Silence hung over the nameless tombstone like a held breath. A thousand years of blood-soaked history had just been ripped open. So who bore the blame? Kunlun, for recalling their only disciple and sealing his memories to protect the Immortal Realm — a decision made not from cruelty, but from the cold calculus of a sect clinging to peace? Or Rong Xian, an immortal who loved a woman of the Yao Race, torn between the sect that raised him and the wife and child he swore to protect — and who, in the end, destroyed both? "Who was wrong? Who?! Linglong — was it me, or was it the Heavenly Dao?!" The hunched figure at the grave folded forward, voice cracked open with grief. Clouds swallowed the moon. Spiritual Qi erupted from Rong Xian's body in wild, uncontrolled surges. Birds fled the mountain in shrieking waves. The sound that tore from his throat was neither wail nor roar — something rawer than either. The group felt the cold before they could move. Then the figure turn...
The group had barely stepped inside when Qin Zhiyan caught up, grabbing Chu Lin's sleeve. Too proud to admit she was frightened of the half-demon on stage, she invented an excuse: "You might need the extra hands." Yun Wan saw through it instantly but said nothing. No reason to embarrass her. She let Qin Zhiyan fall into step beside them. They moved into the inner hall. The room was thick with money — sandalwood ceilings, heavy furnishings, silk curtains pooling around a carved couch where Master Qiu lay sprawled like he owned the world. Which, in this quarter, he did. Master Qiu was a fire fox demon out of Qingqiu Mountain. A hundred years of cultivation, and he still wore the face of a boy of thirteen or fourteen — slanted fox eyes, a pipe between his fingers, two pale legs draped lazily across a servant's lap. His expression hovered between boredom and contempt. "Young Master Li." He exhaled a slow curl of smoke. "You brought money this time?...