The mountains stretched for a thousand miles, blanketed in white. All was silent, and the entire mountaintop was so cold it seemed to have been frozen for a century inside the icy depths of the Ninth Heaven.
A solitary figure in white stood beside a humble thatched hut on the summit.
Rong Yan lowered his eyes as he stood in the wind and snow. His robes were immaculate, yet soaked through with bone-deep cold. His features were pure and ethereal, his brows and eyes the very model of perfection in the immortal realm for ten thousand years. But those eyes had long since lost the compassion and warmth befitting an immortal.
Only deathly stillness remained.
A Thousand Punishments Talisman rested quietly in his palm.
Its surface was covered in densely carved celestial laws. It was his life-bound artifact as an ancient immortal judge, and also the shackle with which the Heavenly Dao had imprisoned him for a thousand years.
At the base of the talisman, a faint black mark lay hidden. It was the demonic nature forged through a thousand cycles of reincarnation and the sin of killing his wife a thousand times.
His immortal bones were frost; his sins had made him a demon.
He was no longer a pure immortal.
This was his thousand and third reincarnation.
His memories were shattered like ice chips. He dared not dwell on them.
Yet every time he fell asleep, a blazing sea of blood would invade his dreams.
A woman in red fell beneath his pure white immortal blade. Her radiant features crumbled, and her warm blood splashed across his sleeve, scorching his soul until the pain nearly tore his spirit apart.
