A Story of Unrequited Love

Ruan Luo was a leafless Blood Sand plant in the Underworld. By chance, she received guidance from an expert and used what little spiritual power she had to visit the mortal realm four times, hoping to reform the future Demon Lord and stop him from going astray and becoming a demon a hundred years later.

When they first met, the future Demon Lord was still a child, not yet six. Though frail, his eyes were always cold and indifferent, as if everything in the world were no more than an insignificant, laughable ant to him, including Ruan Luo, who was always smiling.

Ruan Luo had no idea what had truly caused him to turn dark. All she could do was raise him like a younger brother, thinking that perhaps once the young Demon Lord safely made it through his trials, he might remember a little of her kindness and grant her a chance to be reborn. That would still be better than her current state, neither ghost nor demon.

No one protected him, so she would. He wanted to be emperor, so she would hand him a blade...

Identity, status, power: Ruan Luo appeared at nearly every point when the young Demon Lord needed them most, helping him again and again, even as he kept choosing the most dangerous paths and straying further and further away.

But why was the young Demon Lord looking at her more and more strangely? One night, she woke to find him tying the two of them together. He was softly inhaling the scent of every inch of her skin...

Ruan Luo: ?

Seeing that she couldn't reform the future Demon Lord, Ruan Luo steeled herself and decided to do Heaven's bidding. She could apologize to him at the gates of the Yellow Springs. At least she had once treated him with genuine care.

But the Soul-Slaying Sword in the young Demon Lord's hand was the first to point at her heart.

-

At first, Shen Jingzhi had nothing but disdain for the woman who had suddenly appeared and claimed she wanted to be his older sister. She was always smiling as she lectured him, one grand principle after another.

She appeared once every six years, stayed with him for two short months, then suddenly left without a trace.

He begged her not to go. She smiled and agreed, yet the next day she would vanish without a word.

He grew up, again and again, until he stood a head taller than her. He gradually came to understand the feelings between men and women, and became the most powerful person in the land. Only she remained just as she had been, as if the many years she had been gone had been no more than a few days to her.

How could he not hate her? Hate how she would breezily say, "I'm back," as if those few words could make up for everything he'd missed, without offering a single explanation.

The last time, he was already past thirty, with even a strand of white in his hair. Yet she still looked like the beautiful, smiling figure preserved in his distant memories, pure and lovely.

-

The cold sword dragged along the ground, blood dripping from its tip. Suddenly, he smiled, wiping the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand. His eyes were ablaze with red, and emotions he'd never been able to show surged like waves. He was clearly holding them back, yet his excitement was impossible to conceal.

"Would you come with me to hell?" he asked.

So many times, he'd wanted to sever her hands and feet so she could never escape.

But no matter how much he denied it, during the years she was gone, he had yearned for her as if he were drowning. He wanted to meld her into his flesh and blood, never to part, for a thousand years or ten thousand.

If he couldn't have her, then they would perish together. So what if it was hell? At least she would be with him forever.

-

Content warnings:

A stew of melodramatic tropes

The male lead is a madman with little sense of morality

Theme: Face difficulties bravely