Immortal

Lord Dalian sends a kind Wuxin servant named Mingwen to prepare Liyen for the banquet. The servant shows Liyen unexpected kindness by risking Lord Dalian’s wrath to subtly heal some of her wounds. This perplexes Liyen, who always assumed all Wuxin are “bloodthirsty monsters, hungering for strife” (302). The thought of more Wuxin like Mingwen, who are “no more evil or good than [her] own people” (302), makes Liyen reconsider everything she thought she knew about their kind. When Liyen asks Mingwen about Wuxin history, Mingwen reveals that the Wuxin once lived among the immortals in the Golden Desert. However, when Queen Caihong seized power and united the tribes, the Wuxin did not agree to her rule and were persecuted. When the immortals attacked the Wuxin and killed their heir, Lord Dalian’s sister, they decided to fight back.

Liyen asks if Mingwen and her people are happy in the Netherworld, and Mingwen admits that it is beautiful here and the Wangchuan River’s waters satiates their hunger for now. As she mentions the river, her eyes stray to the bell at her waist, making Liyen curious about the ornament. Mingwen delivers Liyen to the banquet site, a barge on the Wangchuan River, where the sight of Aunt Shou, whose hair now shines in the characteristic snow-white hue of the Wuxin, shocks Liyen.

Liyen’s mind races as she struggles to comprehend the sight of Aunt Shou as a Wuxin. Aunt Shou claims the Wuxin are her people, the Netherworld is her home, Lord Dalian is her biological son, and Damei, the daughter she lost, was the Wuxin heir killed by the immortals. Liyen feels betrayed. She trusted Aunt Shou, never questioning her, but the entire time, she was working against Tianxia. Liyen correctly assumes Aunt Shou poisoned her with the waters of the Wangchuan, though Aunt Shou claims she never intended to kill Liyen. She only used the waters to bring Liyen near death so her grandfather would use the lotus on her instead of gifting it to Queen Caihong.

Aunt Shou says the immortals do not deserve the lotus and the God of War does not deserve a cure. She wants them all to die for what they did to the Wuxin people. Liyen disagrees, for as much as she dislikes aspects of the immortals, they helped the mortals when the Wuxin invaded Tianxia. Aunt Shou defends the Wuxin invasion, reasoning that the Wuxin were dying and desperate to survive. Aunt Shou says that she loves Chengyin like a son, cared for Liyen’s grandfather as a true friend and mourns his death, and cares for Liyen too. However, Liyen cannot see past the fact that Aunt Shou allowed Lord Dalian to possess the body of Chengyin, despite her love, putting him in potential danger and removing his autonomy.

During the banquet, Liyen watches Lord Dalian’s interactions with his mother, and it becomes clear that he struggles with feelings of inferiority that prompt him to rule with a cruel and merciless fist. Liyen also learns that Lord Dalian controls the Wangchuan River, rationing its waters to preserve its power, which has weakened in potency and cannot sustain the Wuxin as it once did. Dalian uses the river’s waning power as an excuse for his ultimate goal of invading the Mortal Realm and conquering it for the Wuxin while avenging his lost sister. While Captain Rao seems eager to invade, Miss Lin says she does not believe invasion is necessary. Instead, she suggests searching for ways to restore the former power of the Wangchuan River.

Liyen asks Lord Dalian how he brought her into the Netherworld, and he admits that the gates have a weak point created by the immense strain of his power, which allows a few to cross each day. Dalian claims that the Wangchuan River was tainted and the source was traced to the Temple of the Crimson Moon. He needs Liyen to wield the lotus’s power to purify and restore the river’s potency. Finding this preferable to a war in which the Wuxin invade the Mortal Realm, Liyen agrees to try.

Liyen is taken to the Temple of the Crimson Moon, where she approaches the pond. She realizes too late that she has walked into a trap. A magical curse attempts to take root in Liyen but the blessing of the Tree of Everlasting Life spares her. When Liyen breaks free from the curse unharmed, repressed memories suddenly return, assaulting her. She remembers her mother, Queen Caihong, holding Liyen in her arms, followed by an entire immortal lifetime as Queen Caihong’s daughter.

The waters of the temple’s pond introduce themselves to Liyen as the Mirror of Destiny. The mirror claims that two futures lie before her and it is up to Liyen which path to take. Liyen asks many questions and learns that the waters of the Wangchuan are untainted, but the river is waning for another reason. She also learns that the Wuxin brought her here to complete a ritual to turn her into one of them. The Mirror of Destiny reveals that Liyen was once immortal and became mortal. What she will become is yet to be determined.

