Purple Cloud Palace lay hidden deep within the great Sea Eye of the South Sea. The nearby seabed mountain ranges were riddled with countless ravines and gullies, their terrain extraordinarily complex, with abundant marine plants and multitudes of fish, turtles, shrimp, and crabs lurking among them.
This Immortal Palace had been built by the Heavenly One Golden Mother. Heavenly One generated water, and among the five elements, metal gave birth to water, making her the Mother of Water. She was also adept at refining Heavenly One True Water, so she was known as the Heavenly One Water Mother as well. In the Zu Mountain World, there was another supremely powerful figure called the Water Mother, named Ji Xuan. She had been Yan Yingmu's master before Yan Yingmu attained the Way, and she too had a Water Mother Palace, built beneath the Northern Sea, where she secluded herself in cultivation year-round.
After the Golden Mother, another Loose Immortal of the Unorthodox Path known as the Earth Mother moved in. Elder Longbrow had helped her survive a demon tribulation, and before Ascension, she gave Purple Cloud Palace to him. Having no use for it, Elder Longbrow sealed it away again, leaving it for his disciples to inhabit in the future.
Some years later, a thousand-year-old clam spirit fleeing for her life from a turtle demon stumbled into the palace by chance. Later, she reincarnated into human form and took the name Huizhu. She brought the daughters of the benefactor who had once saved her life into the palace to cultivate alongside her. They were First Phoenix, Er Feng, and Third Phoenix.
The three Phoenix sisters had been maidservants in the Golden Mother's palace in a former life. Through that karmic connection, they returned to their old home more than a thousand years