The Dao May Fade, Yet Its Light Endures

Night of the thirtieth day of the first month of the Bingwu year.

Zhongzhou, atop Mount Wangwang. The heavenly tribulation had raged for three days.

When the final bolt of crimson lightning struck, the snow covering the entire mountain range vaporized in an instant, revealing the charred rock beneath, etched with ancient runes.

The man facing the tribulation was named Lu Li, once an unfulfilled painter in the mortal world.

Now his Daoist robes lay in tatters, and pale golden Daoist blood gushed from the 360 major acupoints across his body. Above his head, his natal treasure, the Myriad Forms Brush, was covered in cracks. The tiny flame of Primordial Chaos, which he had nurtured since forming his core, flickered like a candle in the wind.

“In the end… I was still just a hair short.”