Nuonuo Comes Down the Mountain, but All Her Disciples Are Acting Weird

[Ensemble cast! Nuonuo + Yang Jian + Li Bai + the fastest swordsman in the martial world ten years ago + adorable child + farming]

During the Kaiyuan era of the Tang Dynasty, the Immortal Way was flourishing.

In Chang'an, incense burned in Taoist temples day and night. In the Zhongnan Mountains, someone secluded himself for decades, then one day rode the clouds away. And when the Luo River rose at night, someone once saw a white-robed Dragon Maiden stepping ashore across the waves.

There were more strange tales in the realm than even the court historians could record.

Bai Nuonuo was roasting chestnuts when her master ascended to immortality.

Before leaving, her master gave her a mountain, the Sect Leader's seal, and an empty sect, with just one instruction:

Go down the mountain and take on disciples.

So Nuonuo slung a peachwood sword over her back and went down the mountain, stepping straight into the strange tales of immortals that would later survive only in fragments.

Someone spent the night in an abandoned temple and woke to find every monk in the courtyard had been dead for a hundred years. Someone fished a bronze mirror out of the Luo River, and in it saw another Chang'an. A Taoist claimed, while drunk, that he had visited the moon palace, and paper horses from the ghost market were able to carry people out of the city at dawn.

Bai Nuonuo kept walking forward.

Sometimes she took on disciples, sometimes she went looking for people, sometimes she hunted ghosts. She would also ask on someone's behalf whether the Underworld ever played fair.

She had seen mountain spirits asking for a title, fox demons repaying a favor, dragon descendants enduring tribulations, and sword immortals seeking the Way. She had also seen places the living should never go, and homes the dead couldn't bear to leave.

Many years later, someone pored through the surviving Kaiyuan-era tales and suddenly realized that the same small figure appeared in stories that otherwise had nothing to do with one another.

She carried a peachwood sword, called herself the Sect Leader, and had more and more people following behind her.

Later, the ancient records kept only one sentence:

During the Kaiyuan era, there was a girl of the Bai family named Nuonuo, who loved traveling the realm and often encountered the supernatural.