Prologue

On the last day of March, I sat twenty meters above the ground, gazing into the distance. A current of air called the spring breeze drifted across my face from time to time, yet it carried with it waves of cold that had no business being there, along with a peculiar smell.

Skinny stood behind me with his nose covered, grumbling in dissatisfaction: “Of all the places to go, we had to come on a spring outing to a garbage dump…”

Fatty slapped dead a prematurely-born mosquito that had landed on his face with a sharp crack, then couldn’t help but crane his neck and shout at me, “Boss, today isn’t even a public holiday — we’re not opening the shop for business, so why are we here? It’s filthy, it reeks, and there are mosquitoes!”

“If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to leave. There’s no rope tying you down,” I said lazily.

Where I sat was a small hill — though most of its body was submerged beneath all manner of garbage: domestic waste, construction debris, a rich and colorful assortment. These useless cast-off things had accumulated day by day over the years, creating the illusion of rolling mountain peaks. Fine to observe from afar, but not to approach for any closer inspection.

The beauty of March was everywhere, yet I had hung a sign at the front of Bu Ting that very morning reading “Proprietor Away — Closed for Two Days,” then taken Fatty and Skinny with me to the outskirts of the city near Yingyue Mountain. This place had gone unmanaged for years and had ultimately become a tacitly accepted natural dumping ground. Even as we arrived, an unlicensed truck was sneaking around to unload an entire cargo of waste, then driving away as if nothing had happened.

Climbing to the peak of the garbage hill, one could look out at Yingyue Mountain standing guard all around — those were real, rolling peaks — and see the river that bore the lovely name of Yingyue River, which had in reality been polluted into nothing more than a stinking ditch.

Fatty and Skinny exchanged a glance. They wanted to leave, of course, but didn’t dare. They knew I had a hundred ways to keep them here without any rope.

“Boss, you could at least give us a reason for coming here!” Fatty sidled up beside me, his face a picture of misery. “I don’t even know if breathing in this much of these smells might give us lung cancer.”

“With your emotional intelligence and your actual intelligence, it would genuinely take me a while to explain it to you clearly,” I said, shaking my head. I tilted my face up toward the sky. The sun was bright today, cotton-candy clouds drifting across the sky as blue as the sea. Yet the entirety of Yingyue Mountain was shrouded beneath a dim, murky grey haze, the sunlight sealed outside of it.

Of course, humans couldn’t see this layer of grey — at most they might sense that this place was colder and more overcast than elsewhere. But I was not human, and neither were Skinny or Fatty. That strange grey haze drifted and gathered before our eyes, rising from the surface of Yingyue River all the way to the horizon.

I pointed at the sky directly above the river and asked, “Do you see that crack in the air up there?”

Fatty and Skinny looked in the direction I pointed. A grey-black crack, faint and barely visible, winding like a serpent, was concealed in that patch of sky markedly darker than the rest, drifting slowly past. The clouds concealed it well — easy to miss if you didn’t look carefully.

“That is called a Heaven’s Rift,” I said, lowering my hand. “Heaven and earth are connected by mountains and water, and mountains and water give birth to spiritual essence. If this pure spiritual essence born of mountains and water is lacking, the space between heaven and earth loses its support and falls out of balance. If left this way over time, the rifts in heaven and fractures in earth will grow — at best, the winds and rains will turn irregular; at worst, heaven and earth will become a disaster, and all living things will suffer. Above Yingyue River, a Heaven’s Rift has already formed — and it is expanding.”

Fatty and Skinny immediately went pale. They had not long ago watched the legendary film 2012. The two of them simultaneously grabbed my hands: “Boss, are you saying… you want to follow in the footsteps of Nüwa and mend the heavens? That’s a highly skilled profession!”

“First let someone mend your brains!” I shook off their claws and stood up, gazing at the lifeless mountain and water below. “This landscape has lost its spiritual essence because the divine guardian who once protected it is gone.”

Skinny’s eyes darted sideways. “You mean something like the Mountain God, a male or female deity, and so on?”

“I’m giving serious consideration to burying you alive here,” I said, leaning solemnly toward Skinny’s ear. “I doubt anyone would find your body.” Skinny darted back five meters in an instant.

“Since we have nothing else to do, let me tell you both a story.” I turned around and fixed my gaze on the Yingyue River below — a river that had long since lost all trace of its original appearance.

I had made a promise to someone, a hundred years ago. Today was the day to fulfill it.

1.

As for the fact that I was a fox, I had always found it rather lacking in originality.

From ancient times to the present, from novels to animation, from legend to film, foxes could be found everywhere — the common fox, the fox demon, the fox deity, a full range of models. Even as an insult, the term “fox spirit” had been immortal for thousands of years.

As a fox who considered himself a cut above the rest and liked to stay at the cutting edge of fashion, I found this overexposure deeply galling. Rare things are precious, but when foxes were everywhere, we lost our value entirely.

Fortunately, as common as foxes might be, those few who had actually encountered one like me — a fox that could cultivate into human form — were still a small minority. As long as the aura of mystery around us remained, as long as the atmosphere of legend lived on, I found some small comfort.

But beyond the occasional sulk about the glutted fox market, most of my brooding was directed at a certain country girl named Tang Xiaohua.

Think about it — in a new century full of fashion-forward people, in a big, trend-driven city, there was actually still someone going by the name Xiaohua. If that wasn’t a tragedy, what was? And more tragic still — the true catastrophe — was that I, this fox, was Tang Xiaohua’s guardian spirit!

Sigh. Such was the helplessness of being a fox above the ordinary sort. Simply because we had a few more abilities than our common kin — riding clouds, driving mist, passing through walls, turning invisible, that kind of thing — we were destined to bear responsibilities that ordinary foxes never had to shoulder.

I had always had a rather vague understanding of my own identity and wasn’t entirely sure which rank of fox I belonged to. In any case, I knew all the techniques that foxes were supposed to know. I remember that when I emerged from that pitch-dark fox den, my mind was like a GPS — I headed straight for the city’s Maternal and Child Health Hospital, passed through twelve walls in succession, and stumbled and tumbled into the delivery room. Looking up, I saw a smooth, wrinkled little newborn in the nurse’s arms, looking like a tiny old woman.

The newly-arrived Tang Xiaohua, however, refused to make a sound. No matter how many times the doctor patted her, she remained steadfast and unyielding, stubbornly refusing to cry.

Just as everyone was beginning to wonder whether something was lodged in the child’s airway, I stepped forward and gave her small bottom a firm slap.

One tremendous wail later, Tang Xiaohua claimed that year’s highest-decibel infant cry award. And then I discovered that wherever I stood, Tang Xiaohua’s eyes would unerringly turn in my direction — and then she would giggle.

This girl could see me. From the very moment she was born, she could see me. That was truly strange. According to the customs of foxes like us, unless we had swept our tails across a human’s eyes, they would never be able to detect our presence in their lifetimes.

I began to wonder who on earth had assigned me to be guardian to this peculiar little creature — but unfortunately, from the moment I left the fox den, I found I could no longer find the way back. And as for my life inside the fox den before all this, those memories faded rapidly from my mind like a series of bursting soap bubbles.

I suspected this was a spell cast to keep me focused on completing my guardian mission. According to the arrangement, I had to guard Tang Xiaohua until she died of old age. And the most effective way to prevent me from slacking off and sneaking back to the den for a long sleep, during this lengthy and monotonous stretch of time, was to make sure I couldn’t find the way home. Truly ruthless.

