One-line summary: Life's greatest sorrow flows east like the endless river.
Qu Zhaozhao decided to help Murong Ke purely by chance.
She only wanted to experience what it felt like to do the good deeds he talked about. She planned to help him and then leave, never imagining she would die on the Li River.
The people along both banks had already been evacuated, and the Murong family's troops had withdrawn under military orders.
In the depths of winter, snow fell over the Li River, frozen for a thousand miles. Under the force of her cultivation technique, the ice cracked, melted into water, and surged downstream, swallowing the thirteen armies of the Five Kingdoms that had been confronting Murong Ke.
At last, the river burst its banks. With her power exhausted, Qu Zhaozhao's armor came apart, the disguise on her face peeled away, and the waves swept her off.
As she closed her eyes, she sighed, "Murong Ke is a liar. I actually believed his nonsense that good people get rewarded. I should have stuck to being the merciless young high priestess who kills without blinking."
Then she sighed again. "I've never killed anyone or done a single bad thing. What a shame!"
The snow kept falling, and the Li River froze over once more.
Beneath the ice lay the frozen body of a young girl.
Qu Zhaozhao's dreams grew clearer and clearer.
She saw not only how she had died in her previous life,
but also that in the first year after her death, Murong Ke ascended the throne; in the second, he married and named an empress; and in the third, he sent troops to attack her homeland in the Western Regions, completing his grand ambition of unifying the world.
For the next twelve years, he was a founding emperor whose achievements brought him glory, striding brilliantly along his imperial path with his wife and children at his side.
He never once remembered the girl who had traveled with him for three months beneath the snow-capped mountains of the Western Regions, then slept forever at the bottom of a river because of one joking remark of his.
Qu Zhaozhao had devoted her mind to martial arts, so she couldn't think through too many twists and turns.
But she knew that being foolish once was enough.
For now, the Western Regions and the Central Plains were still at peace.
If she ran into him, she just had to ignore his nonsense.
If he dared to invade, killing him with one palm strike wouldn't be difficult.
As it turned out, they did meet again, though not because he came to invade her lands with troops at his back.
Atop the golden peak of the snowy mountain, the young high priestess had just finished mastering her cultivation technique. Seated high upon the sacred throne, she lowered her eyes and combed her long, loose hair as she listened to the dynasty's envoy report:
"This is Murong Ke, the third son of the Central Plains' Murong clan. He has been sent to our court as a hostage. By order of the ruler, the young high priestess is to take charge of his custody."
The girl stopped combing her hair and looked down from above.
The young man was frail, his eyes dull.
A gust of wind and snow swept into the hall, and he began coughing repeatedly. With each bout, he spat out a mouthful of blood.
Well, well. When had the third young master Murong become such a sickly thing?
When had he ever been this wretched?
Note:
1. There is an age gap: the male lead is ten years older. One-on-one romance, happy ending.
2. The female lead is a priestess of the state religion of a Western Regions kingdom.
3. The female lead is not a virgin because of her cultivation technique. The male lead's wife and children in his previous life have a complicated backstory, but that would be a spoiler, so I won't elaborate. In short, she has experience, he doesn't. Readers who insist on both leads being chaste, enter at your own risk.
Theme: Plum blossoms and snow vie for spring, neither willing to yield.
