When handing tea to Master, her fingertips would inadvertently brush against his hand.
When walking side by side, her shoulder would unintentionally graze his arm.
Every touch felt like a faint electric current surging down her spine.
She trembled inwardly, secretly infatuated.
But Master's reaction was always so restrained, so... distant.
When they were too close, he would nonchalantly pull away by half a step.
Looking back, she realized that before that incident, Master had never explicitly rejected her proximity, nor had he ever spoken out to stop her.
Master clearly knew that her closeness would only bring him endless impulses and pain, and would force the other two to bear the cost in her stead.
To put it bluntly, Sleeping Snow and Clear Cold were practically Master's mobile blood banks; to put it even more harshly, they were portable medicine used to suppress his symptoms when they flared up.
Whenever the symptoms flared, he would find an opportunity to feed.
Yes, it was true—the seniors had no complaints, but Master's heart was only filled with deepening guilt.
Compared to her, an incompetent disciple who was lost in her own world and ignorant of so much effort and suffering—
The help the seniors gave Master far exceeded hers in every aspect.
But what about the two seniors?
They clearly adored Master as well and gave so much, yet like her, they never received a response from him.
In this regard, she was actually the winner.
Because Master had personally said that he might have fallen for her, whereas he hadn't said that to the seniors.
All those past romantic conjectures were nothing but misunderstandings.
Sometimes when Master stayed overnight in Sleeping Snow and the other's room, he was merely teaching them his insights on cultivating The Self-Actualization Aspect.
Time flowed on until that day finally arrived... it was an afternoon in early autumn, and the sunlight was warm.
While strolling with Master by a scenic lakeside, she saw others snuggling intimately.
She also wanted to take Master's arm and lean against her beloved like an ordinary woman.
Driven by centuries of accumulated impulse, she summoned her courage and reached out, tightly linking her arm with Master's.
As a result, just as she felt Master's warmth through his skin, he pulled his arm away as if by reflex.
The movement was so swift, the rejection so obvious.
Master frowned and asked what she was doing, but she could no longer restrain the overwhelming emotions within her and talked back to him for the first time.
She loudly questioned why, after hundreds of years and her desperate efforts to grow stronger and catch up, she still couldn't earn a single glance from him.
Why could he dance and have close contact with the seniors, yet avoid her like the plague?
She poured out the doubts she had harbored for years without mercy, asking Master why he hated her so much.
Master's equally silent behavior and his face, which showed no trace of emotion, now seemed clearly to be suppressing something when she looked back.
With only a cold expression on the surface, he told her to let go.
He merely found a clumsy excuse to act as cold water, ruthlessly extinguishing the fire of her outburst.
And she, heartbroken, felt as if the whole world had fallen into darkness.
For the first time, the thought of distancing herself from Master to focus on self-improvement and grow stronger faster arose.
Her obsession did not fade; instead, it grew nearly maddening.
Especially after the new Borisin war leader appeared.
This hungry wolf named Hoolay became the destination of her pursuit of Master, the point where she could rightfully stand by his side.
Even if—that destination was just her own wishful thinking.
But at least, it gave her something to look forward to.
She just never expected that this hope would persist for hundreds of years without being fulfilled.
Until the century before Master's passing, Hoolay hid himself extremely well, proving to be the most cunning Borisin war leader in history.
Living on the Luofu was not uncomfortable for her.
On an ordinary morning, the retired Sleeping Snow flipped open a paper calendar for the new year.
star calendar year 7200.
There were still 138 years until Master and Shuhu would perish together.
"Sleeping Snow, I will need your help for the coming period."
Qi Zhimu appeared behind her.
"Just say the word," Sleeping Snow said without hesitation.
"I want to forge a sword."
"But neither my younger sister nor I know how to..."
"It's not the forging process I need help with. Come with me."
Seeing this, a sudden sense of foreboding rose in Jingliu's heart.
Could the sword Master wanted to forge be gazing radiance?
But Master only gave gazing radiance to her in the winter of star calendar year 7277.
What kind of sword requires seventy-seven years to forge?
Jingliu held onto a sliver of hope.
However, everything that followed completely shattered that sliver of hope in her heart.
She pressed her hand firmly over her lips, struggling to keep herself from crying out loud.
She saw Master cutting open his own body day after day, removing bones from specific parts.
For the parts he couldn't easily reach himself, he had Sleeping Snow and the others do it for him.
Once those bones were gone, they would regenerate, and once regenerated, they would be taken again.
Master treated the bones as a special consumable material she couldn't understand, using them to forge the sword gazing radiance.
The blade was melted under extreme temperatures, mixed with powdered bone, and reshaped.
Once gazing radiance completed its second reshaping, it seemed as if it possessed life.
Integrating bones no longer required grinding them into powder; simply bringing the two into contact allowed gazing radiance to automatically absorb the bone into the blade.
Afterward, Master added many other things.
Blood, bone marrow, organs... he would even snap his own neck to integrate his head into it.
This... it wasn't that gazing radiance seemed to have life, but that it actually did!
Jingliu's pupils trembled violently as she unbelievably took out the sword, which had been broken into several pieces, and gently caressed it.
No wonder she felt such immense peace every time she slept holding the sword.
The fundamental reason was that this sword was originally forged by Master using his own body.
gazing radiance was Master's incarnation, possessing a life link where any damage would repair itself... To cast this sword, he had spent a full seventy-seven years!
The moment it was finished, Clear Cold finally couldn't help but speak, asking him the reason for forging this sword using himself as material.
Sleeping Snow cast the same questioning look.
Qi Zhimu didn't answer immediately; instead, he sheathed the yet-unnamed finished product, a look of relief flashing across his face.
"Clear Cold, some monsters are hard to kill, or even impossible to kill. Those who can easily kill a monster, besides gods, are often only the monsters themselves."
"..."
The two sisters looked at each other in silence and understood immediately.
In truth, it wasn't that they hadn't guessed the correct answer in their hearts; they simply hadn't wanted to believe it.
"...So, this is a sword you forged specifically for Jingliu, isn't it?"
"That's right."
"Isn't this too cruel for her..."
"Perhaps, but someone has to do it. I've taught her that if I ever fall to the mara affliction on the battlefield, she must show no mercy."
To fall to the Mara-Struck state is to become a monster, and a monster is equivalent to being Mara-Struck.
"If I can slay Shuhu, perhaps that day will never come. But if the worst should happen..."
Qi Zhimu did not continue.
But whether it was the two sisters or Jingliu looking back at the past, they all understood what those unspoken words were.
"..."
Jingliu's emotions completely gave way, and she fell into an uncontrollable breakdown.