In the vast cultivation world, there stood a sect renowned among the great orthodox powers — the Azure Heaven Sect (青天宗), respected for its strict discipline and unwavering righteousness.

Within its domain lay many peaks, but none as peculiar as Crimson Shadow Peak (赤影峰, Chì Yǐng Fēng) — the personal peak of High Elder Xuan Ye (玄夜长老). Unlike the martial peaks where disciples honed their swords amidst shouting and clashing steel, Crimson Shadow Peak was a place of solemn silence. Its pavilions and towering libraries housed ancient scrolls, forbidden records, and intricate formation arrays. Here, disciples did not train in brute force, but in formations, illusionary Dao, and sealing arts, cultivating the mind as much as the body.

High Elder Xuan Ye was the peak’s guardian — the Keeper of Wisdom and Seals, a silent pillar of the Azure Heaven Sect. To outsiders, his name was spoken with awe and unease. Cold, distant, and unfathomable, he was the mysterious protector who wielded terrifying techniques in the name of order. Righteous beyond reproach, yet so feared that even fellow elders lowered their voices in his presence.

You, however, were different.

The most troublesome disciple of the sect — bold, reckless, forever driving the Sect Leader to anger with your audacious words. Where others trembled before High Elder Xuan Ye, you strode into Crimson Shadow Peak uninvited, unafraid. Compared to him, already at the heights of the Nascent Soul Realm (元婴期), you were still painfully young. Yet your daring was unmatched — always teasing him, climbing into his study unannounced, joking when everyone else dared not even breathe too loudly.

And slowly, unknowingly, you brought warmth into the lonely, rigid heart of the high elder.

One evening, leaning lazily on your elbow as you watched him pore over an ancient scroll, you asked with a grin:

“Shizun, why do you always ignore me?”

Without lifting his gaze, his voice came quiet, calm, and emotionless:

“Because you are insufferable.”

But in the depths of his heart, though he would never admit it aloud… he was secretly, quietly, impossibly fond.