Epigraph: One who truly knows love does not harm others, nor does one harm oneself.

1

Ocean-blue hair, ocean-blue eyes, ocean-blue gauze skirt — what a tranquil, sea-like combination.

But this tranquility was an utter illusion!

I truly had no idea how to comfort this little girl who was working so hard at her dry wailing. From the moment she walked through the door to now, both her hands had been clenched tightly around Jiu Jue’s arm, clinging like conjoined twins and refusing to let go no matter what. Aside from the crying, the sofa was also thumping — a blue fish tail, as despondent as its owner, slapped back and forth in futile protest.

The young woman was a “Blue Shark” — the most beautiful subspecies among the merfolk-type demons, and regardless of gender, every one of them possessed a face that could bewitch the soul. As for the long-circulating tale that a mermaid’s tears turn into pearls — you may as well smile and move on, because that is ninety percent lie. The remaining ten percent of truth is this: the tears of a Blue Shark truly do become the finest white pearls.

Heaven’s favor made the Blue Shark the most beautiful part of legend, and also dragged them, step by step, toward the abyss of extinction. Since ancient times, Blue Sharks had been the prized obsession of fishermen. Gentle by nature, they were no match for nets and desire. Captured Blue Sharks were typically confined in narrow pools, their only daily task to cry. If they refused or their tears ran dry, fishermen would employ all manner of cruel methods to torment and coerce them — until they had wept themselves blind and could shed not a single tear, whereupon they would be heartlessly slaughtered and sold as fish flesh. Others were kept as lowly commodities, placed on the market to be bought by curiosity-seekers for viewing, their fate soon the same: injury, illness, and death. Thereafter, the Blue Shark population dwindled ever further, and the survivors migrated to remote deep-sea islands far from humankind, becoming a species that lived only in legend. In any case, the only Blue Shark I had ever personally encountered was some three or four hundred years ago during a journey — a male Blue Shark in human form I spotted in Chang’an. If I recall correctly, he had entered a pawnshop. When he came back out, I happily chased after him and asked if he was indeed a Blue Shark, whereupon the person gave a startled whoosh and fled… When I returned home I complained to Ao Chi at great length about missing a perfectly good opportunity to obtain pearls for free.

But enough of my memories of Blue Sharks. The point is, I had absolutely not anticipated that Jiu Jue’s so-called “major matter” would turn out to be a Blue Shark girl — a treasure rivaling the world’s rarest gems — and that this girl was telling everyone present, with great certainty, that she and Jiu Jue had a marriage covenant!

Yet Jiu Jue was equally resolute in telling everyone that he had absolutely no acquaintance with this person. This beautiful Shark girl had appeared — popping up out of the water — in the enormous bath tub at his winery the previous night, and her opening words had been: “I’ve finally found you. Let us wed.” Though he was always going on about finding a girl to marry, when he actually encountered one who was dead-set on marrying him regardless, all he’d managed, besides nearly choking on mouthfuls of bathwater in fright, was the immediate thought of finding me to sort things out. Ha! Bu Ting here is not some women’s federation office! For all I knew, this habitual disappearing-act scoundrel had gotten himself into some amorous debt out there and was now reaping what he’d sown! I was actually rather gleeful about it…

“Can you stop wailing, little miss?” Jiu Jue didn’t even dare look at her face. He tore off a tissue and dabbed his own eyes. “Keep this up and I’m going to start crying!”

“You and I have a covenant of three lifetimes — why do you treat me this way!” The Shark girl sniffled, her grievance boundless. “Do you find me not beautiful enough?”

“You are breathtakingly beautiful!” Jiu Jue hurriedly shook his head and then nodded. “But I truly don’t know you, my dear lady! No one I know has ever come up from my bathtub! I brought you here so that all my friends can serve as witnesses — I am a man with a fiancée already! You have truly found the wrong person.” He looked toward me with beseeching eyes. “Quick, vouch for me!!”

I shrugged. “Your fiancée has always been nothing more than a word in your mouth. None of us have ever seen her. What exactly am I supposed to vouch for? You’d better think carefully yourself about whether, on some dark night perfect for murder, you did something you shouldn’t have!”

“Precisely — think it over carefully.” Ao Chi was quite accomplished at kicking a man when he was down. “Men must take responsibility! You’re not getting any younger — you might as well marry her. I think this young lady is quite well-suited to you. You two even have almost the same hair color! She has gone to all this trouble, and you’re still acting like this — how heartbroken she must be!” He directed a gaze full of sympathy at the Shark girl, his tone warm as a neighborhood committee auntie. “Young lady, cry as hard as you like. When you’re young, who hasn’t come across a scoundrel or two! Big brother here understands how you feel.”

“All this because I drank a few bottles of your wine without paying…” Jiu Jue buried his face in his hands in agony.

I glanced sidelong at the righteously indignant Ao Chi. “Why are you holding a washbasin?”

Ao Chi blinked and lowered his voice. “Aren’t you hugging that teacup and keeping it at the ready too?”

“Did you have to make it so obvious?” I pushed the words out through gritted teeth.

“Can’t you say something more heartstring-tugging so she stops just wailing and actually cries some tears?!” Ao Chi glared at me.

Gui Yan, Gen Jia, and Yi silently put down the mineral water bottle and small bowl they’d sneaked into their hands.

Hmm, the rhythm here was slightly off.

Jiu Jue pointed at us in despair. “You people…”

The Shark girl pressed her lips together and said, “Why fabricate a nonexistent fiancée? I am the one who should be your wife!”

“I really do have a fiancée!”

“Then bring her here!”

“I temporarily cannot reach her…”

“You. Are. Lying.”

“Please, I beg you… I cannot marry you! I don’t know you! How many times must I say it!”

“Three hundred and eighty years ago, one summer — did you visit Chang’an or not?”

“I’ve been to countless places in countless points of time throughout my life. How could I possibly remember where I was on a summer day three hundred and eighty years ago!”

“You. Are. Playing. Dumb.”

Jiu Jue, evidently stirred to anger by this unreasonable persistence, did something uncharacteristic — his face suddenly turned cold. “Even as a demon, you are a female demon. Have you no sense of self-respect?”

The Shark girl froze. The wailing stopped. She was stunned for a long moment, and then both hands fell limply to her sides. “Why must you be this way… Seven-colored stone, covenant of three lives, a pact to be together always, for Yonghuan’s joy. When the indigo lotus blooms and smiles, we clasp hands once more and grow drunk together on Qiu Shan…”

A delicately braided red hand-cord slid out and came to rest on her pale wrist — red with a mournful beauty.

Perhaps it was the exhaustion of my days of travel blurring my vision, but the moment I saw that hand-cord, it seemed as though a thin, sinuous shadow, dark as a serpent, crept out from between the interwoven red threads, drifting in the air half-there, half-not — and the other end was coiled around Jiu Jue’s left wrist.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The hand-cord was just a hand-cord. Where was any shadow?

Seeing her like this, Jiu Jue felt a flicker of guilt after all. He took her hand very sincerely and said: “Your name is Yonghuan, right? Yonghuan, little miss — I solemnly swear to you on my honor as a celestial official: I have never seen you before, and a marriage covenant is entirely out of the question. The problem must lie on your end. Go home, sleep well, and think clearly about who it is that made a pact with you. Continuing to pester me this way is unwise. In matters of the heart — whether one is human or demon — one cannot fabricate something from nothing. I do not wish to take any measures that would harm you. Do you understand?”

Her name was Yonghuan?

I smiled to myself. That name, placed on anyone else, would be commonplace, even trite. But on her, it was a profound blessing. Whoever chose that name must have loved her dearly.

Yonghuan stared at Jiu Jue for a long time, and even her indignant fish tail gradually calmed, slowly reverting to a pair of small, snow-white, soft feet.

“I apologize. When I’m anxious, my tail comes out.” Yonghuan smiled at us, a little embarrassed, and adjusted her sitting posture — though she still pressed close to Jiu Jue’s side. “I lost my composure just now. I haven’t frightened any of you, have I?”

Everyone let out a quiet breath of relief. Had Jiu Jue’s words taken effect?!

“You’ve come to your senses?” Jiu Jue looked at her, now returned to normal, and ventured to ask: “Shall I take you home? Though this has all been a misunderstanding, there’s nothing wrong with being friends.”

Yonghuan turned her face, her cheeks flushed with color, and said earnestly: “I am not going anywhere. I will only stay with you. No matter where you go, I will not lose you.”

That bolt of lightning out of a clear sky jolted even me.

“How can a girl have such shamelessness?” Even Chi Pian’er on my shoulder couldn’t hold back anymore.

Even Zhao Gongzi, who had been diligently tidying the room, walked glumly to her side. “Young lady, such matters as marriage cannot be forced. Though this blue-haired fellow is not exactly a model young man, at the very least he is someone who will own up to what he does — a genuine stand-up sort. Since he is this certain he doesn’t know you, then he genuinely does not. You’d better go home and sort things out, lest you miss your true life’s match. Why not let me cook you a bowl of noodles before you head back?”

“Zhao Gongzi, how come I never see you cooking noodles for me when I’m in a bad mood?” Ao Chi huffed.

“You never need comfort.” Zhao Gongzi answered honestly, picked up a basket of rubbish, and walked away.

Ao Chi tugged my sleeve, his expression intensely gossip-hungry, and murmured close to my ear: “That stiff iron block has feelings for that girl!!”

“For a girl this beautiful, having feelings is perfectly normal.” I pushed Ao Chi away and smiled at Yonghuan. “You see — everyone here has expressed their view. I am somewhat exasperated with Jiu Jue, but I still must tell you: however unreliable he may be, he would not deny a marriage covenant. However muddled his thinking, he would not forget someone he loved. If you’re willing, you’re welcome to stay in my shop for a few days, have a look around the city, and go home once your mood has settled.”

Yonghuan’s blue eyes grew dimmer and dimmer, and the flush in her cheeks faded to somewhere unknown.

She fixed her gaze on Jiu Jue once more. “You will not marry me?”

“I will not.” Jiu Jue did not hesitate for a single moment. “You are not the person destined for me.”

I always mocked Jiu Jue for being a man left on the shelf for ages — but with his qualities, if he truly wanted to marry, what shortage of girls would there be eager to have him? I knew that his longing for marriage was largely an act, a running joke. If it was not the one correct person, he would not be moved by any woman, not even one who threw herself at him — he could sit unmoved even in the arms of a beauty. Simply put, he was a gentleman wrapped in the guise of a scoundrel, persistently waiting through his perpetual shamelessness for… the right one. So the reason I was exasperated with him, yet fond of him, was not without cause. Deep down, I truly hoped that the “fiancée” he spoke of was real. But instinct told me that even if such a person existed, she was definitely not this Yonghuan.

What had gone wrong?

Yonghuan bit her lip, looked at all of us, and let her gaze search for a final lifeline.

“Go home!” Chi Pian’er spoke plainly. “Any more pestering and it becomes harassment.”

Gui Yan opened his mouth too: “There is a solution to everything. If this is not the right person, another will come to marry you. Why make things hard for yourself?”

Yi, having turned up a packet of biscuits from nowhere, munched on one and said: “A woman who clings and pesters is not worth any man’s affection.”

The words were a little harsh. The reasoning was not off.

Ao Chi and I expressed our agreement through silence.

Yonghuan fell quiet, instinctively curling her legs up so that her whole body drew into itself on the sofa — a most pitiable posture.

A sigh welled within me. Having drifted through the world for a thousand years or more, I knew deeply that the hardest thing to navigate in this world is matters of love. If even this old demon such as myself felt this way, how much more so this little Shark girl? Perhaps she was like so many of Jiu Jue’s admirers — had merely “caught a glimpse of him in the crowd” and etched this blue-haired fiend onto her heart, unable to let go — and her reaction simply ran rather more intense than the others, leading to this wild claim of a husband. It was not impossible.

“You are all telling me to leave him.” After a moment, Yonghuan’s face slowly emerged from behind her knees. She was still not crying — only filled with a grief that saturated her eyes, laced through with threads of the loss and indignation of not being believed. “I searched for him so many years before finally getting my wish. Why do you all want to separate us? Why can’t you bless us the way Mr. Yue did?!”

This was getting more and more out of hand. A one-sided attachment — how could there be any “separating” them?!

Jiu Jue was close to kneeling before her. “Who on earth are you?”

Yonghuan looked at him with passionate intensity: “I am Yonghuan. Over three hundred years ago, in the Eastern Fence Cottage of young Master Shen — we were always together. Even though I could not see at that time, your voice has not changed to this day. Please do not question the hearing of a blind person.”

Jiu Jue was taken aback. After thinking for a very long time, he finally said: “Eastern Fence Cottage… You said Shen Ziju’s Eastern Fence Cottage?”

Yonghuan nodded excitedly: “You remember! We always lived there!”

Jiu Jue frowned. “I remember Shen Ziju, and I did visit that place — but I have no memory of you whatsoever.”

“Impossible!”

“Every word is the truth.”

“You left a portrait — wasn’t it precisely so I could find you after I recovered? I searched for you for hundreds of years!”

“I never left any portrait!! If you keep harassing me, I will have you bound and thrown into the Eastern Sea!”

“No matter where you throw me, I will find my way back to your side. You and I are already bound together!”

“…”

“Why have you become like this… why do you pretend not to know me?”

And so the situation, in the face of Yonghuan’s stubbornness, circled back to where it began.

She resumed her mournful dry wailing, the sound growing louder and louder, making one’s heart inexplicably agitated just from listening.

“Can you calm down for a moment?” I felt Jiu Jue was about to owe me another favor. “If it truly is Jiu Jue who has wronged you, I promise I will first make him kneel on a keyboard before he marries you. But if it is not, we will not make things difficult for you either — just go back where you came from.”

She did not listen. The wailing continued.

“Yonghuan, you…”

My words were not yet finished when a breath of cool air suddenly flew past between us, aimed straight at Yonghuan. A faint character — “Sleep” — flashed briefly across her forehead, and in an instant she blinked once, then went “thud” and toppled over sideways onto Jiu Jue.

2

How delightful it was to return to a quiet world.

“Wailing without crying — she’d have been better off just sleeping.” Yi lowered a finger and let out a yawn. “Not a single pearl.”

Well, there was nothing else for it — if the wailing had gone on any longer, no one could have borne it. I said to Zhao Gongzi: “Move her to the guest room on the second floor. Hmm — should she actually be placed in a bathtub instead?”

“Wait!” Ao Chi walked over and lifted the small leather bag slung diagonally across her shoulder, opened it, and emptied it onto the table. “A bag is a woman’s second life — let’s see if there’s anything useful in the way of clues.”

The scene everyone had imagined — a great cascade of items clattering out — did not materialize. Yonghuan’s bag contained only a silver cylinder less than a foot long, along with a red card that bounced onto the floor, looking very much like a VIP membership card.

Jiu Jue picked up the large, thumb-thick cylinder, unscrewed the cap at the top, and a roll of yellowed paper emerged. He drew it out, and everyone present had a shock — it was a meticulously rendered portrait in fine-lined brushwork, and the subject was, unmistakably, Jiu Jue himself. However, one edge of the portrait was ragged and uneven, as though a portion had been torn away.

Ao Chi picked up the card from the floor, wiped off a water stain, and muttered: “Hua… Yue Jia Qi… Your Most Trusted Emotional Services Agency?! What on earth is this?”

“Hua Yue Jia Qi?!” Gui Yan sprang up from the sofa, snatched the card, turned it front and back for a close look, and then his eyes went wide. He pointed at the card as though he had seized a murderer, declaring loudly: “That’s it! It’s this Hua Yue Jia Qi — the one that has wrecked our Jin Xiu Yuan’s business!”

Right — disrupted by Jiu Jue’s phone call, we had all forgotten that Gui Yan’s story was not yet finished. The marriage agency he and his wife ran!

“Tut tut — look at that bone-deep hatred. Doesn’t quite fit your gentle nature.” I took the card: a perfectly ordinary VIP card in a festive color, the front printed with “Hua Yue Jia Qi Emotional Services Agency” and a service hotline beginning with 400, the back printed with a serial number — this one was A1335.

