Rong Changing had grown up with him since they were young. Unlike Ye Baiyi, who went looking for fights the moment he was born, he had been a very charming man whose calls to others had been akin to cleanses in a cool breeze. He had liked fine wine, famed swords, pretty people, and even literature. Anyone in the world could have been his friend, given that they gave him a cup of alcohol, but unfortunately, he’d had only one genuine friend — Ye Baiyi, who, when not practicing, would only taunt others.

‘Ghost Hand’ Rong Changqing’s fame-starting work had been the Great Famine sword. At the time, he had been merely a young nobody. Without a single care, he had casually handed the blade that others would later call ‘the General amongst swords’ off to an old, wandering beggar, who had given him a pot of monkey wine and a book of secret techniques.

The wine, he had brought back to share with Ye Baiyi, while the book had contained the surviving sections of what following generations would call the six harmonies.

Later on, Ye Baiyi would hear that by great coincidence, Great Famine, which had wandered across jianghu, had fallen into the hands of the Zhang orphan. He suddenly thought this a little absurd, as if their people and these events were vaguely connected into one circle. Death begot death, age begot age; this became a segment of misery not explained to completion, with no one left behind to do so fully.

Rong Changqing had been a young one; of those who practiced martial arts, which one could ever resist the magic of being one with the Heavens? His aptitude hadn’t been enough, though. At times, when Ye Baiyi thought back on it, he felt that the thing was actually a demonic book with all sorts of snares inside it, luring humans into walking step by step down it until they were damned without reprieve. Maybe only one person out of millions would be chosen by it, then become its new successor, making them the spitting image of something that was neither human nor ghost.

Rong Changqing, a heavensent genius, had relied on his own strength to futilely complete the six harmonies, resulting in qi deviation.

Back then, Ye Baiyi had been out touring, in the midst of looking at Changming Mountain, thinking that it was unfrequented and very suited for his occasional solitary seclusion. The villagers below the mountain had just spread worsening hearsay about an ‘Ancient Monk’.

Madam Rong had still been a not-yet-married girl, yet she had discarded her status to carry Rong Changqing up the mountain on her back, pleading with Ye Baiyi to save him.