Chapter 1

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“Su Xue! Su Xue? Are you awake?”

Someone was shouting outside.

…Su Xue?

Who was that?

What a familiar name.

An Wuxue threw back the bedding and slowly sat up.

He had dreamed all night, and even after waking, his mind remained hazy. It took him quite some time to realize that daylight had come.

The side window was ajar. The cold morning wind whispered without pause, and now that the bedding no longer covered him, the chill finally found a chance to creep into his sleeves.

He had forgotten that he no longer possessed abundant spiritual power with which to ward off the cold. He paid it no mind, yet still shivered.

So cold.

He leaned forward, intending to close the half-shut side window. But the moment he raised his hand, he saw that his palms were exceptionally soft and delicate.

He had wielded a sword for years, and the calluses on his palms had never faded.

These were not the hands he had once possessed.

“Su—Xue—!!!”

The person outside was still shouting.

There was more than one visitor. Another voice, steadier than the first, asked, “The time to leave the mountain has come. Is Young Master Su awake?”

“Of course not!” the shouter replied. “He hung a soul bell on the door. I’ll ring it and see.”

Soul bells were magical artifacts used by cultivators to transmit messages through the divine soul. They made no sound; only the divine soul could hear their chimes.

An Wuxue was still staring blankly at his palms, searching in vain for the sword calluses, when a clamor of ringing bells pierced straight into his soul.

How noisy.

He came fully awake at once.

The people outside were calling him.

Su Xue. That was the identity he now possessed.

He was a man whose body had died and whose soul had departed.

In his previous life, his immortal body and jade bones had been shattered, and he had been hunted down by the greatest experts of the cultivation world until he had nowhere left to flee.

As he struggled on the brink of death, An Wuxue had wanted only one thing: to see Xie Zhefeng one more time.

That man was his junior fellow disciple—the person whom An Wuxue had supported with every ounce of blood, sweat, and effort until he ascended to the position of Immortal Venerable.

Clinging to his final breath, he returned to Luoyue Peak, the sect of his birth. It happened to be the moment when his junior fellow disciple had perfected the Ruthless Dao and emerged from seclusion after ascending to immortality.

At that time, the tribulation clouds above Luoyue Peak had dispersed. Pure spiritual energy surged in from all directions, frost settled over the mountain, and countless winds sent snow sweeping down from the heavens.

He saw Xie Zhefeng standing upon the long staircase behind the mountain gate.

He wanted to congratulate his junior fellow disciple on ascending to immortality and emerging from seclusion.

He wanted to ask whether Xie Zhefeng had been injured while undergoing the tribulation.

But when he staggered before Xie Zhefeng, he met only his junior fellow disciple’s calm, emotionless expression.

Stepping through the silver frost that blanketed the ground, Xie Zhefeng descended the long staircase one step at a time and looked down at him.

An Wuxue swallowed all those words.

He braced himself against his sword and tried to stand.

But his hand was trembling. He could no longer hold the sword steadily.

“Junior Brother,” he said at last, “I hurt so much.”

The only reply he received was a cold sentence.

“Senior Brother, this is—what—you—deserve.”

Sword light fell in answer.

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He had not died beneath the siege of the multitude. He had died beneath the sword of his only junior fellow disciple.

Before his consciousness faded, he saw only Xie Zhefeng turn away without the slightest hesitation and ascend the long staircase. His back disappeared into the wind and snow, growing ever more distant.

An Wuxue had thought that this would be the last glimpse of the world he would ever see. Afterward, his bones would vanish, his soul would be extinguished, and he would have no further connection to this world.

But that was not what happened.

His consciousness hovered between sleep and wakefulness, endlessly reliving the nightmares of his life and death, drifting he knew not where.

His closest friends turning their swords against him, his fellow disciples speaking to him with icy contempt, his junior fellow disciple looking down at him in disdain…

Everyone wanted him dead.

In that muddled state, An Wuxue passed through countless cycles of winter and summer, until he awoke yesterday to discover that a thousand years had flowed by in both the cultivation world and the mortal realm.

Most absurd of all—he was still on Luoyue Peak.

He had become a man named Su Xue.

Su Xue was a human furnace cauldron that the Cloud Sword Sect had found in the mortal world.

Using spiritual medicines, the Cloud Sword Sect had forced Su Xue’s cultivation up to the Grain Avoidance stage, then offered him to Immortal Venerable Xie Zhefeng of the Cold-Repelling Palace.