“If it were your Bu Ting, and overnight every single client who had signed a service contract with you ran off to patronize another shop, wouldn’t you be furious?” Gui Yan shot me a look.

“Could it be that your fees are too high, or your pool of candidates insufficient, your success rate too low — leading to collective client dissatisfaction?” Ao Chi cut in. “There are so many matchmaking agencies these days. If the other place has the means to help clients find true love, and you can’t compete, it’s not strange to lose business.”

“Find true love?!” Gui Yan had originally wanted to say something far less polite, but he swallowed it back and answered with practiced patience: “Jin Xiu Yuan has never made that our promise — because we don’t dare.”

“Don’t dare?” I raised an eyebrow. “Even a former celestial god and a flower demon running a husband-and-wife shop has something they don’t dare do?”

“Something that can only be encountered, not sought — we don’t dare promise it.” Gui Yan grew very serious. “We can promise to introduce clients to compatible companions for them to get to know, but whether it becomes true love — even the heavens don’t know that. What can we guarantee? Jin Xiu Yuan only deals in reliable matters. Have you forgotten what Ding Yan said back then?” He paused, looked steadily at me. “The one thing in this world that cannot be obtained through effort is love.”

I gave a slight start, then smiled and held up the VIP card. “So you’re saying Hua Yue Jia Qi deals in unreliable matters?”

“I have no idea what they actually do.” Gui Yan frowned. “In fact, it isn’t only us who’ve had clients poached. People in this trade have competed by their respective abilities for years, coexisting peacefully — never once has there been such a sudden ‘dark horse’ rising like this. So I and Jin Xiu split up: she went to scout out Hua Yue Jia Qi for intelligence, while I investigated the subsequent situation of clients who had gone to them.”

“And the result was — no result?” I asked.

“Precisely. Jin Xiu said it looked like the most perfectly ordinary, normal matchmaking agency imaginable, and I found nothing suspicious about any of the clients either. However, among those who had gone there, not a single one had successfully married. Several had committed suicide.” Gui Yan recalled. “The first time we experienced Hua Yue Jia Qi’s power was ten years ago, when we were still in the imperial capital. Our branch there had always done well. Because of this one agency, we had no choice but to close up the capital operation and expand to other cities. The years since then have gone smoothly — branches in several cities doing fine, including Wang Chuan. But just a few months ago, this Hua Yue Jia Qi appeared in Wang Chuan like a persistent ghost, and our business immediately went into freefall. It’s also strange — this shop doesn’t operate in multiple cities simultaneously. It does business for a few years, then moves to a different city. Who would have thought that of all the bad luck, we’d have a run-in with it right here in Wang Chuan? This time I disguised myself as an unattached man and went personally — and the result was…”

“They threw you out?” Ao Chi supplied offhandedly.

“People like you get thrown out. I am a man of refinement.” Gui Yan gave him a withering look. “At first I was received with great enthusiasm, but in the end their staff member told me, very apologetically, that I did not fall within their range of clients because I had no need. Then they showed me out.”

I smiled. “How interesting. You were in disguise — your identity and everything should have been airtight, the kind that even a database search wouldn’t flag. How did they know you had no need for them to find you a wife?”

“That’s what puzzled me!” Gui Yan sighed. “So I wasn’t satisfied. In the dead of night I went to their Wang Chuan branch again. I didn’t discover much else, but do you know what I found in one room — decorated to look like a prayer hall?”

“Jesus?” I rolled my eyes. I detested nothing more than someone stopping mid-sentence to ask me to guess.

“A porcelain figurine on a shrine, about two feet tall.” Gui Yan’s gaze became particularly deep. “Carved as a tall man in a long flowing robe, his sleeves billowing — but with no facial features. Only over the area of the eyes, a strip of red cloth was tied. By the old custom, cooks worship the Kitchen God, constables worship Guan Yu, and matchmakers naturally worship the Old Moon God. Many matchmaking agencies still maintain this tradition today. But every single Moon God figurine in every matchmaking agency I have ever seen depicts the small, round, white, plump old man everyone knows. It is inconceivable that any agency would model their Moon God figure this way!”

“Does the figurine look like Ding Yan?” I asked.

“Far too much like him.” Gui Yan nodded. “Though I am no longer a celestial god, as his most familiar companion I am far too well-acquainted with Ding Yan’s presence — too sensitive to it. Yet no matter how much spiritual power I drew upon to sense it, I could not capture even the slightest ‘aura’ connected to Ding Yan in that place.”

“Perhaps the founders’ ancestors once encountered Ding Yan and received his favor?” I speculated.

“I don’t know.” Gui Yan shook his head, troubled. “Afterward I tried to investigate their background — not a single loose thread. Other than that their business is increasingly flourishing and more and more people seek them out. And I only recently learned that Hua Yue Jia Qi operates entirely for free.”

“Ha — doesn’t that explain why all your clients ran off?” I grinned. “If it were me, I’d choose the free one too.”

“It can’t be so simple!” Gui Yan was quite certain. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here looking for you.”

“Because I’m at least something of a local fixture in Wang Chuan?” I teased. “But I know absolutely nothing about the matchmaking industry, and I have no memory of this Hua Yue Jia Qi either. Wang Chuan is not a small city — there are plenty of places I’m not familiar with.”

“You have Shi Tou.” Gui Yan fixed his gaze on me. “I want to bring Ding Yan back. This is the only chance.”

I was aware that my Tian Fei Dun was still giving off no sign of warmth whatsoever.

“I have already told you everything I know. If you won’t help me…” Gui Yan’s expression darkened. “I will stop at nothing to take the Tian Fei Dun back.”

“You can’t beat me.” Ao Chi offered helpfully. “There’s no taking back something once given — that’s not what a stand-up man does.”

“I won’t fight you physically. I’ll fight you with words. I need only let it be widely known that the proprietress of Bu Ting holds eleven ancient divine stones, and people will come in a steady stream to fight you on my behalf. The little insect-people, besides collecting information, also have a business in spreading it — for a price. I’ve earned quite a bit over the years…”

“Fine! I’ll go investigate Hua Yue Jia Qi. But I make absolutely no promises. In return, you must promise me: if I obtain definitive news of Ding Yan, you will compensate me with the most costly item within your means.” Very well — I capitulated. I truly could not bear to hear the words “insect-people” anymore. This pack of unprincipled, money-grubbing information brokers — I would sort them out one day!

“Deal!” Gui Yan grabbed my hand, only to have it forcefully knocked away by Ao Chi.

Strangely, though this bilateral agreement had been sealed, the perpetually chattering Jiu Jue had not said a single word throughout the entire exchange. Like an outsider, he stared fixedly at the half-portrait, lost in thought.

“Hey!” I threw a walnut at his head.

Jiu Jue came back to himself, both eyebrows practically knotted together. He stared at the portrait in his hand and muttered to himself: “I feel like I’ve seen this before… but why can’t I remember… Chang’an… Eastern Fence Cottage…”

The sleeping Yonghuan lay sideways on the sofa, her small mouth moving as though murmuring something — dream talk, whose content none of us could know.

“Tell me — did someone bewitch you at some point and cast a curse or a hex that caused you to lose your memory?” I had no reason to believe she was making up nonsense or that she had lost her mind. If there was nothing wrong with her, the problem could only be on Jiu Jue’s end. This fellow drifted around the four seas constantly, making friends with all kinds of questionable characters — picking up one or two individuals with ill intentions along the way was perfectly normal.

“Do you think this is a novel?! Amnesia…” Jiu Jue denied it vehemently, raised both hands and scratched his head in agony. “That kind of melodramatic plot cannot possibly happen to an old hand like me! I’m working on remembering! I definitely have seen this portrait before. It’s just that I have a terrible memory — I’ve met so many people, and those who weren’t particularly important get forgotten completely without much trouble.”

Strange — had my eyes blurred again? On Jiu Jue’s swinging left wrist, that dark, sinuous shadow entwining him and Yonghuan flickered once more and was gone.

“What are you wearing on your wrist?” It was actually Ao Chi who, rubbing at his eyes, beat me to the question.

“Did you see it too?” Gui Yan said in surprise. “I thought I was simply too tired and had imagined it.”

“On my wrist?” Jiu Jue looked at his own wrist. “There’s nothing there. You must all be seeing things.”

“None of us are seeing things.” I walked over, took Jiu Jue’s wrist, and indeed found it empty. Then I carefully lifted Yonghuan’s right hand and gently touched the hand-cord.

Very quickly, I withdrew my fingers. A strange tingling sensation danced at my fingertips for several seconds before fading.

“There is something wrong with the hand-cord.” I set Yonghuan’s hand down. “Bring me a pair of scissors.”

Zhao Gongzi hurried over with the sharpest scissors.

I aimed at the weakest point at the clasp of the hand-cord and gave a sharp snip. The cord did not break — instead my fingers were jolted numb from the rebound.

This was not scientific. It was an entirely ordinary braided cord, the kind found everywhere.

“Since when has your strength gotten so small?” Ao Chi came and took the scissors, bore down hard — the cord remained uncut, but the scissors snapped in two.

Everyone’s expression turned grave.

Jiu Jue pointed at the hand-cord: “What did you all see?”

“A thin black shadow crawling out of the hand-cord, coiling around your wrist.” Yi said, her tone flat. “Perhaps this explains why this woman is so confident that you can never get rid of her.”

Jiu Jue hurriedly raised his arm and looked at it from every angle. “How is it that I can feel nothing at all?”

It seemed that even without Gui Yan’s threats, I would have to pay a visit to “Hua Yue Jia Qi” regardless. This business of Jiu Jue’s — I could not stand to watch anyone else make a fool of him. Only members of Bu Ting were permitted to tease him at will.

I stood up, righteousness blazing in my eyes, a killing intent in my gaze. “Zhao Gongzi!”

“Do you want me to go with you and fight our way through?” Zhao Gongzi was suddenly electrified with excitement. “I’ll go get my weapon!”

“No — I’m asking you to hurry up and get dinner made. I need to eat before I have the energy to go out.”

“Oh…”

The moment Zhao Gongzi’s mournful figure departed, I turned to Jiu Jue: “When you called earlier, you seemed to ask whether I’d gone out these past few days, and then said you had major news. Does whether or not I’d gone out have anything to do with you suddenly having a ‘fiancée’?”

Jiu Jue forcefully shook his head, working hard to straighten out the thinking that Yonghuan had completely scrambled, and said: “That matter and this one are not the same thing at all! Have you not been out on the street or caught any news these past few days?”

I pointed at Gui Yan. “This scoundrel has put Bu Ting in this state — where would I find time to pay attention to the outside world?”

“Up until yesterday, over four months, Wang Chuan’s suicide incidents have already climbed to one hundred and two! You practically have to be careful walking down the street that someone jumping off a building doesn’t land on you!” Jiu Jue frowned.

“Suicide?” I started.

“Yes!” Jiu Jue nodded. “I also looked through recent national news from a while back — similar incidents have been cropping up everywhere, one after another. That’s why I wanted to mention it to you. Every time the year-end comes around, things get unsettled. Think of two years ago, think of last year — my poor little heart trembles at it. If we run into it again this year, I’ll truly be going to burn incense at the temple.”

“Nothing could be worse than last year, and we survived that too, didn’t we?” Ao Chi took up the thread, glaring at him. “Besides, the world is vast and humanity is numerous — every day there are people who end their lives for all manner of reasons. Don’t assume the worst.”

“Four months. One hundred and two incidents! Don’t you think that’s too many?!”

Ao Chi was left speechless.

“Four months?” Gui Yan silently calculated, then looked puzzled. “Hua Yue Jia Qi opened for business exactly four months ago…”

“Do you think this is connected to them?” I thought for a moment, then asked: “You’ve been in Wang Chuan all this time — how did you not know something this significant was happening?”

“I only just got back from out of town! We’re shorthanded — Jin Xiu has been helping at a branch in another city, and Wang Chuan has been in my care. But there’s been no business, so I simply went to help Jin Xiu for several months. It was because no matter how I thought about it I couldn’t resign myself, that I finally came back to find you.” Gui Yan explained hurriedly. “In any case, the timing is just too much of a coincidence. Though it’s also hard to imagine — it’s just a matchmaking agency, after all. No matter how I think about it, I can’t see how they’d be connected to human lives!”

“How come you and Zhao Gongzi didn’t tell me either?” I turned to Chi Pian’er.

“Ah, since you weren’t at the shop, we didn’t dare go anywhere, so we just kept watch here day in and day out. You know Zhao Gongzi only loves reading his Romance of the Three Kingdoms — and I was busy too, so I didn’t notice the news…” Chi Pian’er mumbled evasively.

“Oh, spare me — you think I don’t know that all you do is chase idol dramas and never pay attention to national affairs, public welfare, or social news?” I shot it a severe look, then turned to Ao Chi. “Bring me the laptop.”

Soon, a segment of online interviews — with the friends and family members of several of the suicide victims, released anonymously — appeared on the screen.

A blurred elderly woman choked through her tears: “I knew he’d always loved that woman — but she didn’t love him, and she’d married someone else. It had already been several years. He always said he didn’t want to love anymore, that he was tired. But then he went and registered at the matchmaking agency on his own, and I thought he’d let go. How could he then… how could he just give up, leaving the two of us old folks behind?”

A man with his back to the camera, hunched, spoke in a low and heavy voice: “What my wife and I regret most now is speaking harshly to her, and pressuring her to go to the matchmaking agency. She said she didn’t understand love, didn’t want to love, and didn’t want to marry… How could this foolish child just…”

A matchmaking agency… each one had visited a matchmaking agency.

And then there was a detail in the final video segment that confirmed our suspicions —

A mother, her emotions running high, held a red card tightly in her hands, crying and speaking incoherently before the camera: “She had finally been willing to let go of that dreadful first love and go to the matchmaking agency — I thought things were moving in a good direction. How could she suddenly jump from somewhere so high… so very high. How much it must have hurt…”

Ao Chi pressed the pause button. Everyone’s gaze converged on that blurry red card, and in the silence, a shared understanding was reached.

Seemingly unconnected people and events all appeared to be gradually threaded together by a single common element —

Hua Yue Jia Qi.

Jiu Jue turned around, stared at the soundly dreaming “fiancée” on the sofa, and frowned, murmuring: “Shen Ziju…”

3

Of all the summer days since the season began, today was the hottest. Willow branches and leaves were pinned dead in the scorching air, and not a single cicada could be heard. Walking through Chang’an, you only had to touch any city wall or stone pillar and your palm was already seven or eight parts done.

Shen Ziju sat in the main hall, his hair pinned and adorned with flowers, dressed in elaborate finery — pitiably, the sweat from beneath his hat brim fell in a relentless stream, almost enough to form a small river.

The elegantly dressed Elder Madam Shen gripped her crane-head cane, her aged eyes having gazed toward the gate so many times now, yet always failing to see the scene she longed for.

Today, Shen Ziju — a young man of modest renown in Chang’an — was to be wed, taking as his bride Yue Ruyi, the daughter of Yue Wanhu, a wealthy merchant from Luoyang and a long-standing friend of the Shen family. A talented gentleman and a beautiful lady — everyone was pleased.

Old Madam Shen had spent countless years and months praying to see her only grandson married and starting a family before she stepped into her coffin. Now that she could witness this moment before her time came, she could truly die in peace. No wonder she was so excited she had not slept all night — before dawn she had been urging the entire household to run through the wedding arrangements once more, allowing no misstep, as though it were she herself who was about to be married.

The groom, Shen Ziju, was far calmer. Though he too had not slept the whole night, it was not from excitement — rather he had spent the entire night bent over his desk copying out the musical score for “Spring River Flower Moon Night,” and had only drifted off in exhaustion just before dawn. Had it not been for his grandmother’s cane knocking him painfully awake, he could have slept until another dawn entirely. Having lost both parents when he was young, he had been raised single-handedly by this strong-willed, decisive old woman, and not going against her wishes was his way of loving this sole remaining family member — including marrying Yue Ruyi.

