It felt like I had had a very, very long dream.
The dream held nothing but loneliness and pain—the bone-deep agony brought by the curse, the eternal solitude of having no one by my side. It all seemed endless.
I did not know how much time had passed. A year, or a century?
I had forgotten time, forgotten who I was. I only vaguely remembered that I seemed to be waiting for someone.
Who was I waiting for?
I could not remember.
Until...
"Li Zuo."
The call was like a ray of light piercing the dark mist, shining into the cave and upon me.
My stiff body shuddered involuntarily, and my long-sealed heart gave a long-lost flutter.
Li Zuo? Such a familiar name...
Were they calling me?
I tried to remember, but my mind had long since gone numb. All I could recall was loneliness and pain.
But why did it feel so familiar? My heart... seemed to be beating.
Something compelled me to raise my head, beyond my control.
But my neck had not moved for too long. It felt rusted over, and I could only lift it inch by inch with tremendous difficulty.
My perpetually lowered eyelids lifted slightly, and my murky black pupils struggled to focus.
Finally... I saw them.
At the entrance to the cave, the daylight was firmly blocked out, only barely seeping in for half a meter.
That brief half-meter of light had become the only piece of the human world within the endless deathly darkness.
Five figures stood silently at the boundary between light and shadow.
Backlit, their outlines were hazy and their faces indistinct, yet they felt extraordinarily familiar.
One had a single arm and carried a longsword on his back, like a one-armed swordsman who had stepped out of a wuxia