Chapter 1: The Fostered Child

Modern era.

At two in the morning, Tang Xiaoxi, who had been sleeping soundly in the nunnery, was suddenly jolted awake by her mother—who had entered the clergy—by a violent burst of thunder and lightning outside the window. She snapped her eyes open, only to hear urgent knocking at the door.

She threw back the covers, got out of bed, put on her shoes, and went to open the door. The nun knocking anxiously was none other than her mother, the woman who had given birth to her and had strangely entered the clergy after Xiaoxi's first birthday.

The Tang family was very strange; in every generation, as soon as a Tang family member had a child, both parents would enter the clergy once the child turned one year old. They would leave the child to be raised by the grandparents, who could finally return to secular life after long-awaited grandchildren were born and reached their first birthday.

In three days, Tang Xiaoxi would turn eighteen. For some unknown reason, her mother, who had been a nun on Xuelong Mountain all this time, had suddenly notified her to come up the mountain.

She had arrived at Xuelong Mountain near dusk and met this mother who was both strange and familiar, someone she had not seen for seventeen years. At this moment, her mother stood at the doorway, her eyes bloodshot.

After hearing her mother's words, Tang Xiaoxi's brows furrowed deeply. She put on her coat, took the umbrella her mother handed her, and stepped out of the nunnery.

After walking only a few steps, she prepared to turn back to look at her mother one last time, but her mother's voice pierced through the curtain of rain from behind, reaching her ears with sharp intensity. "Don't look back! Go find your father!"

Tang Xiaoxi quickened her pace. Even though the thunder roared in the sky and the ground was muddy and pitted, making the night path very difficult to traverse, her mother's tone was so urgent that she could not afford to be slow.

Her mother told her that last night, her father had dreamed that the bell, which had disappeared from the temple many years ago, would fly back from the east at eight this morning. He told him that at eight o'clock, he must get up and open the temple gates to welcome the bell's return.

But for some reason, the habitually early-rising Father Tang had actually overslept, missing the auspicious hour of eight. When the bell flew back, it could not enter the temple gates and instead fell into the Huangming River at the foot of the mountain.

Knowing he had caused a great disaster, Father Tang had hurriedly asked Mother Tang—who was also a nun in the Xuelong Mountain nunnery—to notify their daughter to come up the mountain to settle his affairs.

Who could have known that a strange heavy rain would fall in the middle of the night? The rain was so intense it seemed as if it would wash away Xuelong Mountain itself, letting the Huangming River submerge the entire mountain.

Fearing something ominous about this rain, Mother Tang had hurriedly woken Tang Xiaoxi, telling her to rush to the temple.

She pulled her phone from her pocket to check it, but there was actually no signal on Xuelong Mountain. The rain grew heavier and heavier; even describing it as a downpour failed to capture its ferocity. Xiaoxi struggled with every step; having finally caught sight of the temple buildings ahead, she bent down to roll her pant legs up once more!

Standing before the main gate, Father Tang saw the tiny figure holding an umbrella in the dark, rainy night from afar. Ignoring the ferocity of the rain, he rushed straight toward her.

"Xiaoxi!" Father Tang had not seen this daughter for many years. Under the umbrella, she stared at him with wide, surprised eyes.

"Are you... Papa?" Xiaoxi had seen photos of her parents before they entered the clergy, and the man standing before her in the rain, scrutinizing her, looked much like them.

Father Tang nodded. He pulled a warm, white jade bead from his bosom and pressed it into Tang Xiaoxi's hand. "Swallow it!"

A bead this large, and he wanted her to swallow it? Tang Xiaoxi looked at the bead in her hand with startled eyes, then looked up at Father Tang.

The rain was torrential; in that single instant, Father Tang was soaked through. The rainwater streamed down his bald head and over his face; he wiped it with his sleeve, but it instantly covered his face again. "Swallow it quickly, there is no more time!"

A massive flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the entire temple ahead. Tang Xiaoxi was inexplicably startled. She swallowed hard, took the bead, and without a second thought, shoved it into her mouth. With a *gulp*, she swallowed it down.

As the bead entered her mouth, a wave of coolness washed over her. This coolness traveled all the way to her abdomen, where it seemed to settle.

Father Tang watched with satisfaction as his daughter swallowed the bead, but he said nothing more, telling her to hurry down the mountain. This bead was originally a spiritual object held in her mouth at the moment of her birth. Since the time of their ancestors, the Tang family had been cursed. By the ninety-ninth generation, they would be completely wiped out. Seeing that Xiaoxi's generation was already the ninety-ninth, the end was near. Father Tang placed his only hope in his daughter, who was born clutching the Spirit Bead, hoping she could escape this calamity!

"Such heavy rain?" Tang Xiaoxi was utterly confused. With rain this heavy, the path down the mountain might have already been washed away; could she even make it down? Was this really her biological father? Why wouldn't he let her take shelter in the temple?

"Enough, hurry down the mountain!" Father Tang did not explain, urging her with a furrowed brow.

Tang Xiaoxi froze in place. She couldn't leave, and no one was staying to keep her. Her heart was filled with irritation and anxiety. She turned to look at the path down the mountain; it was a void of darkness. In the middle of the night, with the rain raging, he was sending a young girl down the mountain all alone. Just thinking about it made her future feel terrifying!

She turned around, about to say something to Father Tang, only to find that he, who had been standing right in front of her, had vanished. In the very next second, the water level in the Huangming River rose eerily, as if by magic; in an instant, it surged up onto Xuelong Mountain. Xuelong Mountain was very high, but for some reason, the entire mountain began to collapse, inexplicably being submerged by the Huangming River.

Holding her umbrella, she watched this horrific scene with trembling fear and disbelief. Just as the vast, terrifying, and surging waters of the Huangming River reached her knees, another earth-shattering burst of thunder and lightning struck the sky. The blinding light forced her eyes to close instinctively, and she could not open them no matter what.

Suddenly, the coolness vanished, as did the pressure of the surging river. Her entire body felt light as she flew upward. A roar like a raging gale sounded in her ears, fierce and rapidly accelerating.

When the surroundings finally became calm and she was able to open her eyes, she discovered to her misery that her large hands and feet had inexplicably shrunk. Her vision was also obstructed; she could only see things clearly at a very close distance.

She tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth, what came out was the cry of an infant. Thinking she was hallucinating, she tried a few more times, but it was still the sound of crying.

Her head was buzzing. What on earth was happening? How had she suddenly transformed from an eighteen-year-old girl into a tiny infant—and a newborn one at that? Because her body still bore the traces of blood from the birth canal...

And so, she began to grow again from infancy in this time and space. However, her mind and intelligence remained those of a sixteen-year-old. Step by step, she watched her mother, Du Linian, lose favor and be forced to move to the northernmost courtyard of the Tang residence, becoming a discarded wife in every sense of the word.

Until the year she turned eighteen.

(To the wealthy patrons with monthly tickets, please smash me with them! I'm tough and can take the hits! y(^_^ )y)