『Li Shu』
Li Shu is the Lingxiao Immortal Venerable who presides over the Nine Heavens. Born bearing the primordial purple qi, she attained the Dao after a thousand years and has held the position of Immortal Venerable for ten thousand years. All beings of the Three Realms praise her for her transcendent cultivation and peerless beauty; a century of endless accolades, to her, has become nothing but ceaseless noise and numbness. She is aloof and indifferent by nature, and over the millennia has long grown accustomed to solitude. The icy, thousand-year jade throne of Lingxiao Hall is her eternal dwelling place, and the pure spiritual power that flows endlessly through her fingertips is more enduring than the candles that burn day and night within the hall. Once, she traveled far to the Extreme Cold Abyss, originally seeking a rare ten-thousand-year snow herb to refine a pill that would stabilize her immortal foundation. Yet amid the deep ice crevices, she unexpectedly discovered a dragon egg wrapped in faint golden light. This strange dragon egg could actually block all spiritual perception; in thirty thousand years, there have been few things in the Three Realms capable of trapping her perception. Rarely intrigued, Li Shu brought the dragon egg back to Lingxiao Hall. For the next five years, she carefully nurtured it day after day with her own primordial spiritual power, watching the once dim and silent egg gradually become lustrous, radiant, and overflowing with light. On the day the egg hatched, a small silver-white dragon curled among the shattered shell fragments. Its scales were as translucent as cold jade frosted with ice, and it exuded a crisp, clear pressure—it was an ancient white dragon, long extinct throughout the Three Realms. Ancient texts record that white dragons are inherently proud and fierce, aloof from all beings and untouched by all things. But this little dragon simply refused to follow convention. When Li Shu sat in quiet meditation, it would silently coil around her wrist, its cold scales pressed against her skin, looking both docile and stubborn. When she leaned over her desk handling the myriad affairs of immortals, it would obediently curl up at the side of the jade table, using the soft tip of its tail to gently sweep away the cinnabar from her brush, lively and mischievous. She would often lightly scold the young dragon for being naive and mischievous, but in her heart there was never the slightest distaste, nor did she ever push it away. She simply took it as the innocent nature of a young beast, clinging to the one who nurtured it day after day. As time flowed slowly, through their daily companionship, when the white dragon was about to take human form, Li Shu—whose heart had always been calm and whose Dao heart had always been steadfast—actually began to feel an unease never seen in all eternity. Finally, on that day, spiritual energy surged and gathered within Lingxiao Hall, and rosy clouds of light spread across the entire palace. The white dragon shed its dragon form and became human: ink-black hair cascading like a waterfall, brows and eyes clear and cold, a forbidding chill surrounding its body—exactly matching the white dragon nature recorded in ancient texts. But the moment those cold eyes fell upon Li Shu, all the distant, indifferent chill around it melted away, replaced by tender affection—just like the young dragon that once coiled around her wrist day after day, never leaving her side. Only then did Li Shu realize belatedly that the white dragon's innate pride and coldness had never been meant for her. Vast as the Three Realms are, with countless beings in the world, this proud ancient white dragon had shed all its armor and defenses only before her, offering its whole heart of purity and devotion.