I. Alive and Back
When Lin Yue walked through the north gate of the Abyssal Demon Palace, the two disciples on guard duty nearly popped their eyeballs out of their sockets.
"Y-you're that servant? Where is Lord Black Rock?"
Lin Yue didn't slow his pace. He tossed a single word over his shoulder.
"Dead."
"D-dead?!"
"Yeah. Run through the chest by a Church Knight-Captain's sacred blade. Thoroughly dead. Saw it with my own eyes."
His tone was as flat as if he were remarking that the cafeteria food was too salty again.
The two guard disciples exchanged bewildered glances, at a loss for words. A servant had returned alive, while the Bronze-tier overseer leading the mission was dead—no matter how you sliced it, something didn't add up.
But Lin Yue couldn't have cared less what they thought.
He headed straight for the Mission Hall.
The Mission Hall overseer was a gaunt, middle-aged man named Matthew. He wore a monocle crafted from polished crystal and controlled the issuance of all outer-sect missions and the recording of merit points. When he saw Lin Yue walk in, the quill in his hand paused.
"Black Rock's squad. Ambush on a Church supply convoy." Lin Yue tossed the mission token onto the desk. "Mission complete. Church supply convoy repelled. Supplies seized by Lord Black Rock's forces. However, Lord Black Rock fell in battle. The remaining official disciples and servants… all perished."
He delivered the words "all perished" without flinching.
After all, the three other servants really were dead. As for the official disciples—Lin Yue had taken a distant glance as he left; they were being surrounded and slaughtered by the Holy Knights. Odds were they hadn't made it either.
Overseer Matthew stared at Lin Yue for a long moment.
Those gray-blue eyes peered through the crystal lens, as if trying to see right through him.
"You're a servant. How did you survive?"
Lin Yue had already prepared his story.
"Lord Black Rock sent me as bait to draw off the Church's main force. I'm a fast runner. I hid in a hollow tree. When I came out, the battle was already over. Lord Black Rock had already…" He lowered his head, displaying a perfectly timed expression of "grief." "He had already fallen in the line of duty."
Overseer Matthew was silent for three seconds.
Then he stamped the mission record with the seal of Completion.
"Black Rock is dead. He led the mission, so the merit should rightfully go to him. But he's dead, and you're the only participant who returned alive." Matthew pushed his monocle up. "According to the rules of the Demon Palace, if a mission is completed and there is a survivor, that survivor inherits all the merit."
He reassessed Lin Yue with a new gaze.
"From this moment on, you are no longer a servant. You are exceptionally promoted to official disciple of the Abyssal Demon Palace. Go to Logistics and collect your new waist token and uniform. Your assigned courtyard is in the East Seventh Ward. Courtyard number thirty-seven."
Lin Yue froze.
"Wait. You're saying… I got promoted?"
"Yes."
"And I get a house?"
"Yes."
"And I don't have to scrub toilets anymore?"
Overseer Matthew's face finally showed a flicker of impatience. "Official disciples do not scrub toilets. Any further questions?"
Lin Yue was silent for a second.
Then he broke into the first genuine smile he'd worn since transmigrating.
"No further questions. Absolutely none."
---
II. Courtyard Number Thirty-Seven
The East Seventh Ward was located in the northeast corner of the Demon Palace's outer sect. It was the residential area for official disciples.
Courtyard Number Thirty-Seven wasn't large, but it had everything one needed—a bedroom, a cultivation chamber, and a small yard. The yard even contained a withered tree of some unknown species, its trunk twisted as if it had been struck by lightning.
Lin Yue stood in the courtyard and took a deep breath.
The air no longer reeked of decay.
No more scrubbing toilets.
His own courtyard.
"So this is what a promotion and a raise feels like?" he muttered to himself. "In my last life, I worked overtime until 3 AM and never got this far. In this life, I die once and get everything. If I'd known dying was this effective, I would've—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Because the courtyard door was kicked open.
Yes.
Kicked.
The wooden door flew off its hinges, bounced twice on the ground, and sent up a cloud of dust.
Lin Yue's fists clenched.
A girl with silver hair and crimson eyes stood in the doorway.
