“If my senior brother is the abyss, then I would gladly fall in and never turn back.”
[Characters]
Xie Zhaolan (bottom): A gentle, powerful, long-suffering, beautiful but tragic senior disciple who mothers everyone
Cen Jiling (top): A cheerful, frank, vengeful, morally ambiguous little junior who is hopelessly in love
[Blurb]
The story most often told by storytellers across the land was the century-long feud between the immortal sect Cangfeng and the demonic sect Handian.
Half of Cangfeng's four successive sect leaders had died at Handian's hands.
And the two most formidable leaders Handian had ever produced had both been sent to their graves by Cangfeng swordsmanship.
One righteous, one evil. They were sworn enemies.
.
Cangfeng had a celebrated disciple named Xie Zhaolan.
Wherever the cold gleam of his sword fell, demons cowered and fiends trembled. His peerless Wufeng Sword technique was worthy of the sect's founding patriarch.
One day, Immortal Lord Xie brought a scruffy little beggar back to the sect.
The beggar was named Cen Jiling, a boy who loved smiling at everyone he met.
Anyone who saw his smile couldn't help but exclaim from the bottom of their heart:
What a stunningly handsome young man.
.
Xie Zhaolan didn't bring the little beggar back because he was handsome.
The gifted boy quickly made a name for himself among his fellow disciples. Still in his teens, he slew a demon serpent, made the Immortal Rankings, and became famous throughout the land. What a glorious life.
Cen Jiling smiled at everyone, but he was the most vengeful person in the world.
Anyone who had ever gotten on his bad side would angrily curse him: “Just as you'd expect from a little hoodlum with a beggar's nature!”
They realized the boy was a natural demon star. Anyone who provoked him was cheerfully tormented by his revenge.
They had never seen anyone so petty and yet so utterly unapologetic about it.
Cen Jiling often said, “If anyone in the world hits me, I'll hit them back. Except Senior Brother Xie.”
“Immortal masters, peerless heroes? Even if they piled themselves up into a tower reaching the heavens, they wouldn't measure up to a single finger of my Senior Brother Xie.”
.
Those glorious days passed in the blink of an eye.
On a stormy night, Cen Jiling crawled out of the mountain gate with ninety-nine lashes across his body, each one deep enough to expose bone.
Every lash had come from his senior brother, Xie Zhaolan.
No one knew how the kindest, most chivalrous, gentlest Xie Zhaolan could bring himself to do it. Every lash he struck down seemed to be trying to take Cen Jiling's life.
...And Cen Jiling had been his most beloved junior brother.
The young sword immortal who had once been the pride of the cultivation world became the ragged little beggar he had been years ago.
The tavern keeper who saw Cen Jiling that night said that in forty years of running his tavern, he had never seen anyone so handsome, nor anyone so badly injured, so drunk, or crying so pitifully.
“As he cried, the only thing he kept calling was, ‘Senior Brother.’”
.
The day Xie Zhaolan took over as head of Cangfeng, the whole world learned the name of Handian's new sect leader: Cen Jiling.
They were separated by endless mountains and seas.
Outside Handian's great hall, wind and snow filled the sky.
Cen Jiling sat alone on the cold sect leader's seat, tracing the ninety-nine lashes that had scarred his very bones, while his heart ached with longing for the person who had given them to him.
He heard a voice speak within his heart:
“You hate him, yet you still yearn for him. How strange.”
“Even if you pick up your sword to kill him now, you'll still worry that you might hurt him.”
“People are so pathetic. There's nothing even you can do about it.”
Theme: After the clouds disperse, the moon appears; sincerity bears witness to sincerity
