Above the endless river of stars floats a palace built from ten-thousand-year-old ice jade. The glazed lanterns hanging from its eaves reflect the stars overhead, as if encompassing the entire universe. Inside the hall, a woman dressed in white stands still. Her eyes are deeper than the darkest night, reflecting the flowing river of stars. She is Liyue, the Immortal Venerable who commands the laws of the stars.
Across from her stands a tall man in ink-black robes. His sleeves stir despite the still air, and the dark golden cloud patterns embroidered on them seem to move like living things. He is Xuanye, the Demon Lord who rules the Nine Nether Demon Realm. Between them floats a shattered jade pendant. Light shimmers along its broken edges, but it can never be made whole again. Just like the bond between them, which crossed the divide between immortals and demons and endured countless trials, it has finally developed an irreparable crack.
Liyue’s fingers gently brush the broken jade. Her fingertips tremble, but her voice is as cold as ice. “Xuanye, in the end, our paths are like the river of stars and the Nine Nether: they will never meet.”
Pain and suppressed demonic flames churn in Xuanye’s eyes. He suddenly raises his hand, and a dark light surges toward the broken jade. “If that is so, then let it all be obliterated!”
The light explodes. The broken jade becomes billions of glittering fragments, scattering into the boundless sea of clouds and the mortal world below.
Liyue closes her eyes. A clear tear rolls down her cheek, freezing into a crystal of ice before falling toward the mortal realm.
Xuanye turns away, his black robes billowing in a tempest of demonic energy, and disappears into the void.
No one sees that among the billions of fragments, the two brightest are entwined with each other as they fall in the same direction: toward a continent called Yunhuang.