He had nearly forgotten what Yue Ruyi looked like. His memory preserved only a vague image of a small girl who smiled without showing her teeth, who would blanch and lose her composure at the sight of so much as a leaping frog — not particularly beautiful nor particularly plain, the sort one could not find in a crowd without a fine set of clothes to distinguish her. Ten years ago, when she was eight, she had come with Yue Wanhu to visit the Shen household and stayed for a few days. He, as young host and elder brother, had taken this plain-as-water little girl around the Shen estate to fish a few times and paint a few pictures — mostly him doing while she watched, offering no opinions, occasionally covering her mouth with a light laugh, thoroughly every inch the well-bred young lady. Old Madam Shen had taken this child straight to her heart and frankly told Yue Wanhu: the daughter-in-law of the Shen family could be none other than Ruyi. Yue Wanhu had no objections — a businessman by nature, his abacus calculations were precise: the Shen family, while not among the grandest in Chang’an, still had considerable restaurants, pawnshops, and landholdings; and his own family in Luoyang was hardly exceptional either, and this youngest daughter was no great beauty, unlikely to catch the eye of the grand or official families. Better to let her make a brilliant match into the Shen family as a young mistress — the two families would be united, and in business matters they could support each other. Nothing to lose, any way one looked at it.

And so, without either of the persons most concerned having any say in the matter, their futures were decided in the clink of wine cups between their two elders.

The wedding date had originally been set for three years prior, but Yue Wanhu had fallen gravely ill on a business journey and passed away within a few months. Yue Ruyi had observed three years of mourning, and only now came the day of her leaving home. Escorted by her second elder brother of the Yue family, she journeyed all the way west toward Chang’an.

Yet by the agreed auspicious day, the wedding procession had not appeared at the Shen family gate — not even a distant sound of celebratory music. The Yue family’s reputation for punctuality was legendary, and the second young Yue master had personally written to confirm the date, saying the bridal sedan would arrive on time and the Shen family need only prepare to receive the bride. But as the horizon blazed with sunset colors, the sedan chair remained entirely out of sight. Servants dispatched to investigate came back wave after wave, none bringing useful news — only saying that crowds had gathered outside the west city gate, but still no sign of the wedding procession.

The guests in the side hall whispered amongst themselves. Some said that the road from Luoyang to Chang’an, if one took the shortcut through Black Fox Ridge, ran through terrain where bandits had been causing fierce trouble of late — killing and robbing multiple trading caravans. If the Yue family’s escort party hadn’t known about this and had gone that route…

Unhurried hoofbeats drew near, and the figure who walked in through the gate was not the long-awaited Yue family party.

A young man in grey, crowned with a head of lake-blue hair of a shade rarely seen in this world, swung in carrying a small, gleaming black wine jar, smiling broadly: “Late, late — to congratulate Brother Shen on his joyous day, I specifically tracked down this jar of aged daughter’s red wine.”

It was Shen Ziju’s drinking companion — all in the Shen household recognized this person, an idler who came by now and then to share wine with their young master, origin unknown, occupation unknown, addressed by Shen Ziju only as “Brother Jiu Jue.” The household’s spirits sank once more.

“What is all this?” Jiu Jue surveyed the room — red silk, red lanterns, red wedding characters — but no red bridal sedan. Empty and desolate.

Shen Ziju shook his head. “We don’t know. She was said to be arriving by midday for certain.”

“We cannot keep waiting.” Old Madam Shen’s cane struck the floor. “Ziju, take a few able-bodied men and go out of the city to look for yourself!”

Shen Ziju tugged at his cuffs and blotted the sweat from his brow. “Let us wait a little longer. Perhaps something has delayed them briefly on the road. Ruyi’s elder brothers are all accomplished fighters — her second brother even runs an escort agency. With him escorting her, nothing should go wrong.”

Hearing this, Old Madam Shen thought it reasonable, settled somewhat, and began pacing the room, murmuring: “May the Bodhisattva protect them. May they arrive safely.”

Jiu Jue considered, then stepped forward to address Shen Ziju: “It is growing late, and the guests are still here — it is no solution to keep waiting like this. As the groom, it is not fitting for you to rush about. Why not let me go and take a look? My horse has just been fed and could use a good run.”

Having said this, he turned to leave — but was caught by the sleeve by Shen Ziju: “You have already been worn out brewing the new wine these days. I truly cannot ask you to make this trip. Let us wait a little more.”

Wait? Still waiting? One’s own wife has gone missing, and there is not even a flicker of worry?

Jiu Jue knew Shen Ziju to be a slow-natured person. Ordinarily he spoke little — besides sharing wine by the fire with Jiu Jue, he devoted himself to calligraphy, painting, and musical instruments. His brushwork was fine, his paintings excellent, and any instrument placed in his hands could produce a beautiful melody, effortless as flowing clouds, lingering for three days — and yet he was only a small business owner of restaurants and pawnshops, with an extraordinary refinement about him. Having heard that Shen Ziju was to be married, Jiu Jue had not even paused to eat before rushing back from a thousand li away to attend the wedding, for he was intensely curious what sort of woman could become the wife of this man who rivaled Pan An in appearance and had such a nimble mind.

Several years ago, while wandering the four seas, he had arrived in Chang’an. At the city’s annual “Wine Tasting Competition” he had come to know Shen Ziju — participants blindfolded themselves and tasted dozens of wines, and whoever correctly identified the most varieties won the title of “Wine Immortal” that year, granting them free access to all the finest wines brewed in every winery of the city for a full year. In that competition, he and Shen Ziju had tied. For him, with his standing as an immortal official who brewed celestial wine, to encounter someone in the realm of wine who could hold his own — Shen Ziju was the first. The young man knew wine but was not given to it; he graciously yielded the championship to Jiu Jue. One thing led to another, and the two became drinking companions through wine — whenever Jiu Jue came to Chang’an, a few cups with Shen Ziju were never far behind. Later, Shen Ziju had a cottage-style villa built in the countryside, named Eastern Fence Cottage. He had visited once — backed by mountains, fronted by water, the scenery excellent. This young man’s life was genuinely enviable.

Only this Miss Yue Ruyi — he had never once heard Shen Ziju mention her. The young man virtually never spoke of anything related to lifelong matters. Unlike the usual wealthy young gentlemen of his age — most of whom had already fathered children multiple times by their mid-twenties — Shen Ziju seemed to have no interest in any woman whatsoever, so much so that Jiu Jue had at one point wondered if he had tendencies toward men.

Now he suddenly said he was to be married, and to a childhood companion no less — of course Jiu Jue had to ride here at full speed to see the spectacle!

Yet now here he was, and he hadn’t even seen a single hair of the bride’s. Truly disappointing. Even more disappointing was Shen Ziju’s attitude — this half-dead “wait, wait, wait” business, as though the person about to be married wasn’t him at all.

“The sky is completely dark. I’ll go and look after all.” Jiu Jue pulled his hand free, insisting on going out. “If something truly has gone wrong beyond the city walls, that would be very bad.”

“What good would you going do?” Shen Ziju seemed to panic, the words coming out before he could stop them.

Jiu Jue stopped and looked back at him strangely. What had gotten into this young man today? Ordinarily, even when provoked to anger, he never raised his voice to this degree.

“Ziju!” Old Madam Shen was also furious. “What scene is this you’re playing? You won’t go when told, and now Jiu Jue says he’ll go, and you won’t let him either. Do you have even a shred of concern for Ruyi’s safety?”

“Concern?!” Shen Ziju looked into Old Madam Shen’s furious eyes — and then laughed. “I don’t even know what she looks like.”

Jiu Jue was slightly taken aback. It was evident that what everyone hoped for was not what the groom himself hoped for.

Shen Ziju received a heavy blow from the cane — his slight frame nearly toppled.

“Even if you live your whole life without knowing what she looks like, she is still to be the daughter-in-law of our Shen family!” Old Madam Shen trembled with fury, pointing at Shen Ziju: “You won’t go to find her? Then I will! If I can’t find her in Chang’an, I’ll go to Luoyang! I demand an explanation!”

“Elder Madam, please calm yourself!” Jiu Jue quickly steadied the aged woman. “Brother Shen must have spoken in a moment of panic without thinking. Who wouldn’t be anxious if their wife went missing? Please take a breath — I’ll go check right now!”

Shen Ziju stood rooted to the spot like a stone, as if none of what was happening around him had anything to do with him. Only the musical score tucked inside his robe — that alone was his entire world.

“This unfilial child!” Old Madam Shen was helped back to her chair by Jiu Jue, her anger unabated. “Twenty-three years old and still not married with children — how can you face your parents who died so young?”

Before the words were fully out, several servants came rushing in leading a man dressed as a court officer, his face wearing the grave expression of one who brings bad news.

“My respects to Elder Madam Shen.” The officer made a bow. “I have been dispatched by Magistrate Li to deliver a message.”

The old woman’s heart tightened. “Please speak at once.”

“Two hours ago, a woodcutter passing through the outskirts found a wedding procession at the exit of Black Fox Ridge.” The officer paused. “All were killed. The dowry gifts had all disappeared — believed to be the work of bandits.”

Old Madam Shen’s cane clattered to the floor.

Shen Ziju looked even more like a stone — his face wore an expression impossible to name. It was not grief, not rage. It was more like the disbelief of someone who had somehow known this was going to happen, yet still found it unimaginable now that it had.

“All of them?” Jiu Jue inhaled sharply.

“By great fortune there is one survivor.” The officer continued. “Beneath several of the bodies, a bride in her wedding dress was found barely alive. She has been rescued, and a physician has examined her — only superficial wounds and a case of severe shock. No serious injuries. This woman identifies herself as being surnamed Yue, given name Ruyi. The magistrate, knowing that Master Shen was to take a Yue family bride today, has sent me to ask the young master to come immediately.”

“Ruyi is alive?!” The moment Old Madam Shen heard this, her soul seemed to snap back together. She leaped up and grabbed Shen Ziju. “What are you standing there for? Come on!”

Shen Ziju moved like a puppet, pushed and jostled by the urgency around him toward the door.

Everyone assumed he was simply unable to keep up with the whiplash of grief followed by joy, his emotions lagging behind the action.

Jiu Jue accompanied them throughout, from the Shen estate to the government office — Old Madam Shen always walked faster than Shen Ziju. When the pale-faced girl lying on the bed saw the anxious crowd rush in, her far-from-beautiful face was instantly awash with tears. Her wound-covered hands reached out, straining with tremendous effort, and grasped the hem of Shen Ziju’s robe, choking out a single cry: “Brother Ziju…”

Plain as she was, it was still difficult not to feel tenderness.

Shen Ziju seemed to come back to himself then. He bent down and took Yue Ruyi’s ice-cold hands. “It’s over. You’re safe.”

With a loved one’s comfort, Yue Ruyi burst into tears at last, throwing her arms around Shen Ziju and refusing to let go.

Shen Ziju did not move, letting her lean on him, gently patting her back.

The candle flame on the desk wavered. Old Madam Shen wiped her tears with one hand while pressing both palms together in gratitude, thanking the gods and buddhas for sparing Ruyi’s life.

Jiu Jue felt he too should be glad for his friend — yet every time he looked at Shen Ziju’s unremarkable, unperturbed face, something felt persistently amiss.

The court officers tactfully withdrew. In Chang’an, they at least owed the Shen family a degree of courtesy — after all, Old Madam Shen hosted them for a “meal of appreciation” at her restaurant every year, and whenever any officer found himself short of funds, a visit to the Shen pawnshop never ended in disappointment. Small kindnesses can indeed win hearts. Otherwise, with injuries and deaths happening every day, the magistrate’s office could never attend to so many.

“That future young Madam Shen — truly blessed with great fortune to have survived something like that.”

“Given the way they were wiped out and stripped clean — nine times out of ten it was Li the Big Beard. No other band of bandits at Black Fox Ridge would dare be this vicious.”

“But I heard from my cousin who serves in Luoyang that Li the Big Beard was captured in the capital early this year — I think he was even publicly beheaded.”

“Hmph. Whether they truly caught him or just found some random person to pin the crime on — who can say?”

“Who would dare do such a thing? It’s terrible karma.”

“Who knows. Come on — let’s go drink. We’ve been running around all day, exhausted and thirsty.”

Two court officers murmured as they walked away, their every word falling into Jiu Jue’s ears without missing a syllable.

He stepped out of the room as well, leaving that precious time of surviving a near-disaster to the pair about to become husband and wife, and to the old woman overwhelmed with conflicting feelings.

The worst had given way to the best — at least the bride was still alive.

The hour was already approaching midnight, yet the heat persisted. The entire city had put more than half itself to sleep, while the other half whiled away the time in wine and pleasures. No one knew what ordeal and wonder the Shen family had passed through in a single night…

4

“And then what?”

“Then Shen Ziju brought Yue Ruyi home, and before long the wedding ceremony took place as planned. I drank their wedding wine and then left Chang’an. By the time I next visited that ancient city, two hundred years had already passed. The Shen family members had long since departed this world — no descendants remained, and both the Shen estate and Eastern Fence Cottage no longer existed.”

“Why did you take so long to go back? Wasn’t the man surnamed Shen your good friend?”

“I happened to be busy then — the old ghosts in the celestial realm were after me every single day to brew wine. And besides…” Jiu Jue corrected me, “Shen Ziju and I were not good friends — merely drinking companions who happened to cross paths. People like him, who appear and disappear from my life quietly, are far too numerous. So when Yonghuan mentioned him, I had to think for quite a while before I even remembered who he was.”

From the rear-view mirror I watched Jiu Jue, freshly emerged from his reminiscing, and asked him once more: “You can remember Shen Ziju — but can you truly confirm that Yonghuan had no presence in your memory?”

“I truly cannot recall.” Jiu Jue scratched his head. “Or perhaps I should think a little harder?”

“Too much wine leads to premature senility.” Ao Chi, driving, cut in. “You’d better watch out for dementia in your old age!”

“I’m already very old,” Jiu Jue said deliberately. “But I sincerely wish you’d grow younger and younger — younger until you’re a tiny baby!”

“Don’t bring up that memory!”

“What are you going to do if I do? Hit me, go on, hit me!”

“You think I wouldn’t dare?”

No matter how those two troublemakers quarreled, our car was headed unwaveringly westward toward Taoye Bay.

The suspect-riddled “Hua Yue Jia Qi” was located in this part of the city — a district I almost never frequented, not because it was remote but because I found it too chaotic and noisy. Taoye Bay was the commercial district closest to the city center, the largest wholesale clothing market and all manner of miscellaneous shops crammed into that palm-sized “golden area,” along with Taoye Tower — an old building barely recognizable in its original form — packed full of residents who couldn’t afford new housing and companies that couldn’t afford proper office space. Gui Yan had said the matchmaking agency was in the leftmost unit on the 23rd floor of Taoye Tower, next door to a second-hand mobile phone company.

In the lobby coated with dust and grease, I could barely make out the outlines of the five of us in the grey mirror walls. The place had clearly gone unswept for far too long — yet a shortage of people was the one thing Taoye Tower certainly was not lacking.

I left the sleeping Yonghuan in the care of Zhao Gongzi and Chi Pian’er. Yi, who was too lazy to come, was forcefully dragged into the car by me. Of everyone, Yi could have stayed behind — but not Yi. Why? Heh heh — just in case.

People came and went in a hurry past us: some carrying heavy paper boxes, some dragging woven bags stuffed with cheap clothing, some pushing carts loaded with boxed meals… A disheveled woman with a nest-like head of hair chased after the meal cart calling: “I’m buying two boxes — why can’t you take two yuan off?!”

The people of Taoye Tower, from morning to night, were all scrambling just to get by. So I found it puzzling why Hua Yue Jia Qi would choose to set up shop here. If they were prosperous enough to drive competitors out of business, why were they unwilling to find somewhere tasteful and serene? This was a place supposedly bearing the name of the Old Moon God, meant to help people find matches — yet it ended up feeling like shopping at a vegetable market.

In the narrow, dilapidated elevator, the numbers on the buttons had been rubbed smooth. Jiu Jue stared for quite a while before correctly selecting the 23rd floor. Just as the doors were about to close, a not-entirely-clean hand suddenly reached in to stop them, and along with a strong smell of braised meat, the woman who had been buying boxed meals came rushing in — heading to the same floor as us.

