1.
On Lingxu Peak of Cangping Mountain, the greatest sect in the cultivation world, there was once a brilliant young sword cultivator named Yan Yuanbai.
He began cultivating at twelve, formed his core at fifteen, and reached the Nascent Soul realm at nineteen. None of his peers could match him. At such a young age, he stumbled upon a great opportunity and his cultivation soared. He was hailed as the youngest Sword Sovereign in history, and ascending to immortality seemed within arm's reach.
But this boy was corrupt at heart, a rebel who defied convention. On the surface, he was noble and righteous; in truth, he was a wolf in sheep's clothing. He secretly harmed his fellow disciples, colluded with the demonic path, and committed every crime under the sun, all deserving of a thousand cuts and a thousand deaths. In the end, his ugly deeds were exposed, and the righteous sects closed in. As punishment, his sword bones were torn from him at Lingxu Peak's Soul-Drawing Pool, and his spiritual platform was destroyed to appease the souls of the dead.
Later, he escaped prison and ended up destitute on the streets, where he met an untimely death.
And all this happened a mere few decades after he rose to fame with a single sword strike as a young man.
That was the fate Yan Yuanbai had calculated for himself.
2.
Yan Yuanbai was exceptionally gifted, but carefree and unruly by nature, often giving his master a headache. Perhaps even the Heavenly Dao thought his first half of life had gone too smoothly. By a twist of fate, he glimpsed the secrets of heaven.
Only then did he realize that, beneath the cultivation world's seemingly unchanged surface, dark currents were churning, and a great calamity was coming.
Decades later, the Demon God would appear, leaving all living things in ruin. Even when every cultivator joined forces to fight, they would be unable to turn the tide.
In the blink of an eye, all would be reduced to ashes. The lucky few who survived would be but a tiny fraction of the whole. Then a savior would appear from nowhere: one wielding a sword, the other playing a zither. They would risk their lives to slay the Demon God, and peace would reign for generations.
But Yan Yuanbai would never live to see any of it.
He would already have died a gruesome death at someone's hands on the third day of the twelfth lunar month in the Gengxu year.
That person had a powerful presence and an indistinct face. After killing Yan Yuanbai, they indifferently cut out his heart.
The sight left a deep psychological scar on Yan Yuanbai, who had never feared anything in his life.
3.
Yan Yuanbai shamelessly speculated that his uniquely convoluted death might, perhaps, possibly, contribute in some way to defeating the Demon God.
As it turned out, he was right.
To secure peace for the world, Yan Yuanbai decided to follow the fate ordained by the Heavenly Dao and play his part as a cannon-fodder character.
In just a few decades, he betrayed his master, harmed his peers, had his misdeeds exposed, and had his immortal bones ripped out and his soul refined. With nowhere left to turn, he fell into the demonic path. He did everything he was supposed to do. The great calamity was fast approaching, but a huge problem cropped up at the final hurdle.
The ruthless, cold-blooded new Demon Lord, who was supposed to finish him off with his own hands, stubbornly refused to do it!
Worse, with red-rimmed eyes, he kept calling Yan Yuanbai his master!
Yan Yuanbai was horrified.
As the saying goes, if you don't break out in silence, you'll go mad in silence.
Damn it, the man who had killed him 7,313 times in his dreams without even blinking had gone mad!
Locked away in a dark room, unable to live or die, Yan Yuanbai said, "...Just kill me. Seriously."
Eventually, Yan Yuanbai gave in.
4.
Much later, Yan Yuanbai suddenly remembered something important.
The year he glimpsed the secrets of heaven, he had gone down the mountain.
There was only one reason.
He had no desires in this life, except to find out what the nemesis destined to kill him looked like.
His name was Qi Yao.
5.
"In the three thousand worlds of your dreams, there were tens of thousands of cycles. In 7,313 of them, I was your enemy."
"...And the rest?"
The Demon Lord gazed steadily at him and spoke in a hoarse voice, with reverence.
"I was your beloved."
Theme: There is true love in this world.
