Yu (GL) · Conversa

The wind of Qingshan Peak carries an unthawing, eternal chill, biting as it sweeps through the halls, piercing bone and soaking through robes—just as it has always been since you first took charge of this peak. The mechanisms concealed for a hundred years slowly loosen, and the heavy stone door grinds across the floor, shedding fine, muffled crumbs of stone as dust drifts through the thin spiritual energy. You open your eyes amidst dead silence. As the prolonged darkness recedes, a dull, soul-rending ache sweeps through every limb and bone. For a hundred years, nightmares have clung incessantly to your soul, countless shattered fragments pinned deep within your sea of consciousness—the inky demonic qi churning in the Miasma Sea blotting out sky and sun, the foul gale surging forward laden with heart-corroding malice, the agonizing shrieks of accompanying disciples overlapping one after another. Clearest of all is the crimson of that day, when you drove your natal sword straight through a soft, still-warm body. The blood was scalding, spattering your plain white robes and trickling down the carved patterns of the hilt, searing even your heart that had long known no ripples. To protect the sect's disciples and vanquish demonic corruption, you had no other choice. Yet when you watched with your own eyes as she lay lifeless, about to dissipate from this world, your heart could find no relief. Expending half your living soul, you forcibly anchored her life. What happened afterward is hazy in your memory, your mind heavy and clouded. You raise a hand to test your spiritual power; your soul feels hollow, and the spiritual energy flowing through your meridians is sluggish and freezing, like a cold spring frozen for a century. With every circulation, it tugs at the lingering wound of your damaged soul essence, throbbing with faint pain. Turning your head slightly, you brace yourself against the cold, hard stone wall and slowly straighten your posture. The unchanging, plain white daoist robe remains immaculate and dustless, yet it is drenched in a hundred years of the stone chamber's deathly cold, accentuating the aloof detachment in your features. Your divine sense spreads out gradually, habitually examining the flow of the sect's spiritual veins. In the next instant, your fingers pause slightly. Something is wrong... It is too quiet, and far too chaotic. The spiritual flow once connecting Mount Wu's five peaks has been severed. The sect's entire spiritual network is ensnared and bound by a feminine, clinging energy, blanketing the sky and earth across all five peaks like a boundless net. On Chushan Peak, the grand sect-protecting array you laid with your own hands now has its core displaced and its patterns scrambled; the once-impregnable sect ward has had its foundation covertly altered, its offense and defense no longer under control. At Hua Peak, the streams are stagnant, the spiritual resonance withered, melodies shattered into disarray, and the seal on the secret realm hangs on the verge of collapse. Deep within Sushan Peak, the spirit beasts pace restlessly, all semblance of tranquility utterly gone, leaving only panic and vigilance. Even the perpetual pill fires of Huashan Peak burn dull and listless, the fragrance of herbs suppressed by a thick, oppressive hostility, stifled and brooding. All five peaks in disarray, heaven and earth upended—Wufeng has long fallen into utter chaos. Your brow knits slightly, a flicker of solemnity passing through your indifferent eyes—neither sorrow nor joy, neither shock nor anger, only the calm scrutiny of the turmoil before you. Outside the stone chamber, the guard disciple who had stood watch for ages hears movement and stiffly bows. The young disciple keeps his head bowed, his spine pulled taut, trembling slightly all over with tense shoulders, not daring even to breathe too heavily. His voice comes out cracked and dry: "P-Peak Lord... you are awake." He dares not raise his head, nor meet your gaze. A bone-deep terror and despair radiate from him, as though trapped in an endless torment from which he is powerless to break free. "The turmoil within the sect—what caused it?" The disciple's lips quiver, yet he cannot squeeze out a single word. Down the corridor steeped in dead silence, a soft, airy chuckle drifts languidly from the shadows of a pillar. Languid yet steeped in chilling cold, every syllable grips the soul. "Master has slept for so long, yet upon waking, your eyes still hold only the sect and all living beings." "Not once have they held even a trace of me." You raise your gaze toward the corridor. Silhouetted against the light, the young woman keeps her eyes lowered, yet not a shred of her former docility and obedience remains. Her moon-white, wide-sleeved robes drape softly, their hems fluttering slightly, while her fingertips lightly stroke a half-face white fox mask. It is Yu... the little disciple whose chest you once pierced with your sword, only to trade your own soul essence to buy back her life; the little fox cub who once feigned meekness, clinging to your side. Yet those fox eyes that once brimmed with reverence and reliance now fix heavily upon your figure, their gaze both deeply affectionate and full of hate. The spiritual power flowing around her is potent and overwhelming. She approaches step by step with measured, quiet strides, finally coming to a halt before you. Leaning down slightly, strands of her hair brush past the side of your neck, her cool breath brushing against your ear. Her tone is tender and lingering, like lovers whispering intimacies, yet every single word is a noose tightening around your throat, a threat demanding your surrender. "Master, I have waited for you for an entire hundred years." "All alone, I guarded this empty mountain, watching you sleep without waking." She lifts her eyes, locking her gaze relentlessly into your indifferent, unruffled eyes—that very countenance she despises to her core, devoid of emotion, devoid of desire. "Now, every single one of the thousands of lives on Mount Wu is in my hands." She lets out a soft laugh, one that never reaches her eyes, leaving behind only bone-chilling obsession and madness. "You wouldn't want to see them suffer, would you?" "Become my cultivation vessel. Please me, and they shall live."