In those brief ten or so seconds, the woman did not so much as glance at us. She crouched in the corner of the elevator, swiftly scooping all the braised meat from one box into the other.

Only when the elevator opened and I politely gestured for her to go first did I hear her murmur something indistinct — something about nice clothes.

Was she talking about me?!

Today I was not wearing the signature qipao. I had deliberately changed into the most ordinary white cashmere long coat I owned. If even this drew a compliment, I supposed I ought to feel rather pleased.

I watched the woman walk toward Unit C on the 23rd floor.

This floor had only three units — A, B, and C — arranged in a 品-character formation. Unit C’s door was the most old-fashioned style of sliding security gate, left half-open, with the wooden door behind it wide open. A man of around forty or so sat slumped in a small chair pressed right up against the security gate, his nose bridge bearing the sort of dark glasses only the blind would wear, the corner of his mouth trailing a line of drool. The woman’s footsteps were still some distance away, yet he seemed to know she was coming, and let out cheerful “yee-yee-ya-ya” sounds.

“Today we have braised pork!” The woman waggled the plastic bag in her hand, grinning happily at the man. “The stall owner is a good person — he gave twice the meat for no extra charge.”

As I walked past her doorway, I deliberately slowed my step and caught a glimpse of her supporting the man as she led him inside. When she noticed someone watching from behind, she looked back at me, then turned and pulled the security gate shut — no observers welcome.

As Gui Yan had described, Unit B bore a nameplate for some communications company, the kind of business that rents beat-up old apartments because it’s far cheaper than a proper office. The door was firmly shut, plastered with overdue utility payment notices.

When Unit A — the farthest in, with the grandest entrance — came into view, the first thing to catch my eye was the couplet posted on both sides of the doorframe:

Upper line: As the heavens are long and the earth endures, water drops pierce through stone Lower line: Where the seas run dry and stones crumble, moths fly into the flame Horizontal header: Hua Yue Jia Qi

The calligraphy was mediocre — not the work of any renowned hand, more like a practice piece from someone who had trained for a few days and couldn’t wait to show off. From ancient times to now, I had seen quite a few matchmaking establishments, and none of their mottoes had ever felt like this one: composed of entirely ordinary words and phrases, nothing clever or outstanding, yet for no apparent reason making me feel a heaviness. As though something had pressed down on my light mood.

A matchmaking agency — surely every detail ought to be filled with cheerful auspiciousness, shouldn’t it?

A mere couplet, and already I felt faintly unsettled.

After a brief deliberation, it was decided: Ao Chi, Yi, and I would go in for a look, while Gui Yan and Jiu Jue waited outside for news. Reason one: Gui Yan was a familiar face — going in would only earn him another ejection. Reason two: given the strange shadow connected between Yonghuan’s hand-cord and Jiu Jue’s wrist, it was best not to reveal Jiu Jue for now. If anything unexpected happened inside, those outside could offer backup.

“Remember — right now we’re colleagues: three single, older adults, here together to look for a partner!” Before pressing the doorbell, I reminded the two men beside me one final time.

“I don’t want to go in.” Yi yawned. “I’d advise you two not to go in either.”

“Are you scared?” Ao Chi glanced at him, then sniffed the air hard. “No demon aura, no deathly aura — only the smell of humans. Since when have you gotten so cowardly?”

“You have no choice.” I didn’t even bother asking why. My finger had already pressed the heart-shaped red doorbell.

After three “ding-dong” sounds, the vermilion iron door opened inward. Behind it, a young girl in a red suit and black-rimmed glasses smiled at us. “Are the three of you here for emotional consultation?”

I asked back: “Does finding a partner fall under emotional consultation?”

The red suit smiled even more sweetly. “Of course — that is our main service. Please come in.”

The room was larger than we had imagined. Converted from a residential apartment, it didn’t feel cramped at all. The walls of the main hall — including the ceiling — were painted a warm, soft pink. Nine white heart-shaped office desks stood in neat rows, each staffed by a person in a red suit with black-rimmed glasses; at first glance they all looked as if cast from the same mold. Business was rather brisk — each desk had a client in front of it, and in the waiting area sat a woman in a black coat, appearing to be in her early thirties, clutching her handbag tightly, wariness in her eyes toward everyone.

The red suit led us to the rest area and handed each of us a form, saying: “Please fill this in carefully according to your needs, then hand it to me. My name is Number Ten.”

“Your name is Number Ten?” Ao Chi very much wanted to laugh. He glanced at her colleagues behind her. “So your coworkers are named One, Two, Three, Four, and Five?”

“Yes.” Number Ten maintained her highly professional smile. “We all go by our work numbers. Please fill in the form carefully and hand it to me when you’re done. I’ll be at the front desk over there.”

I had no time to puzzle over the number-names. I bent my head and carefully examined the form in my hands. It was quite simple: the first section requested basic information — name, gender, occupation, and identification number. The second section, headed “Please fill in the following if you are seeking a partner,” had only one field — “Please briefly describe your requirements for an ideal partner.” The third section, headed “Please tick applicable boxes if you have other emotional consultation needs,” had three options: “1. Unrequited love,” “2. Breakup,” “3. Bereavement.”

Truly distinctive, this form…

Ao Chi and I exchanged a glance and silently filled in the second section.

I wrote: Must have a good temper — cannot resort to hitting or yelling at the slightest provocation. Emotional and intellectual quotients must both be no lower than normal. Most importantly, must be willing to spend money on their wife.

He wrote: Good figure…

Yi wrote: Doesn’t matter. As long as they’re not a man.

I immediately felt that sitting beside them lowered my own caliber…

Number Ten smiled as she read through the forms we handed in, eyes not blinking, and said: “Please wait a moment, the three of you. Once our manager has completed the initial review, you will be notified.”

“Is this a job interview? You even need an initial review!” Ao Chi was unhappy.

“I apologize, sir. This is a required procedure at Hua Yue Jia Qi.” Number Ten rose and gave him a small bow. “If you have any complaints, you are welcome to report them to me at any time. For now, please return to the waiting area for ten minutes.”

Quite a personality on this staff member.

Returning to the waiting area, Ao Chi said to me in a low voice: “Something is off here.”

“It looks perfectly normal to me.” I scanned the room. Staff and clients were all deep in animated conversation, a few clients were wiping tears, and the numbered young women were thoughtfully offering tissues and words of comfort.

“That’s precisely it — it looks too normal.” Ao Chi swept his gaze around. “Don’t you feel that there is simply too much ‘human energy’ in this place?”

Too much human energy?! He had hit on exactly what I’d been feeling!

That was the thing I couldn’t quite place before. Human energy is a given in the human world — the predominance of humans ensures it. But human energy fluctuates with the density of people — heavier where crowds gather, lighter where they thin. The human energy in Taoye Tower was crushingly heavy, as though tens of millions of people lived here. Yet in reality, the entire tower contained at most ninety residential units, which even at maximum capacity wouldn’t exceed a thousand people. Add in the traffic through the mall on the ground floor and basement level, and several thousand at the absolute most.

How very strange!

Just then, the woman in the black coat nearby seemed to recall something sad, and suddenly began sobbing softly.

“Are you alright?” I timely offered a tissue.

The woman in the black coat shook her head. She didn’t take the tissue either — she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, deliberately avoiding eye contact with me, and asked: “Are you here to find a partner?”

“Yes. The long nights are so lonely — how wonderful it would be to have someone beside you.” I said with full seriousness. “Aren’t you?”

The woman in the black coat suddenly smiled — a shift from crying to smiling with absolutely no transition. She slowly turned her head and stared through the fogged window at the view outside, murmuring: “I have no strength left… longing, resentment, love…”

Was this yet another woman who had despaired after searching for a match?!

Before I could say another word, Number Ten came floating out of the separate office in the northeast corner.

“Mr. Lin, your information has no issues — here is your number token. Please rest for a moment. I will notify you shortly to go and meet the manager.” Number Ten handed Yi a heart-shaped plastic token printed with the number “2,” then turned to Ao Chi and me with a smile. “Ms. Sha and Mr. Long — I regret to inform you that your information has not passed the review. Hua Yue Jia Qi is sorry it cannot serve you. Allow me to see you out.”

The dismissal came rather swiftly — but it was no more than I had expected.

“We hope to have the opportunity to serve you in the future. Farewell.” Number Ten’s smile vanished behind the swiftly closing door.

Ao Chi stared at the couplet on the door. “Now I understand why you insisted that fellow had to come.”

“You understand now?” I smiled, and turned to walk toward the other end of the corridor.

“That manager is no ordinary sort.” Ao Chi took one last look behind him. “I think the reason we were driven out is the same as Gui Yan’s.”

Before we had gone two steps, Jiu Jue and Gui Yan, who had been keeping watch in the stairwell, poked their heads out. “That’s it? You’re already out?” Gui Yan looked past us. “Where’s the stone-faced little fellow?”

“The younger generation has prospects!” I smiled. “Us old ones are truly beyond the pale — a single failed review and out we were tossed.”

“Hm?” Gui Yan started. “But why is it that this young man…”

Before he could finish, he worked it out himself, and slapped his knee. “There is definitely something wrong! Even if our false identity documents were airtight, they still knew that we were already paired up and had no need to find a match! That’s why they disregarded us!”

“I’ve known Yi for a year, and based on my observation and intuition — this fellow should be single.” I patted Gui Yan’s shoulder. “From the moment you mentioned being thrown out, I found it strange. They may not have known your identity, but they seemed able to see your true situation — paired or unpaired, clear as day. That is information no database lookup can reveal. Before I came, I wanted to verify this: if Ao Chi and I were also expelled while Yi was kept, then this place truly does have someone extraordinary. And now that is confirmed.”

“Can the young man handle it?” Jiu Jue was a bit concerned. “Everything about this place appears fine, yet I feel something is wrong with every inch of it.”

“He’s more capable than you.” I shrugged. With this person of unknown background — a Daoist of sorts — whom I still hadn’t fully figured out, I trusted his abilities entirely. Throughout our journey he had been like a shadow one might easily overlook, yet he always managed to do something useful at a critical moment. I would not have left someone incapable of holding his own in that unknown room as our mole.

Yet somewhere in my heart, there was still a small flicker of worry. A year of keeping each other company does create a certain attachment.

Now what we needed to do, besides waiting, was one other thing.

“Since Yi has not yet come out, I’d like us to use this time to clarify one matter.” I looked seriously at everyone present. “The human energy in Taoye Tower is disproportionate to its population. I suspect someone has been at work here, disguising certain abnormal ‘traces.’ Let’s split up and take a look — reconvene here in half an hour.”

“You noticed too?” Jiu Jue frowned. “I’ll go look at the lower floors.”

“I’ll go to the roof.” Gui Yan jumped into the elevator.

“I’ll go overhead and survey from above.” Ao Chi moved the fastest and, transforming into a streak of light, slipped out through the corridor window.

What was left for me? Door-to-door resident interviews?

Just as I was thinking this, a heavy rattling sound came from outside. I poked my head out of the stairwell to look: the woman from Unit C was laboriously pulling open the security gate, casually setting a large bag of rubbish out by the door.

Seeing me appear, she paused, then looked left and right, and surprisingly opened her mouth to say: “Still here?”

“Yes.” I walked over, smiling. “My friend is still inside registering to find a match. I’m waiting for him.”

The woman leaned against the doorframe and sighed. “People who look as lovely as you still need to come here to find a partner? No wonder Hua Yue Jia Qi is doing such good business. It just goes to show that finding someone right for you is getting harder and harder in this day and age.”

“The one I love doesn’t love me, and the one who loves me — I don’t love. Isn’t life full of exactly these kinds of misalignments?” I walked up to her and asked casually, “What should I call you?”

“Mm. I’ve lived here since I got married. My surname is Fang — but everyone here calls me Sister Tao. I have a little fruit stall at the head of the street, and the thing I sell the most is peaches.” Sister Tao glanced at the cheap watch on her wrist — she seemed to have a little time for conversation still. “I think you’re not that old, little sister. Don’t rush the business of finding a partner. Get the wrong one, and you could ruin half your life.”

My mind immediately conjured the image of the man with the drooping neck and the thread of drool. Was she reflecting on her own story?

“Mm, no rush.” I nodded, and ventured: “The person waiting for you at the door just now…”

“My husband.” Sister Tao smiled crookedly. “The moment I go out to set up my stall, he has to wait for me at the door. He’s been like this since he recovered — more than ten years now, and he still can’t break this habit.”

This smile — no self-deprecation, no bitterness. Surprisingly, even a touch of sweetness.

Sister Tao looked me over again and said: “On the elevator I thought your coat was lovely. I used to love wearing white skirts too when I was young — pity that now my face has wrinkled and my waist has thickened. A fine garment would just be wasted on me.” She pulled a half-smoked cigarette from her trouser pocket, lit it, and took a deeply contented drag, then smiled and asked me: “Do you think, Auntie that I am, if I lost a little weight and wore something like yours — would there still be a lingering charm?”

A rare thing in such an environment — to still retain a sliver of humor. I could not help but look at this woman anew: her whole body in drab windproof clothing, hair dry and tangled as a bird’s nest.

She continued to lean sideways against the doorframe, her figure by now devoid of any curves — yet the cigarette between her fingers, the still gaze in her eyes, and the habitual faint upward curve of her lips after each exhaled breath — all of it contained a quality burnished by the long tides of time and the harsh texture of life, into a black-and-white kind of… allure.

“If I may ask — was it an illness that left your husband this way?” My gaze drifted past her profile and into the interior of the room.

“Hit in the back of the head by a brick. The doctor said he’d become a vegetable — but the prediction turned out to be wrong.” Sister Tao exhaled a smoke ring. “When I was young, I worked at a bar as a hostess. We were classmates in middle school — he’d always liked me, and I liked him. But my family circumstances were poor, and his parents were firmly opposed to us being together. After we graduated high school, we lost touch. Later we ran into each other in another city at a bar. By that time he had opened a small company — not rich exactly, but not poor, and he had never married or had a girlfriend.” Sister Tao smiled. “That fool — the moment he saw me, he erupted. He just grabbed my arm and started walking toward the exit. A customer tried to stop us, and he got into a fight — that time it was a broken left hand, and he was in the hospital for a month.”

“And then you got married?” I smiled too. If only this were the end of the story: ordinary, and perfectly content.

“Our marriage led his parents to cut him off completely.” Sister Tao looked toward her home. “This apartment he bought himself when he was earning his own way — and so it became our home, where we have lived ever since. He said: We’ll manage on our own. Given time, when we’ve had a sweet child of our own, his parents will come around. In those days I’d also found a decent job — working as a sales clerk at a shopping mall. Every evening after work, I’d wait for him to pick me up at the balloon stall by the mall entrance, the way he waits for me now.” She casually flicked the ash to the floor and continued: “Two years later, one day, some thugs I’d known from the bar days walked past the mall and saw me waiting for him. Of course they couldn’t keep their mouths and hands to themselves. I asked them to conduct themselves properly — in exchange, I received several slaps. Then he showed up, and the fight started. He’s usually an exceptionally refined man — but when he actually fights, he’s ferocious. Those fellows were no real match for him. One of them sneaked up with a brick they’d picked up and got him from behind. What you see now is what he looked like after his recovery — without a single one of the listed complications being missed.” She paused. “At that time I was also only twenty-five. My looks and figure back then were not what they are now. There were people telling me to let him go — we didn’t have children yet, and finding another support in life would be no great difficulty.”

“Were you ever tempted?” My mind conjured an image of a grief-stricken twenty-five-year-old woman.

“How could anyone not be tempted — we’re all ordinary people, no halo overhead, not cut out for sainthood.” She exhaled the last smoke ring and looked at me with a smile. “But the moment I thought of what he said to me while going under — bleeding from the head — I couldn’t make myself take a single step.”

“What did he say?”

“‘I’m here. No one will dare push you around.'” She stubbed out the cigarette. “More than ten years now — and that’s how we’ve gotten through it.”

I was silent for a moment, then asked: “Do you feel it’s a sense of duty?”

