Snow Mountain Sect
A sect that has already been wiped out, located in the Great Snow Mountain.
The Snow Mountain Sect's martial arts excel in Internal Skill and Sword Technique. The Snow Mountain Internal Method is meant to dissolve force, circulate Internal Force for warmth, and drive off the piercing cold of the snowy land.
Sect Leader Xiahou of Snow Mountain and the Shangguan Family Head Shangguan Sun were friends who had once sworn to die for each other, and they had agreed to betroth their unborn children.
History
Before the Massacre
The last Sect Leader of the Snow Mountain Sect was Sect Leader Xiahou, and Xiahou Lan was his only daughter. Her original name was Xiahou Mei, and at the Snow Mountain Sect her childhood name was "Xiaomei". The Snow Mountain Sect of Xiahou Lan's childhood was, in her own words, a "small sect" (epilogue video). When Xiahou Lan later returned to Snow Mountain, she said to her parents: "Father, Mother, Xiaomei has come home."
Sect Leader Xiahou and Shangguan Sun were sworn brothers. Xiahou Lan once told Shangguan Ying that if she had been born a man, Shangguan Ying's betrothed would not have been that wastrel of the Nangong Family, but her.
Di San Xiang was an orphan of the Snow Mountain Sect, and Xiahou Lan, while at the Snow Mountain Sect, looked down on him for being an orphan and mocked him at every turn.
The Massacre
"Isn't it ridiculous? What was there to fight over? This kind of laughable, brainless stupidity—that is what the Jianghu is."
It began with a trivial quarrel. Disciples of the Snow Mountain Sect were traveling the Jianghu when one day, at an inn, they ran into people from Kongtong. The Kongtong Disciple jeered that Kongtong was colder in winter than the Snow Mountain Sect, and so a quarrel turned into a fight. Blades and swords have no eyes, and someone was killed by accident. Both sides saw red, and each brought in more people to settle the score, and the affair grew ever larger.
The Snow Mountain Sect once sought aid from the Shangguan Family, but used the long road as an excuse and coldly stood by. In the end the Snow Mountain Sect was wiped out by the Kongtong Sect, and the Sect Leader's only daughter was carried off, renamed Xiahou Lan, and made a Direct Disciple of Soul-Stealing. The one who started it, from the Flying Heaven Gate, died in the chaos of the Snow Mountain battle, and the one who killed the Sect Leader had his head twisted off by her once her martial arts were perfected, his corpse hung at Banyu Terrace to dry into a mummy.
Everything at the ruins was burned away by a great fire and buried under heavy snow. Nothing remains but the five great rocks of the Plum Blossom Stance and a single snow tree.
The Disciple Di San Xiang was struck down into the snow valley in the decisive battle between Snow Mountain and Kongtong, and barely survived. As for his meeting with Xiahou Lan on Kongtong Mountain, that is a story for later.
After the Massacre
After the Soul-Stealing Gate of Kongtong wiped out the Snow Mountain Sect, they saw that Xiahou Mei was a beauty, so they carried her up the mountain, beat her, renamed her, and forced her to become a Direct Disciple (see the biography from Soul-Hooking Elder's point of view). Xiahou Lan was fortunate enough to have the protection of the Former Sect Leader, and so grew up safely. She also hated the Former Sect Leader for not restraining his own disciples, yet she always remembered his kindness, and swore to make Kongtong pay blood for blood—though in the end she could never bring herself to strike the killing blow. After her Divine Skill was perfected, tried to force her by force of arms to yield the place of Direct Disciple, and instead had both his arms wrenched off and his head ground under her foot (see Kongtong Sect · Soul-Stealing Gate).
After Xiahou Lan made a name for herself in the Jianghu, the Shangguan Family Head finally remembered the matter and sent people to Kongtong to ask after her health, and the Former Sect Leader drove them down the mountain.
When Di San Xiang heard that Xiahou Mei had been taken by Kongtong, he slipped into Kongtong and joined the Soul-Stealing Gate. What happened after is told in Kongtong Sect · Death of the Previous Generation.
By the later part of the story, the Snow Mountain Sect has been gone for some ten or twenty years. Xiahou Lan's vow to make Kongtong pay blood for blood has gone nearly twenty years without her being able to harden her heart and fulfill it.
There are people on the Kongtong side too who were parted from their families by this feud. In the Great Ironworks Theft, the Soul-Stealing Disciple who comes to arrest the child who stole things thinks to himself: "If we hadn't gone to war with the Snow Mountain Sect back then, Mother would never have left me."
