Desire - Chapter 23 - Room of Mirrors (3)

As the owner of an ordinary bookstore, Ling PingAn’s biggest wish was to muddle through life and do absolutely nothing.

He had four disobedient disciples, who now achieved success, won recognition and established their own sects.

The embarrassing thing is that it was him who drove those four out of his sect to make them independent.

But one day he had an incident and lost his cultivation. His life was hanging by a thread. Wandering around, he walked into his third disciple’s territory.

What should I do?

Mountains and seas can be tamed, days and nights can disappear.

Only you, the exceptional you, refuse to give up.

——

A man blessed with fortune, the best in his generation, had an accident and started anew; broken in body but firm in spirit, he now uses his wisdom to guide his evil disciples back to the right path.

Notes :
The title 参商 (Shēnshāng) has two meanings:
1) Constellations Shen (ch. “Three Stars mansion”, eu. Orion) and Shang (ch. “Heart mansion”, eu. Antares), which never appear at the same time.
2) Two friends/relatives who are separated/estranged and irreconcilable.

- Description from Novelupdates

“We live in a world of gliphs. The left arm chamber, right arm chamber, left leg chamber, right leg chamber, wind chamber and the heart chamber. These are the six chambers of gliph that represent a glipher’s quality.”

In his previous life, he was the best metalsmith on the continent; even the most powerful fighters came to him for weapons. He was no doubt a powerful man, but sadly, his incapability to retaliate left him at the mercy of others.

Chui Yim, once dead, reincarnated into the world of gliphs, accompanied by Heaven’s Flame. However, the violent introduction of Heaven’s Flame crippled his heart chamber.

Born with a heart deficiency, he was unable to perform strenuous exercise, let alone engage in physical fights. As such, his father who worked as a doctor made him study hard and sent him to the Riding Clouds Academy, where he met a close friend who was escaping from his family’s mu*derer.

Determined to write his own destiny, Chui Yim vowed to break limits and take up the path of a cultivator.

Ding Shan had been a hot topic for seventeen years —from the time she debuted at the age of three with her pure and cute look, all the way until she was twenty years old. She even took home three golden actress awards at her coming-of-age ceremony when she was eighteen years old. Her life seemed so beautiful and filled with applause. However, behind that beautiful scene was a grave filled with lice. Since she was three years old, her family had treated her as their cash cow.

Her parents’ wickedness caused her reputation to rapidly plummet when she was eighteen years old. What was more terrifying was that they even imprisoned her. They drugged her, beat her, used her younger sister as a threat against her, and turned her into a plaything for wealthy businessmen. Ding Shan endured the humiliation for her sister’s sake, then finally sent those beasts to prison two years later. Just as she thought she could finally clean up and live a good life with her sister, reality slapped her in the face. “Why?” Ding Shan asked her sister from where she was tied to a familiar iron bed.“No reason, really.

I just hate you, so I drugged you two years ago. I’m the one who pushed you into hell. I’m also the one who posted that viral video which exposed you back then,” Ding Yuan said as she happily inspected her red nails.“Oh, by the way, you’re not my real sister either. My parents kidnapped you from some ravine.

Your parents chased after you, but my father pushed them off a cliff and they died. I can’t really remember since it happened so long ago. Plus, I only heard about it occasionally, so I can’t remember the details anymore.“Also, you’re tied up here today because your boyfriend, Wen Xiu, sold you for 10 million. You’re still worth a lot of money, so you should perform well tonight. Ding Yuan reached out to pat Ding Shan’s face, then injected her with an aphrodisiac.

The fiery burn that coursed through her body made Ding Shan weak, but the hatred in her heart kept her mind clear and awake. Drugged and left unsupervised, she ended her life with a knife she found in the room. As her life came to an end, Ding Shan swore that if she could start over, she would make all those who had wronged her pay all that they owed her. When she opened her eyes, she had gone back in time to two years ago! So, let’s see how she’ll turn the tide in this life!