His friends and family would leave him one after another. Lu Yun nearly went spontaneously insane to recall the soul-wrenching anguish that was to come and how it would eventually be dulled by bleak, suffocating loneliness.

In those thirty-three eras, he became a walking harbinger of misfortune wherever he went after he reestablished order in the Hongmeng. He seemed to be cursed to deliver disaster no matter where or who he visited.

He hadn’t known the particulars at first, thinking it was a curse from the Curse King or some other enemy. But now as he looked into the eyes of the overlord of Ice, he knew the reason behind it all.

The withered wood!

Lu Yun hadn’t...