Firelight Reflects the One Returning Home

There's a saying in the martial world that no one's mentioned in a long time.

"The Baocan Sect and Woyun Mountain have been locked in a blood feud for a hundred years. It won't end until one side is dead."

No one remembers what started the feud, and no one has tried to end it. Hatred is a river, flowing from one generation to the next, from master to disciple.

Everyone is in the river. No one makes it to shore.

Li Yonggui belongs to the Baocan Sect. More precisely, he was the child the sect leader found and raised in the mountains, where he taught him both great skill and great hatred. The year his master died at the hands of Woyun Mountain's leader, he was seventeen.

Kneeling before an unmarked grave, he thrust his sword into the earth and said, "If I don't avenge this, may I never again be called a man."

Later, he did avenge it.

He thought that would be the end of everything.

But there was something hidden in the truth about his master's death, something he didn't know.

It was like a thorn lodged in an incident from five years ago, in the rainy night when Woyun Mountain and the Baocan Sect clashed, and in the silence everyone was so reluctant to break.

To pull out that thorn, he had to go to one place: the Xuangu Secret Realm.

There was no path through the secret realm, only four entrances to caves. A line was carved into the stone wall: "Unless you understand life and death, choose one and perish."

He chose. Or rather, someone chose for him.

Chen Chengchen waited outside the cave.

A direct disciple of Woyun Mountain's leader, he should have been Li Yonggui's sworn enemy. But he didn't draw his sword or demand answers. He didn't even reproach him. He only looked at Li Yonggui and said, "I won't hurt you."

Li Yonggui didn't believe him.

Of course he didn't. Their masters had killed each other. Their sects had been enemies for a hundred years. Their positions were like a swaying bridge stretched between two chasms: either way, they were doomed to fall to their deaths.

But Chen Chengchen didn't back down.

He pressed a piece of jade into Li Yonggui's hand and said, "My master left this for you." Then he was poisoned, and thin black lines spread from his forearm to his heart. Li Yonggui used the Heart-Locking Curse to suppress the poison: fighting poison with poison, stopping pain with pain. The caster of the curse would share half the afflicted person's suffering.

That night, Li Yonggui held the unconscious Chen Chengchen as they sat in the thick fog of the Lost Immortal Barrier. The two pieces of jade joined together in his palm, giving off a faint light. He suddenly remembered Jin Miaoyu's words: "When you see it, you'll know it at once."

He recognized it. He recognized the Guixu Jade, and he recognized the place. The Lost Immortal Barrier, a realm said to bewilder even the gods.

He didn't know how he got out. He only knew that when he awoke, Chen Chengchen was gone.

Seven years.

For seven years, he searched every text in the land, traveled every famous mountain and river, and asked everyone who might know something. No one could tell him where Chen Chengchen was. Only the Heart-Locking Curse kept hurting without pause. The pain proved that Chen Chengchen was still alive.

Again and again, he saw Chen Chengchen in the Lost Immortal Barrier. The Chen Chengchen in the illusions would smile and talk, shield him from swords, and slowly grow cold in his arms. Each time, Li Yonggui knew it wasn't real, but each time, he couldn't bear to wake up.

Eventually, he stopped waiting.

He split the Lost Immortal Barrier apart with his sword, shattered every illusion, and emerged with his robes fluttering, just like the first time he'd held a sword as a boy.

Someone asked what he was looking for.

He said, "Someone who should never have become my enemy."

Later, someone told him that deep in a certain forest lived a thousand-year-old tree demon, whose flames held the presence of a person.

He went.

As the tree demon burned away, he saw Chen Chengchen.

He had grown thinner, and his eyes held the wear of time. But when he smiled, he was still like the young man in green robes who had come through the mist many years ago, by his master's grave.

He asked, "How long did you wait?"

Li Yonggui said, "Not long."

"Only seven years."

This is a story about fate, waiting, and return.

Blurb by Qing Tang

The sects are carried over from the previous three installments.

This is an original work written in a round-robin format.

The blurb was written after the main story was completed, on 2026.04.04.

Theme: Lovers are destined to be together