The jade blade, sparkling with nascent Qi, reflected the shattered archways of the Contribution Hall. The girl's hand trembled, though her pupils contracted in desperate resolve. "Stay back, I said! You… you demon! You’ll corrupt my foundation!"
Weiying’s smile widened, a cold, predatory curve that seemed to drain the very color from the air. Her eyes, usually heavy-lidded with apathy, now held a sharp, calculating gleam. "Corrupt your foundation? Little junior sister, you misunderstand. I simply seek what is mine." She took another step, her movements unnervingly calm, utterly devoid of fear.
"Mine? Fate itself is against you!" she shrieked, her voice cracking. She lunged in a clumsy thrust, the jade sword aiming for Weiying’s heart.
But Weiying didn't dodge. She simply leaned into the attack, a faint, almost imperceptible shift of her ribs. The blade found its mark, piercing through her outer robes, a whisper of fabric tearing before the hard thud of impact against flesh.
A unison gasp ripped through the disciples. Chu Tiankuo roared, lunging forward, but an abjuration ward, erected by the sect elders too late, held him back. Mu Cangyuan stumbled, blood draining from his lips.
The girl froze, staring blankly as she felt the blade sink in. But there was no gush of crimson. Instead, a trickle of iridescent auric vapor, thick and viscous, began to seep from the wound, coiling around the jade sword like tendrils of dawn. The air itself began to vibrate with a strange, sweet resonance.
“Fool,” Weiying murmured, her voice a low hum, utterly devoid of pain. “Did you truly think such a flimsy thing could pierce a soul remade?”
Within the vapor, an old memory unspooled. It was a chamber of obsidian and starlight, a place beyond time, where a woman knelt before a swirling vortex of pure aether. Her features were once Weiying’s, but softened by a desperate longing, her eyes still clouded with the bitter jealousy that had driven her to ruin. This was the villainess, the one destined to be a stepping stone, her bloodline marked for eradication.
"Fate… it is an unyielding ledger," the past villainess had whispered to the aether, her voice raw with conviction. "A grand market. And she, the heroine, is but their favored bailiff, sent to bankrupt worlds, to foreclose on destinies. But a ledger can be balanced. A debt can be transferred."
She plunged her hand into the vortex, not with an act of self-preservation, but with brutal self-annihilation. Her internal roots, her marrow, her very essence of 'self' twisted and reformed. Her memories, her attachments, her capacity for love or hate – all were systematically purged, converted into pure astral bullion. It was a cold, deliberate act of soul-alchemy, forging a new existence from the ashes of an old one.
“A soul can be a vessel,” she had declared, her voice now devoid of human warmth, only the metallic ring of purpose. “A vault. A storehouse. If the Heavens operate on interest and principal, then I will become the ultimate bank, collecting every scrap, until their treasury is barren. Until their chosen collector, Lin Feifei, finds herself without a single coin to her name.”
The vortex had roared, consuming the last vestiges of the jealous girl, leaving behind only an empty, perfectly honed instrument. A cold, hungry void, animated by an insatiable need for material gain, a being whose every interaction was a transaction, whose every glance measured value in spirit stones. The villainess had not died; she had rewritten her own operating principles, trading raw emotion for cold avarice.
—
The auric vapor intensified, dragging the sword and its wielder into its rippling depths. The world dissolved around them, the screams of the onlookers, the shattered hall, and the soot sky all giving way to a boundless yellow expanse. Weiying, impaled, her breath steady, simply observed.
This was the heroine’s natal soul-domain, the inner sanctum of her lotus root, an expanse of blinding purity. Before them hung a colossal, ethereal bell, humming with ancient power. It glowed with an amber pulse, drawing in the auric vapor that bled from Weiying’s chest.
The Toll Bell. It bore intricate relief carvings of balance scales and sovereign decrees, its chime vibrating through Weiying’s very core. This was the mechanism that calibrated the universal scales, the instrument that assessed the debt of worlds, and now, it was hers.
The girl, still clutching the hilt, stared around the yellow expanse in rising terror. “What… what is this place? What have you done?”
Weiying slowly, deliberately, reached out with her free hand, ignoring the jade blade still buried in her chest. Her fingers, tipped with faint amber light, closed around the base of the colossal Bell. As her skin grazed the metal, absolute comprehension flashed across her mind.
The Heaven-Severing Array. Her past self’s ultimate revenge. It was never about accumulating power. It was about *reversing* the flow. The heroine’s 'absolute luck,' the destiny that warped reality to ensure her ascent, was merely the Dao’s largest asset. A boundless, self-replenishing treasury. To power the Array, to truly sever the Dao’s grip, she didn't just need wealth. She needed to *bankrupt* the firmament itself. To steal the heroine’s luck, to drain the divine economy dry.
As this realization settled, the domain's amber radiance surged. A new figure coalesced from the floating motes, expanding until a presence of immense, ancient power stood before them. It wore the serene, gentle face of Mu Cangyuan, but its eyes, glowing with an impossible, timeless wisdom, held none of his warmth. This was not her senior brother. This was the physical avatar of the Dao itself, now manifest within its favored asset's domain, alerted to the imminent theft of its greatest treasure.