The Goddess Is Nowhere to Be Seen

When he was young, his master was Li Yuan's unattainable ideal. She rescued him from the Hungry Ghost Realm, where he was about to be devoured by countless ghosts, and brought him back to the human world. She took him as her disciple and brought him to her sect, giving him a home of his own for the first time and letting him know what it felt like to be loved.

Yet she was also the one who personally cast him into an abyss from which there was no return. That day, dark clouds blotted out the sky as purple lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The goddess descended through the air in her radiant robes and flowing ribbons, her snowy face cold as she pointed her sword at his throat. "You were born a demon seed, bloodthirsty by nature. You betrayed the Heavenly Realm and slaughtered your fellow disciples. To prevent you from bringing disaster upon the Six Realms, I will personally purge our sect of you today!"

Li Yuan was utterly astonished, but he wasn't even given a chance to explain. He was sealed beneath an array, condemned to suffer the agony of ten thousand swords piercing his heart. Only then did he realize that a thousand years spent together and the deep bond between master and disciple meant less than some nebulous notion of all living beings in the world.

With hatred in his heart, Li Yuan waited and waited inside the array. At last, three hundred years later, he broke free and returned to Mount Bihua. But the world was vast, and the goddess had long since vanished without a trace.

Later, he found a fragment of her soul on the Yellow Springs Road and forged it into a new goddess. But the goddess who returned had an incomplete soul, without a heart or love. Even when he kept her captive in his arms and demanded day and night to know if she regretted it, she never gave him a single reply.

One day, at a tavern in the martial world, a garrulous disciple of the Daoist sect happened to mention:

"Venerable Zheli?"

"I heard that three hundred years ago, the Venerable had a disciple who was born a demon seed, bloodthirsty and cruel. The Heavenly Emperor ordered her to eliminate him. Unable to bear it, the Venerable took the punishment in his place, bore all the penalties meant for him, and then sacrificed herself to seal him away. She's been dead for many years!"

At the next table, a drinker burst out laughing at this, then staggered away. As he laughed, he began to weep tears of blood.

#A thousand years since Yaoji departed, while lilacs and bamboo mourn with the old gibbons#

※ Female master and male disciple, possessive pursuit. A cool and aloof goddess master x a disciple born a demon seed, who's really just a tsundere puppy. The female lead will return whole.

※ The line about being worth less than "some nebulous notion of all living beings" refers to the fact that the master sealed the male lead away on the grounds that he would threaten the mortal world, without even hearing his explanation.

※ Blurb first written on July 22, 2022, archived on Weibo.

Theme: A thousand years since Yaoji departed, while lilacs and bamboo mourn with the old gibbons