Even if what lay ahead was a trap, a mountain of blades, or a sea of fire, he had no choice but to plunge in.

What followed was arranged by the Celestial Demon. Its only requirement was “do not inquire.”

No witnessing, no asking, no divination.

If he violated any of these conditions, the deal would immediately be void.

Cao Budao was skilled at divining the cause and effect of all things. He knew that his interference might pull on one thread and move the entire fabric. If it led to failure… So despite being dominant his whole life and acting as a spiritual charlatan for most of it, he knew nothing from beginning to end about the mystical arts applied to his wife, just like those who had once come to his door seeking his help.

In the end, the Celestial Demon succeeded.

Cao Budao’s supernatural abilities were considerable, allowing him to see what ordinary people could not. That night, he sensed the ghost officials come and go without any disturbance, yet the soul of his wife, which he had hidden away, truly was not taken.

The substitution had succeeded.

While Cao Budao was ecstatic, he was also curious about what method the Celestial Demon had used to fool the ghost officials. However, immersed in the joy of having successfully deceived heaven, he didn’t think too much about it since the matter was already past.

Somewhere deep in his mind, he also vaguely felt that he shouldn’t delve too deeply into it.

After this, the Cao couple remained together for another ten years.

During the first two years of this decade, they lived in harmony and happiness. But as time passed, Cao Budao noticed something wrong: although he used various methods to meticulously nurture his wife’s soul energy, even employing precious materials like soul-nurturing wood, her feelings toward him gradually faded.

Not just toward Cao Budao—in fact, his wife’s responses to everything in the world became increasingly indifferent, as if her emotions were progressively weakening.

Cao Budao was first shocked, then quickly understood the problem:

Emotions are unique to higher beings. The soul strength of ordinary people is insufficient. Once separated from the body for too long without the nourishment of physical form, they cannot experience external stimuli nor provide any feedback. It’s like locking someone in a pitch-black cell, isolated from the world without even someone to talk to. Within three months, that person would go insane.

The same applied to souls—they might roam the world yet remain isolated from it.

Only at this moment did Cao Budao understand that the Way of Heaven was not so easily fooled!

He could defy heaven’s will and keep his wife in the mortal realm, but ultimately could not preserve the deep affection between them.

During the following five years, Cao Budao tried many more methods, such as finding his wife a new body, only to discover with horror:

It couldn’t be done.

The first step in finding a suitable vessel was to match the eight characters of birth.

But only now did he discover that his wife no longer had her eight characters!

When the Celestial Demon performed the substitution, it first had to replace her birth horoscope for the soul being sent to the underworld. Now that Cao Budao wanted to use it again, how could it still exist?

Without finding a specific body with matching eight characters, even if his wife possessed a human form, the incompatibility between soul and body would force her to change vessels within months. Through these repeated transitions, his wife’s soul energy grew increasingly weak. Every time she attached to a body, she had to use part of her soul energy to secure herself; the more frequent the changes, the weaker her power naturally became.

If this continued, she would soon scatter into nothingness.

Cao Budao even risked himself to find ghost cultivators and inquire about cultivation methods, only to learn that this supernatural technique was not suitable for all ghostly beings, just as only a very few humans now possessed cultivation talent.

She was an ordinary person with far insufficient soul energy and no talent for this path.

Seeing his wife’s soul becoming increasingly thin, Cao Budao again performed divinations, only to find that the sole solution was returning to the cycle of reincarnation.

Only by returning to the netherworld and entering reincarnation could his wife’s soul be preserved and given the chance to be reborn as a human.

When Cao Budao reached this conclusion, he couldn’t help but laugh bitterly three times toward the heavens.

Of course, it was a bitter laugh.

Years ago, he had painstakingly arranged for his wife to escape reincarnation, not hesitating to use the Celestial Demon’s power. Now he was trying every possible way to send her back.

What had he been struggling with all these seven or eight years?

The inconsistency of fate was truly full of irony.

By this point, he had gained a deeper understanding of worldly laws and vaguely knew in his heart that he had likely taken a point of no return.

But Cao Budao wanted to make one last effort:

Using thirty years of his lifespan as payment, he gained an opportunity to peer into the netherworld. Although he had mentally prepared himself, he was stunned when he saw the truth:

His wife’s netherworld register had already been erased from the underworld!

Just as the living have household registrations in the mortal world, the dead have netherworld registrations. Those without registration are undocumented, unrecognized by the netherworld, losing the possibility of entering reincarnation!

This result was like five thunderbolts striking his head, and his first thought was “Impossible!”

In Cao Budao’s mind, the worst outcome would merely be that his wife’s netherworld registration had been claimed by the soul arranged by the Celestial Demon. As long as he found a way for the netherworld to discover this, his wife’s identity would likely be restored. At worst, he would bear the corresponding consequences.

But he never imagined that her netherworld registration had vanished, and so thoroughly, as if completely struck off!

It’s worth noting that cultivators like him, whose mystical arts secretly connected to the netherworld, could vaguely calculate a soul’s present life and next life based on a bit of information in the netherworld register.

Now no matter how he calculated, he couldn’t divine anything, proving the register was truly gone.

At this point, he tried to find the Celestial Demon again, but it was like searching from the azure heights to the yellow springs—he found nothing in either realm.

This time, Cao Budao was finally powerless to change fate, only able to watch his wife grow weaker day by day, until finally, she turned into a wisp of blue smoke before his eyes, dissipating between heaven and earth.

It was then that he remembered four words the Celestial Demon had once said to him:

“Blame not fortune or misfortune.”

What he had once avoided at all costs later became his desperate dream.

Only now did he finally understand the true meaning of “good and evil have their rewards, the Way of Heaven revolves.” He thought he could calculate, avoid, and deceive, but he was merely circling within a cage, ultimately unable to escape the fate of being held accountable.

Unfortunately, by the time he understood this principle, everything was already lost. He accompanied his beloved wife until the final moment, watching her soul scatter and dissipate between heaven and earth.

As for Cao Budao himself, not only were thirty years of his lifespan deducted, but his physical condition also rapidly deteriorated, like a river breaking its banks. Within a few short days, his cultivation regressed, his hair whitened, and his teeth fell out.

He had suddenly reached the state of a lamp running out of oil, death approaching in the blink of an eye.

This was heaven’s punishment.

Heaven resented him and imposed punishment.

Cao Budao had long since given up hope and had no desire to continue living, but he was curious why he suddenly faced heaven’s punishment. The Way of Heaven was typically lenient. His actions merely involved substituting his wife’s netherworld registration, not enough to disrupt the natural order of heaven and earth. How had it provoked such severe celestial punishment that would take his life within days?

Using his last strength, he performed one final divination of heaven’s secrets, only to receive an omen of “Great Calamity Upon the World.”