharp. Her brows lifted like drawn blades. Her face was bare of powder, bare of feeling too.
Her wrist turned.
Another sword seal slashed out.
The woman opposite her, a pretty young cultivator in goose-yellow skirts, was driven straight from the middle of the stage to the very edge. Step by step, breath by breath, she was forced back till her heels were nearly hanging over empty air.
Today, Annette did not give way.
Not one bit.
Every strike was hard. Clean. Decisive.
The girl across from her was crushed so badly she could barely lift a hand to answer. One more move, maybe two, and she would fall from the stage.
The result was already clear.
Then—
A streak of sword light ripped through the air from the high viewing platform where the sect elders sat.
It tore straight through the barrier above the arena and drove down into Annette’s chest.
Right through the heart.
The whole sect burst into uproar.
Annette lowered her head, disbelief frozen in her eyes as she looked at the blade buried in her chest.
This sword—
She knew it too well.
It was her master Edric Witherspoon’s natal spirit sword.
Lingtian Sword.
Across from her stood the one who had called that sword here—the sweet-faced female cultivator in yellow.
Rosalynn Deepvale.
Her master’s second disciple.
Her junior sister.
A natal spirit sword could only be controlled by its owner, or by one bound to that owner in true accord—heart to heart, life to life. To put it plain, aside from the sword’s master, only that master’s dao companion could command it.
Master and junior sister?
Blood kept pouring from Annette’s chest, hot and thick. She could not believe it.
Yet she had no choice but to believe.
Her master and her junior sister had long since forged a life-and-death bond in secret.
They were already dao companions.
A black hem swept across the air.
A figure drifted down onto the arena.
But he did not spare even half a glance for the one lying there wounded.
Instead, he went straight to the edge of the stage and gathered the panicked girl there into his arms, his movements gentle, his face full of concern.
“Master… Fuyao didn’t mean it. I really didn’t think I’d hurt Senior Sister…”
“I was being pinned down by Senior Sister the whole time. I only kept thinking I couldn’t fall off the arena, couldn’t let Master down. I never thought that, in a panic, I’d actually call Master’s Lingtian Sword to fight for me… and wound Senior Sister.”
“It’s not your fault. The Lingtian Sword was meant to protect you. Your Senior Sister was the one who struck too hard.”
“Master, don’t blame Senior Sister either. She just wanted to win too badly. You know how she is. She’s always been so hungry to come out on top…”
Above them, the barrier had long since sealed shut again the moment the man across from her stepped onto the arena. It cut off every gaze, every sound from outside.
The two of them held each other close.
Neither of them spared so much as a glance for the eldest disciple—their Senior Sister—who was still skewered by the sword.
The pain came late.
Then it hit all at once, savage and deep, ripping through Annette Misthollow’s whole body. It hurt so badly she went numb. And under that numbness, something colder rose from the bottom of her heart.
Absurd.
Too absurd.
The absurd ones were them.
The laughable one was her.
Everything that happened today had shown signs long ago. The trail had been there from the start. She had just been too blind, too stubborn, too foolish to see it.
Back then, she had entered the sect and spent five full years on Lingxiao Peak, working without complaint, handling every burden, every loose end, every thankless chore. Only after those five years did Edric Witherspoon finally come out of seclusion and formally accept her with a proper disciple ceremony.
And on that very same day, he took one look at the little junior sister who had come for the entrance examination and broke the rules to take Rosalynn Deepvale in as a disciple too.
What should have been Annette’s ceremony, what should have belonged to her alone, was split in half on the spot.
From then on, she trained hard, studied hard, cultivated with everything she had.
Edric Witherspoon rarely gave her guidance.
She wore herself out dealing with all the trouble the disciples of Lingxiao Peak ran into, and he never once gave her a word of praise.
Yet every time he returned from outside the sect, he always brought gifts back for Rosalynn Deepvale.
There was one time in particular.
He brought back more than a dozen treasures. Among them was a sword tassel set with defensive runes. Annette had liked it at first glance. Truly liked it.
But Edric Witherspoon had only said, flat and cold, that all of it had been prepared for the little junior sister.
None of it was for her.
