Over the past hundred years, Ning Ke had appeared in Lou Yunxiao's nightmares countless times.
Dictating his emotions.
Controlling his life.
It was this hatred for Ning Ke that had kept driving him forward, pushing him toward revenge, urging him to cultivate relentlessly and grow stronger, with nothing on his mind but defeating Ning Ke.
Now, he had done it.
He stood at the pinnacle of the Qianyuan Continent.
He had become its undisputed strongest cultivator.
Ning Ke was also in his hands, at his mercy.
Yet in truth, his heart was constantly gripped by an overwhelming emptiness.
Because along this thorn-strewn path of cultivation...
His older sister had vanished, his master had vanished, and his friends and fellow disciples had left him one after another on the road to eradicating demons...
And then there was his junior disciple, A Ke...
The man who had stayed by his side without hesitation, regardless of what anyone else thought of him.
He was gone, too.
Those years spent cultivating with A Ke had made him realize for the first time that life was more than revenge.
He had secretly imagined a future in which they supported each other, grew together, and ultimately spent their lives hand in hand.
A Ke had been the only light on the dark road he walked beneath the burden of hatred.
Yet even that faint light had been swallowed forever by the quicksand in the Underground Palace on that rainy day.
He had died to save him, leaving not even a body behind.
More tragically still, only after A Ke's death had he discovered these tiny hopes hidden beneath his hatred.
But no matter how much he said, that man would never hear him again.
Nor would he ever again... call him senior brother.
A Ke's death