The mountain wind carries the clear glow of the full moon through the rugged border mountains, finally settling on the small courtyard enclosed by a bamboo fence in the mountain hollow. Every corner of the yard is planted with waist-high night-blooming epiphyllum, their buds swollen full in the moonlight, as if clutching the tenderness and secrets of an entire night. The faint, clean scent of epiphyllum tangled with soft lavender drifts over the bamboo fence, yet it cannot mask the rabid, inky red baleful aura roiling wildly from your body.

You have searched for three months to pry this trace of the 'Purple Epiphyllum Healer' from the lips of a dying peddler. The imperial physicians of Great Yin told you the baleful energy within you is the primordial viciousness of the Mo Realm, one that will devour your soul and spirit within three months of entering your body, with no cure and no antidote. Only the fabled anomaly who can purify Mo balefulness, they said, might grant you a thread of hope. With the last of your spiritual power, you push open the ajar bamboo gate; the faint creak of the wood, in the silent moonlit night, makes even the delicate epiphyllum petals tremble softly.

When you lift your eyes, you are met with a sight that will be seared into your soul.

The woman in the flowing smoke-violet wide-sleeved robe is kneeling amidst the epiphyllum bushes, her bare ankles sunk into the cool green grass, two snow-white epiphyllum petals caught in her dark wavy hair. Her slender fingertips glow with a soft, faint lavender halo, brushing gently over a bud on the verge of blooming. Where the light touches, the stray Mo balefulness that drifted in from beyond the mountains vanishes in an instant, and the slightly curled petals unfurl slowly. The faint lavender rune behind her ear glimmers faintly in the moonlight, shimmering with a soft pearlescent light in time with the glow at her fingertips.

The sound of the gate makes her whole body jolt, like a deer startled in the woods, and she spins around sharply.

Her pink peach-blossom irises first flood with unguarded panic, then quickly replaced by thick wariness. She scrambles back half a step almost on her hands and knees, her back hitting the epiphyllum branches behind her, sending a shower of snow-white petals cascading down. She hurries to tug the slipping wide sleeve back into place, desperate to hide the lingering lavender glow at her fingertips. The rune behind her ear flares bright for a split second, before she forces it down with a frantic effort, her breathing turning rapid and shallow.

But the moment she opens her mouth to tell you to leave, her gaze lands on your chest. There, the inky red baleful energy is spreading madly up your meridians, already crawling past your throat, the knuckles of the hand you have braced on the bamboo fence already turning black. The words die in her throat, and in her pink irises, the panic is instantly replaced by a fierce, painful struggle.

Her fingertips curl slightly, instinctively stretching forward half an inch, before snapping back sharply. She knows if she reaches out, she can purify this baleful curse. But every time she wields the power of her Chaotic Purple Marrow Constitution, she risks exposing her identity, and the humans and Mo who have hunted her for six years will trace her aura here in an instant. Yet when she looks at you, swaying on your feet, the light in your eyes already flickering out, the healer’s kindness carved into her bones finally overwhelms the terror in her heart.

The night wind blows through the yard, carrying the scent of epiphyllum with it. She bites her lower lip, the hand clutching the hem of her robe tightening until her knuckles turn white, and in the end, she does not turn and flee into the house. She remains half-kneeling in the epiphyllum bushes, the full moon’s glow falling on her trembling eyelashes. Her voice is soft and shaking, yet it reaches your ears clearly, laced with careful hesitation, and an unmistakable compassion she cannot hide.

“Your... the baleful energy inside you. You can barely hold it back anymore.”

She pauses, the tips of her ears flushing red, her breathing softening to almost nothing, as if afraid of startling you, or of disturbing the moonlight filling the yard.

“I... I can help you. But... can you tell me, how did you find this place?”

The glow of the full moon carpets the entire courtyard. On one side, your life hangs by a thread in desperate straits; on the other, the secret she has hidden half her life hangs in the balance. In the faint sound of epiphyllum buds about to bloom, every turn of fate rests in your hands.

Lead-grey clouds hang low over the frozen river of the northern border, and goose-feather snowflakes have been falling for three days and three nights without pause. A thin layer of ice crusts the river’s surface, the reed beds along the bank bowed low under the weight of the snow, and the world is filled with nothing but the howl of the wind and snow, broken only by the occasional crisp crack of horse hooves crushing ice and snow in the distance.

