Who is the one moving the pieces?
Fu Si, in her incarnation as the Star Lord of Fate, laid a thousand-year game. Feng Yuanlang used his puppet body to help her break out of it, but Chen Xi discovered that she was the pawn fate had repeatedly crushed.
Who is the calamity within the calamity?
Fu Si says Feng Yuanlang is her calamity. Feng Yuanlang says Chen Xi is his. But when Chen Xi carved the ninety-ninth curse into the Demon-Slaying Golden Whip, she finally saw what was wrapped around its tassel: the eyelashes of Fu Si, severed by her own hand.
Who is the outsider?
When Fu Si’s demon core and Feng Yuanlang’s remnant soul both ran wild, Chen Xi’s silver hair suddenly tore through time and space. She saw a rainy night at the dawn of the primordial world, when Fu Si gouged out Feng Yuanlang’s heart, and he smiled as he tucked it into her hair: “Whichever one you choose as your calamity, I’ll descend into darkness with you.”
**Yu Huan**, the orphaned daughter of the Yu family, was born with icy light in her eyes and frost blossoms in her blood. Hidden in her sleeve is the “Heart-Cutting Shears,” forged from immortal essence. Whatever they cut, memories scatter like snow. Yet they cannot sever the prophecy of the black bird with a pearl in its beak beneath the lanterns of Jiao Wei Alley, nor shatter the lingering image of an icy blade repeatedly plunging into her heart in her dreams.
When **Wang Xi**, the God of Spring, enters Fufeng City carrying the Branch of Myriad Forms, cracks in a god-slaying formation appear beneath the curtain of glazed rain.
A thousand broken steles in the forest of blank monuments seep with Chen Xi’s handwriting. Soul-devouring blood vines creep from the cracks in charred wood, while beneath the green patina on the pawnshop clerk **Yan Jiu**’s palm lie the scars of a love-spirit carved over ninety-nine lifetimes.
Fate says she is the dying ember of Chen Xi’s tribulation. The Heavenly Dao sees her as a sacrifice to mend the Ruins of Return.