Though my memories had been blurred, someone had been periodically communicating with me using something like the fox clan’s mind-transmission technique — relaying certain instructions. I had tried using a reverse-tracing method to flush out this shadowy hand behind the scenes, to demand an explanation as to why I had been handed this strange creature Tang Xiaohua instead of a beautiful, normal little princess born with a silver spoon. But every attempt failed. Whoever had pushed me to Tang Xiaohua’s side was undoubtedly an old fox of very high cultivation. Based on a single disembodied voice alone, I had no way of pinpointing his location.

Utterly out of options, I had no choice but to awkwardly remain at Tang Xiaohua’s side. I knew that until I completed my mission, I would never be able to return to that comfortable fox den. I was, at heart, a homebody of a fox.

This staying on — lasted seventeen years.

2.

On Fuming High School’s list of most unpopular figures, only two names appeared: first, Director Ma of the Student Affairs Office, who oversaw school discipline and had earned the glorious reputation of “Black-Faced Demon King”; and second, a female student in Class 6 of the second year, Tang Xiaohua.

Tang Xiaohua, seventeen years old, one hundred and fifty-nine centimeters tall, pale and slender, five hundred degrees of myopia, thoroughly average grades, limited interests, zero inclination toward looking presentable — the type who would vanish without a trace if dropped into a crowd. In short, the kind of girl who, the moment she stood beside me, would be completely eclipsed by my brilliantly imposing presence. What most people felt about this country girl was fear, not unlike the feeling most people had about mice and cockroaches — a mix of revulsion and dread.

For Tang Xiaohua was famously “jinx-tongued.” Whenever her golden mouth uttered something like “Be careful not to catch a cold!” or “Watch out for traffic on your way out!” or “You’d better be careful about this exam — you might very well fail!” — it came true, without a single exception, ten times out of ten. At first people assumed it was coincidence, but after a limitless number of coincidences, the crowd gradually moved from suspicion to certainty, from indifference to avoidance. Those with elderly relatives at home even warned the younger ones not to get too close to someone like her. She was too inauspicious.

As a living eyewitness, I had personally experienced countless such incidents. Back when she was still at the babbling stage of infancy, her mother took her to the hospital for a check-up. She pointed at the nurse’s gleaming diamond ring and said one word: “Lose… lose…” Two hours later, the nurse’s diamond ring slipped from her finger while she was washing her hands and vanished down the drain — irretrievable.

And so the curtain rose on Tang Xiaohua’s difficult life. When she was small, I deflected countless rocks and rotten vegetable scraps that were hurled at her — the children who knew no better would spit at her and call her a freak. Neighbors would detour around her whole family. Even her own parents’ gazes at her held an ever-deepening mix of anxiety and bewilderment.

“Xiao Tou.” Ten-year-old Tang Xiaohua sat on a playground slide, despondent, and looked up at me floating in the air with dejected eyes. “Is it wrong to be an honest child? Didn’t the teacher say that good children tell the truth and must never lie?”

Ah, how I despised her calling me “Xiao Tou!” Not only did it sound like “little thief,” it was terribly girly — and I was, after all, a dashing fellow standing well over a hundred and eighty centimeters tall! It was all because when she first asked my name and I couldn’t answer, she had taken it upon herself to call me Xiao Tou. She said the word “Tou” felt warm and familiar, just like the feeling I gave her.

Well. I admitted that after leaving the fox den, I had forgotten even my own name. But what did a name matter? It was just a label. Xiao Tou it was. Xiao Tou guarding Xiao Hua — a perfect pairing, truly.

I knew she was asking the question with complete seriousness.

“Well…” I alighted beside her and struck an academic pose. “Tang Xiaohua, sometimes the truth makes people uncomfortable. When a lie benefits humans, they would rather be deceived. This principle — perhaps you’ll understand it a little better when you’re older.”

“I don’t understand it, and I still don’t understand it. Even if I don’t say it out loud, those bad things will still happen anyway. Lying is wrong.” On this question, ten-year-old Tang Xiaohua concluded with the most bewildered eyes.

What a one-track creature, I thought, floating back up into the air, looking down at the small figure below — arms around her knees, sitting motionless on the orange slide. The setting sun moved slowly through her black hair, its path like a flower quietly blooming, easy to miss.

Even if she was nothing more than an “assignment” to me, the small face gradually falling with sadness in the evening light was something I couldn’t quite bring myself to feel nothing toward. Especially the fresh wound on her knee — I had slipped away to a neighboring city to buy roast chicken, gone for only a few hours, and the school bullies had taken advantage of her afternoon nap to tie her two shoelaces together in a dead knot, causing her to faceplant spectacularly. About that particular incident, I felt a small twinge of guilt. After all, I was a kind-hearted fox. Besides, aside from being a bit plain and a bit slow, Tang Xiaohua had no other faults to speak of.

More importantly, this country girl treated me very well. The tasty snacks handed out at kindergarten — other children stuffed every last bit into their own mouths, but she always set aside half to share with me. Though I didn’t care much for sweets, every time I saw her eyes and her small, dirty, but wholly enthusiastic hand reaching out, I found myself unable to refuse. One winter, she had put to use the skills she’d learned in a school craft lesson, knitting a scarf riddled with holes, and presented it to me on Christmas Day.

“It’s so ugly…” I, a creature who cared deeply about aesthetics, picked up this white scarf and looked through a large hole created by a dropped stitch. Behind it was Tang Xiaohua’s grinning face.

“You’re always wearing so little — an extra scarf will keep you warmer,” she said very seriously.

“I’m a fox. I don’t feel the cold,” I said, poking at her small head. “All that time and effort, and it turned out this ugly!”

Tang Xiaohua sighed like a little adult, stumbling over her words as she said, “I didn’t have anything else to give you.”

“Why do you need to give me anything at all?” I was baffled. This country girl’s mind really wasn’t quite normal.

“Because Xiao Tou, you’ve always been protecting me,” she said, tilting her head. “You’re good to me, so I want to give you a gift. That way, you’ll know — I’m good to you too.”

Good grief. This country girl was genuinely so honest she came across as naive.

“Listen here: protecting you is my job,” I said with great dignity. “I do not accept bribes. Especially ones this ugly.”

“But I knitted it for a whole week…” she said, a little crestfallen.

I looked into her eyes and saw red veins from exhaustion, and on two fingers of her right hand, two red, swollen chilblains. I had known this dim creature had been knitting a scarf recently — I just hadn’t known it was for me.

“Fine, fine.” I looped the scarf around my neck. “Just this once.”

I looked up. My reflection in the floor-length glass window was crystal clear — jet-black hair falling neatly past my waist, bound behind me; black leather jacket pulsing with wild, dazzling style; paired with a devastatingly fashionable pair of Armani sunglasses. Perfection enough to make you want to weep! But now, with the addition of this outrageously rustic scarf… I actually wanted to weep.

The moment Tang Xiaohua saw that I’d put on her gift, she launched herself at me, arms wrapping around my waist as she laughed and laughed. “Long live Xiao Tou!”

The clear glass reflected this scene of deep, warm embrace. My eye caught it by chance — and my heart gave a small, unexpected jolt.

In that instant, I suddenly felt that this scarf, on me, was not so ugly after all.

And more than that — I found I rather liked the feeling of being hugged by this soft, small creature.

I found myself wondering again about the old fox’s true motivation in sending me to protect Tang Xiaohua. Was it really simply because honest words were so rare — that in a world so thoroughly tangled in lies, a child who persisted in telling the truth was precious enough to be worth protecting at all costs?

That reasoning was far too ridiculous.

Tang Xiaohua was human, but she was absolutely not a normal human. That curse-tongue ability of hers frightened others and surprised even me. She said that people who were about to encounter misfortune would have different-colored mists floating above their foreheads — the darker the color, the more severe the coming accident.