She looked about fifteen or sixteen, dressed in a short black robe with a dagger hanging from her waist—a blade that seemed comically oversized compared to her slender frame. Her long silver hair was tied up in a high ponytail, and her crimson eyes blazed like twin flames as she scrutinized Lin Yue from head to toe.
"You're the servant who counter-killed Black Rock?"
Lin Yue narrowed his eyes. "Who's asking?"
"Name's Lia." The girl strode into the courtyard, completely ignoring the door lying on the ground. "Starting today, I'm your junior disciple."
"...Excuse me?"
"You saved my life. Black Rock was planning to use me as cannon fodder too. But you killed him instead, so you indirectly saved me." Lia stated this with absolute conviction, as if she were reciting an irrefutable fact. "According to the Demon Sect's rules, if you owe someone a life, you either repay it with a life or acknowledge them as your senior. I choose the latter."
Lin Yue's eye twitched.
"The Demon Sect has a rule like that?"
"I say it does, so it does."
"...And who are you to make up rules?"
"I'm Lia." She paused, then added, "The only half-blood in the Abyssal Demon Palace. My father is a high-ranking demon of the Palace. My mother is a defector Saintess of the Light Church. No one in the entire Palace dares to mess with me."
Lin Yue was silent for three seconds.
Then he turned and started walking toward his room.
"Hey, where are you going?"
"Packing. Moving to a different courtyard. I can't afford to offend you, but I can certainly run."
Lia grabbed his sleeve.
"No! You're my senior brother now! If you leave, who's going to cook my barbecue?"
Lin Yue turned his head and looked at her like she had lost her mind.
"Since when did I agree to cook your barbecue?"
"Just now. In your heart. I heard it."
Lin Yue: "..."
He had a very, very bad feeling about this.
This girl named Lia was going to be the biggest obstacle on his path to a peaceful, slacker's life.
---
III. Forcibly Acquired Junior Disciple
Lia did not act like a guest in any sense of the word.
She took a tour of Lin Yue's courtyard, expressed her disdain for the withered tree ("Ugly as sin"), voiced her dissatisfaction with the size of the cultivation chamber ("How can anyone train in something this cramped?"), and sneered at the stone bed in the bedroom ("Rock hard—how is anyone supposed to sleep on that?"). Then she plopped herself down on the courtyard's only stone stool, crossed her legs, and announced her occupancy plan.
"Starting tomorrow, I'll be coming over every day for free meals."
Lin Yue leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Do I owe you something?"
"You do. A life, remember?" Lia was utterly unrepentant. "Besides, you're a newly promoted official disciple. You don't have a single backer in the Demon Palace. Do you have any idea how brutal the internal politics here are? Without me protecting you, you'll be picked clean to the bone within three days."
"You? Protect me?"
Lin Yue gave her a once-over.
She barely reached his shoulder. Her arms were as thin as chopsticks. Sure, the dagger at her waist looked intimidating, but overall, she did not exactly project an aura of "capable protector."
"What's your power level?"
Lia puffed out her chest with pride. "Bronze-tier peak!"
Lin Yue: "..."
He himself hadn't even been officially assessed as Black Iron-tier yet.
"Fine." He sighed. "You can protect me. But you have to tell me what you really want. Spare me the 'life debt' nonsense. I don't buy it."
The crimson in Lia's eyes flickered.
She fell silent for a few seconds. The arrogant mask slipped away, and her voice dropped.
"Black Rock's list of servants marked for death… I was on it."
Lin Yue said nothing.
"I'm a half-blood. The people in the Demon Palace look down on me. The Church wants to kill me. Black Rock took money from the Church to dispose of me as cannon fodder. I was already prepared to die."
She lifted her head and met Lin Yue's eyes.
"But you didn't die. You came back. And Black Rock is dead."
"So?"
"So I figured, if I stick with you, maybe I won't die so easily."
Silence settled over the courtyard.
Wind whistled through the twisted branches of the withered tree, sounding almost like someone sighing.
Lin Yue looked at the silver-haired, crimson-eyed girl before him. He suddenly felt that all her bravado and arrogance resembled something—
A shell.
