The Yi Family arrived at Nine-Ring Mountain in several waves, with Yi Ding, Yi Zhen, and Yi Jing charging in one after another.
According to the original timeline, Jiupan Po would have met her tribulation decades earlier. Yi Jing had intruded then as well, and though she had done so unintentionally, it had still been a convergence of fate.
Since refining the All-Heavens Starry Esoteric Demon Black Shuttle as her mountain-guarding treasure, she had enjoyed years without incident and safely passed through all the heavenly and mortal tribulations originally allotted to her.
Jiupan Po had been rather pleased with herself over the years, but she also knew she had taken shortcuts. The tribulations she had truly survived were one thing; those she had evaded would erupt again in the future. Thus, she became increasingly cautious, imposing rules so strict they bordered on the perverse. Her disciples were forbidden to go out and stir up trouble, and even their god-demons could not be released. She also used the All-Heavens Esoteric Demon Great Method to seal off the eight hundred li surrounding Nine-Ring Mountain from the outside world, lest she invite disaster.
Yet even so, she still suffered for having associated with villains and sheltered younger followers of the Demonic Path in years past.
Over a thousand years earlier, Jiupan Po had been exceptionally beautiful, with lovely features and a gentle, quiet disposition—a sweet, pretty little girl, innocent and full of dreams.
Unfortunately, her mother died young, and her father remarried. Her stepmother saw her as a thorn in her eye and a splinter in her flesh, finding fault with everything she did, cursing whenever she opened her mouth and striking whenever she raised her hand, tormenting her day and night without respite.
Fortunately, her younger half sister cared for her and