She had the ability to see these mists. And beyond that, if she concentrated a little more and drew on an inexplicable inborn power of intention, she could see through the mists to know exactly what was going to happen.

But extraordinary gifts and heaven-given good fortune were not the same thing. Tang Xiaohua’s “gift” brought her little more than a persistent confusion she could never shake, and the alienating, wary gazes of those around her.

I had once asked her what color the mist above my forehead was. She said she couldn’t see it. That was another very strange thing — could it be that a guardian’s charge had no power over the guardian’s fate?

Still, I was glad of it. The habit of preferring good news over bad wasn’t unique to humans — foxes had it too. Especially a fox like me, who only wanted to finish the assignment as soon as possible and get back to sleep.

Under my protection, Tang Xiaohua gradually grew up. I watched her grow from a tiny child into a young woman whose height reached my shoulder. With every bit she grew, I felt a little more relief in my heart. When the day of her natural end finally came, I could complete my duty with full merit and roll back home. In the meantime, as long as this country girl didn’t give me too much trouble, I was content. Dealing with the aftermath of all this curse-tongue’s utterances required no small amount of energy, and I was not a particularly industrious fox.

Still, it was fine. Tang Xiaohua was, by and large, a sensible country girl. Over all these years she hadn’t caused any truly catastrophic trouble.

But lately, something about her had me quietly catching the scent of danger.

3.

On a night a few weeks ago, I had a fight with an underworld envoy who had come from the realm of the dead. The trouble started with Tang Xiaohua — the envoys had come to teach her a lesson. The outcome was that the defeated envoy said Tang Xiaohua had broken the rules of the underworld and tampered with human fates. If she ever dared to interfere in the affairs of the underworld again, they would not let it go lightly.

But at that point, I still didn’t know exactly what had happened. I had recently become obsessed with a game called Warcraft, spending my days drunk with pleasure in front of the computer, and had loosened my oversight of Tang Xiaohua. The night after my confrontation with the envoy, I hauled Tang Xiaohua into the bathroom in her home — the room with the best soundproofing — and pressed her for an explanation.

Even at seventeen, she was, in my eyes, a complete child. The bathroom mirror reflected us facing each other like fire and water. Tang Xiaohua wore an outer coat of an ugly color and deeply unfashionable cut. Her face, half-hidden by a mop of straight, plain short hair, was slightly pale. The light above shone through her smooth skin, giving her a faintly translucent quality.

“Come clean. What have you been up to in my absence?” My expression was colder and harder than marble.

Tang Xiaohua’s lips moved. She stole a glance at me, then immediately averted her eyes and said nothing.

“Talk!” I felt I bore no resemblance to a guardian spirit whatsoever — more like a gangster collecting protection money.

“Well, I… I…” Her bright black eyes shifted and dodged behind the lenses of her glasses.

“You never lie.” I softened my tone. Interrogation required technique — both hard and soft pressure.

“All right, all right, I’ll tell you.” She sniffled, raised her head to look at my forehead, lifted one finger and traced a shape there, then said in a tone that was half-excited, half-troubled, “I saw something new on people’s foreheads.”

“What do you mean?” I instinctively reached up to touch my own forehead.

“Your phone, your phone — hand me your phone!” She rummaged through my pocket, pulled out my new phone, and pointed at the battery indicator on the screen. “Something exactly like this! Everyone has a marking like this above their forehead.”

I was taken aback. “You’re saying you can see battery level indicators floating above people’s heads?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Some people have high battery levels, some low. Elderly people all show low battery. But quite a few young people show low battery too.”

After a brief pause for thought, clever as I was, I had a rough idea of what was going on. Simply put, this country girl had apparently gained the ability to see the remaining life force of human beings.

But what did that have to do with the underworld envoy’s outburst?

“When did you first notice this new ability?” I asked. Tang Xiaohua shook her head.

“Do you not remember, or are you refusing to say?” I pressed on, gripping her shoulder — getting tangled up with the underworld was a matter that could range from serious to grave. She shrank back, stubbornly holding out.

Tang Xiaohua’s defining trait was that she never lied. As she’d gotten older, she had occasionally learned the art of silence, but she would absolutely never lie.

Knowing her temperament well, I released my grip, and combed through my own memories, searching through these past months for anything out of the ordinary — bit by bit, small details and trivial events. In the end, my focus landed on the week before my confrontation with the underworld envoy.

Once a year, there was always one day when I would leave Tang Xiaohua alone for twenty-four hours and go alone to the deep mountains outside the city to absorb the spiritual dew that formed at the transition between day and night — those things appeared only once a year. Such was the sorrow of being a fox: always dependent on external energy sources to sustain one’s vitality. Still, absorbing spiritual dew once was enough to sustain me for a full year. My agreement with her was that during those twenty-four hours when I was away from her side, she was not to step one foot outside the house.

I recalled that morning when I returned from the mountains. Tang Xiaohua had been sitting across from her perpetually-sighing parents, eating breakfast with a tired look on her face, nibbling at a steamed bun that seemed as though it would never be finished.

I had long since grown accustomed to the particular way she interacted with her parents — but I was not accustomed to her ignoring me. In front of her parents, she was obedient and quiet as a gentle rabbit, without any of the rebelliousness typical of children her age. She liked her parents and respected them, complying with all their arrangements — but always maintained a subtle, careful distance.

With me, though, it was different. She was still rather like a rabbit, but not a quiet one — a clingy rabbit that hopped around. Even when others were present and she had to pretend she couldn’t see me, the eyes that secretly followed me always held a particular gleam that only I could see.

That intimate closeness, so distinct from how she was with everyone else, had grown more and more pronounced as she got older.

And yet on that morning, not even my arrival could light up her eyes. Whatever had happened must have occurred on the very day I went into the mountains.

“On the day I went to the mountains, you broke our agreement — didn’t you?” I could no longer afford to waste time. I grabbed her wrist.

“Ow…” Tang Xiaohua’s expression changed. She cried out.

My grip had always been measured. That amount of force would not hurt her. Unless—

I yanked back her sleeve in one swift motion. On that pale, slender wrist was a clear, distinct mark — shaped like a flower petal, twisted at an unsettling angle, bringing to mind a pair of lips with something left unsaid. Most extraordinary of all, I could see the floor’s pattern right through this mark — the mark had caused a portion of her flesh and blood to vanish.

What I felt was no longer unease. It was danger.

“Tang Xiaohua, I’m giving you two choices.” I tilted up her chin, holding two fingers before her eyes. “First: tell me the truth. Second: starting tomorrow, I disappear from your life forever. You know I mean what I say.”

I admitted I was out of ideas. I had no ability to peer into another person’s past.

“You…” She blinked in a panic. A life without me in it was something she had never once imagined.

I knew it was unscrupulous to threaten a young girl using her own vulnerability — but compared to letting her die without understanding why, I was willing to be the villain.

“I…” She twitched her nose, bowed her head like the greatest sinner in history, and said quietly, “I lied to someone…”

4.

A plainly dressed man sat beside the hospital bed, his young son in his arms, holding tightly to the hand of the woman lying there. On the young woman’s swollen, weary face was an overwhelming fragility and an overwhelming concern.

In the meal box on the cabinet: half a portion of rice and a side of cheaply stir-fried greens.

“Mama… home, home…” The small child puckered his lips and reached out to tug at his mother’s hand.

Those few words were enough. The woman began to weep quietly.

“We’ll go home,” the man said, eyes reddening. He pressed a kiss to his wife’s forehead. “My son and I will be waiting for you.”

“But…”

“Shh.” The man gently placed a hand over his wife’s mouth and said softly, “I just spoke with the doctor. You’re only in the early stages — if you cooperate actively with treatment, the chances of recovery are very high. I have full confidence. And you need to as well!”