Epilogue
In 2025, Xiahou Lan won the "Send Colored Paper to Your Beloved" poll, and the developers released a Snow Mountain Sect epilogue video[1]. In the video, Xiahou Lan is the Snow Mountain Sect Leader, Zhao Huo is the Eldest Senior Brother, and Fan Xiaotian is the Junior Sister. The closing narration says that Heroine Xiahou, the Soul-Stealing Orchid, is hailed as the restorer of the Snow Mountain Sect; that the Snow Mountain Sect ranks among the seven great sects of the Wulin; that it is allied by marriage with the Tang Clan, on friendly terms with Jinxiang Palace, a match for the Kongtong Sect, and an equal of the Shangguan Family; and that those drawn by its fame come to study without end, heroes arise in every generation, and the common people rely on it forever.
A script of the same scene as the video was added to the game's data in the large October 2026 update, but there is no way to trigger it in the game.
Martial Arts
The Snow Mountain Sect's martial arts excel in Internal Skill and Sword Technique. According to Xiahou Lan, the quality the Snow Mountain Sect valued most was not a talent for martial arts, but backbone.
- Snow Mountain Internal Method: meant to dissolve force, unlike the Mystic Skill Gate's Internal Method, which emphasizes accumulation. Training the Snow Mountain Internal Method makes you cough up a little blood, which Xiahou Lan says is "like the plum blossoms in the snow". See Snow Mountain Internal Method for the Secret Manual.
- Snow Mountain Sword Technique: a Sword Technique long lost. Only when Xie Wuchen saw Zhao Huo use the Snow Mountain Sword Technique passed down directly by Xiahou Lan did he recognize it as such.
- Plum Blossom Stance: the five great rocks left at the Snow Mountain Sect ruins.
- Plum Blossom Moon-Gazing Steps: Xiahou Lan blended it into the Cloud-Ascending Step and named it "Moon Gazing". See Ascending Cloud Step · Moon Gazing for the Secret Manual.
- Trembling Plum Branch: a Snow Mountain Sect Move that Xiahou Lan performs with the Iron Bone Umbrella.
- Glacial Acupoint-Brushing Hand: the Snow Mountain Sect's own Acupoint Strike method. It congeals Internal Force and strikes it into the opponent's acupoints, where it flows like drifting ice along the Meridians. To break the seal by circulating qi, one must first catch up with the drifting ice—among the Wulin it counts as a superior Acupoint Strike method.
- Snow Mountain Snow-Melting Skill: the Snow Mountain Sect's method of circulating qi, which Xiahou Lan once had Zhao Huo practice.
- Snow Mountain Flying Goose Claw: a martial art Xiahou Lan created only after long thought, having seen Rui Sheng's Agility after the Kongtong Grand Trial. Built on the Snow Mountain Sect's Internal Skill and the Soul-Stealing Gate's methods, and blended with Crane-Controlling Qigong, it is not meant to kill or wound but is a martial art made solely for dueling experts. See Snow Mountain Flying Goose Claw for the Secret Manual.
Xiahou Lan spent nearly twenty years breaking down the barriers between the Soul-Stealing and Snow Mountain sects and mastering both—and at bottom it is the Snow Mountain Internal Method. When Jing Hong saw that Xiahou Lan could drive the Soul-Stealing Phantom Claw with the Snow Mountain Internal Method, she concluded that though the Soul-Stealing martial arts might work, its Internal Method was worthless dross, and switched to Western Xia qigong to wield the Soul-Chasing Soul-Reaping Whip.
Secret Manuals
- Soul-Stealing Phantom Claw
- Snow Mountain Flying Goose Claw
- Ascending Cloud Step · Moon Gazing
- Snow Mountain Internal Method
Notes
- In the game, the Great Snow Mountain is in the Gansu region, near Kongtong Mountain, far from the real Great Snow Mountain range in Sichuan. It is presumed to lie in some other mountain range, and Bird Bear also said it is purely a reference[2].
- If you take Xiahou Lan's route, Zhao Huo is the Eldest Disciple of the Snow Mountain Sect, and Fan Xiaotian has a chance to become the Snow Mountain Sect's Junior Martial Sister.
- Although there is a Snow Mountain Sword Technique, Xiahou Lan never draws her sword and always uses Palm Technique. In the game, too, only Zhao Huo and Xie Wuchen display a few moves when the Snow Mountain Sect is mentioned, and there is no Secret Manual.
Original Bird Bear FB - Send Colored Paper to Your Beloved Results Revealed ↩︎