In a thick darkness, the sound of wind gradually reached my ears.
The wind grew louder and louder. I felt as if I were being pulled by a gale, swaying back and forth as I moved forward.
Leaving the darkness behind, I was surrounded by heavy snow, and I had become one of the snowflakes, carried forward by the fierce wind.
I drifted over a forest of ice and snow. In the forest, every tree stood like an ice spike, rising eerily and piercing straight toward the sky, transforming the forest into a hellish prison, terrifying to behold.
I floated through countless ice trees, finally drifting to a frozen lake.
On the lake, atop what seemed like ice that had not melted for ten thousand years, a man dressed in black armor knelt within a blood-red formation. He hunched over, head lowered, his entire body trembling.
His body was covered in wounds, and the fresh blood from his injuries flowed out in thin streams, winding around him to form eerie red threads that fed into the formation on the ground below him.
He murmured incantations, strange spells that sounded like Buddhist sutras yet also resembled dark magic. Though he chanted alone, the entire ice forest trembled with his words.
“Summon my lord, from the extreme abyss, offer my eternal life, willingly serve for eternity…”
As his incantation continued, the blood encircling him like ribbons flowed faster and faster.
“Begin…”
With the man’s final utterance, the formation beneath his feet emitted a strange crimson glow.
In the next instant, the formation on the ground produced a resonating hum, like the morning bell vibrating, one sound after another, rhythmic like waves, rippling outward in layers.
An extremely small black spot, like a grain of sand, rose from the formation.
As it rose, the surrounding air waves grew increasingly violent and terrifying.
When the light spot completely left the ground, the air waves surged like a massive tsunami, sweeping outward and destroying everything around it as if uprooting ancient trees.
The snow fog churned, turning into white steam. As all the mist receded, within the white fog remained only a black flame the size of a water droplet, floating and burning in the air.
The man who had summoned this black flame had been stripped of all flesh and skin by the previous air waves, leaving only a skeleton, standing in place as if in devout worship.
The black flame floated quietly in the air. After a moment, the flame began to vibrate.
As it trembled, the black formation on the ground released black vapors that condensed into threads and entered the skeleton. In an eerie manner, they wrapped around the bones, rebuilding sinews, internal organs, and even flesh.
It… restored the man…
But unlike before, this man’s veins beneath his skin were no longer blood-colored but had transformed into black vessels. His eyes had also been dyed completely black.
A malevolent spirit…
Yet not an ordinary one.
“My lord Hao Yi.” As this name was uttered, bell sounds crashed into my ears, shaking my very soul.
Hao Yi…
The name of an ancient evil god.
Even during our lessons at Kunlun, the master only dared let us see these two characters in books, never allowing us to recite them aloud.
The evil god Hao Yi, born in the extreme abyss, is undying and indestructible.
Thousands of years ago, the gods from all eight directions united their efforts and finally sealed the evil god in the deepest sea. The malevolent energy in today’s world is merely the last lingering breath of the evil god remaining in the world.
After that battle, the gods from all directions were nearly extinguished. In today’s world, counting Xi Wang Mu, the main deity of my Kunlun, there are only ten left.
If the evil god were to emerge from the extreme abyss, there would be no more gods or Buddhas in the world to make him dormant again.
Yet this person here was addressing this black flame as—my lord Hao Yi.
Had the evil god already returned to the world…
I looked at that flame, feeling shock and terror. In the moment of my fear, my heart felt as if it were being tightly gripped by a hand. I became aware of my body’s existence. Then, intense pain spread throughout my body, causing it to curl up involuntarily.
The surrounding white snow receded in an instant, and the scene before me was swallowed by darkness.
I looked up, and that flame, mixed with blood-red, occupied my entire field of vision.
The flame danced before me.
I stared at it, entranced.
I saw countless black malevolent energies extend from around it, transforming into spider threads that came from all directions, touching my skin.
They held me like a puppeteer controlling a puppet.