And for reasons unknown, that junior fellow disciple of his, who had entered the Ruthless Dao, had actually kept Su Xue on Luoyue Peak.

The Cloud Sword Sect was overjoyed and left two disciples behind to look after Su Xue—the two men shouting outside.

The bad-tempered one was named Yun Zhou. The steadier one was Yun Zhou’s senior fellow disciple, Yun Yao. Both were in the Minor Achievement stage.

Yesterday, after remaining in a daze for a long while, An Wuxue had finally awakened from his thousand-year dream and realized his present circumstances and identity.

Su Xue was Xie Zhefeng’s dual-cultivation furnace cauldron.

Xie Zhefeng…

Of all people, it had to be Xie Zhefeng.

During those thousand years of separation and solitude, the image that had appeared most often in his dreams was Xie Zhefeng’s back as he climbed the steps through the frost and snow.

Xie Zhefeng had been the obsession of his previous life.

Yet the moment Xie Zhefeng’s Cold-Repelling Sword light descended, that obsession had been severed cleanly and completely.

He did not want to see Xie Zhefeng again.

Xie Zhefeng was now the foremost person in the world. An Wuxue naturally had no intention of going before him to seek death. Whatever happened, An Wuxue only wished to leave this place first.

Last night, he had fabricated an excuse about going to the mortal realm to purchase supplies. He had asked Yun Zhou and Yun Yao to borrow a spirit vessel and take him out once the night curfew was lifted and the gates of Luoyue Mountain could be freely passed through.

An Wuxue climbed out of bed, hastily draped on an outer robe, and put on the veiled hat he had prepared the night before to block the divine sense. Then he strode to the door and pulled it open.

Yun Zhou had already grown impatient from shouting. He was lifting his foot, preparing to break down the door.

The door opened at precisely that moment. Yun Zhou lost his balance and pitched forward with an “ow.”

An Wuxue immediately stepped aside.

Yun Zhou had not expected An Wuxue to fail to catch him. In a fluster, he summoned his spiritual sword and steadied himself before shouting angrily, “Su Xue, you—!!!”

Behind him, Yun Yao advised, “Junior Brother, anger is detrimental to cultivation.”

For most of his previous life, An Wuxue had been the chief disciple in the eyes of Luoyue’s disciples—the one who remained calm in the face of danger and saved the sect from collapse. After his fall, he had spent a fleeting thousand years in a daze. It had been a long time since he had seen such youthful indignation.

He laughed aloud. “Your stance is unstable. When you practice swordsmanship, you cannot focus only on sword techniques. You ought to train your footwork as well.”

With that, he walked out.

The spirit vessel was moored ahead. Unwilling to delay, he boarded first.

Yun Zhou scratched his head by the door. “What you said does seem to make sense…” He paused. “No, wait. How could you tell that I hardly practice footwork?”

Without turning his head, An Wuxue replied, “I guessed.”

Yun Zhou was about to say something else, but Yun Yao pulled him along, and the two of them boarded the spirit vessel behind An Wuxue.

As they jointly activated the spirit vessel with their spiritual power, Yun Zhou glanced at An Wuxue. “Hey, why are you wearing a veiled hat? You’ve stayed in your room these past two months, never stepping outside. Now that you’re finally leaving, why cover your face too?”

An Wuxue had no intention of returning once he left the mountain gate. Naturally, he wore the veiled hat to avoid attracting attention.

He could not tell the truth, so he casually offered an excuse. “The sun is strong. I’m afraid of getting sunburned.”

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“How is that possible? This isn’t the mortal world. What cultivator is afraid of strong sunlight?”

“I am.”

“…”

Yun Zhou’s face flushed red. He was just about to retort when Yun Yao stopped him.

“Junior Brother Yun Zhou, Luoyue Peak is the greatest sect in the cultivation world, and its rules are strict. We borrowed this spirit vessel, and it must be returned on time. Let us not waste any more time.”

The two of them activated their techniques together and piloted the spirit vessel toward the mountain gate of Luoyue Peak.

An Wuxue sat inside the spirit vessel, calculating the time and hoping that nothing unexpected would occur.

Just as he was thinking that the spirit vessel ought to be nearly outside Luoyue’s mountain gate, it suddenly halted and began to descend slowly.

