Reborn As The Villain - Chapter 17 - 16: Death Flag

System: You are the only human who meets the binding requirements of this system, please bind with me!

After being flogged to death for a crime she didn’t commit, Calista received a second chance when a system contracted her. It was simple: complete tasks and she could earn a second chance in life. After completing several of them, the chance to reincarnate in her original world and body was finally granted to her.However, unlike others, she didn’t want revenge against the people who killed her or wanted to unmask what truly transpired back then. All she wanted was to live peacefully and enjoy the bounty benefits which came with the reincarnation.And that was something she found when she met a man she fell in love with in some backward village. Unfortunately, all that was broken when her husband of five years perished at the hands of bandits.Things went downhill when Calista married her second husband, Orson, an amnesiac man whom she scammed into marrying her. But things weren't as simple as they seemed— Orson might be hiding some secrets of his own.Led on a path of revenge that Calista never thought she would be on, she soon realized that Orson might have more to do with her first life and death than he led on. If he knew she was still alive, he might kill her again.That meant that this time, Calista might have to strike first.

Meet Gu Yu—a college dropout and a talented incense maker, and at the same time, the rather stoic protagonist of this story. Despite his somewhat introverted manner, he has a tendency to make sarcastic remarks in his thoughts. One day, after saving a squirrel, a windfall (metaphorically and literally) dropped into his lap. Stumbling into the cultivation world with little help, he was not turned into Superman overnight (as he would like). Apparently, becoming a cultivator would not make your life easier, at least in the beginning.

Somewhere along the road, he ran into Jiang Xiaozhai, a young woman who’s got the brains, the beauty, and maybe one or two secrets of her own. As it turned out, the two made a perfect team—Mulder-and-Scully style. Motivated by many unanswered questions, they had been running up and down the country, getting into all kinds of trouble, and learning more of the modern cultivation world, which is by no means the same as in the ages long past…

- Description from Novelupdates

Cultivation is about refining oneself and one's heart.The heavens and earth are the furnace, creation is the work, yin and yang are the carbon, the myriad paths are the copper, and with a steadfast Dao heart, one can refine a Primordial Dao Fruit.Refining pills, refining tools, refining formations, refining talismans, refining swords, refining souls, refining medicine, refining plagues, refining demons, refining devils, refining the heart, refining worlds, refining the Dao...Everything in nature can be refined!This is what Xuan Qing says.If you provoke him, he will even refine the Heavenly Dao to show you!Of course, this all began the day he joined the Jie sect...