Yun Qianqian would never forget how, during the demonic tide of the Heaven-Sacrificing Ceremony, her prodigy of a senior brother carried her, a good-for-nothing, across the Underworld River of Demonic Fiends. His legs were burned to the bone and his eyes scorched blind. Turning back with tears of blood streaming down his face, he smiled at her and said, “I won't leave you, my dear, until we reach the Yellow Springs.”
Yun Qianqian thought perhaps her senior brother felt something special for her.
That was, until he went to Minghe to recover. When he returned, he brought a female cultivator with him.
Yun Qianqian hid in the back hills and cried. Only when her tears blurred her vision did her memories awaken: she was the vicious supporting character in a cultivation novel about unrequited love. Her senior brother and the female cultivator were the novel's protagonists, while she, as the villainess, would die horribly for coming between them.
Only then did Yun Qianqian learn that the female lead suffered from a bone-rotting illness, and that her senior brother had risked his life to carry her out of the Underworld River of Demonic Fiends that year only because he wanted the spiritual bones in her body.
When Qianqian tried to leave, her senior brother said, “You can't go. You still owe me your life.”
Qianqian owed him nothing. She gouged out her own spiritual bones to repay the kindness he had shown when he risked his life to protect her during that year's demonic tide.
Yun Qianqian left, covered in blood. Guided by the direction she remembered, she had only one thing left in her heart: to go home and find the family she had relied on before joining the Immortal Sect.
Her eyes were filled with tears and blood. The wind howled, the rain poured, and she was about to collapse into the mud when a pair of hands, white as porcelain, lifted her chin and helped her up. Cool fingertips gently wiped away her tears, then caressed her cheek with tender care. It was as if they held a thousand feelings. Yun Qianqian looked up through her tears and saw a pale face with eyes lowered slightly, like a Bodhisattva's.
The beauty lowered his eyes, his tender, lingering voice sounding beside her ear.
“Don't cry, Qianqian. Your big brother is here to take you home.”
“Bro... brother? Big brother?”
“It's me.”
Yun Qianqian threw herself into his arms and wrapped them around his waist. Her tears fell without stopping. Brother, I finally found you.
Yun Qianqian had an older brother. At her insistence, their parents had found him in the snow and taken him in. At their first meeting amid the snowstorm, Yun Qianqian could never have known that the stubborn, solitary boy would grow up to become the apocalyptic demon lord who would shake all six realms.
And now, this apocalyptic demon lord held her in his arms, tending to her wounds and speaking to her with the gentlest, most compassionate expression, while saying something shocking enough to shake the world:
“Who hurt my little Qianqian like this? Big brother can wipe them out for you, all right?”
Theme: A girl's resolve
