Chu Lingfeng, the “Iceberg Demon Venerable” who has lived for nearly ten thousand years, once used half his cultivation to forcibly seal the memories and powers of Bai Luochen, the Golden Phoenix Demon Lord, in an attempt to change the prophecy that she would die at three thousand. But after demons attacked them by surprise, he lost her in the mortal world for a thousand years.
He searched all three realms for his wife, always wearing at his neck the feather pendant she had left him when she saved his life. Deep in his demon palace, he kept fabrics woven from golden phoenix feathers for her, and in his spiritual garden, he cultivated the spirit fruits she loved to make candied hawthorns. At last, in a ruined temple on a frigid mountain in the twelfth lunar month, he found a girl who had lost her memories, huddled beside a bonfire. Dressed in a pale pink gown with her hair in two little buns, she mistook him for her “master” and treasured half a frozen wild fruit, yet still instinctively rubbed an old wound on her right hand whenever she was nervous.
After their reunion, he was a Yama to everyone else, tearing down the immortal clan’s watchtowers and picking fights with the Heavenly Emperor. But with her, he used “unstable demonic energy” as an excuse to warm her hands, and happily drank the raw grass soup she made, even when she forced it down his throat. She went from a timid girl who depended on her “master” to breaking through her seal when she was abducted, wielding golden feathers and flames to slay the traitors and reclaiming the commanding presence of the Golden Phoenix Demon Lord. Yet when his demonic energy went into reverse under the full moon, she still gently laid a phoenix feather over his old wounds from the tribulation lightning.
From living together in the demon palace to quelling unrest among the demons, from the immortal clan’s lightning tribulation array to the ultimate crisis in the Demon Abyss, they overcame every challenge through their mutually sustaining bond. His demonic energy nourished her spiritual roots, while her phoenix power helped him reach the pinnacle. In the end, the demon and monster clans formed an alliance, and all three realms joined hands to protect the peace. At their wedding by Drunken Phoenix Pond, he slipped a phoenix-feather ring onto her finger, and his thousand-year search for his wife finally ended in a perfect union, bound together by one phoenix for a lifetime.
