The entire sect considers her an ill omen. When the junior sister burns her soul-suppressing tablet, neither her master nor her senior brothers intervene. The moment the tablet shatters, the Return-to-Bones Well opens, yin energy spills out, and vengeful spirits haunt the entire sect. Only then do they remember Shen Zhaogu, who has knelt beside the well for twenty years. But she will never kneel again. She reveals the truth before everyone: she is not a disciple but the third chosen vessel meant to seal the well. Before her, someone else had already died a gruesome death beneath it. She refuses to continue suppressing the well for the sect. Entering the Return-to-Bones Well alone, she brings the rogue cultivator Jiang Heng, who has been sealed there for eight hundred years, and all the trapped souls out of the abyss. After the well dries up, she turns and descends the mountain, rejecting everyone's pleas for her to stay. Yet a warm breeze always lingers at her sleeve. Jiang Heng is still accompanying her.