“Really?” The woman looked steadily at her husband’s face.

“The doctor just told me this. You have no idea how happy I was to hear it!” The man spoke with complete conviction.

I shook my head. Another person telling lies. I had clearly heard the doctor say, without any expression, that his wife had at most one month left to live.

In the doorway, Tang Xiaohua stood with a packet of cold medicine in her hand, staring blankly at the couple. She instinctively moved to step forward, then looked at me and held back.

There was still one week until April Fool’s Day. Spring was a season prone to colds, and every year at this time, Tang Xiaohua was a regular visitor to the hospital.

After her shot and her medicine, Tang Xiaohua — who had no sense of direction — turned the wrong way when heading downstairs, and by some inexplicable force found herself wandering into the second floor’s inpatient ward, where she stopped in front of the doorway of this couple’s room.

“How much battery does that woman have left?” I crossed my arms and asked, as if making idle conversation.

“Less than a week,” she said quietly.

“How pitiful…” I shook my head.

If this woman’s life battery could be extended a little longer, this family of three would live quite happily.

“Xiao Tou… I want to…” Tang Xiaohua looked at me with pleading eyes.

A moment ago, in the outpatient section, Tang Xiaohua had lost her wallet. This man had found it and chased her down to return it.

“Repaying a kindness?” I countered with a question and smiled. “Go on, then.”

“Xiao Tou…” Tang Xiaohua opened her eyes wide, as if unable to believe my permission was real.

“Go.” I nodded toward that pitiful family of three.

Tang Xiaohua ran into the room without hesitation.

The man looked at her in surprise as she arrived unannounced. “Little girl, is something missing from your wallet?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” Tang Xiaohua walked up to them, glanced at his wife, and said, “Your wife is going to be fine.”

“Hm?” The man blinked.

“I said she’ll be all right.” Having said this, Tang Xiaohua extended her right hand toward the woman’s forehead, touching that cold skin. She smiled at the woman and said, “I’ll tell you — your life still has…”

I had not followed her inside. I stood silently in the doorway, my expression neutral, watching every corner of the room. The very instant Tang Xiaohua opened her mouth to speak to the woman, I looked up at the ceiling of the room, and my eyes narrowed slightly.

Tang Xiaohua had not yet finished speaking when every person in the room felt as though a hurricane had swept through. Their bodies and consciousness were instantly frozen by a force concealed within the wind, eyes, ears, every sensory faculty failed in an instant — everything in the entire room was suspended in place. Tang Xiaohua remained in her foolish posture, arm outstretched, mouth open, standing beside the bed like a wax figure.

Suspending a small space for a short time — I could manage that. Though this kind of technique would drain a fair amount of my energy, it was necessary.

I steadied my breathing, closed the door, walked into the room, and looked up at that formless, black-mud-like anomalous mass clinging to the ceiling. I said, “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I’ve decided to pull a small trick to lure you out for a meeting. I know you’ve been monitoring Tang Xiaohua all along — you only show yourself when she ‘lies’ to people.”

With that, I leaped upward and thrust my right hand into the black mass. There was a dull grunt, and a dried, thin figure of a man was wrenched out from within and flung to the floor. But this was no true human — his body from the waist down was the form of an arthropod insect, thoroughly hideous in appearance.

I planted one foot on the insect-man’s back and said coldly, “I don’t care what sort of creature you are or where you crawled out from — if you harbor ill intentions toward my charge, don’t blame me for what follows.”

“Spare me, great hero!” The insect-man raised his head, both hands raised in surrender. “This lowly one was only acting on another’s orders — just taking something from this girl, trying to make a living!”

“Taking something?” I added more force to my foot, nearly snapping the insect-man’s torso in two. “Tell me! What is going on exactly?”

In terms of technique, a low-level minor demon like this was no match for me whatsoever. But in terms of accumulated gossip and knowledge, I was far outclassed by these insect demons who concealed themselves in every corner of the human world, spending their days crawling everywhere gathering information and serving as informants for others in exchange for payment.

The insect-man rotated his slightly bulging eyes and asked carefully, “What is your relationship with this girl? Could it be that you have also come for that object?”

Something stirred in my heart. I gave a cold snort, bared my fluffy tail, and said, “It seems you’re not entirely stupid. You could see this girl was already claimed by me, yet you still dared to come and take a share?”

“Ah, great hero, this this this is truly a misunderstanding!” The moment the insect-man saw my snow-white tail, he began to stammer in fright. Others might not know what it signified, but these insect demons who made their living selling information certainly did — white foxes had always been the nobility of the fox clan, with spiritual power and techniques a cut above all others. If I was angered, the probability of him being dismembered on the spot was extremely high.

Seeing me maintain my cold silence, the insect-man grew even more flustered and said all in one breath, “This lowly one did not know this prophetic flower had already been claimed by you — it took great effort to find her. So many people want the prophetic flower’s petals for spells and curses, but unfortunately prophetic flowers are exceedingly rare in the world, and those who have cultivated into human form are rarer still. This… this lowly one was blinded by greed, thinking this would be a great windfall, never knowing I would offend a white fox noble. This lowly one would never dare again — please spare this lowly one’s life!”

Prophetic flower?!

Everything else he said had already grown faint to my ears. Only the two words “prophetic flower” remained, like a brand pressed against the deepest place in my heart, hissing and searing.

Prophetic flower, prophetic flower, a word spoken comes to pass. Reversed, reversed — the flower fades, the life ends.

You are not a thing of ill omen! Whoever dares to harm you — I will make them repay it tenfold!

Far away and dim, like words murmured in a dream, the voice suddenly surged up in my mind. Every word seemed to have grown edges — sharp edges that stabbed into my heart, leaving an unbearable, stinging pain.

In the instant I was distracted, the force in my foot gave way. The insect-man rolled on the spot, shrank instantly into a black mass, shot up toward the ceiling, and vanished into it without a trace, gone without a shadow.

I had no time to pursue the minor demon. I walked slowly to Tang Xiaohua’s side and, with a gravity and care I had not once shown in seventeen years, looked steadily into her face…

I removed her glasses. Her beautiful eyes were revealed. Her rustic short hair seemed, in my eyes, to grow and transform, and the school uniform dissolved like wax — and beneath it, a robe the brilliant red of an evening sky.

Chaos — incomparable chaos erupted and collided through my mind. Murmured words flickering in and out, scattered and drifting fragments, in an instant engulfed the part of me that had always been rational and clever…

5.

Late at night, I looked at Tang Xiaohua sleeping deeply, pulled the blanket that had slipped back over her awkward sleeping posture, then turned and stepped outside.

Standing at the highest point of the deep mountains, I gazed up at the pitch-dark sky — not a single star or trace of moon. I drew a long breath, sat cross-legged, and concentrated all of my intention, searching for the voice that had brought me to Tang Xiaohua’s side — that wicked old fox who refused to reveal a single word of truth.

Only this old fox who never showed his face could untangle my doubts. I had known all along: if Tang Xiaohua were just an ordinary girl, he would never have sent a fox of noble lineage like me to her side. A scheme — this had to involve a scheme.

That old fox hadn’t been in contact with me for at least ten years — not since Tang Xiaohua and I had fully established the bond of family. Tonight, even if it cost me my primordial spirit, I was going to reach him.

Mountain winds swept one after another, cutting straight to the bone. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I had no idea how much time had passed before, at last, at the very moment when a ray of moonlight fell on my head, a voice reached my ears — the voice of a man whose age was impossible to discern. More precisely, it reached my heart.

“You’re looking for me?”

I was overwhelmed with joy and asked urgently, “Where are you? I want to meet you in person — I have many things I need to ask you face to face!”

