In the mountains, days and moons slipped by unnoticed.

Nana Toki cultivated inside a cave, and two centuries drifted past like mist on a ravine.

She only stopped when she broke through to the Great Vehicle Stage.

She’d wanted to go in one breath, ascend and become a true immortal, but the tribulation thunder refused to gather, so she let it go with a sigh.

The System finally told her the truth: after the Great Vehicle Stage, the mortal realm can’t supply enough Spirit Energy; progress crawls, and the lightning tribulation may come painfully late.

Fine, then Great Vehicle is Great Vehicle. She didn’t fuss; at least she could protect herself now, unlike the green sapling she’d been.

Nesting Phoenix had condensed a Golden Core in her body, and she’d fused that gift with phoenix blood; every hour of practice doubled like spring rain on tilled soil.

Yet she had little sense of her actual realm.

From day one till now, she hadn’t taken a single step out of that cave; aside from the vast tide of Spirit Energy surging in her core, she felt no other markers.

She could wield the Phoenix Flame too, but it wasn’t the same. Years of the Fusion Flame Art had melted that flame into something new.

The new fire burned violet. It held no heat, like winter light, but its effects were almost the same as the original Phoenix Flame.

Maybe it tied back to the Nine Suns Courting the Phoenix Art she cultivated.

Shrine Water had said this manual at Great Vehicle can call forth a “Pseudo Phoenix Flame.” It probably complemented the Fusion Flame Art and morphed into this new flame.

“Hiss—ow, ow, ow...”

She sprang off the stone slab, and every joint screamed like old timber in a storm.

So those xianxia novels were lying—no dramatic crackling bones after long closed-door training.

My poor waist...

She forced her bones to loosen, working through the stiffness till her body felt like hers again.

“What even is all this?”

She tugged a cobweb from her sleeves; dust blanketed her from shoulders to hair like a gray veil.

Her black robe was nearly dyed ash-color.

She left the cave and found a secluded lake. Cold water wrapped her like silk as she scrubbed clean, and she let out a long breath.

Thank the heavens she packed soap.

Otherwise the dust alone would’ve driven her mad.

Once she’d straightened herself out, she drew on the System’s power and returned to the central lands of the mortal world.

The towns were familiar as old courtyards, but the faces had changed like crops after a season.

When Nana Toki learned the demon realm was invading the mortal realm, she froze like a deer on snow.

What the—what happened? Demons invading the human world?

How was that even a thing?

In the original plot, the heroine ascended before anything like this. How did the script jump the rails this hard?

She asked around, pieced rumors together, then matched them with the System’s briefings. Only then did the past years unfold like a ragged tapestry.

First, after the great elder “pinched” her to death (fog), Cloudpeak Sect returned to normal. Shrine Water, the second elder, resigned and took Shuiqin Lin to the Purple Bamboo Grove to live in seclusion.

With no vicious female antagonist in her way, the heroine’s cultivation galloped; Nascent Soul came easy, and Great Vehicle was a casual reach.

Still, the road tangled.

What shocked Nana most was this: the heroine was violated.

Yes.

After breaking through to Nascent Soul, she went to Demonfall Cliff to fulfill her last vow, freed an old monster from a seal, and learned he was a powerful demon lord.

She lost, was captured, and was assaulted.

Only then did she realize the trap. The Azure Sea Tide Technique does boost water-root cultivation early on, but it has a shadow.

After Nascent Soul, if you want to continue, you must keep running Azure Sea Tide Technique.

But once you run it at Nascent Soul, Spirit Energy hits a cap; the overflow tears your meridians like floodwaters in clay banks.

To cancel the backlash, you need yin-yang complement—dual cultivation.

The heroine’s root was water. She was the perfect “furnace.”

That demon lord didn’t let her go, and her path forward now demanded the same act again and again.

Cloudpeak Sect’s master, Yunlan, was first to know. The cabbage he’d tended got stolen, and rage sent him storming out to butcher the demon remnant.

They fought seven days and seven nights, winds and thunder ripping the sky, and Yunlan won by a hair, riding the demon’s weakness right after breaking the seal.

The heroine saw what awaited if Yunlan dragged her home—she would become his kept plaything. So for her future, she struck while he was weakened and killed her master.

Then she forged proof that demons had slain the sect master, brought back the body, and the great elder—suspicious but empty-handed—couldn’t stop her. With the master gone, the closed-door disciple slid naturally into the seat of sect master.

But without dual cultivation with men, her realm stalled. She sought men anyway, yet their cultivation was too low; progress was mud.