She smiled again — with the gaze of someone who has long since passed through it all, looking at me: “Nothing could sustain you through this on duty alone. You young people like you cannot imagine the depths to which our lives have at times fallen.” She paused. “I love him. So I didn’t let go. It’s that simple. You don’t know how adorable he looks when he throws a fit demanding braised pork. And though he’s blind and his mind isn’t what it was — the moment I come close, he knows it’s me. Isn’t that remarkable?”

I let out a long breath, and smiled. “You tell a complete stranger your private matters just like that?”

“Even knowing all this, would you — a stranger — actually do harm to this middle-aged woman?” Sister Tao shrugged. “All those who know our story, whether family or friends — most eventually drift out of our lives. I don’t blame them. It’s just that with time, having no one to talk to gets rather dull. It’s a rare thing to have a chat with you — don’t mind an auntie running on a bit. Think of it as serving as a rubbish bin — that’s doing a good deed too. And while I’m at it — do come and support my stall sometime. It’s at the third tree across from the T-junction up ahead. Given your manner and your clothes, you’re clearly the sort who doesn’t even haggle when buying fruit — saving the bargains for others rather than this auntie here would be such a waste.”

“Alright, I’ll remember: third tree from the T-junction.” I burst out laughing.

If she were a demon, I would have invited her into Bu Ting for tea. I liked the candor and humor that ran deep in her bones.

“By the way — since you’ve always lived here, you must have often run into staff from Hua Yue Jia Qi?” I asked.

Sister Tao thought about it, then shook her head. “Honestly — not once. Their door is always shut tight. Besides the clients like you who come to call, I have never seen any of their staff come out. Perhaps the timing is never right.”

The moment the words were out, a shout came from inside the room, and Sister Tao responded. She then turned back to me: “He’s calling me to keep him company while he listens to the radio. You take care. I hope you’ll soon find your right person — and keep your eyes sharp about it!”

People with stories everywhere — I confirmed this once again, and I was glad I happened to be here and happened to have heard this account of a middle-aged woman and her blind husband. A chance encounter, and an old story long since past.

The security gate swung shut again, sending me and this woman I’d just met drifting back to our separate worlds.

I checked the time: half an hour had passed. The elevator gave a “ding,” and Jiu Jue came hurrying out, something gripped in each hand — two grass figures less than a foot tall, each one round and plump, as though stuffed full of cotton. Right behind him, Gui Yan came bounding down from the stairwell, nearly colliding with Ao Chi, who materialized without warning.

“This place is definitely wrong!” Ao Chi’s expression was grave. “From the air, I could see that the entire tower is locked under a faint red mist.”

“The human energy flowing through here is ‘dead.'” Gui Yan frowned. “Someone has deliberately been at work.”

“It’s the Soul-Borrowing Energy-Gathering Technique.” Jiu Jue dropped the grass figures on the ground, tore open their bellies, and a pile of rice spilled out with a clatter. He picked up a single grain and held it up before me. “Look — every grain of rice has a name and a birth date inscribed on it by magical means. All the people whose information was inscribed must be living persons. Once their details are carved into the rice grains and gathered together, as long as these people remain alive, the grains will draw their ‘life energy’ in a continuous stream. In ancient times, if a grand estate had been uninhabited for long, its owner would bring in a Daoist to use this technique to ‘fill’ the residence, dispersing the gloomy cold energy and preventing illness and misfortune. The people whose ‘souls’ were borrowed face no danger to their lives — they’ll simply suffer prolonged fatigue and weakened immunity. That is why this technique, which harms others for one’s own benefit, was outlawed long ago. To think someone still knows it today. I had to circle the basement twice before locating these two figures at one point of extreme Yang and one of extreme Yin — they had a sight-confusing technique on them, invisible to ordinary eyes. This despicable, low-down method. I hate it.”

“Where there is need, it cannot truly be banned.” I looked at the pile of rice grains underfoot. “No wonder there’s no demon aura — it was all masked long ago.”

Ao Chi, his face twisted in disgust, extended a finger toward the ground and jabbed downward. A tongue of flame appeared from thin air, incinerating the grass figures and rice grains into a heap of black ash in an instant. Countless threads of white vapor rose from the ashes and passed through the surrounding walls, vanishing without a trace.

In the same moment, all of us were hit by a wave of demonic energy rushing straight at our faces. Suppressed for far too long, it surged in like an ocean, like countless desperate hands clutching at my heart simultaneously, making it impossible to breathe. Beyond that, an inexplicable grief welled from somewhere deep within — so intense that I wanted to wail.

Gui Yan held his breath and shook his head. “I have never, in all my years, been subjected to such an overwhelming demonic aura. What a colossal demon this must be!”

“Not necessarily large — certainly formidable.” Jiu Jue worked to steady his breathing. He looked around. “Where is Yi? Still not out?”

I was startled — right, so much time had passed, and the Hua Yue Jia Qi door had not opened once. I quickly grabbed my phone and called him: “ding-dong, ding-dong,” and then: The subscriber you have dialed is currently out of service area.

Very well. It seemed the undercover mission would have to be forcibly concluded.

We strode quickly to the Hua Yue Jia Qi entrance, just about to force the door — when the door opened.

The woman in the black coat from our earlier encounter stepped out unhurriedly, saying a “thank you” over her shoulder to Number Ten, and when she noticed us at the entrance, she did not so much as glance our way, held her head slightly higher, and walked past us. Her face wore an expression of profound relief, completely transformed from the helpless, weeping woman from before.

Though if I wasn’t mistaken, the area beneath her left eye had gained a bandage since she’d arrived?!

Not only her — Number Ten, too, behaved as if we didn’t exist. She was about to pull the iron door shut.

Ao Chi put a solid thud of his hand against it, blocking the door, and fixed her with a glare. “Is this how you treat your clients? Just now you were all smiles — and now you’ve turned your face at the blink of an eye?”

Number Ten’s face showed not a trace of any emotion. “I apologize. You are not clients of Hua Yue Jia Qi. Please leave.”

“Then kindly ask my friend to come out — I’ve been waiting for him for quite a while.” I stepped forward.

“Are you referring to Mr. Lin?” Number Ten replied with certainty. “He left fifteen minutes ago.”

“Impossible!” I kept my anger in check. “From the moment I walked out to now, aside from that woman in the black coat, no one has come out.”

“Then you must have stepped away and missed him.” Number Ten’s face was even colder than mine.

“Is that so?” I gave a cold smile.

No signal was needed — Ao Chi very obligingly gave the iron door a hard kick.

Every client seated at the office desks and mid-conversation with a numbered young woman fell into terrified silence and looked back at us.

The faces that turned around — some belonging to groundhogs, some to toads, along with a cactus and a banana plant — so-called “clients,” and yet half of them were demons. The Soul-Borrowing Energy-Gathering Technique having been broken, demons of all kinds lost the illusory disguise confusing the eye. The remaining half were bona fide humans, though they now looked worse than ghosts — screaming and scrambling over each other in a rush to get out the door.

Number Ten was shoved back several steps by the force of it all. Her face remained expressionless. “If you leave now, we can still part on peaceful terms.”

“Send your boss out here, and I’ll guarantee your safety in kind.” I looked at the firmly shut manager’s office door — unless I was mistaken, Yi should be in there.

Boom!

The iron door Ao Chi had kicked open instantly restored itself — shutting firmly, without a gap.

The similarly-faced numbered young women lined up defensively before us, speaking in the same tone with the same expression, their voices sharp and shrill: “Get out! Get out!”

“Against all of you?” Ao Chi’s eyes flashed, and he casually grabbed a stack of memo paper from a nearby desk. He twirled it lightly between his fingers, then hurled it forward with force. The thin paper transformed into several diamond-shaped white beams of light, spinning as they sliced toward the numbered women advancing on us.

“Swish, swish, swish” — a series of soft sounds cut through the air, and then the shrill voices cut off. The numbered women, bisected by the memo paper, crumpled softly to the floor. Without mounting any counterattack, they dissolved into lengths of red thread, then gave one last disgusting writhe before going completely still.

Demons made of red thread?!

Far too fragile — Ao Chi had barely exerted any force, yet they had collapsed utterly.

Looking around, the demonic clients who hadn’t managed to flee in time were shaking all over — some cowering behind curtains and cabinets, some simply jumping straight out the window.

I seized a banana-plant demon that was about to make the leap and demanded sharply: “What exactly are you all here for?”

The banana-plant demon, half a head taller than me, thudded to its knees. “I-I came for help! I have fallen for the daughter of a fruit orchard owner and wish to marry her, but she is engaged to another man! Only this place offers privately provided fate-binding threads — able to help me attain my heart’s desire!”

“Privately provided fate-binding threads?” Jiu Jue stepped forward and grabbed the demon. “Fate-binding threads have always been under the jurisdiction of the celestial realm’s Moon God. What gives this place the right to offer them?!”

“They said so themselves!” The banana-plant demon pointed frantically at the manager’s office door. “They told me that as long as I was willing, they could bind me and my beloved with a fate-binding thread, so that she would be unable to go through with her engagement, and no matter how much she might dislike me, she could never be rid of me — and no matter where she might hide, I could use the power of that thread to appear by her side! And all of it for free! I have a friend who came here before — he said it was real, that this place is the Moon God’s Hall in the mortal world!”

“Nonsense!” Gui Yan was furious. “What kind of honored and revered deity is the Moon God — how dare you besmirch his name this way?!”

“I would never dare deceive the noble lords!” The banana-plant demon dissolved into tears and snot. “I have never done anything wicked! I simply love Miss Axiu too much! Great lords, spare my life! I’ll go home and never dare entertain such foolish hopes again!”

And with this, everyone understood what had happened between Yonghuan and Jiu Jue — the so-called “love” was nothing but a conjured enchantment.

I was just about to ask more questions when a red thread appeared from thin air, fast as lightning, and coiled around the banana-plant demon’s neck. A light squeeze, and the demon fell, head parting from body — dissolving into a puddle of green water.

Extremely decisive. Not the slightest hesitation.

“I was already willing to let you all leave — how ungrateful to refuse the offer.” A voice as clear and clean as a spring, emerging from within the manager’s office. The white door swung open slowly.

A familiar warmth suddenly spread from the innermost pocket of my coat — I had brought the Tian Fei Dun when I left.

5

Not until I saw this man in full did I completely understand why he had perpetually occupied the top spot on the celestial realm’s list of most admired male deities.

Crimson threads curled between his slender fingertips, and even at ease and seated, his posture was remarkably upright. A face refined yet not in the least effeminate — not a single flaw to be found. Those light-brown eyes in particular were ten times more beautiful than Gui Yan had ever described them. Such features required no assistance from thick side-swept bangs or any ornament whatsoever — only the simplest, neatest cut of black hair, and he was already as good as he could possibly be. Add to this the white mandarin-collar Tang-style jacket embroidered in silver thread — exquisite but not garish, flowers and round moons rendered with life-like precision. Whichever angle you looked from, he seemed like a man perpetually bathed in the clear luminance of a bright moon, absorbed in his threads, untouched by worldly affairs.

Comparing Ao Chi to him, I could only say — my Lord Ao is carved a touch too rough.

An enormous, sweeping half-moon desk made entirely of glass reflected his smiling face — and stood between him and us like a gulf: commanding, and warning strangers to keep their distance.

“Ding Yan?!” Gui Yan, after mentally comparing this person to his old friend two hundred times, finally blurted it out. “It’s truly you? It’s actually you?!”

“These days, everyone calls me Mr. Yue.” He smiled and knotted the red thread in his fingertips, then let it go — neither confirming nor denying.

Gui Yan clenched his fist, incredulous, scrutinizing this old friend he had known since tens of thousands of years ago: “Why have you never contacted me all these years? Why did you set up this kind of secretive matchmaking agency?!”

“First — I conduct business in the open, entirely aboveboard. Second — this is not merely a matchmaking agency. All matters of the heart can find resolution here.” Having made this correction, Mr. Yue looked at us with approval. “Hua Yue Jia Qi has been in business for several centuries, and you are the first group to have made such a mess of it. When you destroyed my grass figures, I was right there in my office giving you a round of applause!”

Jiu Jue, who had been unable to contain himself from the moment they set eyes on each other, slapped the desk. “You’re the one behind Yonghuan’s situation, aren’t you?”

“Where there is cause, there is effect.” Mr. Yue smiled. “Yonghuan cherishes you with wholehearted devotion. Why refuse her?”

“You are no longer the Moon God and have no right to meddle in others’ fates.” Jiu Jue raised his left hand. “If you have tied something to my person that should not be there, remove it — before I lose my temper.”

“Hua Yue Jia Qi is not willing to let any client leave heartbroken.” Mr. Yue breathed on the red thread in his hand, and the soft thread drifted slowly upward, curling into a perfect red heart above the desk. “Hua Yue Jia Qi’s existence may hold more meaning than the Moon God’s hall.”

He was making it perfectly clear he had no intention of taking Jiu Jue seriously…

I blocked Jiu Jue, who was on the verge of erupting, and said: “Then my existence, for you, is perhaps something of a calamity. Hand over my person.”

“Your person?” Mr. Yue considered for a moment. “Oh! The young man with no expression, correct?”

“Where is he?” I frowned.

Mr. Yue tilted slightly, propped his chin on one hand, and asked smilingly: “Is this person very important to you?”

“I am this person’s employer. As my associate, I have an obligation to ensure his safety.” I had no intention of telling him that if something had truly happened to Yi, my heart would not be at ease.

“So the feelings aren’t particularly deep, then.” Mr. Yue smiled again — a suggestive smile. “Yet in this gentleman’s heart, you are the woman he holds most dear.”

What?!

Me?! Yi holds me most dear?!

No, no, no — this scoundrel was talking nonsense. In Yi’s heart, he likely wished his stingy boss would choke on her food or fall into a ditch. How was it possible that he regarded me as the woman most dear to him?!

Within the other party’s suggestive smile, I also noticed Ao Chi’s face going dark — every line of it read: “I always knew that miscreant harbored vile intentions toward you.”

I pressed down my irritation and smiled brilliantly: “Is that so? To think I still have such a devoted young admirer at my age — truly gratifying. So may I trouble you to send him back to me, so my vanity may enjoy long-term satisfaction?”

Ao Chi’s fist was clenched tighter than ever, his gaze at me practically shooting flames.

“That won’t do.” Mr. Yue’s finger moved, and the red heart transformed back into a dangling red thread falling into his palm. “You are already bound in matrimony with the gentleman beside you. Coveting what is beyond your share is not a good habit.”

True to my earlier deduction: whether the person before me was the former Moon God or a demon transformed into something else, he could clearly see in a glance the marital status of each of us.

“In that case, there’s no need to waste further words.” The paper screen had been pierced — no need for politeness. I dropped my smile. “I don’t make threats. But if you refuse to return my person, I guarantee Hua Yue Jia Qi will not exist past tomorrow.”

Ao Chi added the final cut: “And I guarantee you will not exist past tomorrow either.”

“My eyesight has grown poor with age. I cannot make out exactly who you are — but you are indeed people I would rather not provoke.” Mr. Yue inhaled deeply, then suddenly stood. “As your companion, he is no pushover either — I would not dare do anything to him. He is in the Wish Room, resting. Come with me.”

Mr. Yue stepped out from behind the desk, every step measured and calm — not the least bit worried that any of us might strike at him without warning.

Gui Yan stood frozen, staring at him as he passed by without a sidelong glance, straining to find even a trace of something worth remembering in him.

Nothing to find.

Mr. Yue stepped out the door and headed straight down the short corridor to the left. The vermilion wooden door at the far end swung open by itself at the sound of his footsteps.

“Over the years, you are not the first group to have come looking to cause me trouble.” He spoke as he walked. “I am not a person who craves material things, and my fighting skills are by no means exceptional — nor have I cultivated my sorcery to any remarkable degree. When I can beat them, I fight. When I can’t, I run. When I can’t run, I beg for mercy. What else did you think is how I have managed to survive to the present?” He gave a slight laugh.

These words were probably not untrue. From start to finish, this man did not possess the presence of any “great villain” I had faced before. I believed what he said — but this candor, conversely, made me more uneasy than anything else.

“So you are begging for mercy now?” I looked at his back — floating along, like a cloud that never quite touches the ground.