“I’m in the water.”

I opened my eyes. Nearby, the river surface glittered in the moonlight, its waters flowing with a soft, rippling sound.

I scrambled and stumbled to the riverbank and peered over — on the water’s surface, there was nothing but my own reflection. Not a trace of the old fox.

“Why did you erase my memories from before?” I ignored all else and shouted at the water.

“Your memories have always been with you.”

“Impossible!” I was growing angry. “What exactly is Tang Xiaohua? Her abilities couldn’t have come from nowhere. I want to know the truth!”

“When you can recall her name, all questions will have their answers.”

“Old fox, are you playing games with me?” I plunged my fist into the water. Ice-cold spray splashed across my face.

“This was your own choice. The only one who can truly unlock the mystery for you is yourself.” That voice gradually sank deeper in the water and vanished without a trace.

On the river’s surface, only my shattered reflection remained.

No matter how long I called until my throat was raw, the voice never answered me again.

When you can recall her name, all questions will have their answers.

I repeated this sentence to myself like a fool, forgetting my ability to ride the wind, staggering in a daze down the winding mountain road in the dead of night.

Ahead, the roar of an engine tore toward me. Two blindingly bright headlights showed no mercy as they stabbed into my eyes.

My body was run through by cold, unyielding steel…

That sensation of being completely torn apart and shredded — it jolted awake a memory that had slumbered for who knows how long.

I saw a vivid crimson, three-petaled flower fly out from within my body, trace a solitary arc through the air, and then quietly disappear at the other end of the void.

Give me your hand. Hey — what’s your name? I’m called A’Tou.

I’m called… Bu Yu.

Bu Yu…

Bu Yu…

6.

Five hundred years ago.

This was the third time I had pulled this foolish girl out of Yingyue River — thrown in again by the village children.

Her brilliant red skirt, as vivid as cloud and sunset, floated in the cool river water, truly like a flower in full bloom.

“Give me your hand.” I jumped into the water and grabbed hold of her.

She pressed herself against the riverbank and coughed desperately, spitting out several mouthfuls of river water.

I knew who she was. She lived in the village at the foot of the mountain — her family ran a small wine shop there. I often went to the shop to buy wine for my Shifu. It was always her — standing on a small stool, ladling fragrant wine from a jug taller than she was, carefully pouring it into my flask, then wiping the flask clean with a cloth before handing it over.

She was an abandoned infant her current parents had brought down from the mountain. They had no particular affection for her — only harsh words and demands.

I had personally seen her stout adoptive father chase her with a wooden club, all because a tally check revealed she had collected two coins short on a wine sale. I watched her dodge and beg for forgiveness, tears streaming down her flushed little face.

From then on, every time I went to buy wine, I would toss down far more silver than the wine cost. Shifu never cared about money — he always gave me plenty.

But this foolish girl would always chase after me and return every last extra coin, not a single fen short. Honest enough to make you want to throttle her.

I patted her cold, wet back and waited until she had caught her breath, then asked, “Hey — I’m called A’Tou. What’s your name?”

“I’m called Bu Yu.”

I gradually came to understand the reason she was unwelcome. She would tell the villagers things like “Tomorrow when you go to chop wood, you’ll cut your hand!” or “There will be a fire at your home tonight — your son will be burned.” And every time she said it, it came true. The villagers, without exception, regarded her as a monster. Not one of them liked her. Some went so far as to clamor for her expulsion from the village. As for her adoptive parents, unwilling to lose a free little servant, they found every means to keep her.

But when she honestly told the villagers, “In three days, the village will be destroyed by a great fire — there will be deaths and injuries beyond count,” she was finally driven from the village with blows and curses from the furious crowd. They called her a crow’s mouth, called her a curse, said she only ever spoke of bad things and never good ones. They told her to get as far away as possible, and that if she ever dared to return, they would break her legs.

Three days later, a great fire reduced the once-lively village to rubble. The bodies of the villagers who perished were piled in a small mountain upon the ground.

In the smell of scorched earth spread across every hillside, I took Bu Yu’s hand and brought her before my Shifu. When Shifu saw Bu Yu standing shyly at my side, I clearly saw that his always half-narrowed eyes suddenly shone with a rarely seen light.

Bu Yu became my little junior sister in the lineage.

My previous senior and junior brothers and sisters had not a single human among them — some, like me, were foxes; others were fish demons or mountain spirits. Shifu was the Mountain God of Yingyue Mountain, a benevolent middle-aged figure who knew a great many wondrous techniques. He taught us — we wild creatures born of mountain and forest — what it meant to be “broad-minded” and what it meant to be a “humble gentleman.” He urged us to treat all things around us with kindness. He taught us the art of riding clouds and commanding wind, and gave us a stable, warm place to live. Life in Yingyue Mountain was like one large family — senior and junior brothers and sisters sparred and played chess, practiced music and the arts, and lived each day in warm contentment.

Before meeting Shifu, every one of us had lived difficult lives. Some had been hunted by Daoist masters and lived in constant fear. Others were so unremarkable they couldn’t even manage three meals a day. As for me — Shifu had even saved my life, having bought me back from an old hunter. Had he not, I would certainly have become that old man’s fox-fur rug.

I was a fox who was easily satisfied. After meeting Shifu, I finally came to believe that this world was not as terrible as my kin said — that there were good people in it after all. I hoped that this way of life could go on forever. After Bu Yu came to my side, that hope grew even stronger.

Bu Yu and I were the closest of all. From the day she arrived in the mountains, she was like a little tail attached to me, training in techniques alongside me, playing through the forest. What made her most remarkable was that she never lied. After she came, whenever something was stolen from the kitchen, or someone had snuck down the mountain for a day of fun, Shifu only had to ask her and she would tell him everything without hesitation — much to the great frustration of the senior and junior brothers and sisters. She still said things to others like “You’re definitely going to fall into the river when you go down the mountain today!” but we were different from the villagers — not only did we not get angry, we would cheerfully place bets with nothing better to do, to see whether her words would come true. They always did, without a single exception.

As time went on, we began to suspect her true identity. We knew that when Shifu took disciples, he never took humans.

Many years later, we brothers and sisters in the lineage had all grown into fine young men, and Bu Yu had blossomed into a graceful and lovely young woman. At Shifu’s birthday banquet that year, he looked us over with deep satisfaction, and at the same time satisfied the curiosity we had all harbored for years. He told us that Bu Yu’s original form was a prophetic flower.

The prophetic flower grew beside the Xi Ming You Sea, at the highest point of a clifftop. It bloomed once every hundred years — three petals, red as blood. If a petal of this flower were consumed, one could foresee the misfortunes that would befall others. Hence the name “prophetic flower.” Once a prophetic flower absorbed the essence of heaven and earth and was fortunate enough to cultivate into human form, it could not only foresee human disasters but also determine the exact hour of one’s death. If its petals were harvested and processed with secret techniques, they could be fashioned into the most devastating poison curse in existence — all those who were struck would perish without fail.

In the eyes of the righteous cultivation world, this flower was a thing of ill omen.

After the shock, the brothers and sisters exchanged glances and began to murmur quietly among themselves.

At that birthday banquet, Bu Yu was more silent than she had ever been. Before this, she had known nothing of her own origins — not even who her parents were. Or perhaps she had no parents at all: she was simply a prophetic flower that had somehow cultivated into human form and somehow drifted to Yingyue Mountain. Above all, those words — “a thing of ill omen” — were like an invisible blow that left her unable to raise her head.

Sitting beside her, I quietly tightened my hold on her hand. I truly hated watching her sink lower and lower. The only way I had to pull her back — to keep her from continuing to fall — was to hold on like this.

