Be The Icy Beauty: A Xianxia/Cultivation Tale

Transmigrated back into the body of her child self, can the mighty Celestial Bing Meilu survive in a Xianxia world all the while staving off the advances of arrogant young masters and wannabe protagonists alike?

Why is life so hard for the Icy Beauty?

Any corrections or criticisms are welcome, I hope you enjoy Hong Long Xiyi Interlude 1

---

Hong Long Xiyi stood in the training yard outside her home, furiously slamming a wooden spear against a tall oak tree. Her form was erratic and terrible, but she did not care. She just needed to hit something right now.

Crack!

Slam!

Boom!

With each blow, the muscles in her arms burnt slightly from the exertion, but she ignored them and pushed forward. Blow after blow after blow.

Booming noises filled the air with each impact. Despite being a mere mortal child, the powerful blood of a drake ran through her blood, and Hong Long Xiyi's strength was already far greater than even an ordinary adult man.

'Why me? What did I ever do to deserve this?' she thought, gritting her teeth.

Angry tears welled up in the little girl's eyes at the memory of the confusing events of the past day. A strange man appeared before her-claiming that she was a bastard, and he was her real father! And then, her mother confirmed it!

'It's not fucking true! I'm not-'

"Are you alright, little flame?" a voice interrupted her spiralling.

The young girl spun around, eyes widening in shock as she nearly dropped her spear. She relaxed as she met the eyes of an elderly man seated on a nearby log, sipping on a cup of steaming tea.

"...Yes, gramps. I'm fine," she grumbled. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She did not know the old man's exact identity, just that he was some big wig of the clan. He often visited her, bothering her with mysterious and cryptic nonsense- a favourite pastime for old-timers like him. She felt her stomach turn in anxiety. He didn't know... did he?

"I merely noticed you seemed to be unusually rough on that tree," the old Redscale observed. "But if you are not angry, I can only assume that tree has somehow offended you and that you are simply showing it the height of the heavens and the breadth of the earth."

The elder nodded sagely, stroking his long white beard. "For its crimes, you must slaughter its nine generations!"

Xiyi could not help but giggle despite herself at the ridiculous statement. The laugh was short but relieved a bit of the disease in her gut. She set aside her practice spear and stretched her aching arms. The old man sipped at his cup of tea in silence, waiting for her to speak.

"So, why are you really here?" she eventually asked.

It was never just a social visit when the old man came to see her. She already had a good feeling she knew what this was about, and a sinking feeling of anxiety began to build up in her gut at the thought. All she hoped was that he had not found out...

"What do you think about him?" the old man asked, raising an eyebrow.

Xiyi did not need him to specify who exactly he was referring to. Her face turned an ashen white

"I-you know?" she hissed.

"I do," he merely shrugged. "Are you going to answer my question?"

The silence stretched into seconds. Then, slowly Xiyi spoke, voice wobbly and unsure.

"Am-Am I going to be kicked out of the clan?" she whispered.

It was an understandable concern for any ordinary bastard. Clans took matters of bloodline very seriously, far more seriously than ordinary sects. In them, bloodline was literally power, so of course they would concern themselves with carefully managing it.

There had been multiple cases where the non-Redscale wives of clan members bore children without the Redscale bloodline. Once this was discovered, such children were removed from the clan registry, and often, exiled as well. That was assuming their higher-ranked legal 'father' did not simply kill them to avoid the shame.

Hong Long Xiyi had a special bloodline supposedly, so all she could hope was that it would be enough to protect her and Mom.

"You know, no one alive today knows this but... I was also born a bastard." the old man smiled. "That's right? It might be difficult to believe, considering my sheer awesomeness, but there was a time some ignorant people even tried to criticize me because of it."

"What?!" Xiyi exclaimed.

The revelation shocked her...though perhaps not as much as it should have. The old man did have the troublesome aura of an illegitimate child. Not like her, who was a kindle, gentle, demure and well-mannered young lady!

"But...then, what happened?" she asked, struggling to put her thoughts into words. "How did you become an elder if-if..."

"If I was a bastard you mean? I merely became so strong that no one could survive insulting me," he shrugged. "And soon, everyone forgot the circumstances of my birth and focused on my strength. And then one day, I realized there was not one of my critics who had managed to survive the grinding of the wheel of time."

Xiyi looked down at the ground. He made it sound so easy...like her problems would just vanish if she waited long enough. Like they did not matter.

"But...what about until then? Oh yeah, I'll just w-wait ten thousand years and then it will be fine? You-you stupid old man! No one wants to wait that long!" she said, eyes growing wet.

The old man gave her a serious look.

"You might not understand this, but it is the most important thing I will tell you today. In the face of absolute power, not a single soul will care about who your father is."

He was right. She did not really get it. But one thing in his words annoyed her.

"He's not my father!" Xiyi insisted, snapping her head up. "Ji Ran's my legal father, in the eyes of heaven and man. This guy is just some loser who abandoned me! I-I bet he only came back because he heard of my special bloodline or something!"

"When was the last time you saw Ji Ran?" the old man asked idly.

Hong Long Xiyi paused. When was that...Two years ago, on her birthday? Well, her Father was a very busy man after all. He had good reason, unlike Xi Fu!

"I can tell you one thing. If Xi Fu did not care for you at all... he would not have left you his spear manual."

The girl's eyes widened.

"No way... You're saying the mysterious spear man... is that deadbeat?"

A long time earlier, a strange notebook had appeared before her. It was filled with countless profound spear techniques. Xiyi was not yet a cultivator, but she was still considered a genius of combat. She had seen the clan's various weapon arts and could immediately tell that what was before her was far more profound than anything she had been taught.