“A truce.” He stopped at the wooden door and turned back with a smile. “I know I am no match for any single one of you — so I have no interest in playing a game of futile defiance. I also hope that after you take him, you will forget about Taoye Tower. Please do not equate me with a demon. I only do what I can to help people.”

“You were not so reasonable when you struck down the banana-plant demon.” Jiu Jue gave a cold smile. “And don’t forget — I still have an account to settle with you.”

“I dislike clients who speak at excessive length.” He glanced at Jiu Jue’s wrist. “If you agree to forget about Taoye Tower, I might consider severing the ‘fated bond’ between you and Yonghuan.”

“That is not something you can refuse to do.” Jiu Jue gritted his teeth. “You — meddling in others’ fates this way — you are truly terrible!”

He smiled and said nothing, walked into the Wish Room, and pointed ahead. “There.”

As Gui Yan had described, this room did hold a white porcelain human figurine — eyes bound with red cloth, robes billowing, celestial in bearing. Small as it was, it still had a presence that seemed to look down upon the world’s suffering.

No wonder Yi had knelt before it…

Standing a few meters from the figurine, every member of Bu Ting present confirmed: the person kneeling on the meditation cushion with his back to us was without question Yi.

“Yi!” I called to him.

No response. He remained with his back to me.

Something was wrong. I called his name again.

Yi slowly turned his head. A face wound about in red thread — no features visible — twisted toward us in a distorted smile. “Welcome to your arrival.”

Before the words had even fully faded, the Moon God figurine suddenly levitated. A white jade case — barely two inches square and utterly unassuming — was revealed beneath its base, and it snapped open with a violent motion. From within, an intensely blinding blue light shot out, which in an instant flooded the entire Wish Room in something resembling the blue of the sea. Every living creature present, save for the false Yi and Mr. Yue, was drained of its original color. I watched Ao Chi, Jiu Jue, and Gui Yan transform into figures with blue eyes, blue skin, blue hair, and blue clothes. I watched my own white coat go blue. The lot of us were like wretches who’d fallen into a dyeing vat — our very DNA had gone blue…

Mr. Yue stood serenely close to us, still being entirely candid: “I truly am not inclined toward force, and I do truly hope to reach a truce with you. If that gentleman earlier had been a little more pleasant, I would have had no wish to send him away. It appears that you are all similarly unpleasant. So I feel I still bear responsibility for Hua Yue Jia Qi’s safety — I ought to do something once and for all.”

The sensation was terrible — like sinking into a vat of thick adhesive. I could move, but only within a limited range. Ao Chi and I had never encountered such a peculiar sorcery. A thousand-year tree demon and an Eastern Sea dragon, plus a celestial immortal and a former Relief King — confined by a color? Or perhaps it was that unremarkable white jade case?!

“You plan to trap us with this trinket?” I waved my arm with great effort — as heavy as swimming through mud — and couldn’t even manage a dismissive smile without tremendous exertion. “And then find a kitchen cleaver to chop us up?”

Mr. Yue smiled and shook his head. “I will not harm any of you. I simply intend to invite you to remain permanently in a quiet place.”

Permanently?!

Gui Yan struggled for a moment, then suddenly stopped. He snapped his head up to look at Mr. Yue’s face and blurted out: “No — you are not Ding Yan!”

At this, Mr. Yue smiled, still neither confirming nor denying, and said only: “Lord Gui Yan, do not be too confident in your own judgment. You earlier disguised yourself as a single man to come and spy — I already let that pass without pursuing it. Yet you pressed and pressed, and now you cannot blame me.”

He knew Gui Yan! Someone who could call him by that peculiar name — there could be precious few left alive who could.

If he was not Ding Yan, then who was he?!

“Completely sealed off…” Ao Chi gritted his teeth, wresting his body this way and that in ridiculous contortions like a beginner struggling through a dance lesson. Mid-struggle he rounded on Gui Yan. “Weren’t you the Relief King? Can’t you ‘relieve’ anything from this?!”

“I resigned long ago!” Gui Yan glared back, helpless.

Every form of escape-technique Jiu Jue deployed collapsed before this uncanny blue. This blue was utterly unlike the color of his own hair — not the least bit endearing.

“I still have things to attend to. That will do.” He stepped back and began murmuring something soundlessly.

The muttering, dream-like at first, grew steadily clearer, emanating from every direction. The blue binding our bodies tightened further. Looking up at the white jade case, veins of blue like subcutaneous vessels had spread across its surface, and numberless writhing, contorted, half-transparent creatures came pouring from within — wrapping around our bodies like fog. Without the slightest effort, I felt my feet lift from the floor, my body drifting lightly toward the white jade case.

“It is not such a terrible place.” Before my eyes were entirely obscured by the layers of swirling light and vapor, Mr. Yue gave us a “friendly” wave. “A safe journey, all of you. Farewell — we shall not meet again.”

I watched helplessly as Gui Yan, powerless to resist, reached the case, transformed into a beam of colored light, and sank into it without a sound. Then Jiu Jue. Then Ao Chi, cursing without cease…

This was the greatest joke — I, who had roamed this world for a thousand years, had faced countless monks and Daoists seeking to capture me with their instruments, yet not one had succeeded — on the contrary, I had confiscated their tools of the trade. To think I would end up capsizing in a half-wit matchmaking agency, about to be suppressed for eternity by a deceptively simple little case! And the most extraordinary thing was: it collected not only demons — it took down dragons and gods as well?!

Hadn’t I said it — year-end never brought anything good… every year the same, never a peaceful close to the year? Was the Heavens truly so stingy about granting me a relaxed and happy year-end?

But — to be inexplicably collected into a box like this without even putting up a fight — wasn’t that just a little too humiliating? Anyone intent on sending me to hell should be going along with me.

I did not know whether forcing my spiritual power to its absolute maximum in an instant would leave any lasting effects. But I was the proprietress of Bu Ting. It was simply not in my nature to be plotted against without fighting back.

A long, supple tree branch burst through layer upon layer of resistance, blazing with its own true color. Swift as lightning, it coiled around the man who had just turned away — believing everything was in hand — from feet to neck, not a single gap left.

His face went from composure to startled alarm; he struggled frantically. But the blue coursing along my hair now crept along the branch extending from it, and finally seeped onto him.

I am a person of many years’ experience — but I have always been a tree. Without even this much capability, what good would I be?

In the instant before I became a beam of light, I gave my head one fierce toss. You can’t lead guests to their destination without the host to guide the way — if we’re playing, we all play together!

The light grew ever brighter, blinding enough to make my eyes swim. Yet the more my vision blurred, the clearer the scene before me became — strange face after strange face swept past me, their passing leaving traces that shaped overlapping geometric figures. There were men, there were women, and every one of them was weeping. Tears, large as beans, rose into the air and transformed, each one, into a fish with a flicking tail…

6

The fragrance of butterflies and birds and grass, the sound of dripping water… my briefly non-functional mind, in a world growing steadily clearer, slowly recovered its function.

In a dark, spacious cave — no one beside me.

Everywhere my fingers could touch was ice-cold. Every crack in the stone walls was packed with cold, damp moss. The cave mouth was just a few steps away. I could see the butterflies alighting on wildflowers, birds cutting through shafts of sunlight, and a lush expanse of grass. But I could not go out. The cave mouth, empty as it looked, had been sealed shut by a curse. You could only see — you could not exit. Hope given freely, never to be realized.

I was a little weary. Leaning against the stone wall, I sat down, feeling along the invisible barrier at the mouth of the cave, trying to find a way to break through it.

My chest felt oppressed. A sadness, impossible to name, began seeping out from the deepest part of me, drop by drop — you can never leave, no one will come for you, you are destined to be the one who is abandoned…

My mind refused to follow any rule of my own. The longer I sat before this cave mouth, the deeper this conviction became, coiling tighter and tighter around me, suffocating me to the point where I wanted to end my own life.

I pressed my hand to my heart and leaned against the stone wall, gasping in great gulps of air. Cold stone cave, an exit I could not leave through — the scene before me shifted and shimmered repeatedly, and a desolate grief at being abandoned, a misery like knives cutting through the body…

Wait. Why did this place feel so familiar?!

I forced myself to concentrate and carefully compare what lay before my eyes with a certain place from memory. The result: a perfect match.

This was… this was the Hopeless Sea! Years ago on Lake Dongting, I had fallen into the water and been captured, and it was Ao Chi — still an enemy then — who had imprisoned me here, repeatedly mocking me as a pitiful wretch abandoned by Zi Miao. It was also in this place that this stinking dragon and I had each delivered the other a resounding slap, and from that inauspicious beginning, forged a strange bond…

The moment Ao Chi’s loathsome face floated into my mind, the pressure on my chest seemed to spring a leak — “whoosh” — draining all at once. My addled mind snapped back to clarity, and the brief sorrow was dispelled like smoke.

My body lightened. I sprang up, slapped my own face hard, and looked around me again. Indeed it was the cave of the Hopeless Sea from my memory — but looking closer, why did certain parts of the cave occasionally seem to twist, like a television screen losing signal?

An enchantment?!

Connecting this to the impulse to end my own life I’d just barely escaped, I felt I had found the key. And I also noticed: the clearer my mind became, the more normal my state — the more severe and frequent the “distortions” in the cave grew. At this moment, almost the entire cave was rippling strangely, as though whoever had cast the spell could no longer sustain it and was on the verge of collapse.

If that was the case — might as well gamble.

I drew a deep breath, stood in the center of the cave, closed my eyes to gather my focus, and called up the “Dream-Dispelling Incantation” that Ao Chi had taught me. When a demon uses an enchantment to create illusions to affect your mind, this incantation is the remedy — though it works only against low-ranked small demons. Against a specialist in illusion arts at the top of the power hierarchy, one would simply have to draw a cross over one’s heart and leave it to fate. My only hope right now was that having gone so long without using it, I wouldn’t have misremembered the words.

Petal-like flecks of pale pink light flew from my palms in great sweeping waves, illuminating the entire cavern as bright as snow. Each fleck of light became an abstract enormous hand, pressing outward in every direction, as though determined to flatten this godforsaken lightless place to rubble.

A few seconds later, accompanied by the sound of something like an old tree groaning, the entire cave vanished. I was standing, perfectly intact, on an open expanse of meadow. Some distance away, a blue object the size of a fist was hopping frantically, trying to escape.

I crossed to it in a few strides and planted my foot on its flailing tail.

“Jii-jii!” It screamed, struggling in panic.

I examined this small prisoner of war — and couldn’t help laughing. Because it looked…genuinely hilarious.

Among every demon I had ever encountered or known of, there had never been one of this type. Entirely ocean-blue, unmistakably the body of a chubby fish — but atop the fish’s head sat a perfectly round human face with round eyes and a round mouth, round in every direction. Beneath the fish’s belly extended two plump little human legs. No wonder it could hop so energetically on land.

“Jii, jii, jii!” It flapped its two fins in a motion imitating a human cupping their hands in a bow — probably begging for mercy?

“What manner of creature are you?” I demanded sternly.

“Jii, jii, jii!“

“Speak in a human tongue!”

The blue fish gave a full-body shudder and hastily raised a fin to pinch its own nose, opening its mouth: “Aah-aah! One-two-three-four! Four-three-two-one!“

This creature had a “language switching” function and a “calibration” function?!

Once the “calibration” was complete, the blue fish lowered its fin. Its first words were: “I have failed. But please do not kill me.”

“Were you the one who conjured the Hopeless Sea illusion just now?” I bent down and killed it with my gaze.

“That place was reflected from within yourself!” It defended itself quickly. “I was simply waiting beside you.”

“Waiting beside me? For what?” I pressed down harder with my foot.

“For my food.” Its eyes brimmed with tears. “You cannot keep stepping on it — my tail will break!”

“Serves you right!” I jabbed at its fish-head with a finger. “You want to eat me? Aren’t you afraid of breaking your own teeth?!”

“Not eating you!” It waved its fins frantically. “Eating the ‘loop.'”

My comprehension was failing me again. A loop?!

“Speak in a human tongue!” I commanded. “And — what is this place? A space concealed inside that white jade case?”

The blue fish gave me a look of aggrieved ill-treatment, fin wiping at its eyes, and said: “Here is Jin Wan — a world where sorrow spreads endlessly, without end.”

I was thoroughly confused. I picked the creature up, poked at its round belly, and pressed: “What does that mean? Start over and explain it to me!”

The blue fish looked at me, plainly struggling: “My language function is not naturally good. How should I explain it so you can understand?”

“How should you explain it?” I poked its round belly again and stomped the ground. “Then start from this lake!”

“Ah — you want to start from the Autumn Mountain Lakeshore?”

“This place even has a name?!”

“It does. This place also exists in the world outside Jin Wan. In other words — the one who cast this has copied everything from their memory into Jin Wan.”

“Alright, then tell me about this Autumn Mountain Lakeshore.”

7

“Seven-colored stone, covenant of three lives, a pact to remain together always, joy for Yonghuan. When the indigo lotus blooms and smiles, we clasp hands once more and grow drunk together on Qiu Shan.”

The most commonplace of phrases, and yet read from her vermilion lips, they carried a lingering spirit — conjuring endless imaginings.

“Well?” In the courtyard of Yin Fang Lou, Shen Ziju gazed at her as she sat serenely on the swing. Her profile in the moonlight was exquisite and luminous — one could look endlessly without ever having enough.

“You taught it very diligently.” She folded the paper with the verses carefully and handed it back to him. “To think that a rough fellow like Duan Wu can now write lines like these — it truly has been taken to its finest.”

He shook his head with a smile. “I can’t imagine what this young man has gotten into his head — not a scrap of talent, yet he pestered me endlessly to teach him to compose poetry and lyric verse.”

“Naturally, he has someone he fancies.” She couldn’t help covering her mouth with a light laugh. She pressed a small foot against the ground — the swing of woven vines gently swayed. Her hair, long past the waist, and the gossamer layers of her skirt traced flowing lines; as the breeze swept through, the indigo lotus blooms on the lake beyond the bamboo fence stirred with the wind, a lovely complement to her air of grace.

“Is that so?” He smiled. “Then I’ll need to find an occasion to thoroughly interrogate him.”

She turned her face toward him. Those long, bright, captivating eyes seemed always to shimmer with a bewitching phosphorescence — a single glance, and one was intoxicated: “Some people express their love by attempting what lies beyond their reach.” She paused, and over her face — white as congealed snow, flushed with a faint rose — there drifted a trace of disdain. “Unfortunately, such people are often too foolish to attain what they wish for.”

“Why?” he asked, puzzled.

She tilted her head up to look at the half-moon in the sky and said: “Love is the one thing in this world that cannot be obtained through effort.”

Her words struck him with an inexplicable desolation. He lifted the wine cup from the table and drank it down in one go.

“What if it could?” he said.

She leaned to one side, reached out her slender jade fingers, and lightly touched his handsome face, smiling: “There are no ‘what ifs,’ foolish one.”

She was always like this — wherever she stood, whomever she faced, whatever situation she encountered, she maintained this same unruffled calm. Even her smiles were cool and faint. She truly was perfectly suited to the name Wei Lan.

Three years of acquaintance, and the small estate deep in the Autumn Mountain Lakeshore called Yin Fang Lou held many a moonlit evening’s worth of tender, lingering good times. Even though she had never once said the word “love” to him, it in no way hindered his mad desire to remain at her side. The first year, he gathered all his courage and told his grandmother he wished to marry a woman. Old Madam Shen asked: Where is she from? What do her parents do? How old is she? He could answer not a single question. He had spent all his time and energy immersed in her beauty and intelligence, in her alternating nearness and distance — when had he ever stopped to consider such mundane matters? So his request naturally ended with Old Madam Shen’s resolute refusal. The day his request was denied, he fell drunk inside Yin Fang Lou and pressed his face against her knee, aggrieved as a child who had suffered an injustice. She neither reproached him nor comforted him — she only refilled his cup, over and over, until he was beyond consciousness.

The second year, Old Madam Shen assigned more of the family’s business to his management. He grew busier and busier, yet still found every available moment to be at her side — watching her smile and frown and gather lotus, listening to her coax gentle music from a thousand-year ancient zither — and still seizing her hand at every chance to declare that one way or another, he would persuade his grandmother to let him marry her.

