Phoenix Calamity

She was once stunning in white, her features bright with defiance; she fell deep into purgatory and was stabbed in the back. She once drew her bow to hunt the moon and wielded a rainbow that could topple the sky; she was also shattered to the bone, her radiant blood turned to ash. Everyone knew her name, yet no one in the world remembered her herself. They said she was Fenghuang Suni, and also the Crowned One, Nie Yun. Later, whenever people spoke of the Divine Venerable Bu Yu, whose name was forever linked with hers, they would recall the red lotuses that had set half the sky ablaze millions of years ago. They said that amid the karmic flames of red lotuses blazing across the horizon, Bu Yu's eyes had shimmered with a dazzling brilliance that stole one's breath. In that brilliance, one could see the nirvana fire rising from Fenghuang's bones, a flame capable of consuming all things. Fenghuang plunged from the Thirty-Third Heaven through the netherworld, all the way to the Eighteenth Level of Hell, the lowest realm of all. As Fenghuang fell from heaven, all the splendor in his eyes vanished in an instant. And even after Fenghuang returned from nirvana, standing on the Twenty-Four Bridges as he gazed at the moon, the pagoda, and her, his eyes held only a bone-deep desolation. Of all the women in the world, only Suni's beauty existed in his eyes. Behind me and before me, there has never been anyone but my own shadow. The road ahead may be fraught with hardship, but I have no way back, so all I can do is forge an incorruptible heart and walk forward alone.