Where the Peach Blossoms End, the Sea of Hate Stretches Without End

After the Battle of Kunlun Ruins, Mo Yuan returned in spirit form, but Bai Qian was no longer the little fox who used to follow her master around and get into trouble. She had once carved out her heart and offered her blood to save Mo Yuan, then guarded his soul for seventy thousand years. Through the long years, she had told herself again and again that as long as he could return, she would be willing to remain his disciple for the rest of her life, forever separated from him by an impassable chasm. Yet when Mo Yuan awoke, he brought no tender reunion, only a decree of fate, cold to the core: Bai Qian was the queen of Qingqiu, bearing the fortune of the Four Seas and Eight Wildernesses. If she formed a secret romance with a High God, the sea of tribulation would flood back, condemning all living beings to a fatal end. To protect Qingqiu, and to repay the karmic debts left by the chaos caused by Qing Cang, Mo Yuan chose to sever every bond of affection between them with his own hands.

Bai Qian did not believe in fate, nor did she believe that Mo Yuan had never loved her. But when she saw him marry another woman with her own eyes, then publicly banish her from Kunlun Ruins; when she was struck by the Heart-Rending Nail and heard him say coldly, "Between us, there is nothing but the bond of master and disciple," she finally understood: the cruelest punishment in this world was never loss, but loving someone deeply and being forced to watch them push you into a fate from which there is no escape.

Three hundred years later, an endless tide of demons appeared across the Four Seas, and Qing Cang, missing for ages, returned. Bai Qian discovered that the half of her heart sealed away years ago was actually the key to opening the gates of the underworld. Mo Yuan's supposed betrothal, coldness, and betrayal were all tied to a sacrifice known to no one. It was not that he did not love her. During the seventy thousand years she slept, he had already made a pact with his divine soul and borne the heavenly punishment that should have fallen upon her. But this love had come too late, and had been hidden too deeply.