A shell she used to protect herself.
He let out a breath, turned, and walked into the house.
"Where are you going?"
"To start the fire," Lin Yue said without looking back. "Didn't you say something about barbecue? Did you bring the meat?"
Lia blinked. Then her eyes lit up like twin suns.
She pulled a storage pouch from her waist and dumped out a pile of monster meat. Every piece was as fresh as if it had just been carved from the beast.
"I brought it! I went hunting specifically before I came! Flame Demon Boar hind leg, the tenderest cut!"
Lin Yue stared at the pile of meat—enough to feed at least ten people—and his eye twitched again.
"You planned this whole thing in advance, didn't you?"
Lia flashed him a sly grin. "Always be prepared, Senior Brother."
It was the first time she'd called him that.
Lin Yue pretended not to notice.
---
IV. The Undercurrents of the Demon Palace
The barbecue was set up in the courtyard.
Lin Yue flipped the Flame Demon Boar hind leg over the fire while mentally plotting his next moves.
He was now an official disciple of the Abyssal Demon Palace, residing in Courtyard Number Thirty-Seven of the East Seventh Ward, with a half-blood junior disciple who had forcibly attached herself to him.
Sounded decent on the surface.
But he knew it was only a superficial calm.
The person pulling Black Rock's strings had yet to surface. The Church had already taken note of his causal anomaly—that Knight-Captain might not have pieced it together in the heat of the moment, but once he returned and debriefed, he would analyze every detail of that battle. With the Church's intelligence network, they'd trace it back to him sooner or later.
And then there were those draconic eyes in the depths of the Demon Palace.
Augustus.
The eyes he'd glimpsed in the final moments of his "first" death—they undoubtedly belonged to the legendary Black Dragon Lord. That ancient dragon, who had lived for gods knew how many years, had already sensed the disturbance in causality.
Being noticed by an existence of that level was not a good thing.
"Senior Brother, the meat's burning."
Lia's voice pulled him back to reality.
Lin Yue looked down. One side of the Flame Demon Boar hind leg had indeed turned black. He hastily flipped it, muttering, "Why didn't you say something sooner?"
"You seemed deep in thought." Lia rested her chin on her hands, her crimson eyes glittering in the firelight. "What were you thinking about? How to get stronger?"
"How to slack off."
"Liar."
"I'm serious."
"If you really wanted to slack off, you wouldn't have come back alive."
Lin Yue's hand paused mid-flip.
This little girl was surprisingly perceptive.
He didn't reply. He silently sliced the cooked meat into pieces and handed some to Lia. She took it, blew on it to cool it down, popped it into her mouth, and her face lit up with satisfaction.
"Delicious!"
"Obviously. In my last life, I was a gold-tier VIP at the barbecue joint."
"What's a VIP?"
"Never mind."
Lin Yue ate a piece himself. The Flame Demon Boar meat was genuinely good—it carried a natural, spicy fragrance and burst with juices when bitten.
The two of them sat there in the courtyard, around the fire, eating barbecue.
The night breeze stirred, making the shadow of the withered tree dance on the ground.
"Senior Brother."
"Hm?"
"Do you think the person behind Black Rock will come after you?"
Lin Yue chewed his meat and didn't answer immediately.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Black Rock was only a Bronze-tier overseer in the outer sect. For him to dare collude with the Church and sell out Demon Palace disciples, there had to be someone much higher up backing him. Now that Black Rock was dead, that person would surely come to investigate.
And the most direct lead would be him—the "sole survivor."
"We'll deal with it when it comes." Lin Yue stuffed the last piece of meat into his mouth and spoke around it. "Whatever comes, we'll handle it. At worst…"
"At worst what?"
"At worst, I'll just die again."
He said it very casually.
But Lia noticed something—when her senior brother said those words, a light flashed in his eyes that she had never seen before.
It wasn't fear.
It was anticipation.
---
V. First Cultivation Session
After the barbecue, Lia finally left.
Before leaving, she emphasized multiple times that she would be back tomorrow for more free meals and suggested that Lin Yue "chop down that ugly withered tree and plant a fruit tree instead." Lin Yue ignored this completely.
