She knew, deep down, that none of this was real. The Heart-Questioning Gate had thrown her into the past—was this supposed to be her trial? A demand that she renounce what had already burned to ash?

  But there was nothing to let go of. She had been an orphan.

  When she was small, she had clung to the hope of finding her family. But as the years passed, that hope had rotted away.

  She hadn’t been kidnapped, trafficked, or lost. She’d simply been abandoned. The orphanage director had found her swaddled at the doorstep. Her parents had left her there and never looked back.

  Lauren drew in a long, steadying breath, closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the world had shifted again.

  The Evercrest estate.

  The family she had once joined.

  Grandpa Preston had just emerged from three years of seclusion, his cultivation soaring to the Great Perfection of Foundation Establishment. One step away from Core Formation. If he succeeded, he would become the first Core Formation cultivator in all of Mistvale.

  Families from across Mistvale came bearing lavish gifts and congratulations.

  But that day, an unexpected guest arrived.

  Indiana. The fourth daughter of the Evercrest family. She returned from the Moonlit Sect, her entourage of allies at her back.

  Everyone assumed she had come to honor Preston’s achievement. Instead, she placed before him not a gift, but a document of severance.

  Preston was stunned. He could not fathom what wrong the Evercrest family had done to deserve such a public break.

  Indiana gave the answer herself, listing eight damning accusations.

  “Nelson abandoned his wife and daughter, all to marry another woman.

  “Lauren’s mother drove my mother to suicide, then smeared her as a whore’s daughter, turning me into a pariah.

  “I was the most gifted child in the clan, yet I was starved of resources. Even that useless trash Lauren received more than I did.”

  Lauren couldn’t hold her tongue.

  “Your mother was nothing but a prostitute,” she snapped. “Money, sex—her transactions were clear. How do you even know who your father was? Maybe she killed herself out of fear her secret would be exposed.”

  “And resources? Don’t give me that shit. To keep you out of trouble, I gave up my own share. My mother couldn’t stand watching me flounder, so she secretly gave me her own supplies. And you dare whine that it wasn’t enough?”

  “Shut up!” Indiana’s voice cracked with fury. “All these years you’ve poisoned everyone against me with that silver tongue of yours. Haven’t you done enough? Every time you ‘helped,’ I ended up punished—kneeling in the ancestral hall until my knees bled. And you expect me to thank you?”

  Lauren’s lips tightened. If I hadn’t helped, you wouldn’t have just been kneeling. You’d have been rotting in the grave.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Indiana’s sword gleamed as she turned to Preston. “Hand her over to me today, and I’ll spare you. Otherwise…”

  “Otherwise what?” Nelson roared. “You ungrateful wretch—do you mean to kill your own kin?”

  Indiana’s sneer was her only answer. She seized Odessa—Lauren’s mother—by the collar and dragged her forward. One flash of the blade, and blood sprayed across the hall.

  Nelson’s face went white with rage and regret. His moment of weakness, his lapse in judgment, had cursed the family. He should never have brought that child into their home.

  Lauren screamed, but her voice was nothing against the storm. Indiana and her allies slaughtered the Evercrest clan, one by one, forcing her to hear the screams, to watch every death unfold in front of her eyes.

  Then Indiana dragged her to a dungeon, carved out her Immortal roots, and condemned her to endless torment.

  With her dying breath, Lauren rasped, “Why? Even if you hated this family, you didn’t have to kill us all. Why?”

  Indiana’s sneer was colder than steel. “Because you’re my demons. My heart tells me I must kill you all—torture you to death—before I can ascend.”

  Lauren’s blood ran cold with horror.

  When she’d first read the book, back when she was just a reader, the so-called heroine—Indiana—had been trapped during her attempt at forming a nascent soul, crippled by her inner demons.

  The Evercrest family haunted her, a source of endless nightmares that left her screaming awake in the middle of the night.

  Her guardians had pressed her again and again until she finally confessed the truth about those dreams.

  After deliberation, they decided she needed to face her fears.

  So they urged her to return to the Evercrest family.

  And, like every cliché in every novel she’d ever read, the villains lined up to play their part. Instead of reconciliation, they doubled down on cruelty. The conflict escalated until Indiana snapped, slaughtering the entire Evercrest clan in a frenzy of blood.

  She nearly lost control completely, and it had taken the combined efforts of her companions to drag her back from the brink.

  Back then, as a reader, Lauren had sneered. Serves her right.

  But now, standing inside the illusion, she realized something was wrong.

  “You don’t hate the Evercrest family,” Lauren said slowly, watching Indiana’s trembling figure. “You dislike them, sure. But you don’t hate them. Do you?”

  Indiana’s face drained of color. “What are you talking about?”

  “Yes or no.”

  Indiana’s hands flew to her head. Her body convulsed as though some invisible force was tearing her apart.

  “Why kill them? Why her?” The words echoed around them, and then Indiana’s hand was wrenched upward, sword angled against her will—its tip aimed at Lauren.

  Indiana’s eyes went wide with horror.

  And Lauren understood.

  They weren’t living freely. They were trapped inside a story—a story with fixed plot points, unalterable no matter how many small details shifted with her rebirth.

  Indiana’s nightmare. Her inner demons. The inevitable destruction of the Evercrest family.

  Indiana wasn’t the heroine at all. She was just a pawn, locked on rails toward a predestined end.

  Which meant all of Lauren’s struggles were meaningless.

  She almost laughed. So this is it. Everything I do, wasted.

  Her lips curled into a bitter smile as she closed her eyes, ready to accept her fate.

  But then—thunder split the air.

  A deafening roar, right in her ear.

  No.

  No.

  She had been reborn. And the first thing she had done after waking was kill Indiana—rip the story apart at its root.

  Without Indiana, there would be no massacre. No destined tragedy.

  The moment Indiana’s blood hit the ground, the script had burned to ash.

  From then on, the story belonged to Lauren.

  Her vision wrenched violently, and suddenly she stood beneath a storm-torn sky. Lightning split the clouds. Dark thunderheads boiled above, and in the heart of the storm a vast eye stared down at her.

  Most would have cowered.

  Lauren threw back her head and laughed.

  “Indiana is dead. The plot is broken. I’m the one who’ll go to Sky-Covering Valley. I’ll be the one to join the righteous sects. I’ll become Drake’s disciple—the strongest cultivator in the world. One day I’ll stand on black earth, raise my sword to the sky, and gouge out your eyes.”

  “BOOM!”

  The heavens split with thunder as a dragon-shaped shadow soared upward, piercing straight through the monstrous eye.

  Lauren froze, stunned—then the scene shattered.

  The Heart-Questioning Gate faded away.

  “Junior Sister Lauren, you’re finally out.”

  She blinked, disoriented.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—the children were all there. Vernon hurried to her side, face tight with worry. “Are you all right? You’re pale as death.”

  Lauren shook her head, dazed. Just now… she’d nearly lost herself completely.

  But what about that dragon-shaped shadow?

  Had someone—something—saved her?