She had stopped training with her sabre and picked up the spear instead. She had often wondered just who the mysterious spear master was. Some ancient ancestor of the Redscale clan? Or an even more mysterious expert who had noticed her talent? Maybe a legendary spear immortal seeking to make her his disciple.

She refused to believe the legendary spear master she had revered for the last several months was this layabout loser surnamed Xi!

---

The next morning, Xiyi woke with the dawn, as she always did. Her mother stood in the kitchen, looking extremely awkward. She had not spoken to her mother since that day and continued the streak.

"I-I made lamb-" the woman began.

Xiyi huffed, and turned away, stalking outside to train. She walked over to where she had left her training spear. In the confusion of the day, she had forgotten to store it inside. Thankfully Heaven had been kind enough to have not rained on the thing.

As she leaned down to pick up the weapon, she noticed what appeared to be a notebook lying on the grass. Xiyiy leant down and opened it.

'A spear manual?'

She flipped through the pages, looking over the sketches and instructions. It was a spear manual containing the same wisdom as her mysterious spear manual, except, adjusted for someone of exactly Xiyi's height?

Even the handwriting was the same...

The words of Xi Fu, she refused to call him 'father', from yesterday came back to her.

"...you're much shorter, with a different center of mass. You need to adjust the technique to fit you, rather than simply doing what the book says. Forge your own path..."

Had he actually gone and manually adjusted the entire spear technique just to fit her? The notebook was thick with even more detail than the original one. There were instructions on how to adapt it even further as she grew. It was clearly handwritten and must have taken hours to write.

Xiyi felt something strange in her chest.

"...At least he's not a total deadbeat," she finally decided. "Stupid loser!"

---

It was the next day that Xiyi discovered Ji Ran had died.

"W-what?" Xiyi stared at her mother in total shock and horror. "What do you mean?"

The woman sighed, pulling her daughter into a tight hug.

"It was yesterday," she said. "According to Madam Fang, Xi Fu came to Ji Ran's manor to inform him that you were not his child. Ji Ran decided to attack Xi Fu using a life-sacrificing technique, and perished..."

Dead? Her Father was dead? Xiyi listened in a state of numbness.

'Not only that...but he died thinking that Mom betrayed him...That I wasn't his...Xi Fu! You fucking bastard! Why couldn't you just keep your mouth shut?!...'

A profound sense of sympathy filled the girl's heart at that. She could imagine the stoic and honourable face of her father as he chose to die for his dignity rather than live on and swallow the humiliation willingly. Like the hero of a great epic making his last stand and spiting his enemies.

'My existence was nothing but a curse on him... If not for me, if not for Xi Fu, he would still be alive!'

Perhaps Xiyi should have cried, but she did not honestly feel the deep personal sadness of a loved one dying. Her father had been a busy and important man, and she rarely saw him. In all honesty, she barely knew him. No, what she felt was more akin to righteous outrage. Ji Ran may not have been close to her, but he was her legal father! What kind of child would she be if she was not angry about his murder?

"So...What happened to that man?" Xiyi spat. "Are they going to execute him?"

Her mother gave her a look of confusion, before shaking her head.

"Ji Ran assaulted a Captain of the Sky Swallowing Gulper Armada. If he had survived his own folly, the Clan would have been executed anyway." she sighed. "As compensation, all of the Ji branch's holdings are being given to Xi Fu."

Xiyi could only stare in stunned shock at that.

"What? That motherfucker m-murdered my dad-and is being rewarded for it?"

"Ji Ran killed himself, and more importantly, he is not your father," Xue Xiang said with a tone of finality.

The girl turned to stare at her mother in shock.

"How can you say that? He was your husband-"

"He was not my Husband either!" Xue Xiang shouted.

Xiyi froze, eyes widening slightly. Her mother had never raised her voice at her like that. She shrunk back slightly, staring up at the woman.

"I was nothing but a Concubine. Do you know what that means? My parents sold me to Ji Ran to be a plaything. Because they could not afford to feed me. He was not my husband-he was my owner. Do you know why I even agreed to sleep with Xi Fu in the first place? It’s because I hated Ji Ran."

The girl stared at the furious expression on her mother's face, lips beginning to wobble as she held in tears.

"I eventually made my peace with him and our relationship...at least I thought I did. But Xi Fu was correct. Ji Ran was a terrible man, a horrible father, and frankly, I am glad that he is dead!" The admission seemed to shock even Xue Xiang as it slipped out of her mouth unintentionally.

"...That's right, I'm glad he's dead!" she repeated the words again, louder as if daring the world itself to contradict her.

"I hate him. I hate everything about him! His pompous arrogance, his callous indifference to everyone who isn't him-I hate the way he dresses. I hate the way he walks, I even hate the way he talks!" Xua Xiang shouted.

Xiyi stared at her furious ranting mother and then began to loudly sob, arms wrapping around herself. The former concubine froze at that, face softening. She reached forward, arms wrapping around her daughter before pulling her into a tight hug, an expression of guilt on her face.

"Sorry- ‘m sorry Mom- please don't be angry," Xiyi sobbed.

"Shh, it's alright. I wasn't mad at you," Xue Xiang said, rocking her daughter. "...Mama is sorry for scaring you, okay?"

Xiyi kept shaking, tears streaming down her face. Her mother gently raised her into the air, carrying her over to a couch. The older woman lay down, pulling her daughter into a warm cuddle. Slowly Xiyi's sobs grew quieter as she clutched at her mother until she fell asleep.