The following day, I went through the old, worn notebooks in the study — records of all manner of demons and spirits — and in the section on prophetic flowers, at the very last line, found a single sentence:

Prophetic flower, prophetic flower, a word spoken comes to pass. Reversed, reversed — the flower fades, the life ends.

I went to ask Shifu what these words meant.

Shifu sighed and said, “The prophetic flower has never been known to tell lies. She can accurately speak of the misfortunes a person will encounter. But there are two sides to everything.” He trimmed the dead leaves from a potted plant and continued, “Bu Yu can see how much life a person has remaining. To give an example: when she honestly tells someone ‘You can only live ten more years’ or ‘You only have three more days to live’ — this is a fact that not even the gods can alter. But if she lies, and tells that person ‘You can still live another fifty years’ — then the other person’s life will be rewritten, and they truly can live fifty more years. However, as punishment for acting against her own nature, a prophetic flower who speaks such a lie will lose a portion of her petals. In Bu Yu’s case — she will lose a piece of flesh and blood. The more lifespan she extends for others, the more flesh and blood she loses, until there is none left, and she disappears into thin air. And so, across the ages, the masters who have sought prophetic flowers have been of two kinds: some want their petals to create harmful curses; others want to use secret techniques to process the petals into life-prolonging medicine.”

At last I understood the meaning of the phrase “the flower fades, the life ends.”

That moonlit night, we lay side by side on the mountaintop, basking in the moonlight as we had when we were small. The clear, silver light cascaded over us, giving us a temporarily peaceful world apart.

“Bu Yu…” I gazed at the full moon above. “Will you promise me something?”

“You’re not about to propose to me, are you?” she said, her head resting on my shoulder as she giggled.

“That is the second thing I’ll ask you to promise me,” I said, sitting up and pulling her up as well. “But the first is more important.”

“Tell me.” Seeing that I was serious, she stopped laughing.

“Never, ever lie to people.” I said each word deliberately. “Promise me.”

“But I don’t lie anyway,” she said, puzzled.

“Promise me — no matter when, never do it.” I stressed it once more, tightening my hold on her hand. “Swear it.”

Her smooth face radiated a gentle glow in the moonlight. Looking at me — stubbornly insisting like a child — she nodded. “All right. I promise you. No matter what the time, I will not tell lies. If I ever break this oath, may I be separated from you for a hundred years, never to be united again.”

I drew her into my arms. That soft, warm body gave me a tenderness I could never in any age relinquish.

“A’Tou… I am a thing of ill omen… I often think back — that great fire in the village, if I had never spoken of it, would it still have happened? Or if I had simply never appeared in that village at all — would they have been spared that misfortune?” She murmured into my ear.

“You are not a thing of ill omen.” I held her tighter. “If in the future anyone dares to use that as an excuse to harm you, I will make them repay it tenfold. Don’t think nonsense. You only spoke the truth — and most humans don’t like the truth. It’s that simple.”

“A’Tou… you’re so good to me. Shall we marry? Only that way can I let you know that I’m good to you too.”

She was always this honest.

I smiled. “Yes!”

7.

It snowed.

All of Yingyue Mountain was wrapped in silver and white.

From that winter onward, Shifu required us to enter the deep mountains for a period of secluded cultivation — for he intended to choose, from among his many disciples, the next Mountain God.

I was young and full of vigor, and the title of “god” filled me with excitement.

Shifu said that every stretch of mountain and river needed a capable Mountain God to stand guard over it. He was old; his spiritual essence was slowly dispersing. To prevent the disasters that would follow if the heaven and earth were left without support, he needed us to cultivate more diligently, so that the most suitable successor could be chosen — one who could guard this mountain and river.

That winter, Bu Yu and I made an agreement: once the next Mountain God was appointed, whether or not the title fell to me, we would marry.

My brothers and sisters and I alike all dreamed of transforming from insignificant minor demons into Mountain Gods who could guard a corner of the world. Our lives held none of the former ease and contentment — only the singular focus of individual cultivation. And the ultimate aim of that cultivation was to complete each person’s inner core. As demons of different origins, all of our vital energy resided in that inner core — the more complete it was, the stronger we would be.

My fish senior brothers and wolf senior brothers and cat senior brothers completed their inner cores one after another. The fox clan’s inner core was the most difficult to cultivate, and while my brothers had already succeeded, mine was still at the critical stage of taking shape.

During that time, Bu Yu would often bring roast chicken — my favorite — to the mountain cave where I was cultivating, to sustain me. Each day she did only a token bit of meditation and qi training, with no thought of competing for the position of Mountain God. The only thing she wanted to be was my wife.

The happiest memories of that time were the two of us huddled in the cave, a bonfire burning, eating fragrant roast chicken while watching the snow fall thick outside the cave entrance.

The quiet beauty of those passing days was precious beyond measure.

Shifu appeared before us rarely that winter. We knew he was keeping company with his only son, who had fallen prey to a strange illness. Shifu’s son had been born unable to speak and without any consciousness — like the living dead. Over the years, Shifu had tried many methods and still could not cure him. This grieved us disciples as well.

But gradually, an eerie atmosphere began to settle over the mountains —

My brothers who had completed their inner cores vanished one by one. In all that vast forest, not a trace of them remained. Shifu aged greatly overnight, and as he simmered medicine for his son, he murmured softly to himself: “So be it, so be it. Their wings are grown — let them go and seek their own path. Yingyue Mountain is too small for them…”

I had always been close with my senior brothers, and I couldn’t fathom why they would leave without a word. Could it be that in their hearts, the joy of living and cultivating together with Shifu and everyone else — was not worth as much as going off alone in some incomprehensible “seeking of one’s own path”? Besides, had they not been wholeheartedly set on competing for the title of Mountain God?

Though I was full of doubt, I could not afford to let it distract me too much. In seven more days, my inner core would be complete — if my resolve wavered now, I could very easily go astray and have my cultivation devolve into chaos.

Bu Yu came to check on me every other day, always bringing good news — saying Shifu was well, the younger junior brothers and sisters were all behaving, and the missing fish senior brother had sent word back saying he had reached a prosperous city and even met a beautiful woman.

I knew Bu Yu never lied. I finally set my heart at ease.

And yet — I could clearly see the faint furrow of Bu Yu’s brow in the instant she turned to leave.

White foxes were the nobility of the fox clan, and the most perceptive of all. Reading expressions and observing behavior was always a strong suit.

I watched her figure grow smaller in the dusk, a string of deep and shallow footprints trailing behind her in the snow, like imperfections on the face of a beauty. I suddenly recalled — Bu Yu’s steps always moved lightly as clouds, leaving no impression on water. She always said that fields of pristine white snow were the most beautiful sight, and that footprints would only ruin them — so she never left any trace in the snow when she walked.

Standing in the mouth of the cave, I felt that heart I had just settled begin to be tugged at again, by some strange force I couldn’t name.

8.

Before Shifu breathed his last, he pointed at Bu Yu across from him and, with the last of his fury, spat out two words: “Wretched disciple!” Blood poured from his mouth like a river, flooding over the hands I held him with, gripping tightly.

Bu Yu stood before us, her expression blank, her eyes cold and indifferent.

Shifu’s room was in utter chaos — bloodstains everywhere, overturned medicine cups spilling their thick, dark red liquid, several small black ceramic jars scattered in the corners, and a hidden alcove in the wall that had been destroyed. One of the jars had cracked open, spilling a heap of dark green ash.

Beyond that, beside the three of us lay a young person whose body was a mass of blood and torn flesh — alive or dead, it was impossible to tell. This was our youngest junior brother in the lineage, a snow leopard. He had entered the lineage late, but his natural gifts were exceptional, and Shifu was deeply fond of him.

