[Cultivation + corruption + purification]
My name is Ye Bai, an ordinary boy from Qingniu Village.
When I was five, my parents went into the mountains to gather medicinal herbs. A landslide struck, and they never came back. I thought that was the cruelest thing life could do.
Until I turned seventeen, when the mist behind the mountain changed color.
A split opened in the back of the village chief's neck, and an eyeless eye grew inside it. The butcher Wang's right arm burst open, and tentacles wrapped around his wife's waist. Everyone called it a plague. Only I saw the truth: countless black threads poured out from behind the mountain, winding around everyone.
I can absorb this corruption. The price is that it is eating away at my body.
Before Li Bo died, he told me: Your father wasn't gathering herbs. He went to find a doctor who could cure your illness. The year your fever wouldn't break for seven days, he took your mother into the forbidden grounds behind the mountain.
He died for me.
Then a deeper truth came to light: the Cold Abyss Sword, a weapon from the fallen Outer Gods, is awakening beneath the earth. Cults are "sowing seeds" everywhere, searching for a "vessel" that can bear the cursed sword's will. The black sword-shaped scar on my hand is its mark.
Ancient texts record that anyone marked by the sword will become its master. They will also be hunted by the entire world.
I should hate this sword. But when a sword cry rang out from behind the mountain, I heard it calling my name.
That day, I set out on a road of no return. Either I end this curse, or... become it.
