The Entire Cultivation World Thinks I'm Dead

My junior fellow disciple, Yu Ling, was a once-in-a-millennium sword prodigy in the cultivation world.

He was perfect in every way except for his taste in partners: he married a frail, ill-tempered mortal far too young, someone who had nothing going for her except her looks.

Everyone in the cultivation world laughed at him for getting caught up in mortal affairs and ruining his path to immortality.

That was until he went down the mountain to exterminate demons and mysteriously disappeared.

I searched for half a month, but found no trace of his body. All I brought back was his bloodstained life-bound sword.

For a sword cultivator, there was no time when they would abandon their life-bound sword, unless they were dead.

Though our sect mourned and regretted his loss, we soon accepted the truth.

A month later, my master suddenly summoned me and told me to find someone: the wife Yu Ling had left behind in the mortal realm.

When I first met her in the mountains, I only felt sorry for the little widow.

She was frail, spoiled, and sharp-tongued, practically the picture of someone Yu Ling had pampered far too much.

I deliberately handed him the bloodstained sword and told him Yu Ling was dead.

The youth wore plain white robes. His face was pale, his eyes were red at the corners, and he trembled slightly as he held Yu Ling's relic sword.

Like a pear blossom drenched by the rain, fragile and delicate, yet breathtakingly beautiful.

I obeyed my master's orders and brought him back to the immortal sect.

No one could have imagined that the usually restrained and composed Yu Ling had been hiding such a delicate beauty, with a shapely figure and eyes brimming with springtime.

All those who had once admired, depended on, envied, or resented Xuan Ling now stared fixedly at the youth hiding behind Pei Ying.

From the Sword Pavilion's cool and self-possessed master to its unruly junior disciples and taciturn friends...

We all, just like me, developed an almost frenzied possessiveness toward this frail, clinging parasitic vine that depended on others to live.

We vied to imitate Yu Ling's mannerisms, the way he spoke, the clothes he liked to wear...

All just to earn a hint of red at the corners of that person's eyes... or a brief, distracted glance.

Just as we were fighting over Xia Fu, red-faced and at each other's throats, someone arrived at the Northern Territory's immortal sect.

Yu Ling had crawled out of the Demon Abyss...

Theme: Cherish the present moment.