Legend says the Mountain Lord takes a bride once every hundred years.
If she doesn't put on her wedding dress and enter Mount Qingwu within seven days, the streams will turn foul, the plants will wither, and no one in the three towns and twelve villages below the mountain will survive the winter solstice.
The whole village kneels before her, begging her to die.
Only the Mountain Lord, clad in black and emerging from the mountain mist, calmly tells her with golden eyes full of certainty:
“A hundred years ago, you already promised to marry me.”
Shen Qingluo sneers. “I'm twenty-two.”
She doesn't know that Lu Xuanji has been waiting for her for a hundred years.
He remembers what she likes to eat, which hand she curls up when she's cold, and how she once drove a knife through his heart to save the people at the foot of the mountain.
But Shen Qingluo remembers none of it.
All she knows is that the brides of every generation were never sent to live in comfort.
Their bodies were filled with the resentments of countless beasts, then offered up to the Mountain Lord.
One woman in exchange for peace across the mountain.
They've followed this path for a hundred years.
Everyone urges Shen Qingluo to accept her fate.
Instead, in front of everyone, she burns the marriage contract of the Mountain Lord who waited a hundred years for her and fell from godhood for her sake.
“The one who promised you in my past life isn't the person I am now.”
“If you want to marry me, start over.”