Liyen asks about her repressed memories, and the Mirror of Destiny reveals that the Wuxin cursed Liyen and Zhangwei during the war. To cure herself, Liyen chose to become mortal, wiping her memories of her immortal life. After the lotus cured her, the immortals planned to return Liyen’s immortality to her. However, the Wuxin had other plans. Their curse hid Liyen from the immortals, and they planned to transform her into a Wuxin by feeding her waters of the Wangchuan River. The only thing that saved her was the blessing from the Tree of Everlasting Life.

The Mirror of Destiny shows Liyen visions of two potential paths, saying that what happens next depends on the path Liyen chooses. In the first vision, Liyen chooses to become Wuxin but loses vital aspects of her humanity in the process. She collapses the gateway, allowing the Wuxin to invade Tianxia and slaughter countless mortals. The Wuxin version of Liyen cuts through her former soldiers without remorse, securing the Wuxin victory. When the immortals arrive, she fights Zhangwei, distracting him long enough for Lord Dalian to land a killing blow.

In the second vision, Liyen chooses to become immortal, but the choice ends in mass casualties of her mortal people in Tianxia. While she fights alongside Queen Caihong and Zhangwei against the Wuxin, she mourns the deaths of not only the mortals but the Wuxin as well. She witnesses Aunt Shou mourning the death of her son, Lord Dalian, on the battlefield. Both visions feel wrong, the victories of each battle hollow. Rather than choosing one of the paths, Liyen insists on taking a new path and forging her own destiny.

When Liyen emerges from the temple, Aunt Shou greets her. The Wuxin assume that their plan has worked, and Liyen plays along, letting them believe she became Wuxin. On the return journey to the Wuxin palace, Liyen asks how the Wuxin ration and feed on the river’s water. Aunt Shou instead shows Liyen, pulling a memory from the river and storing it in the bell she keeps at her waist.

In her chambers, Liyen learns that she can now summon immortal magic, such as the water element in the form of ice. Liyen falls asleep swiftly, but dreams about the war with the Wuxin, witnessing the death of her father as the Wuxin unleash their forbidden magic. She and Zhangwei are caught and injured in the cursed blast. When Liyen startles awake from her dream, she is relieved to discover Zhangwei in her chambers. After Zhangwei proves he is not a Wuxin pretender, Liyen greets him affectionately. He tells her how he captured a Wuxin to gain the entrance to the Netherworld through the small gap in their gateway.

While most of her memories have returned, Liyen still has missing spots that will come back with time. Zhangwei helps fill these gaps for her, explaining that their life forces were fatally damaged from the effects of the blast that injured them and killed Liyen’s father. They learned the lotus could heal them both, but only if one became mortal; the lotus did not possess enough magic to cure two immortals. Zhangwei adds that retrieving her memories too early would make Liyen immortal again, ruining their plan to share the lotus. This explains his secrecy and Queen Caihong’s detached behavior toward her. Zhangwei reveals that it was fortunate he failed to take the lotus from her before she received the blessing of the Tree of Everlasting Life, since she would have become full Wuxin without its protection. Liyen tells Zhangwei of Aunt Shou’s true identity. Zhangwei reveals that he asked the Ancient Grandmaster to remove the trace of the Wangchuan River in Liyen’s body. Happy to be back together, Zhangwei and Liyen become intimate.

Zhangwei and Liyen spend the night reminiscing about their shared immortal pasts. Zhangwei admits he should have given up his immortality and gone to the Mortal Realm instead of Liyen. Liyen remembers sneaking out in the middle of the night without Zhangwei’s or Queen Caihong’s knowledge. Liyen disagrees with Zhangwei, claiming that since Zhangwei shielded Liyen from the brunt of the blast, his condition was more fragile and becoming mortal might have killed him.

With her memories coming back, Liyen realizes that the South Courtyard is her former chambers. He admits to closing them off for fear that seeing them would trigger her memories too early. Liyen also realizes that the qilin who helped her escape the Immortal Realm after Zhangwei tried to take the lotus from her was her own faithful pet.

Despite the return of her immortal memories, Liyen tells Zhangwei that her promises to her mortal grandfather and her duty to the people of Tianxia remain just as important. Zhangwei plans to fulfill all the promises he made Liyen, including helping her free Tianxia. Liyen worries that she can never return home since she is not fully immortal anymore. Zhangwei assures her that they will make a new home wherever they can.