I saw that Shifu’s chest bore a great hole, its edges charred black. A thin layer of crimson mist floated over his face, like an unusual flower petal laid across it. Bu Yu’s right sleeve hung empty and hollow — her once slender, pale right arm was nowhere to be seen.

My heart, at the moment Shifu took his last breath, seemed to stop along with his.

I suddenly felt that leaving the cave and secretly coming back was the most foolish thing I had ever done. Had it not been for that accursed unease and attachment that drew me back, I would not have come. Had I not come, I would not have witnessed what lay before me. Had I not witnessed it… had I not witnessed it… could I have simply, at ease with myself, pretended to know nothing?

“Did you do this?” I slowly set down Shifu’s body, watching as this person — who had saved me, raised me, taught me, whom I had sworn with my life to protect — gradually lost his human form and became a gleaming black scorpion.

Bu Yu’s lips stretched stiffly into a smile. “Yes. I asked him to teach me better techniques — I was the best candidate to become Mountain God. But he refused.”

“Those senior brothers who went missing…” I rose to my feet, unnaturally calm. “Were they connected to you?”

“I needed their inner cores. That would make me stronger much faster.” As she spoke, her eyes remained fixed on the window outside. “I despised those days of being pelted with stones. I refused to remain an ill-omened flower demon. I wanted to be a god — to be worshipped.”

“You promised me you would never lie — isn’t that right?” I waited for the last answer I needed.

“Yes,” she said, nodding.

I threw back my head and expelled my not-yet-completed inner core. It transformed into a fine sword, its sharp silver light slicing between us. Something was severed in that instant. Her truthful answer had handed me the greatest self-deception I had ever suffered.

“Want to avenge your old master?” She mocked me with a cold, contemptuous laugh. “Go finish your inner core first, then come find me.” My sword found only empty air. Her grace in movement, her ability to vanish — surpassed everyone else in our lineage. Fury, grief — they crashed and surged within me like a storm.

I buried Shifu with my own hands. After settling the unconscious snow leopard junior brother, I took one look at this place — once so full of life, now hollow and bare — and turned resolutely back to the cave.

My body was stronger than it had ever been.

My intention was more concentrated than it had ever been.

My heart was clearer than it had ever been about what needed to be done.

9.

Finding her required no effort at all.

Because she was waiting for me at Yingyue River’s bank — crimson gauze robes, white snow all around, beautiful in a way that broke the heart.

Driving my perfected sword into her heart required no effort at all. Because she neither dodged nor moved.

She fell into the snow, staining a patch of the world red. The last words she said to me were: “I’m sorry.”

Whether her remorse was genuine or false, I had no strength to discern. Her eyes closed peacefully. The flower that had always bloomed within her body and her eyes withered on the thick snow into a lonely, fading imprint.

The familiar body gradually dissolved into smoke. I watched as the knife-sharp snow wind gathered those trembling three red petals from the ground and carried them away, further and further, until they silently vanished somewhere on the other side.

My sword hit the ground with a clatter.

10.

I became Yingyue Mountain’s new Mountain God.

A hundred years. Two hundred years. I grew dull to the passage of time. I spent my days in the mountains, now sitting in stillness, now sleeping.

A certain wound gradually formed a scar.

Yes — I had simply removed a demon who had killed her Shifu and harmed her lineage-mates. Grief was there, the yearning of sleepless midnight hours was there. But all of it quieted in the flow of time, tucked by me into the deepest place within.

Everything here grew lush with vitality because of my spiritual essence — the mountains green, the water clear. Only the sky was forever overcast. The sunlight at the horizon never reached these mountains and rivers.

“A Mountain God’s mood affects the weather,” a woman said, waking me as I dozed beneath a riverside tree on a spring afternoon.

“You really do look like a very melancholy fox,” she said, crouching beside me — dark hair, dark clothes, almond-blossom eyes, red lips, laughing with a lightness that seemed entirely unburdened.

“And you really are a very boring tree spirit,” I said, glancing at her and pulling the lotus leaf back over my face.

I had known this female demon named Shaluo for nearly ten years. Every spring she came to the mountains to collect a type of extremely sour wild fruit, which she said she gave to someone to brew into wine. Occasionally we would chat. Over time, she knew my story, and I knew part of hers. This tree spirit’s cultivation was far beyond mine, yet she always liked to affect the naive innocence of a low-level minor demon, deliberately saying all kinds of absurd jokes — an endless source of exasperation.

“Hey, I came today to bring you good news.” She removed the lotus leaf from my face. I sat up irritably, just about to lose my temper — when a fresh, urgent young voice cut me off.

“Shifu! Shifu! Snow Leopard senior uncle has woken up!!” A chubby child — my white rabbit disciple — came sprinting toward me from the forest in a panic.

Something struck inside me. I shot to my feet and rode the wind back.

Only now, I realized — somewhere deep in my subconscious, I had always been waiting for this moment of waking…

Late at night, I walked out of the snow leopard’s room and looked up. The full moon hung overhead.

A certain night, many years past, broke free from the deepest place inside me.

I drew a long, deep breath, turned, and walked into the mountains.

On the silver-white mountaintop, the tree spirit’s shadow and mine were stretched very long by the moonlight.

“You’ve decided?” Her elegant brow lifted.

“While I am away, please look after Yingyue Mountain in my place.”

“You can’t be away too long. I’m not the Mountain God here — my spiritual essence can’t cover everything.”

“One hundred years. One hundred years from today, I will certainly return.” I looked at her face and entrusted her with an earnestness I had never shown before. “I hope you will help me.”

“Give me a lot of gold as payment and I’ll do it,” she said, pursing her lips.

“It’s a deal.”

11.

I sank slowly to the bottom of Yingyue River. There, a dark and warm cave awaited — the safest, most suitable place for a long slumber.

Perhaps I should thank heaven for keeping the snow leopard in a coma for several hundred years. Had he woken a few hundred years earlier, I would have chosen obliteration. But now, what I wanted was to make amends. The first words out of the waking snow leopard’s mouth were: “Senior Sister Bu Yu saved me!”

Shifu had told us the greatest lie of all. The taking in, the raising, the teaching — not for the sake of our happiness, and not to find a worthy successor. What he needed was our inner cores. His son’s illness could only be cured by consuming ninety-nine fully-formed inner cores one after another. We were not his disciples. We were only a collection of pills waiting to be swallowed.

Now I finally understood: Bu Yu’s “I’m sorry” in her final moments was not a confession of her crimes — it was because she had failed to keep her promise. The promise to never lie.

But what I still couldn’t fathom was: why had she deceived me at all?

I needed to see her again. For my confusion, and for my guilt.

The tree spirit had brought the good news: the King of the Underworld had recently heeded the wishes of the people and changed the rules — giving those demons who harbored good intentions but had died with profound regrets a single chance to reincarnate as a human. Though Bu Yu had died at my sword, a wisp of her spirit still drifted in the mortal world, and her chances of reincarnation were promising. But when she would be reincarnated, and where — that was impossible to know.

In the vast sea of humanity, I still felt no worry that I wouldn’t find her.

Because her warmth, her smile, had long been buried in my bloodstream, inseparable. The moment she descended into this world again, I would sense it immediately. After all — I was a fox who had become a Mountain God.

I buried myself in the riverbed, along with all the old memories — sealed away together. The spiritual essence that separated from my body was a fresh, clean life — without any memory or burden.

I wanted to step back into her life in this state. To know her again, to understand her. Only in this way could I truly find the answer I was looking for.

In the pitch-black cave, I slowly closed my eyes. Consciousness began to split — half wrapped in past memories, remaining at the riverbed; half carrying a newborn hope, awaiting a summons. In that half-dream, half-waking state, a voice said —

You are a clever fox. You have no past — only the future.

