Northern Dark Ice Soul

Desolate Ancient Moon has already failed at Cheng Bai mountain and lost her sense of self, and Verdant Great Sun is still lost to addiction, leaving no child to save Ren Zu in Luo Po Valley. The valley is a maze where bewilderment fog slackens the soul and Luo Po wind cuts it, and Ren Zu’s spiritual body, unable to find a way out, grows weaker still. The soul fragments it cuts away slowly converge into a youth. He is Ren Zu’s third son, Northern Dark Ice Soul. ^{ch. 567}

Cold in look but warm at heart, Northern Dark Ice Soul is deeply filial, and seeing his father weaken daily, he resolves to save him though Ren Zu has already accepted death as fate. Immune to the valley’s own dangers since he was born there, he wanders searching for an exit, and finds none, until he meets a Gu that names itself unexpected. Meeting it here, unexpected Gu says, is itself an unexpected brush with life, and it offers to pull him into the human world, but him alone, since he is the one who found it. He refuses to leave without his father. Unexpected Gu takes him anyway, and he wakes in the human world with a body of flesh. ^{ch. 567}

Alone and bewildered in this vast world, he remembers Ren Zu once speaking of an elder sister, Desolate Ancient Moon. Cognition Gu comes to him, offers help, and tells him of Cheng Bai mountain and of her failed search there, so he decides to find his sister first. He finds her turned into a monster, repeating the same questions, unable to recognize the world or her own name. He answers each question and tells her their father is dying in Luo Po Valley and needs resurrecting, but she only asks why humans, or she herself, should live at all. To that question he has no answer. ^{ch. 567}

While he ponders, bewilderment Gu quietly slips over him, taking his sense of his surroundings, and love Gu and disguise Gu follow, a trio even cognition Gu avoids provoking. Love Gu borrows disguise Gu’s power to pose as cognition Gu, and tells him he must find a meaning Gu to wake his sister. No such Gu exists, and the three, laughing behind him, agree to take turns tormenting him in his search. He suffers under their tricks but keeps searching anyway. His persistence moves cognition Gu, who comes to him whenever love Gu is away, and under its true guidance he sees through the disguise and the two tricksters retreat. ^{ch. 567}

Grateful, Northern Dark Ice Soul realizes that if no meaning Gu exists, he can make one himself. He returns to Desolate Ancient Moon. He presses a self-made meaning Gu into her. Her eyes brighten, and she names her new purpose: to search for success Gu and resurrect their father. ^{ch. 567}