On the day a heavy snowfall sealed off the Demon Palace, Gu Qingyi was nailed to the Immortal-Slaying Pillar by righteous cultivators. They used a bone-eating forbidden art to strip away my spiritual meridians, and poisoned chains crushed my bones and sinews. Laughing and cursing, they pinned the stigma of “demonic calamity” on me. I had guarded the realm for three hundred years, only to end up reduced to ash.
As I drew my last breath, I saw my attendant, Mo Chen, kneeling in the snow. His dark robes were stained with blood, but he still stretched out a hand to touch me. A blast of sword energy knocked him into the snowdrifts. He was the attendant I had taken in at the Demon Palace, a quiet man who organized my papers each day and brewed tea for me. I had never looked too closely at the meaning hidden in his eyes.
When my soul left my body, I drifted through the wind and snow, watching him climb out of the snowdrift. In that moment, the seals around him shattered. Ancient divine power swept across heaven and earth, and his dark robes billowed as if ablaze. So he had been a hidden powerhouse all along, sealing his cultivation and serving as my attendant just to stay by my side.
Carrying the broken sword I had left behind, he stormed the gates of the Immortal Alliance. For ten years, I watched him settle scores with each sect, cutting down one by one the people who had harmed me. His methods were ruthless, yet driven by desperate resolve. After every bloody reckoning, he returned to the frozen Demon Palace, caressed the things I had once used, and softly called my name in the empty hall.
On the day he avenged me, his meridians were shattered and his spiritual power exhausted. He collapsed in the bloodstained snow. I drifted above him, watching snowflakes fall on his pale face. Clutching the half of a jade pendant I had left behind, he breathed faintly and murmured, “Qingyi... I’ve come to be with you...”
