The stern Preston softened, a rare gentleness in the grooves of his face. He smoothed the little bun at Lauren’s nape and said, “It’s not that Heaven won’t even look—it’s that there are places Heaven simply cannot see.”

  They flew over a mirror-still lake as a thunderbolt split the air, a white streak a thousand feet long that scorched the clouds. Lauren glanced up and saw the monstrous eye roiling in the dark heavens, a shadowed gaze fixed on her like a living thing.

  At last they reached the Sky-Covering Valley. Preston dropped their talisman like an umbrella and stretched the great, dome-like device over them. The lightning hammered down, but the device held; each strike hit the shield and splintered away.

  Still, with every impact Preston’s face grew paler. Time was bleeding out of him.

  He crouched and looked at her with an expression that was equal parts stern and terrified. “Lauren, I don’t know what you’ve done that would draw Heaven’s ire. I won’t ask.” His voice was low. “This thunder will not stop until it claims your life. But living is better than dying. No matter what—live. Go. Enter the Sky-Covered Valley. Let whatever sins you carry be washed away.”

  Lauren nodded fiercely. “Grandpa, don’t worry. I’ll come back. Three years. I’ll be back in three years.”

  Then she stepped forward and plunged into the valley without looking back.

  Almost at once the thunder died. The dark clouds thinned and bled away.

  The Sky-Covered Valley was an odd place—one that could be entered but not easily left. For a thousand years it had been said no one who arrived in had ever emerged.

  In her previous life, as the vicious supporting sister, Lauren had once hurled Indiana into this valley before the girl had even begun to cultivate. And yet Indiana had crawled back out. As a reader back then, Lauren had known exactly how.

  The Valley was less a place of divine damnation and more like a prison that doubled as a refuge. It held something locked at its core—something the world chose not to look at. In a sense, it was Heaven’s mercy: anyone who took shelter here was beyond the reach of celestial punishment. Your past sins would be forgiven, but the price was steep—those who sought refuge here accepted exile. They did not leave.

  But Lauren had read the entire story. She knew the loophole. She smiled thinking of it and stepped deeper onto the path.

  There was no real day or night here; the sky was a constant bruise of clouds. She walked until her legs ached. At some point she heard an old woman’s voice—raspy, cracked with age, yet full of a startlingly bright joy, a voice that sang with the kind of cheer that had outlived hope.

  Then the singing cut off.

  “Hey, someone new?” a voice called.

  Lauren pushed through a stand of bamboo and emerged into a small clearing. Before her hunched an old woman, bent so far she might have been part of the earth itself.

  Her skin was parchment, her hands knotted, but there was a spark in the woman’s eyes that made Lauren think she’d rather meet this woman than any other fate in the valley.

  If the first person here had been a butcher or a devourer, Lauren would already be in trouble. As it was, fate had favored her.

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  She smiled, the bright, practiced smile of a child. “Hello, Grandma,” she said.

  The old woman blinked and something like memory softened her face. “A little one,” she said. “Little one, what wicked deed brought you here?”

  Lauren’s mind raced. Anyone who survived here was not a simple weakling. This woman had power—hidden or honed—and might kill without second thought if offended. But if Lauren could win her favor, her odds of surviving this place would jump dramatically.

  She already knew the only currency that would buy the old woman’s protection.

  Lauren let the sweetness in her voice bloom like a trap. “I killed the destined heroine,” she said plainly.

  The old woman’s smile froze. Her eyes narrowed, disbelief knocking her voice off balance. “What? You killed the destined heroine?” she repeated, incredulous.

  “Yes.”

  “And why?” the old woman demanded, incredulous and curious at once.

  “To take her place. To replace her.”

  The old woman hissed—soft, sharp, like a startled animal.

  The old woman set aside her work and stared at Lauren as though she were some rare, dangerous treasure.

  No longer did she see a pretty, delicate child—what stood before her was something terrifying.

  A little girl who had dared to kill the destined heroine. A little girl who dared to claim her place. How could such a thing be possible?

  She had been trapped here for five hundred years. Five hundred years of silence, dust, and waiting. What had changed in the outside world during all that time? To think that even a child now dared to slay fate’s chosen…

  The old woman’s gnarled hands trembled before she finally gathered the courage to seize Lauren’s wrist.

  Her cloudy eyes widened. What? This child had clearly only just begun cultivation—barely the first stage of Qi training, level one at most.

  “How,” the old woman demanded hoarsely, “could someone like you kill the heroine?”

  Lauren only laughed, bright and cruel. “Why not? I’d already stepped into Qi training. She hadn’t even started. She was still scrubbing chamber pots when I slit her throat.”

  The old woman: “…”

  “And how,” she pressed after a long silence, “did you even know she was the heroine?”

  “I dreamed it,” Lauren replied smoothly. “If I didn’t kill her, she would kill me.”

  The old woman’s face twisted, disbelief and something else warring inside her. She probed Lauren’s body again, this time more carefully—until her breath caught.

  Her hand recoiled. “Immortal root. You… you actually have an immortal root.”

  Lauren didn’t resist. Against someone of this level, she was less than an ant. Better to let her see and admit it plainly.

  “Yes,” Lauren said calmly. “An immortal root. I was born to defy Heaven.”

  That was enough. The old woman believed her. Defy Heaven… If such a child truly existed, one who could spit in Heaven’s eye, then perhaps—just perhaps—she might even find a way out of this damned cage.

  The old woman’s voice shook with excitement, words tumbling over each other. “Come on, you rebellious… rebellious little girl. I’ll take you to the village.”

  The “village” held only eight souls now. Once there had been far more, but the rest had been swallowed by this place. Only eight still survived—eight who could still speak. None of them were ordinary.

  The old woman herself was no exception. In another life she had been the Saint of the Demonic Cult.

  Once, in her youth, she had loved a man. A man who smiled softly, who whispered to her in the dark. But he had been an undercover spy—sent to win her trust, only to use her as the key to open the gates of the Demonic Realm.

  It was his betrayal that sparked the war.

  For years, the righteous sects and the Demonic Cult had lived in a fragile peace. But he, with his schemes and secrets, set fire to the world, playing both sides in his game.

  When the storm broke, she, the Saint, bore the brunt of it all.

  She killed him with her own hands. And only after his death did she recognize the face she’d once known: the neighbor’s boy, her betrothed since childhood.

  Only then did she understand the madness of his choices.

  When she had been taken by the Demonic Cult as a girl, he had devoted his life to infiltrating them, searching for her. But somewhere along the way he had been told she was already dead.

  So he sought vengeance.

  Not until his dying breath did he finally find her.

  Her grief had split her mind. Her fury had cracked the world. She unleashed the ancient barrier of the Demonic Cult, a cataclysm that destroyed every living thing within its borders—disciples, beasts, even grass and trees. To this day, nothing grows there. The force of that slaughter was like an atomic blast.

  She had survived, yes—but there was no place left for her in the world of men. And so she had come here.