There is a foolish one who needs your protection.

Go, go…

12.

I dragged my aching body back to the Tang household. Yes — I had been struck by a speeding, overloaded freight truck. Though my body was not truly made of flesh and blood, the pain was still there, to some degree.

Tang Xiaohua was still asleep. Outside the window, moonlight had appeared at some unknown hour. She turned over. The silver-white light settled on her face — delicate, gentle. An entirely different face, yet one that made me vividly think of someone else.

I gently stroked her young face. At last, I laid my hand on her forehead, closed my eyes, and let a force that carried warmth flow from within my heart, through my palm, and into her world.

“Bu Yu…” I called her name, again and again, in my heart.

“Mm…” Sleeping in her dream, Tang Xiaohua’s lips moved.

“Why did you lie to those people who were going to die?” My gaze fell on her wrist — missing its flesh and blood — and a dull ache moved through me.

“The Spider Man asked me if I wanted to truly help those in danger,” she said slowly. “It said, if I told those who were dying ‘you can still live twenty more years,’ they wouldn’t die.”

I could not help but curse that vulgar insect-man in my heart. It was he who, wanting the petals of the prophetic flower — Tang Xiaohua’s flesh and blood — had used this method to awaken her full powers, and in so doing had attracted the underworld envoys who administered life and death.

“I’m not ill-omened… not a crow’s mouth… I can save people too.” Tang Xiaohua murmured. “So it turns out that lying isn’t necessarily a bad thing…”

I paused, and then asked the question I most wanted to ask: “Why did you lie to me about Shifu?”

“I warned my senior brothers and sisters… I saw Shifu use a sword to cut open their bodies, remove their inner cores, then reduce their bodies to green ash and seal the ash in ceramic jars in the wall. But they didn’t believe me — said I had gone astray in my cultivation. That day, the snow leopard junior brother stumbled upon him using the senior brothers’ inner cores to brew medicine. Shifu was going to kill the snow leopard to silence him… I heard the snow leopard calling out for help… I lost my mind — a scorching force raged through my body. I struck a palm against his chest… my right arm felt as though it was on fire…”

“Why didn’t you tell me in time?” I genuinely wanted to haul her up and give her a thrashing.

“You loved Shifu so much — believed in him, respected him so deeply… Overturning him meant overturning your entire world.” Tang Xiaohua’s brow furrowed slightly. “Your inner core wasn’t yet complete… you had always wanted to become Shifu’s successor… If the one who had done wrong was Shifu, would you still have continued cultivating? Abandoning cultivation at that critical moment… would have caused you severe damage to your primordial spirit — it would have been fatal. But if the one who had done wrong was me… you would be furious, you would be heartbroken, but as long as you held onto the desire to find me and take revenge, you would certainly work hard to complete your inner core… As long as you got through that, you would become the Mountain God you’d always wanted to be.” Her brow smoothed. “Nothing was more important than making sure you lived. Lying to you wasn’t to deceive you — it was because… I love you.”

Foxes never cry. Male foxes especially. But today, I made an exception. “What an idiot!” I wiped away my tears, drew a deep breath, and pinched Tang Xiaohua’s nose.

She sneezed and opened her eyes. “Xiao Tou… you’re still not asleep?” She sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“I’m going to leave for a while.” I kept my voice deliberately light, as casually dismissive as always.

“Where to? How long?” she asked, anxious.

“Back home. About… a month or so, I’d say.” I poked her on the head. She let out a breath of relief. I looked carefully at the way she looked, wanting to imprint this foolish picture of her firmly in my memory — I was not leaving for a month. I was leaving forever. But before that, I still had one last thing to do.

“Sleep now. I have to go.” I pressed her back down into bed.

“Right now?” She looked at me reluctantly. I nodded. She looked at me for a long moment, then suddenly broke into a wide grin: “Then — let’s pretend we’ll see each other again tomorrow!”

Tomorrow was the first of April — April Fool’s Day. I smiled. “All right. See you tomorrow!”

“See you tomorrow!” She nestled contentedly back into the covers. “Come back early!”

I walked out the door and said nothing. Not until she had fallen back into deep sleep did I pass through the wall, stand beside her, and look at her sleeping there like a little pig. I thought: the smile on my face now must be a warmth and tenderness that hadn’t been there for many, many years.

You will become a normal girl. From now on, you won’t remember anything connected to me. You’ll have a brand new happiness. This is the last thing your guardian spirit — a fox — will do for you.

Before dawn, a fox with snow-white fur leaped from Tang Xiaohua’s bedroom window, landing lightly on the ground. It looked up at Tang Xiaohua’s home for a moment, then turned and disappeared without looking back into the slowly brightening light.

Epilogue

The snow-white fox crouched elegantly in the chair, using a paw to pick up a red bean cake and stuff it in its mouth, chewing contentedly while swishing its fluffy great tail.

“The red bean cake turned out quite well. But this tea is too bitter.” It smacked its lips and pushed the cup of Fu Sheng tea as far away from itself as possible.

“No regrets?” I glanced at it sideways.

This fox had spent the entirety of its own cultivation, erasing the reincarnated prophetic flower’s abilities from Tang Xiaohua — and with them, all her memories of the past, and the past before that.

On April Fool’s Day, Tang Xiaohua became a true, healthy, ordinary person — while A’Tou, reverting to its original form, had to start everything over from nothing.

“What is there to regret? She is a real human now. The human world ought not to have foxes in it — ought not to have prophetic flowers in it. She should live like all ordinary girls — go to school, fall in love, marry and have children. That is true happiness.” A’Tou said softly, then immediately shot me a look and changed tack: “Speaking of which — I entrusted Yingyue Mountain to you to look after, and look at the state it’s in now!”

“I’m not the Mountain God there,” I said flatly. “Anyway, you’re back — without a human form, but your spiritual essence is intact. The task of restoring that mountain, and dealing with that not-too-severe Heaven’s Rift, I am hereby formally handing back to you!”

“Then the payment I owe you is getting cut in half!”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

The two of us — one person, one fox — chatted cheerfully away, entirely oblivious to the extremely resentful and indignant looks radiating from the eyes of Fatty and Skinny, who were covered in all manner of foul-smelling filth.

All right, I’ll admit it — I played a trick on them on April Fool’s Day. I said we were going on a spring outing, but actually had them serve as excavation workers and divers, hauling A’Tou — whose primordial spirit had returned — out of that dirty, reeking Yingyue River. This was the agreement the two of us had made a hundred years ago.

Foxes are always clever, and A’Tou had thought things through carefully. After a primordial spirit had been wandering outside for so long, returning to the original body left not a scrap of energy to spare for climbing out from the riverbed. Getting accidentally drowned at that point would have been a genuine tragedy.

“We are formally requesting overtime pay!” Skinny and Fatty drifted in front of me, aggrieved as scorned housewives. This time, I didn’t hesitate for even a moment — I went to the inner room, retrieved two gold bars, and pressed them into their hands. They could barely believe my generosity. Fatty bit down hard on the gold bar multiple times. “It’s real!” The two of them leaped for joy, waving their gold bars and running out.

Five minutes later, I heard several bizarre screams.

Fatty and Skinny came running back, their faces twisted in horror. The gold bars in their hands had transformed into a pitch-black crow, its round eyes bulging as it squawked again and again: “Happy April Fool’s Day! Happy April Fool’s Day!”

Well — it was April Fool’s Day, after all. What is there that couldn’t happen, right? Heh heh.

I thought: from now on, when I pass by Yingyue Mountain again, that place will surely be bathed in ten thousand rays of sunlight.