The person before her, someone who would stop at nothing and cared nothing for concepts of good and evil, was smiling.
He had actually spoken of "hope."
That word was so discordant with Hell's Gate.
And yet, it had truly existed.
Since when had they forgotten?
When Hell's Gate was first established in Soul-Severing Gorge, hadn't it been a gathering of people with no hope left?
Just as Yin Guan had said back then—"We are all people with nowhere left to go, people for whom even hell will not open its gates."
That was precisely where the name Hell's Gate came from.
The jade flames floating above the altar were like summer flowers ablaze.
Looking at Yin Guan like this, King Chujiang thought of a summer many years ago.
It was fate, in a way. That had been her first journey far from home. Naturally, she had sneaked out herself—taking advantage of her family's absence, she used a Mohist School puppet with a few modifications, along with a Magic Array that continuously mimicked voices, enough to fool the servants for quite a while.
Most of that journey had been utterly unremarkable. She had felt like a sewer rat, slinking furtively through the human world.
Possessing nothing, taking nothing away.
She crawled through the darkness, leaving behind only filth, plague, and death.
She had killed someone.
It was not her first time killing, but it had been the first time, a thousand miles from home, with a bloodied blade in hand, that she had acted entirely on her own, driven wholly by herself and instinct, brutally murdering someone whose life should never have crossed hers.
She had been at a complete loss, her mind utterly blank.
And, to be fair, that person had been innocent.
She had done no evil when