In the Great Qin Dynasty, inside the Celestial Masters Court—

“Your Highness, Crown Princess, everything has been arranged. You may go in now.”

A maid knelt on the floor, head bowed low, voice trembling.

The woman before her wore a scarlet long dress. Her figure was lush, her face beautiful in a sharp, dangerous way, like a blossom soaked in poison. The moment she heard those words, a fierce, impatient light flashed across her eyes.

“No matter what happens inside,” she said coldly, “no one is allowed to enter.”

This woman was Daenerys Blackwood.

Daughter of the Celestial Master of the current age. Crown Princess of Great Qin.

After giving that order, she did not waste another breath. She pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The room was quiet. Heavy. Even the air seemed sealed tight.

On the bed lay an unconscious young man.

It was Ethan Blackwood, the Sixth Prince of Great Qin.

Daenerys Blackwood stood by the bedside and stared at him. Her red lips slowly curled, and the hunger in her eyes was no longer hidden.

“Ethan Blackwood... Ethan Blackwood. All these years, I never let the Crown Prince touch me. I endured all of it for this one day.”

“The world only knows that you carry the Pure Yang Bloodline.”

“But what they don’t know... is that I, Daenerys Blackwood, carry the Pure Yin Bloodline.”

Her voice dropped lower, but the fire in it only grew hotter. It sounded like a blade scraping across stone.

“Once I seize your Pure Yang power, I’ll forge an unshakable foundation. After that, I’ll rise in one leap and no one will be able to stop me.”

“You think I care about being Crown Princess?”

She let out a low laugh. It was soft, but there was madness in it.

“What I want... is to become an Empress who rules an age.”

As she spoke, the look on her face grew more and more feverish, almost twisted. Ambition burned there naked and wild, without the slightest attempt to hide it.

Then she took out a pink medicinal pill.

Her fingers were slender and pale. Against her skin, the pill looked strange and almost wicked, like a peach blossom stained with blood.

She parted Ethan Blackwood’s lips and fed it into his mouth.

A few breaths passed.

She sensed the medicine had already taken effect. The hesitation in her eyes vanished at once.

She did not wait any longer.

…

At that very moment, Ethan Blackwood’s consciousness began to stir.

Like a man drowning in a black sea, he clawed his way bit by bit toward the surface. His thoughts were muddled, heavy, split apart by pain and confusion.

He slowly opened his eyes.

And in the next instant, Daenerys Blackwood’s body entered his sight.

Boom.

It felt as if an invisible warhammer had smashed straight into his skull.

His mind shook violently.

A sharp chill ran through him.

Wasn’t he already ambushed by the God-Emperor Taihao and the Yaochi Divine Mother?

Hadn’t he been beaten until both body and soul were destroyed, scattered to dust?

Then what was this?

What in hell was going on?

“Why… why is the misery of his youth showing up again? Was it all just a hallucination?”

A moment later, a sharp, blazing light flashed across Ethan Blackwood’s eyes.

“Not a hallucination.”

“I’ve been reborn.”

“Back to my younger years.”

“Back to the ugliest, darkest stretch of my whole life.”

Three years ago, he had awakened the Pure Yang bloodline. The news shook the whole Great Qin Empire.

Roland Blackwood, the Crown Prince, had wanted him dead from that very moment.

Daenerys Blackwood, the Crown Princess and the daughter of the Heavenly Master, had offered Roland the scheme and poisoned Ethan herself.

That poison did not kill him outright. It set off the power of his Pure Yang bloodline instead, turning it into a curse. From then on, he was tormented day and night by Yang poison, every hour like fire gnawing through his flesh and marrow.

After that, he could only keep going to the Heavenly Master Institute for pills, just to ease the pain and drag himself on.

And through those three years, every pill Daenerys fed him was a Resentful Yang Pill.

The Resentful Yang Pill could keep piling up the power of Ethan’s Pure Yang bloodline inside his body, layer after layer, like dry wood stacked for a blaze.

Daenerys’s purpose had been plain from the start. She wanted to devour the power of his Pure Yang bloodline, force Yin and Yang into one, build her foundation, and then join hands with her father to seize the throne.

In his previous life, after Daenerys swallowed the power of his Pure Yang bloodline, she still could not let go of him. She liked the taste of him too much. So she spared his life, locked him up, and kept him around as a toy for her pleasure.

Of course, Daenerys and her father still failed in the end.

Not because they were weak.

Because the current Qin Emperor looked old, frail, and half a step from the grave, but in truth he was a ruthless old monster.

The royal house had no trace of mercy in it. That truth showed itself down to the bone.

For the sake of extending his life, the Qin Emperor could even refine pills with the flesh and blood of his own sons and daughters.

Even Ethan, who had already been tortured to the edge of death, was still something that old emperor wanted to squeeze dry one last time.

Luckily, Seraphine Waters, his childhood sweetheart, had achieved success in cultivation within her sect. At the critical moment, she rushed back and risked her life to save him. Only then did he escape that tiger’s maw.