The third year, he married Yue Ruyi. But he continued to treat Yin Fang Lou as his true home. Three days after the wedding, he was once more utterly drunk in front of her, repeating over and over: I had no choice.

His greatest promise had come to nothing — but the musical score for Spring River Flower Moon Night, which he had pledged, he completed the night before he took Yue Ruyi as his bride. Wei Lan’s greatest love was playing the zither, and she always complained that the ancient scores for the Spring River piece lacked sufficient beauty and grace. He was well-versed in music and it was far easier to work hard on perfecting a piece than to persuade Old Madam Shen — so he had taken the task with great seriousness. When she read the score, she was utterly satisfied, and threw her arms around his neck with delight, spinning him around several turns.

But the joy of the score did not last long. One day, she frowned at the ancient celebrated zither before her, sighing about how it still fell short of its best, unable to produce the most perfect sound. He knew how devoted she was to this sole passion of hers, and this instrument was already the finest he could find. He said he would seek out master craftsmen to make a new zither — as many as it took to satisfy her. She shook her head: the finest zither in the world, she said, was something one could only encounter by chance, not by searching. Seeing her slight disappointment, forging a peerless zither instantly became his most pressing concern.

“Wei Lan — what manner of being are you, truly?” The wine cup had run dry again; his gaze, slightly unsteady, followed the back-and-forth of her swing. “At times I feel you are a demon — never truly belonging to the mortal world, with no past and no future to speak of.”

The swing slowed. She looked at him with a smile. “Why a demon? Could I not pass as a celestial maiden of the highest heaven?”

He had no answer. A celestial maiden would be beautiful — perhaps not even as beautiful as she. But he simply felt she was like a bewitching demon, irresistible even knowing better, impossible to shake free of.

She stepped down from the swing and settled gracefully onto his knee, her lips close to his ear, in an intimate murmur: “Foolish one — I am not a demon, and not a celestial being. I am simply a person.”

He drew her close. “Wei Lan — what if we stayed together our whole lives? Would you agree?”

She smiled, gently pushing him away. “It’s late — you should go home, and not leave your wife to guard an empty room alone.”

He shook his head vigorously. “No — I don’t want to go. Why must you make me go?”

“She is your wife.”

“She should never have been my wife!! ” The fumes of wine went to his head. His eyes reddened. In fury he said: “Those fools at the Yan Luo Market — what they should have killed, they didn’t. They didn’t even know if survivors had been left. My money might as well have been thrown to pigs!”

“Ah? The calamity at Black Fox Ridge — you were behind that?” She covered her lips lightly, putting on an expression of exaggerated surprise, but quickly burst into a laugh. “Why go to all that trouble? Besides — the bounty hunters at the Yan Luo Market have been getting worse by the generation. Using them is just wasting money. Though I’ll admit I’m somewhat impressed this time: those few minor figures managed to kill ten of the Yue family. My, my.”

“The one who should have died still lives! After a disaster like that, she survived.” He was still furious. “But my grandmother is fond of her. Very fond.”

“Mm.” She smiled, gently stroking his hair. “Come — up you get. Let me row you back.”

A small skiff slipped out from in front of Yin Fang Lou. She stood at the prow, bamboo pole in hand, bathed in moonlight, weaving through layers of indigo lotus, ferrying this half-drunk man to the Autumn Mountain Lakeshore embankment.

She had been overjoyed when she first found this secluded spot, hidden within the lake’s depths. She loved all things beautiful and new — whether people or scenery — never staying long in any one place, never lingering too long beside any one man. She relished the joy of perpetual “renewal.” Yin Fang Lou had been built with her plan to stay for five years at most — five years, and the scenery would grow tiresome, and the person would grow tiresome.

Shen Ziju had always believed it was he who had discovered this pearl among the multitudes. Three years ago, on a summer’s day, he had rescued her from three thugs while walking home, and the shy sidelong glance, the soft “thank you,” and the rich floral fragrance that emanated from her had easily ensnared him in a tender trap he could never escape — one might call it being bewitched by her. He had sincerely thanked the heavens more than once for letting him encounter such a woman — as though fresh color had been breathed into his life, as though there was no longer only an endless stream of business dealings, tireless nagging, and a fiancée whose face he couldn’t even recall.

Every time she thought of the bruise he’d earned from a thug’s fist on her behalf, Wei Lan would smile. This man was truly a born scholar — he couldn’t even beat a few counterfeit ruffians made of paper.

Shen Ziju must have been the first man she was drawn to after arriving in Chang’an. She did not care for wealth or reputation, nor paid much mind to whether one was particularly handsome. The melody from the Phoenix Courts His Mate that this man had improvised on a whim from an upper-floor perch was the primary reason she had chosen him. She was always partial to men skilled in music. Though not necessarily — sometimes she was equally taken with bold, spirited fighters, vigorous and dashing. So which type of man she chose to love also depended on her mood.

She had engineered his “chance to play the hero.” She had long since grown practiced at placing herself into the lives of different men through varied forms of “chance encounters” — savoring, across long stretches of time, the pleasure of both loving and being loved.

The boat touched the shore. She steadied his arm as he stepped off, then handed him a lantern: “The night air is heavy with dew. Watch your step.”

“Walk with me a little further?” He caught her sleeve, half-drunk and petulant. “Every time you row me to the bank and go back — the wilderness all around, and you’re not even a little worried I might meet with trouble?”

“Someone who knows to hire killers from the Yan Luo Market doesn’t meet with trouble.”

She laughed softly, pulled his hand away, and with a light, graceful leap was back on the boat. A push of the bamboo pole, and the beautiful figure receded — leaving only a Shen Ziju, soul half-departed, standing there unable to bring himself to go.

Only when her silhouette had vanished into the indigo blue did Shen Ziju rouse himself slightly, turn, and walk back, his mind drifting as he went. He wondered: once the gift he was preparing for her was complete, would she be so delighted she would never leave him?

A cool breeze across his heated cheeks, the wine half-cleared, he pulled his outer robe tighter and quickened his step. His emotions — drifting and dreamy before — settled back to calm. There was still much at home left unattended. His grandmother had said that another restaurant was soon to be opened and required more attention and effort from him. Then there was Yue Ruyi — seldom speaking, and whenever his grandmother impatiently mentioned wanting grandchildren, all she did was turn away, blushing. A wife like this was far better than he had imagined: obedient and quiet. He could treat her as a glass of plain water — there for appearances. It troubled him not. His grandmother was happy. And it didn’t interfere with his visits to Yin Fang Lou. All three parties content. Why not?

As Shen Ziju’s silhouette disappeared into the night, a white figure stepped slowly out from the shadows along the lakeshore.

A cloud of mist drifted over. The moonlight dimmed — yet it could never dim the face of the one who stood in it. Even now, his air had not lost a single trace of its elegance — not for the change in his station. He had spent a long time watching Shen Ziju go, and then, again and again, pressed down the impulse that filled him with the deepest self-loathing yet which he longed to act upon. It cost him greatly.

He drew a long breath and knelt at the lakeshore, scooping up the ice-cold water and splashing it across his own face.

Water drops traced down from his lashes. He instinctively raised a hand to wipe them away — but his fingers paused beneath his left eye for a long while. There — once there had been a scar. Now he had lost the power to reclaim it.

The moonlight brightened again. She had just moored the boat and was making her way back to her dwelling — graceful and unhurried, arms cradling a freshly gathered bundle of indigo lotus. Flowers against a beautiful face, captivating beyond words.

She did not return to Yin Fang Lou. Instead she curved around from the front gate, following the bamboo fence to reach a square patch of grass. In the center stood a headstone carved from timber, inscribed in her own hand: “Fallen Flower Tomb.”

She walked to the headstone and gently set down the lotus blooms in her arms, looking down at the wildgrass that flourished underfoot, saying: “It is the most beautiful time of year for the indigo lotus now. I picked some for you — surely you will love them.” A pause, and then she addressed the air: “If I recall correctly, this is the eighteen hundred and eighty-second time I’ve asked you — are you never bored, always following behind me like this?”

“Would bringing flowers to the dead not be more boring?” He stood behind her, his gaze cold and level on her graceful back.

How many thousands of years had passed, and yet her appearance had not changed in the slightest.

“Beautiful things are meant to be shared generously.” She turned. Beautiful eyes, smiling. “They helped me, and I offer a token of thanks — that’s not unreasonable, is it?”

“Have you never felt remorse?” He deliberately looked away, avoiding her eyes.

“You are the most handsome man I have ever seen.” She turned around and walked to him without the slightest hesitation, fixing him with the purest, most guileless gaze as she studied his face. “Who on earth are you?! If you wish to take my life in the name of righteous justice, you are welcome to try at any time. But you have been behind me for more than ten years now — from the south of the Yangtze to Luoyang, and then here. You never act. I am beginning to feel anxious on your behalf.”

He stepped back, continuing to avoid her eyes. “I will make you stop.”

“You?” She raised a slender finger, and her laughter had never been so uninhibited. “Will you kill me?”

He said nothing.

She lowered her hand, rose onto her toes, and brought her lips close to his ear: “You do not want to kill me. The one you want to kill is the man beside me.”

His heart contracted as though stung by a poisonous insect.

She straightened again, smiling with the satisfaction of a victory cleanly won: “I shall continue in my way — loving this world, living more beautifully than any flower, happier than any immortal. Though I am always equally glad to welcome you here to kill me.”

Leaving behind a trace of a smile and a thread of faint fragrance, she stepped past him with perfect composure and returned to the small world that belonged to her.

He stood rooted to the spot. The headstone was pale in the moonlight.

Four young girls’ bare skeletons lay beneath the earth — whiter, perhaps, than the moonlight itself.

They had become the offering that sustained her ageless beauty and her long, long life.

From the day she had secretly learned the Forbidden Art of Longevity, every first of every month, a young girl would vanish from the world — her flesh and blood consumed, her white bones all that remained.

He had lost count of how many children had been buried in how many places. Wei Lan was a true woman of flesh and blood — yet she was more monstrous than any demon.

The impulse to kill her had circled through him countless times before he ever ascended to the celestial realm. He had thought that if he simply never saw her again, he could live in peace. But then — of all people — a certain someone had revealed her whereabouts to him and erased his scar. He could only blame himself for his feet overruling his heart, his heart losing to his feet, and his feet carrying him back to her side. Ten years it had been, and the foremost emotion he had experienced in all that time was hatred of her.

Hatred?

What did he hate her for?

For her beauty remaining intact? For the innocents she corrupted? Or for her use of love’s name, her habit of novelty over loyalty, her revolving-door of companions — never once repeated?

He walked away, watching from a distance the faint lights of Yin Fang Lou and the faint strains of zither music drifting from within. A hundred different feelings wound around his heart.

He raised his eyes to the bright moon overhead and suddenly recalled — long, long ago — a precociously composed young official in his “Moon God Hall Celestial Records” who, after conducting a routine inspection of the mortal realm, had returned and written down this line: “The most unbearable hatred is not necessarily that the other has given their heart elsewhere. Nor that you were wounded beyond all repair. It is that when you meet again — they cannot even remember who you are.”

In that age, holding his celestial position, the Moon God who was immune to love and hatred had taken that junior official’s reflections as mere sentiment and smiled them away. But now he saw clearly: that junior official had far greater potential for his role than he had ever had. He had always worked at feeling and analyzing — not like the Moon God, who had cut off his own emotional capacity and been done with it.

Yes. Wei Lan no longer remembered who he was — not from amnesia, but simply because he had never occupied even a fraction of space in her heart, and so was forgotten too easily.

On the mountain peak of Ling Yuan Feng, the master whose beard reached his knees addressed his assembled disciples: “All present here, though born mortal, each possesses an enlightened heart. If you cultivate diligently, it is not impossible to be selected by the higher realm as celestial officials.”

The master’s words proved true. In that era, the creator goddess Nu Wa had not long since fashioned humanity. Across the four seas, some drank blood and ate raw flesh; some were dull of mind; some had learned the wisdom of plow and fire. Yet the senior disciples of Ling Yuan Feng were different — selected personally by a master of extraordinary origin, each one sharp of mind and gifted with extraordinary arts. Whether or not they ever became celestials, they would at minimum be exceptional among humans: figures who could create a chapter of history wherever they went.

He was the most ordinary among them. He could not ride the clouds or conjure soldiers from scattered seeds. All he had were two unusual eyes capable of seeing three “points” hidden on each person’s left eye, at the heart, and on the little finger. He himself also had them — red, very vivid. Sometimes, a red thread would grow from the first point on a person, extending — faster or slower — to the second, then the third, and finally emerging from the little finger as a beautiful red line. Several of his senior and junior fellow disciples had such a thread. Yet he had noticed they spent their days alternately mocking each other bitterly — later he understood: that was called playful flirting.

His master told him that what he saw was a person’s emotional meridian — and for that reason, his eyes were precious.

On the day little junior sister Wei Lan arrived at Ling Yuan Feng, every fellow disciple was struck speechless. Never had they seen a girl beautiful as this — wherever she walked, even the loveliest flowers paled beside her, and in the ten years she remained on the peak, the flowers in the surrounding area did not bloom a single time. What later generations called closing the moon and shaming the flowers — Wei Lan could have been called the original.

She was eager to learn, brilliant, honey-tongued, and her compliments to others always landed exactly right: making one comfortable without ever seeming obsequious. A casual smile could lead senior fellow disciples to teach her their closely guarded knowledge one by one, while all she needed to give in return was a clutch at their arm and a bit of endearing caprice — and they were left thoroughly satisfied, something to savor for days. In contrast, the senior female disciples were not particularly fond of her. Several had at various times engaged in overt or subtle conflicts with her, all of which she defused one by one. Most significantly, even the master was fond of her — saying she had a heart of seven exquisite apertures, a gift for broad learning, and that she would surely achieve great things.

He always hid behind that pine tree and watched her cultivate her inner arts on the stone platform — translucent wisps of colored mist drifting around her, wreathing her serene and tranquil face. Not quite a celestial maiden — and yet she was.

Wei Lan always called him “little senior brother” in her sweet way. They were close in age, and whenever she received something good to eat, she would always save him a portion too. Even so, he remained stiff and awkward, never quite daring to look directly into her eyes. Yet whatever she gave him — even a fruit so sour it could kill — he could swallow it without flinching. Because he did not taste the sourness. He tasted something sweet. Very sweet.

He had nothing to teach her. So she fixed her gaze on his eyes and asked: “I heard from senior brother that you can see a person’s emotional meridian? Can you see mine, then? Has my fate-binding thread grown? I’m so curious!”

He did not know how to answer. Could he tell her that he could only find two emotional meridians on her, and that the one at her heart — the third point — was absent?

So far, she was the only person he had ever seen with only two.

He wasn’t entirely sure what this signified, so he only told her: “It doesn’t emerge all at once. You’re still young — what’s the hurry?”

She giggled, leaned her head against his shoulder, and said playfully: “I love being loved.”

“Perhaps I love you very much” — he swallowed these words back until the day she married their third senior brother, and still he had never let them out.

Third senior brother was the master’s greatest pride — in both abilities and appearance, the only one on Ling Yuan Feng who could be paired with little junior sister Wei Lan as a truly matched couple.

On the day she was wed, he sat beneath the pine tree and drank an entire jug of wine. Every time he imagined her at that moment in another man’s arms, his chest felt as though it would catch fire.

In the years that followed, she and her husband led a deeply content life — never apart in cultivation or in worldly excursions. Even the master remarked that Wei Lan had found the right match. Truly a pair of immortal partners.

And he always did his best to avoid every occasion that would put them in the same room. Not seeing her meant not hurting. Or so he told himself. But inevitable encounters still came — and when he saw her placing a fruit lovingly into third senior brother’s mouth, he found himself hating this man, imagining whether he might choke on the pit and lose his life.

The thought was terrifying. Even he was alarmed by it.

Life on Ling Yuan Feng became dull and long-drawn after that. Some fellow disciples went down the mountain to subdue demons, others soared through the nine heavens. Even Wei Lan and her third senior brother left to establish their own household below the peak. Only he remained, at loose ends, sitting beneath the pine tree all day in a daze. Sometimes he would doze, and dream of Wei Lan personally feeding him fruit, leaning on his shoulder, calling him “little senior brother” in her warm voice.