Looking down, I saw that spider threads had already attached to my chest. I watched helplessly as they seemed to have a life of their own, burrowing into my skin. I felt them entangle my heart.
Intense pain invaded my internal organs, making me want to curl up, but the spider threads wrapped around my limbs stretched my body open.
My heart contracted in severe pain while my body was infinitely extended. I felt as if I was about to be torn apart right here!
I bit my teeth, enduring the pain, using my last bit of consciousness to repeat a sentence in my mind, almost turning it into a belief.
And when I recited this sentence, the pain in my body indeed seemed to lessen somewhat.
The flame danced before me, gradually transforming into a human shape. Darkness enveloped its entire body, making its features indistinguishable.
It seemed curious about what my trembling lips were saying. It walked toward me, gently putting its ear close to me.
“Whatever you dream…”
It came closer.
“Whatever you dream, don’t be afraid.”
I clenched my fingers into a fist, gritting my teeth to endure all the tearing pain and fear of the unknown. My arm broke free from the black spider threads, and I swung my fist directly at it.
Xie Zhuo’s words, “Don’t fear!” became the only sound echoing in my ears at that moment!
My punch felt like it hit cotton.
But the black shadow before me dispersed.
The spider threads gripping my heart and binding my limbs all retreated in that instant.
I fell to my knees. Just that one punch had nearly exhausted all my strength.
I gasped for breath, and before me, the black malevolent energy gathered again. I was already annoyed by its endless persistence, but when I looked up, I saw that the malevolent energy had formed into the shape of a woman.
There was something strangely familiar about this woman’s features, but I couldn’t quite place why.
The woman formed from malevolent energy clasped her hands in front of her, her demeanor arrogant as she looked down at me, examining me.
“Second time.”
She spoke, her voice truly ethereal and vague, making it impossible to distinguish between male and female after hearing it, just like… that shape-shifter from before…
Was it him again?
“Who exactly… are you?”
He didn’t answer me, only continuing to speak: “Few can break free from such control. Do you want to be the second Xie Zhuo?”
The name Xie Zhuo made my ears twitch. I looked up at him.
Seeing my gaze, he seemed to find it quite interesting and slightly curved the corner of his lips: “Every time malevolent energy enters his body, he has to struggle with me once. It seems you truly don’t know anything.”
He hid it well; I knew nothing at all.
I felt a pain in my heart, not from being attacked, but simply from heartache.
In five hundred years, how many times had such torment and pain ended without my knowledge?
And how many times had he awakened, having to face me as if nothing had happened, covering everything up?
And what about me?
How had I responded to him?
“Feeling sorry for him?”
The woman before me tilted her head slightly, observing my expression: “You’ve won for the second time. I’ll give you a gift.”
As he spoke, he waved his hand, and the surrounding darkness receded. I returned once more to the frozen lake in the ice forest.
On the lake was still that man resurrected by the black flame. He bowed respectfully to the black flame before him, his voice mechanical and hollow: “Snow Wolf tribe, has a strange woman, compatible with my lord, can birth a son, suitable as a vessel, can help my lord, return to the world.”
Snow Wolf tribe…
My heart trembled, and I turned sharply to look at the person beside me.
But in the instant I turned, the surrounding scene suddenly changed. Before I could see the person formed from malevolent energy beside me, I had already appeared in a new scene.
This was… a tribe.
In the tribe, men and women were gathered in one place. Some people held children in their arms, but the children here each had a tail behind them, large or small, indicating their identity—the Snow Wolf tribe.
Standing in front of this group of Snow Wolf tribe members was that man resurrected by the evil god. The darkness in his eyes was gone.
If not for the extra black flame mark on his forehead, he would have looked no different from ordinary people.
“Chief?” the Snow Wolf tribe people asked the man, “Why have you gathered us here…”
Before the person could finish asking, the one called the chief raised his hand and directly grabbed a woman from the crowd.
When I saw this woman’s face, I was shocked.
