Storm Continent.
Tu Kingdom, Youming Forest.
The sky was cloaked in black clouds. Thunder cracked without warning, followed by a torrential downpour. Sharp rain sliced through the air like silver needles, veiling the forest in a shroud of mist and bone-deep chill.
Not far from a river, nestled among jagged stones, a small blood-soaked figure lay motionless. She wore a tattered red dress, her delicate face marred beyond recognition. Dark hair was plastered to the ground, and blood trailed off with the rain. Each cold raindrop landed unrelentingly on her battered body.
Then—
The body twitched. Her eyes snapped open, sharp and cold as ice.
“Still alive?”
Her voice was quiet, cool. She stared flatly at the falling rain, not a ripple in her obsidian gaze.
A stab of searing pain hit her mind. She winced, closing her eyes as unfamiliar memories surged in.
After a while, Clara Monroe reopened her eyes.
“So I really made it.” She lay among the rocks, face blank, as if the pain from those gaping wounds had nothing to do with her.
“Guess that means you hitched a ride back with someone else's corpse!”
A childish voice echoed in her head. A puff of black mist rose from her chest, forming into a chubby beast that blinked at her.
“Whiskers... you came too?” A rare warmth flickered in her cold eyes.
“Our souls are one, remember? As long as yours survives, I’ll always find you." Whiskers licked its paw lazily, then stepped on her chest. "But if you keep lying here, you’ll end up a rain-soaked corpse no one bothers burying.”
Clara sat up slowly. Fire burned across her face, and pain tore through her chest and legs. Her brows creased slightly.
“Ugh! That face is hideous,” Whiskers circled her twice with disdain. “Can't even compare to one-tenth of the beauty you used to be.”
Clara ignored it. She dropped her gaze to the blade buried in her chest, weighing whether to remove it now or later.
“You’re in bad shape,” Whiskers muttered, shaking rainwater from its fur. “But first, you ought to find shelter. This body’s going cold.”
Clara nodded. She placed a hand over her knee, and a soft green glow pulsed from her palm. As the warmth spread, her shattered legs began cracking back into place, healing rapidly under the flicker of light.Clara Monroe frowned at the faint green glow. Even her powers had weakened? Just fixing a simple fracture took twenty whole minutes.
Once the pain in her legs was gone, she tried to stand. A sharp stab in her chest and a dizzy spell hit her at once—she nearly faceplanted.
Expressionless, Clara straightened up. In the pounding rain, she scanned the area for anything useful. Her eyes finally stopped on a cave not far off. She dragged herself toward it, step by painful step.
Her tattered dress was soaked through. As she walked, blood marked the dirt, but the heavy rain soon washed it away.
Whiskers Monroe trotted behind her, chubby form waddling, claws tucked behind its back like some old man out for a stroll.
No one knew how long it took, but Clara finally reached the cave. That short distance had drained her of every last bit of strength.
Her whole body ached like it had been ripped apart—a pain enough to knock out even the toughest.
Slumping down against the cold stone wall, she finally took a good look at this body from the inside out. The worst injury was the dagger lodged near her heart, just a hair's breadth away from killing her. The shattered legs likely came from the fall. As for her face... her gaze turned icy. In every life she'd lived, she hated nothing more than women who ruined other women’s faces out of spite.
"Emily Benson, huh?" Clara muttered, eyes sharp and dark beneath their clear surface.
"Master, your power’s flickering. Could it be... you leveled down?" Whiskers shook itself dry, pulled out a fresh bamboo shoot from who-knows-where, and started chewing happily.
Clara gave it a half-glance and raised her hand. A faint green light sparked to life in her palm.
“Level three. Not knocked all the way back to zero.” She gently touched her cheek. The light crept into her torn skin, slowly knitting the damaged flesh back together.
Only then did she start sorting through the memories in her head. This was a world built on cultivation, on a continent called Fengyun. She was deep in Youming Forest—the most feared place in Tu Country.
The girl who once owned this body had the same name as her, just with a different surname. At sixteen, she was the fourth-ranked daughter of Richard Benson of one of the four great families. Tested at seven and found with a perfect Fire Spirit Root, she had reached the fifth level of Qi Training before ten—a star of the house. What she wanted, she got.But good times never last. At twelve, just as she was about to join the Flowing Cloud Sect, Clara Monroe gave in to her second sister, Sophia Benson, and went with her to Yuehua Mountain to find some so-called Moonlight Dew for their grandmother. Midway, they were ambushed by a pack of fifth-tier Black Lions. Clara’s dantian was destroyed. Her cultivation gone. Everything changed after that.
The once kind and gentle parents turned cold and distant. Her always-smiling grandmother now looked at her with scorn. Her already aloof elder brother became even colder. The fiancé who used to whisper sweet words didn’t wait a day before breaking off the engagement.
Everyone avoided her like the plague—except Sophia, who still played the part of the caring sister.
“Heh,” Clara let out a cold laugh, her eyes dead calm but full of killing intent.
[“She’s useless, doesn’t deserve any cultivation resources. She belongs in the lowest shack,”] Richard Benson had said.
So from the elegant Phoenix Rest Garden, Clara was tossed into a rundown hut meant for livestock.
Once a prodigy praised across the capital, now reduced to a laughingstock overnight. The Flowing Cloud Sect, which once eyed her talent, dropped her instantly. Instead, they accepted Sophia, whose face won her praise as the most beautiful in the capital.
The family’s disgust, her parents’ indifference—Clara couldn’t even get enough to eat under that roof. Servants beat her like sport. She endured that hell for four long years.
And that wasn’t the end. Her sweet cousin, Emily Benson—daughter of the Benson Great Elder—never seemed satisfied with mere bullying. One day, she ordered servants to drag Clara to this place, doused her face in Violet Mandora venom, rammed a blade through her heart, and tossed her off a cliff.
Dead.
Forgotten.
