[Blurb to be revised, but the story's subject matter should remain the same]
Gong Jiangyi is the beloved youngest disciple of the Changheng Sect. He is stunningly beautiful, gifted, and outstanding in every way.
At sixteen, he went down the mountain for the first time on a sect mission to exterminate evil spirits. He slew a vicious beast and advanced straight to the Golden Core realm, becoming the cultivator with the greatest chance of ascending to immortality. Everyone admired and fawned over him.
By contrast, his senior brother Ying Zhi, who had grown up alongside him, had not only been steadily losing cultivation, but had also grown increasingly withdrawn. He looked so sickly that it seemed he could die at any moment.
Every time people compared the two, they lamented how ordinary his senior brother had become and praised Gong Jiangyi as a heaven-blessed genius, a figure as pure as the moon and too lofty to approach.
After hearing those rumors day after day, Gong Jiangyi, too, began to resent his unambitious, dull, and boring senior brother.
Yet he couldn't forget how his senior brother had doted on and protected him since childhood. Torn between those feelings, he began cruelly humiliating his chronically ill senior brother in all sorts of situations, unable to control himself.
He wanted to know how far his senior brother would fall into ruin, and wanted to force him to stand up for himself.
But after bullying his senior brother so many times, Gong Jiangyi even forgot what he'd originally intended. All he could remember was the thrill of humiliating him.
Then an accident happened. Gong Jiangyi mistakenly drank the aphrodisiac wine sent by the Hehuan Sect to curry favor with him, and his senior brother caught him in the act.
Overcome by the drug and desperate with desire, he had no choice but to ask the senior brother he looked down on to relieve him. Afterward, his disgust for his senior brother reached new heights.
He despised his mediocre, boring senior brother, yet took pleasure in his skill.
He knew his senior brother's cultivation was weak and was sure he wouldn't want to give up the chance to improve his techniques by dual cultivating with him. So Gong Jiangyi grew increasingly brazen, summoning him whenever he pleased and dismissing him just as easily.
At last, during a battle between the immortal sects, Gong Jiangyi saved everyone but forgot the senior brother who shared his bed night after night. By the time he remembered, his senior brother had already passed out.
Gong Jiangyi felt guilty for a moment, but then thought that his senior brother was so good-tempered, he surely wouldn't mind this time either.
But when his senior brother woke and saw him, the usually gentle look in his eyes held not a trace of affection.
He said, "Gong Jiangyi, leave. Never appear before me again."
Then he closed his eyes, no longer willing to look at him even once.
Gong Jiangyi had thought he wouldn't care, that he might even feel relieved. Instead, it felt as if a steel needle had pierced his heart, and the pain went straight through him.
Later, to cure his senior brother's failing health, Gong Jiangyi fell to the demonic path and journeyed to the immortal mountains, all to seek a spiritual herb said to bring the dead back to life and restore flesh to bone.
He survived countless brushes with death, yet never again earned even a single glance from that man.
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Theme: Stay true to your original intentions to see things through.
