Frost Descends on the Nine Realms

The Nine Realms crumbled, countless races bled, and the dust of one era’s end buried too many secrets.

Qin Shuang awoke from endless darkness. His memories were broken stars, and all that remained was a battered body that had endured through the ancient battlefield. He gripped the half of a rusty sword in his hand, a fragment of the ancient divine weapon Sky-Splitter. The dried blood and interwoven dragon and phoenix patterns on its blade seemed to whisper a forgotten name.

“Who am I?”

The question echoed in the depths of his soul, but no one could answer. Around him lay heaps of white bones. In the distance, an enormous rift stretched across the galaxy. Within it, the corpses of gods and demons and scattered divine weapons could just be made out: the gleam of a broken Pangu Axe blade tore through chaos, a fragment of the Taiji Diagram turned with the forces of yin and yang, and the baleful aura of the Four Swords of Immortal Slaying stained the stars. Each one radiated a power that made the heavens tremble.

Some said he was a world-ending demon who had returned from the distant past to unleash another storm of bloodshed. Others said he was the savior, bearing the Nine Realms’ last hope, yet lost to himself in the cycle of reincarnation.

When he stepped out of the ancient battlefield where countless legends lay buried, the Nine Realms were thrown into turmoil once more. Buddhists and Daoists battled for supremacy, demonic flames blazed sky-high, angels’ hymns mingled with zombies’ howls, dragons roared in the depths, and phoenixes were reborn in volcanic fire. The slumbering ancient divine weapons also began to awaken, one by one, at the touch of his aura.

“Qin Shuang...”

A voice called across the ages, carrying the scent of blood and fire. He saw the woman he had loved turn to ash, his closest friend’s bones forged into a monument, and himself once sweeping through the heavens with the Sky-Splitter sword and the Qiankun Ring. Now he could not even remember his own name.