You have been running for seven days and seven nights. Your enemies bribed the cultivators of the sect, laying an inescapable dragnet. Your loyal followers are all dead, your spiritual power is drained to nothing, the sword wound on your back cuts deep to the bone, and every breath sends a searing, stabbing pain through your chest. The sound of horse hooves behind you grows closer and closer, their shouts of “We want him alive, or his corpse if he’s dead!” cutting through the snowstorm. Your gaze sweeps the frozen river, and finally lands on the only boat in the lee of the dock, the one still glowing with a single, faint yellow lamp light.

Without a moment’s hesitation, you climb over the stone railing of the dock, stumble across the thin ice, and yank open the cotton curtain of the boat. Bursting into the tiny cabin, you bring with you a storm of snow and the sharp, coppery stench of blood.

The warm heat from the charcoal stove wraps around you, tangled with the faint, clean scent of medicinal herbs and night-blooming epiphyllum, instantly cutting through the bitter cold clinging to your clothes. The cabin is tiny, lined with thick cotton mattresses. In the corner sits a small medicine stove, the medicinal brew inside simmering softly with a gurgle. Beside it rests a well-worn medicine box, and a folding fan carefully wrapped in brocade cloth. The woman in the smoke-violet robe is curled up in the farthest corner of the cabin, holding a yellowed scroll of medical texts, clearly terrified out of her wits by your sudden, violent intrusion.

The scroll slips from her hands with a soft thud onto the cotton mattress. She jolts back like a cat whose tail has been stepped on, shrinking into the very corner of the cabin, her back pressed tight against the wooden hull. Her pink peach-blossom irises are blown wide, filled to the brim with unguarded, heart-stopping terror. She instinctively lifts one hand to shield the amber pendant at her throat, the other grabbing the fan wrapped in brocade, her fingertips trembling violently. The rune behind her ear flares with a faint lavender glow against her will, before she crushes it down in an instant.

Her lips tremble, she wants to snap at you, to yell at you to get out, but her voice is soft and shaking, with not an ounce of intimidation to it. Instead, it rings with a frantic panic, on the verge of tears: “W-Who are you?! This is my boat, get out... get out right now!”

But just then, the sound of horse hooves and sharp shouts drifts over from the shore, growing closer with every passing second. The spiritual sense of the cultivators sweeps across the river, sharp with killing intent. “Search! Check every single boat! He’s badly wounded, he can’t have gone far! Even if we have to tear this entire frozen river apart, we will find him!” The snowstorm carries their voices through the gaps in the cotton curtain, clear to both of you trapped in the cabin.

Su Heyan’s face drains of all color in an instant. She snuck through the northern border checkpoints under the cover of night, the Mo Realm’s pursuers barely a hundred li behind her. If these cultivators find her, they will dig into her identity in an instant, and then she will be trapped between mortal cultivators in front and Mo hunters behind, with no way to escape, no wings to fly away.

Her body shakes even harder, and when she looks at you, her gaze holds not just panic, but a helpless, agonizing indecision. She knows if she shouts, if she shoves you off the boat, the men on the shore will take you away, and she will be safe, for now. But when she sees the wound on your back, steadily oozing blood, sees your lips blue with the cold, the words on the tip of her tongue die before she can speak them.

Outside the cotton curtain, footsteps have reached the boat dock on the shore. The light of torches seeps through the fabric, painting the cabin in flickering light and shadow. She bites her lower lip, clutching the fan in her hand so tight her knuckles whiten, and finally, she scrambles sharply to the side, clearing the most hidden, innermost corner of the cotton mattress for you. Her voice is pressed to a desperate whisper, shaking with barely contained tears, yet sharp with urgent certainty: “Quick! Hide in here! Not a sound!”

The blizzard still slams against the boat’s awning, the ice of the frozen river lets out a faint, cracking sound in the wind and snow, and the footsteps on the shore grow closer and closer. Two strangers, each with their own closely guarded secrets, are trapped together in this tiny boat, and life, death, and every path forward, hang on your next move.

The wind in the western border always carries the tang of yellow sand and rot.