By chance she discovered this: if both partners were women with water roots, sex doubled the effect.

She hated it, but she still hooked female disciples with water roots. One of them was a woman named Chi Li, whom she met by the South Sea on the road back to the sect, after Nana Toki had beaten her once before.

Chi Li had an innate water root and high cultivation, and her favor toward the heroine was absurdly high.

Heaven’s timing, earth’s luck, and human intent braided together, and the heroine very quickly bent.

With the Azure Sea Tide Technique and same-sex dual cultivation, she forced her way to the Great Vehicle Stage.

Nana listened to the System, stunned silly.

Yeah.

The news was too explosive; her mind balked.

Reaching Great Vehicle by lesbian dual cultivation—across the whole net, that’s probably only her.

“And how does that tie to demons invading the mortal realm?”

On the road to the demon realm, Nana Toki asked her System, voice dry as wind over slate.

Ah... it starts when the heroine reached Great Vehicle.

Yiling Shen thought she’d wait and ascend soon enough, but then her “best girlfriend” Chi Li flipped the table and wrecked Cloudpeak Sect.

Only then did the heroine discover Chi Li’s true body was Chiliao, the serpent Nesting Phoenix had wounded by the South Sea.

She’d been lurking at the heroine’s side, using same-sex dual cultivation to mend those wounds.

The thought of “sleeping with a snake” for centuries and being used like a tool blackened the heroine’s face, but the moment had passed. By the time she moved to stop Chi Li, the serpent had already returned to the South Sea, allied with the demon realm, and launched an attack on the mortal world.

As Cloudpeak Sect’s master, the heroine had to rally the other sects and resist.

Hence today’s war.

Nana Toki: “...”

Yiling Shen is something else. Even novels wouldn’t dare play it this wild.

Let the heroine handle mortal squabbles. Nana just needed to reach the demon realm and find Phoenixfire.

Once she revived Nesting Phoenix, she’d find Shrine Water and finish the main quest.

The System hurled her into the demon realm.

It looked much like the human world, only more barren, like fields stripped by winter.

Cultivation arts here breathed heavy demonic aura.

The System couldn’t nail the location, so Nana got dropped at random.

Her luck was terrible.

She landed at the border where realms met, and before her boots even set, a blade-light flashed at her eyes. She dodged on instinct, caught an arm, and yanked hard.

“Ah!”

A scream tore through the smoky battlefield, blood spraying like rain among clashing blades and stray spells.

“Mm, Cloudpeak Sect?”

She recognized the robe on the man whose arm she’d ripped free. While he still hadn’t focused on her, Nana stirred her Spirit Energy; violet-red flame crawled over his body. He became a man of fire, then collapsed in ash.

If Cloudpeak Sect was here, the heroine couldn’t be far.

Nana Toki: “...”—I run into her everywhere.

Most cultivators on the field were Foundation Establishment or Golden Core. A few Nascent Souls tangled with their own kind and couldn’t break free.

The tilt still favored the demons. Their cultivators were born to the demon realm’s turbulence; at the same rank, they pinned mortal cultivators like wrestlers in wet clay.

Cloudpeak disciples broke fast, and Nana didn’t linger. Riding the height of her realm, she slipped toward the crossing between worlds.

The junction sat in a mountain forest on the demon side, pines like spears under a leaden sky.

She stepped out, and a fire dragon steeped in demonic aura lunged like a comet.

Nana lifted her right hand, and the dragon burst mid-air. The shockwave rattled leaves; echoing flames bit into the bamboo and lit the grove.

Yeah, someone was posted here.

She met the attacker’s gaze across the trees, and her mood darkened like a brewing storm.

“Who are you?”

In the woods stood a handsome man, eyes narrowed as he measured the black-robed woman walking in from the realm’s seam.

His features were chiseled like marble, edges clean, wild and wicked. His gaze was sharp and deep, pressing like a millstone. Black armor couldn’t hide the aura of a born king, a sovereign who walked like thunder.

This was the demon king, Jiang Chen.

He led this invasion, and he was the one Nana had come to find.

Jiang Chen let no emotion show as his eyes traced her. A woman.

Rare beauty aside, that earlier exchange had told him enough—she’d torn his attack apart with a lift of the hand. Her strength was real.

Since when did the mortal realm birth a woman like this?

He was wary and held his blade, making no rash move.

“You’re the Demon King?”

Nana’s brows curved with a smile, her face bright as sun on water, her eyes still as a deep lake without a ripple.

“Let’s make a deal.”