Rosalynn had even comforted her with soft words, saying that Annette’s cultivation was already high and she had no need for outside objects, while Rosalynn’s own cultivation was low and she lacked the strength to protect herself. That was why Master had given all the treasures to her.
And Annette had believed it.
She had believed every word.
Later, when she forged her first sword bone, she had been so happy she could barely hold it in. She ran off at once to find her master and tell him the news.
What she saw instead was Edric Witherspoon teaching Rosalynn how to ride a sword through the air.
There was laughter in his eyes.
Warmth too.
The kind she had never received.
Rosalynn saw her and jumped down from the flying sword in a fluster, nearly twisting her ankle. Then she pointed at Annette and said,
“Master, Senior Sister is still watching.”
Edric Witherspoon’s eyes sharpened at once. He reached out to steady Rosalynn and said,
“Don’t mind her. She’s not as good as you.”
That was the first time Annette Misthollow had truly felt disappointment.
She had always thought her master’s coldness was tempering her. Honing her sword heart. Beating her will into shape.
And she had done it.
Step by step, by her own grit, Annette Misthollow had climbed above the rest of her generation.
Yet that one line—
“She is inferior to you.”
It still cut.
It cut deeper than any blade.
So in her master’s eyes, all she had given, all she had endured, all the blood and sweat she had spent on the sword—none of it mattered. Not worth a glance. Not worth a word.
She could not accept that.
That was why, in the grand sect tournament, she had not done what she used to do. She had not yielded just because her junior sister asked in that soft, pleading voice. She had not held back.
She had fought with everything she had.
She wanted to prove it to her master.
She was no worse than Rosalynn Deepvale.
No worse than anyone.
But now, looking back on it—
what a joke.
What a bitter, miserable joke.
Blood kept pouring out of her. More and more. Warm at first, then chilling as it soaked through her robes. Her sight blurred, the world dimming at the edges like a lamp running out of oil.
Annette Misthollow could feel it clearly.
Her life was slipping away.
Only then did the two people across from her, still wrapped in each other’s arms, seem to remember she was there at all.
Through the ringing in her ears, she heard Rosalynn Deepvale ask in a careful, timid voice, “Master… can Senior Sister still be saved?”
“No.”
Just one light, drifting word.
That single word sealed Annette Misthollow’s death.
“Her sword-bone and spirit root were meant to be transplanted into you from the start. This is merely a little earlier than planned.”
“When you become the master of the Xuantian Sword Sect, her sword-bone and spirit root will not have gone to waste. As for her—”
Edric Witherspoon’s voice was calm, flat, without the slightest ripple.
“She dies where she ought to.”
At the last instant before her mind broke apart and sank into darkness, those words fell clean into her ears.
And Annette Misthollow understood everything.
Why her master had taken her in despite his utter indifference.
Why a man with no trace of master-disciple affection for her had still accepted her as his disciple.
So in the end, she had only ever been a thing.
A tool Edric Witherspoon had set aside for the woman he truly cherished.
No different from all those gifts he had gathered over the years from every corner of the cultivation world, then laid before his little junior sister as if the whole world should kneel at her feet.
Annette Misthollow had once looked up at her master as a peak to chase on the road of cultivation. She had thought him cold, distant, lofty. A sword sovereign above common dust.
Who would have guessed he was this kind of shameless bastard underneath?
Even if she died, she would not let them have their way.
With the last scrap of breath forced in her chest, Annette drove her Golden Core into motion. A thunderous bang ripped out.
Flames exploded around her in an instant and swallowed her whole.
That fire could not be doused.
It could not be blown apart.
When the flames finally died, the arena was already empty.
Annette Misthollow’s body had burned so clean not even a shred of ash was left behind.
…
The rising sun climbed into the sky, and red-gold dawn spilled across the clouds.
Today was once again the day Xuantian Sword Sect opened its gates to take in disciples, the grand event held once every five years.
Sunlight poured over the ten thousand stone steps before the hall on Wendao Peak. It flashed so hard off the stone that the people still climbing were dizzy from the glare, their bodies swaying as if they might tumble back down at any moment.
This was the final step of the disciple selection.