This… wasn’t this the exact likeness of the woman that the shape-shifter had transformed into earlier?
I turned to look for that shape-shifter but couldn’t see any trace of him. I was like a wandering soul, floating in the air, watching everything happening below.
“The evil god has chosen you,” the Snow Wolf tribe chief said to the woman. “You will bear a child for the evil god.”
The woman was shocked, and everyone below was also astonished.
A man holding a child rushed out from the crowd: “Chief!? What… what is this evil god? Ayu has already formed a blood oath with me, we already have a son, why…”
With a “whoosh” sound.
Black energy flashed by, and before everyone’s eyes, the man’s head rolled to the ground.
The man’s body still held the child, standing in place. The child’s face was splattered with fresh blood, but the child seemed not to have yet processed what had happened, only staring blankly at the severed neck and the blood flowing out.
Everyone was silent.
Then the man’s body fell to the ground.
The child fell with him. He didn’t cry; he still hadn’t reacted to what had happened.
At this moment, “Ayu,” who had been grabbed by the chief, suddenly let out a piercing scream and began to wail.
She struggled desperately, trying to break free from the chief’s hand to rush to the side of her husband, with whom she had formed a blood oath.
But the chief not only didn’t release her but also lightly touched her belly. Malevolent energy surged like a tornado, enveloping the woman, but in the blink of an eye, it entered her body.
The black energy disappeared, and the chief released his hand. The woman’s body fell powerlessly.
“The vessel needed by the evil god will be born from Ayu. From today on, the Snow Wolf tribe will collect malevolent energy from all over the world to worship my lord.”
Only after the chief’s words did people in the crowd below begin to react.
“We cannot worship the evil god!”
“Chief!? Why?”
“We must not let the evil god return…”
Black energy swept over, extinguishing all voices.
My ears were once again filled with the howling wind. I still stared blankly ahead, unable to come back to my senses for a moment.
“Do you understand now?” The shape-shifter’s voice appeared in my ear. “Xie Zhuo. Nothing but a manufactured vessel.”
The howling wind pulled at me, and I seemed to become that snowflake again from the beginning.
I drifted, flying over the frozen lake, flying over the ice forest.
I finally landed on the shoulder of a small boy.
He had a large tail and two fluffy ears standing on his head.
“Mother…”
I saw him chasing after the footsteps of the woman ahead. I heard him stammer, with a slightly childish voice: “My… name, which character is it? Zhuo? Zhuó? Zhuò? They… they… won’t tell me…”
In front of the little boy, Ayu walked with her back to him, showing no intention of turning around.
The little boy persisted in chasing after her, his short, small hand reaching into the air, trying to grab the sleeve of the woman in front of him.
With a “slap,” the small hand was harshly brushed away, and the little boy fell, sitting on the ground.
He looked up. The woman in front of him was indeed Ayu, her face now weathered, her hair already white. The disgust and hatred in her expression couldn’t be hidden from her trembling voice.
“Get away!”
“Don’t come near me!”
“You are the child of filth!”
“Your name is Xie Zhuo!”
The voice seemed to still echo in my ears when I suddenly awakened.
Before me was a sea of fog, and in the distance stood the walls of the Undying City. On the walls, the never-extinguishing fires had been extinguished.
Dawn had broken…
I was sitting on a rafter. I turned my head to look to the side, and Xie Zhuo’s head was next to my neck.
I could feel his bite on my neck.
Seeming to sense that I was awake, he tried to lift his head.
Without a word, I raised my hand and pressed down on his head.
He seemed somewhat surprised, freezing against my shoulder.
I held him with one hand and reached out with the other, grasping his hand that had been supporting my shoulder.
I held his hand tightly.
“It’s all right. You can come close to me. You’re not just a vessel, nor are you an error, much less a child of filth.”
I said: “Your name is Xie Zhuo, you are my…”
I choked up; I couldn’t continue.
It was I who knocked Buzhou Mountain askew, cut the red string, and swore that we were divorced…