Li Qingsui arrived at Shrine Mountain.
The place had always been desolate. After Li Qingci passed away, it became even colder and lonelier.
Shrine Mountain welcomed a sliver of light. The dark clouds no longer blanketed the dome above the disaster zone, and a strip of daylight was revealed.
When Shrine Mountain's last guardian of the path died, this place finally welcomed the light.
However, the shrine's crisis had not been completely resolved. Countless black flowers still bloomed throughout the mountains and wilderness.
"They're all gone... gone..."
Li Qingsui crouched on the mountaintop, hugging her knees as she looked at the flowerbed her elder sister had left behind and murmured softly.
After returning to the shrine, she was no longer the Li family head who held the power of life and death in the Outside World.
At that moment, she looked like nothing more than an ordinary little girl.
In truth, that was exactly what she was.
She still had two years before she turned eighteen.
According to the traditions of the Nagano Li family, one would usually invite their most important and cherished "family" and "teachers" to their coming-of-age ceremony. Long ago, Li Qingsui had imagined the joyous scene of her own ceremony. She had thought that if her elder sister still could not leave Shrine Mountain by then, she would hold it in the mountains and invite the direct descendants of the Li clan and the core members of the Council of Elders.
Of course, Gu Shen would be there too.
But later, she seemed to grow up overnight.
Those unrealistic fantasies never appeared in her dreams again.
The wind blew softly, and the mountaintop was utterly silent.
Li Qingsui had this rare tranquility all to herself, yet she did not feel at ease.
She reached out and