The Tale of Leng Xuan

I am Leng Xuan, and the curse of the Skycleaving Cauldron lies hidden in the ice patterns on my left hand.

When I was six, iron chains dragged me into Redflame Fortress. The instant the Crimson Scale Blood Pact was branded into my spine, Su Lixue was strangling a hidden guard with her ice silk. The blood droplets spattering her lashes looked just like the crimson ice crystals on Ice Abyss City’s walls, three hundred years later, when Chu Liyue drove a Heartburning Curse into my heart.

“A hostage should learn to live on his knees.” On the night the young lord of Redflame Fortress tore open my clothes, the ice patterns suddenly flared with heat. The heart of the cauldron trembled in the gaps between my bones, and a Black Tortoise bearing the memories of nine lifetimes smashed through Ice Abyss City’s walls. Only then did I realize that Su Lixue had frozen more than time: her Iceheart Art held fragments of the ancient Canglan Code, while the embers of a civilization from before the Book-Burning Calamity flickered within Chu Liyue’s Redflame illusions.

When the Black Tortoise breathed purification crystals into the sea of sand, I realized I was carving the law into a new set of shackles. Power pierced my palm like an icicle, while the Skycleaving Cauldron whispered temptingly in my ear: “End the chaos with absolute control.” Until one day, Chu Liyue burned through my crown with the Heartburning Curse, and Su Lixue wrapped her ice silk around her own neck. “Leng Xuan, the way you look when you suppress tyrants is exactly like the abusers in the dungeons of Redflame Fortress all those years ago.”

The instant the cauldron’s heart shattered, I saw three hundred full moons shining upon the Canglan Code. As the last two clusters of icefire entered their brows, I smiled and crushed my own imperial bone. Lixue’s ice veins became the golden script of the code, and Liyue’s embers became the peal of freedom’s bell. Now my gravestone rests in the dawn, bearing an inscription they wrote together in ice and fire:

“Here lies one who made the crown the final offering buried alongside the Canglan Continent.”