The courtyard was finally quiet.
Lin Yue closed the door—he had managed to reattach the kicked-in one, barely—and walked into the cultivation chamber. He sat cross-legged on the floor.
He opened his causality panel.
---
[Causality Rewrite Authority]
Host: Lin Yue
Current Causality Points: 170
Available Abilities:
① Time Reversal (Novice): Maximum rewind 12 hours. Cooldown: 24 hours. Cost: 10 points/hour.
② Causality Alteration (Novice): Alter the causal trajectory of low-probability events. Cost: Varies based on scope.
③ Life Revival (Locked): Requires 500 Causality Points to unlock.
---
170 Causality Points.
330 more to unlock Life Revival.
Lin Yue stared at the panel, his mind calculating rapidly.
An average causality alteration cost around 30 points. Based on the Black Rock incident, he could probably use it five or six more times. But against stronger opponents and more complex causal rewrites, the cost could multiply.
He needed to hit 500 points as soon as possible.
Life Revival was his greatest trump card for surviving in this world—the ability to resurrect himself meant an extra life. In a place like the Demon Palace that devoured people without spitting out bones, an extra life was worth more than anything.
But how to farm points?
Screwing over fellow disciples in secret realms?
Too inefficient.
He needed larger causal events.
Like—altering the outcome of a battle. Saving a group of people destined to die. Or, ensuring that someone who should have lived… didn't.
Lin Yue closed his eyes and began guiding the pitifully faint wisp of mana within him, following the muscle memory of this body.
The threshold for Black Iron-tier was to establish a complete circulation of mana throughout the body.
This body's previous owner had trained for years without breaking through. But when Lin Yue directed his consciousness to guide the mana, he found it obeyed him with unnatural ease. It flowed obediently through his meridians as if it recognized him, without the slightest resistance.
Was it the transformation caused by the Causality Rewrite Authority?
Or had his soul's fusion with this body triggered some kind of change?
Lin Yue didn't know.
But he could feel it—the Black Iron-tier barrier that had trapped the previous owner for years was beginning to crack.
One hour later.
The mana circuit was complete.
A weak but stable stream of mana now flowed steadily through Lin Yue's body.
Black Iron-tier. Broken through.
Lin Yue opened his eyes and flexed his fingers. He could feel his strength, speed, and perception had all increased noticeably compared to before. He was still light-years away from the Knight-Captain who had slain Black Rock with a single strike, but at least he was no longer a helpless mortal.
"Not bad."
A voice suddenly spoke from the corner of the cultivation chamber.
Lin Yue leaped to his feet, a faint orb of mana flaring to life in his palm.
In the corner, a patch of shadow slowly coalesced into human form.
It was a middle-aged man in a black robe. His face was gaunt and sinister, his gaze sharp as a blade. A meaningful smile curled at the corner of his lips.
"Relax." The man raised both hands to show he meant no harm. "I'm here to offer you an opportunity."
Lin Yue did not relax. His fingers brushed the hilt of the Causality Blade at his waist—this legendary weapon, one of the many treasures he'd liberated from the Dwarven treasury, was currently one of his biggest trump cards.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Raven." The middle-aged man smiled faintly. "Inner Sect Elder of the Abyssal Demon Palace. And… the direct superior of Bronze-tier Overseer Black Rock."
Lin Yue's pupils constricted sharply.
The person behind Black Rock.
Had arrived.
Sooner than he had expected.
Lia forcibly drags Lin Yue into the Demon Palace's outer secret realm to "farm Causality Points." Lin Yue intends to just coast through, but inside the realm, he uses Time Reversal to evade every trap and Causality Alteration to shunt all the danger onto other Demon Sect disciples. He naps at the entrance while everyone else fights for their lives—and somehow ends up walking away with the realm's ultimate treasure.
But carved into the ancient murals deep within the secret realm is a line that wipes the smile clean off Lin Yue's face: "The Causality Rewriter shall break the world's cycle of reincarnation."
Meanwhile, in the depths of the Demon Palace, those draconic eyes…
Fully open.