But by that time, Ethan’s life source had already been ruined beyond measure. He was in a wretched state, half-dead, his foundation shattered, his breath hanging by a thread.

Seraphine ignored her own safety. To heal him, she begged countless people and thought of every method she could…

During one trip to seek spirit medicine for Ethan Blackwood, Seraphine Waters met with disaster and died before her time.

That blow smashed Ethan clean through.

Hope gone. Heart gone. He wanted nothing but death.

He climbed a cliff, stepped into the void, and threw himself down. Yet fate played a crooked hand. He did not die. He was dragged into a spatial rift instead and fell into the Heavenly Realm.

There, he struck fortune against all reason.

In barely a hundred years, he rose like a blade drawn from fire and became the strongest of the human race in the Heavenly Realm.

Then the supreme immortal artifact, the Hongmeng Cauldron, came into the world.

Ethan joined hands with his friend, the Taixiao Divine Emperor, and the Yaochi Divine Mother, and fought to seize it.

When the battle peaked, Ethan erupted with overwhelming force. His edge split the field, his might shook heaven and earth, and together they crushed the ten alien Divine Emperors.

But the instant Ethan took hold of the Hongmeng Cauldron, the Taixiao Divine Emperor and the Yaochi Divine Mother turned on him at the same time.

He had never guarded against those two.

In the end... he was blasted into ash. Body and soul scattered. Nothing left.

And right then, Ethan realized something.

Inside his dantian, there was a tiny cauldron.

It was... the Hongmeng Cauldron!

“Could it be this thing—this Hongmeng Cauldron—that sent me back to my younger years?” Ethan thought, his heart tightening.

This was a legendary supreme treasure. Every time it appeared, the Heavenly Realm drowned in blood and slaughter. Countless peak experts, men who had already climbed to the summit, fought and died for it.

Yet from beginning to end, no one had ever truly controlled it.

Because of that, no one knew its secret.

Ethan had just begun to focus, wanting to probe it and see what use the Hongmeng Cauldron truly had—

when all at once, the pure yang power inside his body began pouring out without end, and Daenerys Blackwood was drawing it away at an even faster speed.

Ethan snapped back to himself.

His gaze turned icy. Hard as winter steel.

“Daenerys Blackwood. Roland. Father. Taixiao. Yaochi... since I, Ethan Blackwood, have lived this life again, none of you will ever harm me another time!”

“Seraphine... in the last life, you suffered for me beyond measure. You swallowed grievance after grievance, pain after pain, and in the end even lost your life... I owe you far too much.”

“In this life, I will repay it. I will protect you well.”

At this moment, Ethan’s condition was terrible.

His body was a wreck.

But right now—

this was the best chance he could ask for.

Daenerys Blackwood treated him like a furnace to be used.

Then fine.

He could use her the same way.

The secret art she prized so much, in Ethan Blackwood’s eyes, was crude trash. Full of holes. Childish.

He had countless ways to reverse yin and yang.

Another short while passed.

Inside Daenerys Blackwood, the pure yin power slowly wound together with the pure yang power in Ethan Blackwood’s body. The two forces twisted, merged, and became one.

Just as Daenerys Blackwood was about to swallow that fused power whole—

Ethan Blackwood, who had been lying there like a dead man, suddenly moved.

His body burst with force.

In an instant, he ripped the fused yin-yang power back and dragged it into himself.

At once, that broken, ruined, half-dead body of his began to change.

The massive, pure yin-yang force washed through his limbs and bones like a flood breaking a dam. It fed his dried blood, filled his hollow meridians, hammered strength back into flesh that had long been weak and ragged.

His body, which had been full of holes, quickly grew firm and strong under that nourishment.

“Ah!”

Daenerys Blackwood let out a sharp cry of pain.

Her eyes, shut the whole time, flew open.

Only then did she see it clearly.

The unconscious Ethan Blackwood had already awakened.

“My yin-yang power…” Daenerys Blackwood’s face twisted on the spot. Her fine features turned savage, ugly with fury, as if she wanted to tear him apart alive and devour him raw.

“Give me back my yin-yang power!”

She shrieked and lunged forward, both hands clawing for Ethan Blackwood’s throat.

Ethan Blackwood moved fast and caught her wrists in one grab.

Daenerys Blackwood’s plan had failed. Worse, a huge part of her pure yin power had been stolen back from under her nose. The aura inside her body was now in chaos, her strength scattered and blocked. She could not circulate her power at all, much less break free from Ethan Blackwood’s grip.

And there was still some pure yin power left inside her.

That could not be wasted.

Now that Ethan Blackwood had the upper hand, he did not stop.

He continued.

Daenerys Blackwood felt the pure yin power still left in her body draining away at a frightening speed. Her face turned pale. The arrogance from before shattered cleanly, and panic surged into her eyes.

“Ethan Blackwood… please… please…”

Her voice trembled.

“I’m the Crown Princess…”

Ethan Blackwood gave a cold laugh.

There was not the slightest trace of desire in his eyes.

Only an icy chill, hard and deep enough to freeze a man to the bone.