Chapter 1

I was the Red-Thread Fairy. On the day of the Star Festival, hurrying toward the Hall of Crimson Love, my foot slipped and I fell into the celestial pool, waking up inside the body of the useless junior disciple of the Heavenly Sword Sect.

The body's original owner had wanted to ask senior disciple Aidan Blake out for the Star Festival. But the moment she touched his sleeve, his spirit beast trampled her half to death.

"Shameless. You know I hate being touched, and by you of all people?"

Aidan waved a hand with open disgust and tossed a talisman at me.

"Fine. I'm generous enough not to hold it against you. Consider this top-grade talisman an apology for your injury."

"The betrothal between us was nothing but a joke our parents made. It was never meant to be taken seriously. Stop clinging to me."

Ugly words drifted into my ears from all around.

"A prodigy like the eldest Blake heir belongs with the second senior sister as his cultivation partner. He shouldn't be dragged down by trash like her!"

"She threw herself under his beast on purpose to get stepped on. A top-grade talisman, and he just hands it over to her for free?"

"Who still believes in parental arrangements these days? He has a top-grade heavenly spirit root. How could a useless thing like her ever deserve him?"

I gave a small flick of my hand, and red thread slowly wound around their index fingers.

Hurt people on purpose and still spout such righteous nonsense? From now on, every last one of you can take an animal for a cultivation partner.

……

Pain shot through my body, and the ugly words bored into my ears one by one.

I came back to myself and found I was being pinned under a spirit beast that looked like a black panther with golden eyes.

The man in flowing white robes standing a short distance off claimed he wouldn't hold anything against me.

Yet he made no move to call back the beast crushing me.

It hurt so much.

I pounded at the beast's huge paw with everything I had.

"Get off me, you big black lump of coal!"

Only then did Aidan Blake call his spirit beast.

"Onyx, that's enough, come here. Don't dirty your paws on trash like this."

The beast lifted its paw and padded obediently behind him.

Aidan didn't spare me a single glance.

He only raised a hand and gently stroked the beast at his back.

As if praising it for a job well done.

In that instant, the original Lauren's memories came flooding into my mind.

I understood roughly what was going on.

The original Lauren was love-obsessed, a childhood companion of Aidan Blake, and yet she had only an empty spirit root.

To keep up with him, she had poured a fortune into buying her way into the Heavenly Sword Sect.

Aidan looked down on her, deciding she wasn't good enough for him.

Trading on his title as senior disciple, he led the other disciples in bullying her.

Behind her back he spent no small amount of her spirit stones and leaned freely on her family's resources.

He took every advantage there was, and played the noble aloof man on top of it.

But the moment the betrothal came up, suddenly she wasn't good enough for him.

It left the original Lauren believing she really was worthless, forever bending over backward to please Aidan Blake.

I spat, hard.

Disgusting.

Of all things, this fairy cannot stand a man who wears righteousness like this while his heart is rotten with malice.

He was the one unworthy of the original Lauren's whole devoted heart.

On the ground, the top-grade talisman was still glinting.

I glanced down at it.

This talisman was one he'd made the original Lauren buy with her own spirit stones. That time she'd bought a hundred of them at once.

Using one of her own bought talismans to pay for her life, and wearing that magnanimous look while he did it. It was sickening.

Aidan Blake looked down at me from above.

"Lauren Flores, what are you still lying there for? Don't tell me you're trying to play the victim?"