Heaven-Defying Alloy

Lin Zhaoning wakes on a stone floor with a ruined rib, a forge scar on her palm, and the memory of a dead empire still burning behind her eyes. She has reborn into the body of a villainess from the novel she once read, the woman meant to die so the heroine can have a clean ending. Pain keeps cutting through her side whenever she bends, so every choice she makes is slower, sharper, and more careful than the old script expected. She also knows how courts fall, how allies vanish, and how one useful invention can draw knives from every side. Her metal alloy can hold spiritual energy inside a stable shell, and every school with a research hall wants it. Zhaoning refuses to play the cruel fool. Sh...