The smell of medicinal herbs couldn't mask the stench of failure.
Wei Shao opened his eyes to a ceiling he'd last seen three hundred years ago—wooden beams darkened by smoke, a spider's web glistening in the corner where moonlight crept through paper windows. His hands, when he raised them, were smooth and unmarred. Young hands. Weak hands.
Seventeen years old again.
He sat up slowly, cataloguing every sensation. The Mortal Shell realm—barely able to circulate soul essence, pathetically fragile. His meridians were unopened, his soul space a mere candle flame where once an inferno had raged. Everything he'd spent centuries building, gone. Everything except his memories.
And memories, Wei Shao knew, were the most valuable treasure of all.
A notification appeared in the corner of his vision, that damnable Heaven's Ledger that tracked every cultivator's progress:
Wei Shao
Realm: Mortal Shell (Early)
Soul Depth: 3/100
Contracts Bound: 0
Karmic Debt: ???
That last line made him smile—a cold expression that didn't belong on a seventeen-year-old's face. The Heaven's Ledger couldn't calculate what he'd done in his previous life, the prices he'd paid, the lines he'd crossed. It only knew he shouldn't exist, a soul that had somehow slipped backward through time itself.
Not time, he corrected himself. The Sovereign's mercy.
He'd stood before that ancient being in his final moments, his body shattered by the combined assault of seven Transcendent realm cultivators. They'd feared him, called him the Demon of Binding, hunted him for decades. And they'd won—barely.
But the Sovereign had made him an offer.
"Return to the beginning. Make different choices. Or make the same ones, if you dare. I care only for the amusement of watching you struggle."
Wei Shao had accepted without hesitation. He'd learned long ago that pride was worthless currency.
Footsteps approached his door. He recognized the gait—hurried, nervous. His younger sister, Wei Lin. In his first life, she'd died at nineteen, caught in the schemes of the Crimson Lotus Sect. He'd avenged her, eventually. It had taken him forty years and cost him his last shred of humanity, but he'd reduced that sect to ashes and scattered their souls to the void.
This time, perhaps he'd save her.
Or perhaps he'd use her more efficiently.
The door slid open. Wei Lin peeked in, her face anxious. "Brother? You're awake? Mother said you were unconscious for two days after the Contract Ceremony."
Ah. The Contract Ceremony. The event that determined every young cultivator's path. Wei Shao had been humiliated in his first life—unable to bind even a Lesser spirit, marked as talentless before the entire clan.
This time would be different.
"I'm fine," he said, keeping his voice neutral. "The ceremony was... enlightening."
Wei Lin's expression shifted to pity. She thought he was putting on a brave face. "Brother, it doesn't matter that you couldn't form a contract. Many cultivators find their path later. The Mortal Shell realm isn't everything."
In his first life, her words had been a small comfort. Now they were almost amusing. The Mortal Shell realm wasn't everything—it was merely the foundation. And foundations could be rebuilt properly, if one knew how.
"Tell me, Lin," he said, "do you remember what Father taught us about cultivation?"
She blinked at the non-sequitur. "That power comes from binding spirits to your soul? The stronger the spirit, the greater the—"
"Wrong." Wei Shao stood, moving to the window. Outside, the Wei clan compound sprawled beneath the night sky. Somewhere in those buildings, the clan elders were plotting. The family head was preparing to betroth Wei Lin to the son of the Crimson Lotus Sect. Wei Shao himself would soon be cast aside as worthless.
He'd spent three hundred years learning that orthodox cultivation was a comfortable lie.
"Power," he said softly, "comes from understanding the price of things. Spirits have a cost. Contracts have a cost. Even breathing has a cost, though we pay it unconsciously."
He turned to face his sister. "The cultivation world is a ledger, Lin. Everything balances. The question is whether you're willing to pay."
Wei Lin's face showed confusion, but Wei Shao saw the moment his words took root. She was clever, his sister. In another life, with proper guidance, she might have been formidable.
"I don't understand," she said.
"You will." He smiled, and this time let a trace of warmth enter it. "Go rest. Tomorrow the clan elders will announce the engagement arrangements. We'll need to be prepared."
After she left, Wei Shao returned to the window. His reflection stared back—young, supposedly powerless, overlooked. Perfect.
In his first life, he'd spent decades trying to walk the righteous path, following orthodox methods, believing that hard work and virtue would be rewarded. He'd learned better. The cultivation world devoured the virtuous and elevated the ruthless.
This time, he would be ruthless from the start.
The Heaven's Ledger flickered:
New Quest Available: The First Contract
Requirement: Bind a spirit to your soul
Reward: Soul Depth +10, Title: "Contractor"
Time Limit: 7 days
Wei Shao dismissed it with a thought. The Ledger offered conventional quests for conventional cultivators. He had no intention of being conventional.
Three days from now, the clan would hold its monthly spirit auction. A wounded Grief Shade would be sold—most considered it worthless, too damaged to bind, too dangerous to heal. Wei Shao knew better. In his previous life, he'd learned techniques the righteous sects had tried to erase from history.
He'd learned how to bind broken things, corrupted things, forbidden things.
The night air was cold against his skin, but Wei Shao didn't shiver. He'd survived three hundred years of cultivation's cruelest lessons. He'd climbed from nothing to the threshold of true immortality, only to be cut down by those who feared what he'd become.
This time would be different.
This time, he knew all their secrets.
This time, he'd show them what real cultivation looked like—not the sanitized, moral version the great sects peddled, but the raw, merciless truth that lay beneath.
Power had a price, and Wei Shao had already decided he was willing to pay it.
The only question was who else he'd make pay along the way.