She is the last snake woman of Wuyin Mountain, gouging out her heart and offering her blood each month to feed the Serpent Crystal and maintain a prison woven from lies. He is an herb gatherer, but the snake-shaped mark on his wrist bears the remnant soul of her lover, who was reduced to ashes three hundred years ago.
When Xuan Yi smashes the altar and exposes the bloody truth, Qing Lin discovers that the elders who call themselves “guardians” are actually rogue Daoist sect members who slaughtered her entire clan. The life-prolonging broth she drinks each day even contains the floating, shattered eyeballs of her stone-turned elder sister.
Fate forces her to choose: tear out her lover’s heart to awaken the Serpent Mother’s true form, or let all living beings perish in the poisonous miasma? The nighttime struggle between snake tail and human legs is not the only thing that binds them. There is also a forbidden love steeped in blood and tears through countless cycles of rebirth. The truth is that they are the twin divine aspects torn apart from the Serpent Mother, and every embrace hastens their mutual destruction.
“If I’m destined to die by your hand...” Qing Lin drives the Serpent Crystal into Xuan Yi’s chest. Her petrified fingertips touch the marriage contract from three hundred years ago that he has kept all this time. “Then please remember: every scale that falls from me is a longing that refused to drink Meng Po’s soup in every cycle of rebirth.”
The twin stone statues on the summit of Wuyin Mountain remain entwined for eternity. When the first light of dawn pierces the poisonous miasma, people see an unprecedented sight atop the mountain: a half-serpent, half-human woman and a man in blue robes transformed into entwined stone statues. In the crystal clusters blossoming from their chests, 365 scales keep being born and falling away, over and over. At the foot of the mountain, all the gentian plants suddenly turn indigo, every leaf vein winding into the shape of longing.
It turns out the most poisonous curse is willingly waiting for you in the prison of reincarnation; the deepest sin is forsaking all living beings just to finish the half-written love poem.