Inside the great hall at the end of the stairs, Sect Master Orion Blackwell and the elders had long been waiting. But this batch of new disciples was ordinary through and through. Their talent was flat, nowhere near as striking as the last group.
The elders had already lost interest.
Then suddenly, a voice full of wild delight burst in from outside.
“Great news!”
“Great news!”
“Sword Venerable Edric Witherspoon has come out of seclusion!”
The solemn hall exploded at once.
Orion Blackwell, the sect master, shot to his feet.
“Edric is out?”
“I saw it with my own eyes!” the disciple blurted out, breath still unsteady. “Sword Sovereign Edric Witherspoon has come out of seclusion. Not only are his injuries healed, his cultivation has even broken through a minor realm!”
“He said he’ll take a short rest, then come to the main hall to speak with Sect Master Orion Blackwell and the elders.”
The smile at Orion Blackwell’s mouth would not stay down no matter how he tried.
“Good. Good!”
“Where is Annette Misthollow, that girl?”
“Bring her to the main hall at once. She still hasn’t formally paid respects to Edric Witherspoon!”
Today, the real focus should have been the new disciples on the stone steps, the ones still grinding through the trial.
But the moment word spread that Edric Witherspoon had emerged from seclusion, everyone’s gaze shifted, almost by instinct, toward the front of the main hall.
There stood a woman in a plain robe, a silver hairpin at her temple. Her face was cool and still, like frost on clear water.
That was Annette Misthollow.
Among the batch of disciples who had entered the sect five years ago, her talent had stood above all the rest.
A single metal spiritual root.
Talent grade: ninety-nine percent.
The same gift Edric Witherspoon himself had once possessed, the famed number one Sword Sovereign of East Continent.
And that was not even the rarest part.
Back then, on Wendao Peak, through the ten thousand-step Heavenly Ladder trial, she had taken first place as well. That proved more than talent. Her will was hard too—first-rate, clean and sharp.
At the time, several elders had nearly started a full quarrel in the hall over who would take her as a disciple. In the end, Orion Blackwell made the call himself. In Edric Witherspoon’s name, he accepted her into Lingxiao Peak, to wait until the Sword Sovereign left seclusion and only then perform the formal apprenticeship rite.
Once that decision was made, the elders had nothing more to say.
After all, Edric Witherspoon was the unquestioned first man of the sword in East Continent.
Especially after the fall of Sword Sovereign Selene Moonshard.
In all of East Continent, the only one left worthy of the title “Sword Sovereign” was him.
It was only a pity that fifty years ago, he and Selene Moonshard had gone together into Moyuan to hold back the demon race. In that battle, he suffered hidden wounds. As the years dragged on, those wounds only worsened. Ten years ago, he had no choice but to declare closed-door seclusion and heal.
These last two years, Annette Misthollow had begun to show her edge in the sect.
There had even been disciples who secretly sneered over it, sour to the bone. To them, Edric Witherspoon stayed shut away year after year, and Annette Misthollow’s so-called title of “Sword Sovereign’s disciple” was nothing but an empty name hanging over her head. A fine signboard, maybe, but no true inheritance behind it.
Now those sour thoughts had all turned into envy.
“Annette Misthollow really was born under a lucky star.”
“Once the ceremony is done today, she’ll be Sword Venerable Edric Witherspoon’s only disciple. In the future, she’ll inherit his true sword legacy. Her road’s wide open.”
“Look. The one who just flew into the main hall—that’s Sword Venerable Edric Witherspoon…”
“In a moment, they’ll call Annette Misthollow in.”
The disciples waiting outside the hall kept their voices low, heads bent together, whispering back and forth.
Sure enough, a voice came from inside and called, “Annette Misthollow.”
The girl whose name had been called jolted hard and froze where she stood.
“Junior Sister Annette?” the disciple leading the way reminded her softly.
Annette Misthollow seemed not to hear him at all.
The roaring blaze before her eyes was gone. In its place stood a solemn, towering great hall—grand, heavy, and terribly familiar.
Her mind slowly cleared.
Then Annette Misthollow came back to herself. Light flared in her eyes.
She had actually come back.
Back to the very day she formally took Edric Witherspoon as her master.