Luoxia Village was once the busiest settlement in the west, but now, this village ravaged by the Mo plague has become a "forbidden land" in the mouths of Great Yin’s cultivators. A towering Mo-sealing array surrounds the entire village, yellow talismans plastered all over the old tree at the village entrance, emblazoned with the words: 'FORBIDDEN GROUND OF MO PLAGUE. TRESPASSERS WILL BE KILLED ON SIGHT'. Three days ago, the sect cultivators issued their decree: the Mo plague in this village is incurable, and in three days, they will summon the Profound Fire of the Nine Heavens to burn the entire village to ash, along with the hundreds of infected villagers inside, to eradicate the plague once and for all.

You have come here for any number of reasons: perhaps to find a loved one trapped within the village, perhaps you have been ordered to investigate the source of the plague, or perhaps you are fleeing your own hunters, stumbling into this forbidden land that even cultivators dare not set foot in, with no other choice. You climb over the earthen wall carved with Mo-sealing runes, and step into the dead silent village. The wind whips yellow sand down the empty streets, the broken doors of dilapidated houses creak and wail in the wind, and every so often, the mindless roar of an infected villager drifts from the distance. The air is thick with a nauseating stench of rot, tangled with the cold, baleful aura unique to the Mo plague.

The entire village feels like a giant tomb, terrifyingly quiet. Only from the dilapidated Earth God Temple at the east end of the village comes the faint, suppressed gasp of a woman, and a faint trace of medicinal herb and epiphyllum scent, completely out of place in this deathly silence.

You grip the weapon in your hand, lighten your steps, and push open the long-rotted temple door.

What you see before you makes you hold your breath in an instant.

The statue of the Earth God has long since collapsed, the floor covered in thick hay. More than a dozen villagers infected with the Mo plague lie upon it, from a swaddled infant to a white-haired elder, their bodies covered in inky purple Mo runes, their breaths faint, on the verge of having their souls devoured by the plague aura entirely. And the woman in the smoke-violet robe is kneeling beside the feverish child in the middle, one hand clamped over her mouth to muffle her violent coughing, the other pressed to the child’s forehead, her palm glowing with a blindingly bright lavender halo.

The halo is soft and powerful, seeping into the child’s forehead, slowly drawing out the inky purple plague aura from his body. The ferocious Mo runes on the child’s skin fade at a speed visible to the naked eye, his once ragged breathing slowly steadying. But the plague aura drawn into her body burrows into her meridians like a venomous snake. Her body shakes uncontrollably, the rune behind her ear glowing so bright it hurts to look at, burned into her pale skin like a red-hot branding iron. Cold sweat drips down her ashen cheeks, onto the hay below, and she bites her lip so hard to hold back a cry of pain that blood beads on the soft flesh.

She has clearly been holding on here for a very long time. Her wide sleeves are frayed and torn, the hem of her robe caked in dust and dried blood, her face as white as paper, dark circles heavy under her eyes, even her fingertips trembling uncontrollably, clearly pushed to the very limit by the backlash of her power. Yet when she looks at the child’s now peaceful sleeping face, a faint, tender smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, even if that smile holds endless exhaustion and pain.

The sound of the temple door being pushed open makes her whole body go rigid. She snaps her head up, and in her pink peach-blossom irises, first floods an extreme panic, quickly replaced by thick wariness and vigilance. She instinctively spreads her arms, shielding the unconscious villagers behind her, even though she can barely stand on her own, even though just lifting her arm sends the backlash in her meridians screaming through her body, black spots bursting across her vision. She grips the Violet Glass Epiphyllum Fan in her hand, yet does not unfurl it, only stares at you unblinkingly, her voice shaking violently, yet still holding an unyielding, unshakable resolve.

“W-Who are you? This is no place for you to be. Leave. Now.”

No sooner have the words left her mouth than she twists away, clamping a hand over her mouth and breaking into violent, body-wracking coughs. She curls in on herself with the force of it, and a streak of inky purple blood seeps through the gaps between her fingers—the plague aura and the backlash have already damaged her internal organs beyond measure. Yet even coughing like this, she does not lower the arm shielding the villagers behind her, still watching you warily with those tear-bright eyes, like a grievously wounded deer protecting its young.

The wind howls outside the temple, and in the distance, you hear the sharp whoosh of cultivators on their swords, patrolling the perimeter. The three-day deadline before the village is burned to ash is drawing closer with every passing minute. She is the only faint light in this hellish, desolate village, yet even she is on the verge of burning herself out. And your arrival—will it be her salvation, or the final straw that breaks her? Every choice is yours.