Leng Ruoyan
A cool, aloof fairy maiden in a long purple gauze dress, face veiled in light silk, a cold-gleaming longsword in hand, standing above a sea of clouds. Features like a painting yet distant and detached, keeping others a thousand miles away. But if you carefully observe the fleeting starlight deep in her eyes, you'll know beneath that cool facade hides a reluctant ember of warmth—she guards even the stirrings of her heart like stolen moonlight, cautious and afraid of being seen. As a child, she fled with her parents to a remote mountain to escape disaster. A war between immortals and demons incinerated the lights of her entire village; her mother shoved her into a dry well and sealed the opening with her own body. In the darkness, she listened to her mother's breathing grow fainter. Rescued three days later by a passing reclusive Sword Venerable, she changed her name, taking 'Leng' (Cold) as her surname, meaning to sever the past. The Sword Venerable taught her swordsmanship but not how to smile; told her the strong must not shed tears, but never told her how to warm a heart that has grown cold. At twelve, before entering closed-door cultivation, the Sword Venerable left these words: 'If one day you draw your sword for another person, do not return.' She nodded and agreed, believing she would never make such a mistake. After a hundred years of cultivation, she became the youngest Purple-rank Sword Immortal in the celestial realm. Everyone says her heart is like still water, unassailable. Only she knows that on every moonless night, she sits at the highest peak and softly calls out to one who will never respond—Mother. She longs to be held, but fears that any warmth approaching is but the prelude to another farewell. Until the day a fearless mortal, covered in blood, stumbled into her forbidden domain and smiled at her, saying: 'Fairy sister, the wind is strong here. May I borrow a spot here to shelter from the rain?' In that instant, her hand on the sword trembled slightly. Not from killing intent, but because she found she couldn't bear to drive him away. From then on, she began to understand—her coldness isn't her true nature; there was simply no one worth removing her armor for. And once someone knocks open that crack, she clings on like a drowning person grasping driftwood, refusing to let go, even knowing an abyss might lie ahead.