Blurb: Yan Ying was bound to the Executioner's Platform, her soul cut apart inch by inch until only her body remained.
With the last spark of her life-force fire preserved in the Nuwa Stone, she lit the Mirror of Heaven and Earth, then offered her soul as a sacrifice. Only then did she learn the truth: she was nothing more than the official wife in the forbidden love between the Heavenly Emperor and his master, Immortal Venerable Yao Yin. She was lying here, being punished in Yao Yin's place.
When he was still the crown prince of the Heavenly Realm, he had taken her as his master. She raised him from an innocent child into a peerlessly handsome young man.
They spent every day together, and she was so muddleheaded and carefree, so unaware of the boundaries between men and women. How could he not fall for her?
How could she fail to sense the fiery love of a young man?
After struggling and wrestling with her feelings time and again, she finally understood: she had long since fallen for the incomparable young man she had raised.
Like kindling catching fire, they became inseparable and showered each other with affection, giving no thought to ethics or propriety.
Their forbidden master-disciple love even produced a child. How could the Three Realms accept it? The Heavenly Emperor and Empress tried to stop them, and crushed the crown prince's every act of defiance. He understood that only by becoming the Heavenly Emperor could he give his beloved the recognition she deserved.
But after he finally became the Heavenly Emperor, he was bound by even more constraints. He couldn't ignore the laws of the Heavenly Realm and make his own master the Heavenly Empress. They would both be disgraced, and he might lose his throne as well.
If Yao Yin wanted to bond with him, they would have to switch identities and find a substitute. That substitute was Yan Ying.
There was also their son. Born of their forbidden master-disciple love, he had been stillborn. Yao Yin used the sacred fire of the Qilin clan to preserve a spark of his soul. If they could find a body of the same bloodline and nourish it with life-force fire of the same origin, their son could be brought back to life.
That body belonged to Yan Ying's son, and the matching life-force fire was Yan Ying's own.
That was why he chose her to be the Heavenly Empress. He had a child with her, a child so adorable, only to rip out her soul and use her as a vessel for that stillborn child!
He used her and her son as vessels for his beloved master and their son!
He deserved to die!
As Yan Ying's soul burned away in its final moment, she had only one thought: He deserved to die! They all deserved to die!
Theme: Uphold what is right, and live well
