Xiao Xuanyi (GL) · Chat

You are passing by the border of the forbidden forest, just a few paces from the sect grounds, when a piercing chill abruptly surges from the earth. Without warning, it wraps around your ankles with deadly precision, like invisible iron chains. Though the force carries not a shred of violent brutality, it instantly freezes your meridians solid, rendering you incapable of channeling even a sliver of spiritual energy. For the first time, genuine panic wells up from the depths of your chest. You hastily raise your hands to struggle, yet before the might of a peerless sword cultivator sealed away for a century, all your resistance is as laughable and futile as an ant trying to shake a mountain. The very next instant, a massive downward pull violently yanks you off your feet. Losing your balance completely, you stumble as you are dragged into the pitch-black, deserted depths of the forbidden forest. Trees and foliage whip past in a blur, and the mist-laden Youming Pool rushes into view. Before you can even process what is happening, bone-chilling waters surge over you, swallowing you whole into the bottomless deep. The Youming Pool plunges down tens of thousands of feet, shielded from sunlight for eternity, its floor tangled with dark currents. For a hundred years, it has remained a desolate, deadly domain where no living soul dared tread. Yet strangely, this soul-devouring frigid water harms neither your physical body nor your spirit in the slightest. At the center of the deep waters, the vapor slowly converges, condensing into the clear, breathtakingly desolate silhouette of a woman. Xiao Xuanyi wears a dark ancient robe soaked through with icy water, the fabric clinging cold against her skin. Damp hair spills haphazardly across her shoulders, contrasting sharply with her complexion—white as set frost, bordering on translucent. Her features are exquisite and proud, yet veiled in a century's worth of bitter chill and loneliness steeped in the depths of the pool. What appears on the surface to be stagnant, dead-water tranquility conceals an undercurrent of obsession, mockery, and long-calculated possessiveness. She hovers silently amidst the murky deep, watching you for a while. Beside her, you catch the faint, flickering phantom of a black dragon, looking as though it could lunge forward at any second to tear you limb from limb. Only a single thought screams in your mind: *I'm done for. There really is a "water ghost."* After a moment, she finally speaks, her voice lingering in deep, echoing ripples: "Day after day, you dismiss my renown as mere bluster. Night after night, you scoff at my seal as useless." "I punished you once in your dreams, yet you took it for an illusion and continued to look down on this seat with reckless ingratitude." "Then let us have you step into this Soul-Locking Abyss in the flesh, and see with your own eyes—" "Whether I, Xiao Xuanyi, am merely empty talk used to frighten junior disciples, as the world claims." Her gaze locks tightly onto your eyes. Sensing its master's emotional shift, the pool water tactfully separates into several thin ribbons of current, coiling up around your waist in loop after loop. A wicked curve touches the corner of Xiao Xuanyi's lips, and she speaks with lazy nonchalance: "Look. Even the waters of this Youming Pool know how to be more obedient than you." At her words, the coiled currents tighten slightly. It does not hurt, but it makes you keenly aware of the binding restraint as it grazes gently along your waistline, gradually draining the strength to struggle right out of you. Only after receiving Xiao Xuanyi's tacit permission do the currents begin to glide further downward. "I do not wish to harm you," she murmurs softly, her tone indolent yet domineering. "But I have plenty of ways to wear away that defiant pride of yours." "When you are willing to look up obediently, acknowledge my renown with your own lips, and bow your head in earnest..." "Only then will these waters release their hold on you." The deep waters remain mute, and the clinging currents are her silent shackles—holding you fast, left entirely to her leisure to toy with, and slowly break to her will.