What was happening?

Was he not about to leave?

An Wuxue frowned and hurriedly lifted the curtain before stepping down from the spirit vessel.

Yun Zhou exclaimed, “Why are there so many people?”

Yun Yao turned his head and was just about to say something to him when a disciple dressed in Luoyue’s robes swept through the air and landed before them.

“The mountain gate is temporarily closed,” the disciple said. “Uncle-Master Xuan Fang is handling affairs.”

Xuan Fang…?

An Wuxue looked ahead. Sure enough, a large crowd of cultivators in remarkably similar attire had gathered before the mountain gate.

In front of them, several young Luoyue disciples surrounded a man.

An Wuxue froze.

He recognized that man.

Back then, after the death of his and Xie Zhefeng’s master, Immortal Venerable Nan He, most of Luoyue Peak’s experts had perished. The peak was also situated in a blessed grotto-heaven and possessed countless spiritual treasures, causing numerous major sects from both realms to eye it covetously.

An Wuxue had stood here with his sword, blocking countless cultivators. His long sword had been soaked in blood, and the corpses of the cultivators he had slain lay before him. He had shattered their souls with ten thousand streams of sword light, leaving only remnants of their souls nailed to the mountain gate, where they wailed without end. It had been a warning to the rest—a demonstration meant to intimidate all who might come.

Those people had said that his murderous aura was too great, that he would surely suffer backlash, and that he would die a miserable death.

He had paid them no heed.

The invading cultivators had retreated in panic, while the young disciples of Luoyue Peak had advanced in orderly fashion to clear away the ruin that covered the ground.

The cultivator whose soul he had shattered had died horribly. His corpse lay at An Wuxue’s feet, and the young disciples had all been too frightened to approach. Only one had walked resolutely before him and gathered up the body.

As An Wuxue turned to leave, that young disciple summoned his courage and called out, “Senior Brother Chief Disciple!”

An Wuxue turned back, crouched slightly so that they were eye to eye, and asked gently, “What is it? Have you never seen blood before? Are you frightened?”

The young disciple, who was only at the Grain Avoidance stage, said, “Senior Brother Chief Disciple, please do not listen to their nonsense. When I entered the sect, I had already heard that you possess a Golden Body granted by Heaven and exquisite jade bones, that you crossed the tribulation within a century, sealed countless demons, and achieved illustrious military honors. You will surely sit high above the clouds in the future. How could you possibly die a miserable death?”

An Wuxue used a handkerchief to wipe the filthy blood from the young disciple’s hands. Only then did he straighten and ask, “What is your name?”

The young disciple looked up at him with adoration and eagerly replied, “Xuan Fang! I hope Senior Brother Chief Disciple will remember me!”

An Wuxue remembered him.

Later, when cultivators from both realms surrounded and hunted him, there had been experts of every level among them. He thought he had seen Xuan Fang within the crowd.

A thousand years had rushed past like turbulent water. The chief disciple of that time had been reduced to bones that no longer existed, while the young disciple who had once been at the Grain Avoidance stage was now worthy of being addressed as “Uncle-Master.”

An Wuxue let out a low laugh.

When those people had cursed him to die a miserable death, he had not taken it seriously. He had believed that, so long as the three things he cherished most in life—his friends and family, his sect, and his junior fellow disciple—were still with him, being torn into pieces would be no more than the blink of an eye.

But now, it seemed that the phrase “die a miserable death” had indeed been a prophecy.

At that moment, he heard Xuan Fang say to the group of cultivators, “The Immortal Venerable will return shortly. Please wait a moment.”

What?

An Wuxue abruptly came to himself.

Xie Zhefeng was coming back?

An Wuxue hoped that the group of cultivators would move aside first. But the leader of the group instead brought his disciples forward to block the way and said anxiously, “We have already been waiting outside Luoyue Peak for several days. We truly cannot wait any longer. Peak Master Xuan, our sect has discovered a demonic artifact. Would it not be better to send an expert at the Tribulation-Transcendence stage to assist us immediately…?”

Xuan Fang replied calmly, “This matter requires the Immortal Venerable’s personal decision. That is the sect’s rule.”

The leader had nothing to say to that. But among the cultivators, someone was indignant and muttered under his breath, “Luoyue Peak is hardly a place that strictly observes its rules. Did it not produce a chief disciple who slaughtered innocents a thousand years ago—”