Yet what he had not anticipated: nine years after they left, third senior brother was dead. Not choked on a pit — but killed by the master’s own hand, for third senior brother had broken into the restricted chamber of Ling Yuan Feng and stolen that volume of Collected Forbidden Arts. The master had caught him red-handed in their home, the evidence plain before him. Before Wei Lan’s very eyes, the master enforced the sect’s rules. His heart breaking at the sight of this once-cherished disciple taking his last breath, the old man cast a “take care of yourself” at Wei Lan, then took the body and the stolen text back to Ling Yuan Feng with heavy heart — and within less than a year, passed away from illness.

After tending to the master’s final affairs, he gathered his courage and descended the mountain to call on Wei Lan, resolved: if her circumstances were poor, he would go through fire and water to secure her peace.

But the reality he encountered plunged him for a second time into the abyss. Her circumstances were excellent. The man at her side was a tribal chieftain — valiant and handsome, and most importantly, possessed of inexhaustible meat and wine, and inexhaustible devotion to her. The look she gave this man was indistinguishable from the look she had given third senior brother.

At his arrival, she tilted her head and thought for quite some time before recognizing this slender, refined young man as her little senior brother.

“Come back to Ling Yuan Feng with me.” For the first time he looked directly into her eyes.

She shook her head, smiling: “I am to stay with this person. He loves me, and I love him.”

“So easily?” He was beginning to get angry. “And what of third senior brother? Where do you place him?”

“He is already dead.” She pulled at his sleeve, the way she always had. “Little senior brother — can you grant me this wish?”

He stared into her shining eyes, tightened his fist, and pointed outside. “And him — what if he also dies? What then?”

She burst into a laugh: “There are so many men in this world.”

Half his heart was frozen tundra, the other half a roaring blaze. He had never felt such agony.

He looked at her emotional meridian again. A pale, nearly translucent, half-formed red thread swayed and wavered at her little finger. Without the heart’s emotional meridian, could a fate-binding thread still grow from her? Or was this not a fate-binding thread at all — only a thread of endless ill-fated entanglement?

He had no heart left to think further. His chest ached as though it might crack open. As he turned to leave, she caught the hem of his robe and called softly: “Little senior brother.”

He stopped. He could never leave when she called for him.

“Since I can no longer conveniently go to Ling Yuan Feng, please go to his grave on my behalf and say ‘I’m sorry.'” Her face pressed against his back, her voice low. “Had I not been vain enough to be troubled by the fine line at the corner of my eye, he would never have risked his life to steal that forbidden item for me.”

Thunder above his head. He turned violently and looked at her — ageless as a girl of sixteen — and only then, dimly, did he remember that her age was approaching thirty.

“You knew it was a capital offense.” He clenched his fist.

“I knew. But if I hadn’t, I would grow old, would die, would lose everything.” Her delicate brows knit lightly, her expression pitiably helpless. “He could not bear to see my beauty fade — and neither can you. Isn’t that right?”

He seized her wrist and demanded: “You’ve seen it?”

“Only the chapter on ‘Longevity and Preserved Appearance.'” She smiled. “I am not greedy.”

He stared at her face for a long time, released her wrist, and said: “I do not care what you learned from that. If you harm anyone, I will kill you with my own hands.”

She gave a sudden laugh out loud, brushing a strand of hair from her brow. “You wouldn’t. You would not harm so much as a single hair of mine. Otherwise I would not be telling you things from the bottom of my heart, little senior brother.”

A confidence built on certainty of her power over him.

From this moment on, he realized: Wei Lan’s eyes could also see things others could not — and most terrifyingly, she possessed the ability to exploit this “gift” to the greatest possible degree.

He could no longer bear to look into those placid eyes. He fled, wretched.

This was their last meeting.

He returned to the sparsely populated Ling Yuan Feng, slept for three days beneath the pine tree, and made a decision — love and hate were too exhausting. It was better to simply relinquish them.

The short dagger engraved with golden runes all over could cut through iron as though it were mud. The master had once used this blade to sever the head of a python, and he said there was nothing under heaven it could not cut.

Dark red blood traced down his left cheek. A deep cut marked his jade-smooth skin. He gripped the dagger, stood expressionless beneath the pine tree, and in the world gone red, felt something important gradually recede — the heart that had been so heavy felt as though emptied of everything in an instant. Nothing remained. No love, and no hate.

What a relief.

He threw down the dagger. He smiled.

On the ninth day after severing his own emotional meridian, someone claiming to be a celestial official came to find him, saying he had been chosen to serve as the Moon God and oversee all fated unions in the world.

He didn’t even bother to ask why. He simply took a strip of red cloth, bound it over his eyes, and followed the official up to the celestial realm — and never left the Moon God’s hall again.

He had believed they would never meet again — but to his utter surprise, they crossed paths once more in the vast sea of humanity, and it was even more unexpected that “the woman of experience” that she was had by then completely forgotten the quiet, withdrawn “little senior brother” from Ling Yuan Feng. Even more unexpected… that he still yearned for her desperately.

Had he truly wished her dead, ten years would have been sufficient to kill her a hundred times over.

Millennia had turned, and fate, tracing a great circle, had maliciously returned him to where he had started. Standing outside Yin Fang Lou for a long, solitary while, he let out a long sigh and walked away across the water.

8

“Your medicine for today, please take this carefully.”

The fat-faced pawnshop owner slid a neatly wrapped paper packet through the small window. Duan Wu quickly received it, carefully tucked it into his clothes, thanked the owner, and hurried out.

His left leg was increasingly failing to support him. Every step sent a stabbing pain through him. He hadn’t gone far from the pawnshop when a young woman with hair past her waist sidled up beside him and asked: “Excuse me — are you a Blue Shark?”

He stared at this stranger in horror, then fled as though seeing a ghost — running all the way to the fork in the road not far from Eastern Fence Cottage before he could stop. He collapsed against a tree, nearly dropping from exhaustion.

How had he been recognized?! Who was this woman, to see through his true nature?!

It was impossible. By this era, not only were those capable of recognizing a Blue Shark vanishingly few, even those who knew of the Blue Shark lineage at all were nearly none.

He pressed a hand to his wildly hammering heart and counted himself lucky he’d run fast enough. If this woman had ill intentions and he’d come to harm — what would become of Yonghuan? Her eyes were not yet healed; he could not afford anything to happen to him.

When he thought of it, grief welled up. Once upon a time, their Blue Shark clan had been a large and flourishing tribe. Now, in this day and age, only he and Yonghuan remained.

Three years ago, the clan leader’s trust in a human had been repaid with a ship — charging in full of gunpowder and weapons. Most of the clanspeople were captured alive, caged in iron, and transported away in separate directions.

Yonghuan was the clan leader’s daughter. He was only the odd-jobs attendant who swept her quarters and prepared her food. Yonghuan had never liked him — because he was an anomaly among Blue Sharks: born with a deformity, his entire left face skewed, like melting wax. From childhood she had called him “ugly freak,” and when her temper flared, she would grab whatever was at hand and hurl it at him — conch shells, coral branches, even a dagger sharp enough to draw blood. He could only wait until she was asleep before he dared steal more than a few glances at her.

The clan leader had spoken to Yonghuan more than once, asking her to treat him better — considering his parents had died young of illness and he was always so earnest and diligent. “I won’t!” Yonghuan had been thoroughly headstrong. “I just don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to see that ugly face! Father — can’t you send someone else to look after me?” “Don’t be foolish!” The clan leader rapped her on the head. “You know full well how hard life is for our people. Every member has their work to do and must devote their effort to protecting this hard-won home. Who has extras to spare at your choosing? Duan Wu is a fine young man — stop giving him such a hard time.”

“Hmph!” She turned away in displeasure, and said no more about sending a replacement.

He had been hiding behind a coral tree, catching every word of that father-daughter exchange. He wasn’t particularly grieved — on the contrary, being able to remain at her side made him feel very glad.

She didn’t always have such a bad temper. He had seen her cry — more than once — in the deep dead of night. She would weep in her dreams, crying out “let my mother go!” while her hands flailed wildly through the air. Each time, he would hold her hands and hum a gentle lullaby until she calmed. She would then press her damp-with-cold-sweat head into his arms and curl her small body close, returning from nightmare to stillness. During those times, he never dared move a muscle — afraid of waking her — and would hold the position until she turned of her own accord to the other side, even if his body went stiff and numb.

To lose your mother as a child so young — the grief must be a thousand times deeper than he could know, having never had parents at all. Every time he thought of her witnessing her mother being dragged away by brutes at such a small age, he found within himself an inexhaustible patience for every bad mood she could ever have.

Life should have flowed on peacefully, if the clan leader had not kindly rescued a merchant who nearly drowned — which led to the most clichéd and ungrateful story imaginable. The man whose life was saved had secretly marked the path as he left this labyrinthine stretch of sea, and what he brought back was not gratitude but utter catastrophe.

Perhaps heaven took pity: he shielded Yonghuan and, by some stroke of fortune, found a gap in the smoke and gunfire through which they could flee. Enduring every hardship, they escaped to the shore. His plan was to lie low inland for a while and then figure out what to do next. But Yonghuan refused — she wept and demanded to go back and find her father, saying she could not lose her father having already lost her mother, and could not lose the home she had grown up in! That was the one and only time in his life he lost his temper with her. He gave her a hard slap and said: “If you go back, the Blue Shark clan will truly become nothing but a legend on paper.”

In the end, she let him drag her by force in the direction of the mainland interior.

Hiding in the crowd was perhaps the safest refuge for now.

Yet he had thoroughly underestimated the malice of the human world and the depths of human desire.

The weeping Yonghuan’s tears turned to pearls, unstoppable as she tried. She refused to say a single word to him, pouring all her grief and rage onto this ugly freak she had always despised. Their bad luck was the worst sort: escaping the maw of the wolf only to meet the tiger at the back gate. They had survived the slaughter — only to fall prey to a greedy opportunist. A “kindhearted uncle” they met along the road used a packet of knockout powder to steal Yonghuan from his side.

When he awoke in the shabby village inn, Yonghuan was gone without a trace.

He searched frantically. Two years later, he found her — in a marionette show in Luoyang, displayed in a glass tank, her eyes having gone blind.

Seeing her frail and emaciated, her eyes turned grey and sightless in the tank, he could have killed everyone who had harmed her. But his reason kept him calm. He waited until the dead of night, then secretly infiltrated the marionette show, intending to rescue Yonghuan.

Unfortunately, his skills were too poor and he alerted the enemy.

The result: he was identified as a clumsy thief attempting to steal the show’s star attraction. The furious ringmaster had his men drag him to the back alley and beat him half to death.

Perhaps it was not his time to die: on the brink of death, a swaying young man with a rare head of lake-blue hair leapt down from the alley wall with a grin, reproving everyone for the noise that had ruined his mood of drinking wine by moonlight.

He didn’t know what had come over him. Despite being thoroughly wary of humans by then, this person’s appearance inexplicably made him cry out: “Save me, sir! These people have taken my kin captive!”

It was a terribly reckless thing to do. If the blue-haired man had no interest in others’ affairs, he would have died right there. But he felt — in some way he couldn’t explain — that this person had a quality about him: outwardly dissolute, yet capable of being trusted with something that mattered. He gambled that such a man would not stand by in the face of injustice.

He gambled right.

The show’s rough men were very easily bound up in a pile by the blue-haired man. When the man scooped the barely-living, half-human-half-fish “creature” out of the tank, he only widened his eyes and said in curiosity: “Oh — a Blue Shark?”

He fell to his knees and kowtowed in gratitude, briefly summarized their ordeal — speaking only of a family disaster and escaping with his younger sister — and said nothing more.

“You’re also a Blue Shark?” The blue-haired man sniffed the faint demon scent in the air and smiled. “I thought as much. Tsk tsk — in this day and age, Blue Sharks are a rare thing.”

He didn’t know what to say. He continued to bow in thanks, then gathered Yonghuan up and prepared to leave.

“Wait.” The blue-haired man called after him. “Your little sister is skin and bones — barely half a life left. If she doesn’t rest and recover, I don’t think she’ll last much longer. Do you have a suitable place to stay? Money to buy tonics?”

He started. “That… I will work hard to find something.”

The blue-haired man looked him up and down — worn and ragged — and shook his head. “I don’t think so. A person like you probably couldn’t afford so much as half a cent’s worth of ginseng. You Blue Sharks may be demons, but your dietary needs aren’t that different from humans — your little sister is this weak, she’ll need nothing short of Heavenly Mountain snow lotus and century-old ginseng to recover.”

“Then what can be done?!” He held the unconscious Yonghuan in his arms, distraught. “It was my moment of carelessness that let us be drugged by that scoundrel, and because of that she suffered so much.”

“All right, all right — enough of this useless dialogue.” The blue-haired man cut him off, found writing materials and wrote a short letter along with a simple map, and handed them to him. “It’s not that far from here to Chang’an. If you trust that I won’t sell you — follow the map to a place called Eastern Fence Cottage, and find a man named Shen Ziju. Give him the letter and he’ll give you a decent place to stay. When I have time I’ll come check on you. If I’m too busy, then I won’t.”

He gripped the letter and the map — before he could say another word of thanks, the blue-haired man had vanished into the light of dawn.

He didn’t even know his name. He could only face the direction in which he’d disappeared and press his forehead firmly to the ground three times. Even if all the world deceived him, this person could certainly be trusted. This belief was absolute. The clan leader had once said: meeting someone you can trust with your whole heart is a tremendous stroke of fortune. Before the merchant’s ship broke in, the clan leader had clapped him on the shoulder and said very seriously: “Duan Wu, I have watched you grow up. Your nature means you are the sort of person who can be trusted without condition. That is why I not only trust you to care for Yonghuan, but also wish to entrust one other thing to your keeping.”

At the memory, he instinctively touched his chest. In the place closest to his heart, fastened by the most sturdy cord, hung a white jade case barely two inches square.

He had seen it with his own eyes: when the enemy ship approached, the clan leader had taken out this case, recited a string of incantations, and the case had opened of its own accord. A blue light shot out, and eight or nine of the brutes standing at the ship’s prow were instantly drenched in that light and then “sucked” into the case.

He had never known the clan leader possessed such a formidable “weapon.” At this rate, how many enemies could come — and it would be of no consequence?!

But the clan leader had said its only function was temporary intimidation. Because this case could only be opened twice in a day — and could “take in” at most nine living persons per opening.

This case was Jin Wan — the Ashen Bend.

It contained the souls of every Blue Shark who had ever died.

Blue Sharks had always loved this world — and the people in it — as they loved their own lives. Time and again they had gone to humans, yearning to become their lovers or friends. But the results were always cause for sorrow — the so-called genuine bond could never withstand the lure of white pearls. Every Blue Shark who died carried with them a deep grief and a bitter, lingering regret, so their souls could find no peace. Over long ages these forces remaining in the world had gathered together, and absorbing the spiritual energy of sun, moon, wind, and water on the sea’s surface, they became a case as white as pearl. The old clan leader said the case contained another dimension — a place both pitiable and terrible. One must never fall inside it, or life would be worse than death. The incantation to open the case was known only to the clan leader and passed down through each generation. But this time, as the enemy ship’s cannons roared, the clan leader had given Jin Wan and the incantation, as well as Yonghuan herself, into his keeping.

Even if all is lost, something must always be left behind — those were the last words the clan leader said to him.

Jin Wan and Yonghuan — each carrying the grief and the love of the Blue Shark people, respectively — and from this point forward, his life existed only to carry both of them onward.

He took off his outer robe and wrapped Yonghuan in it carefully, then gently dried her tail and watched it slowly shift back into human form. He picked her up and walked forward, resolute.

This road led him to Shen Ziju.

It was after arriving at Eastern Fence Cottage that he understood why humans had the saying “like attracts like.” The blue-haired man had not been in the least bit surprised by their identities — and even his friend, upon learning they were not human, still did not treat them as outsiders. He simply told them to settle in and rest, and took care of all the needed tonics and remedies himself.

Humans are a complicated species. How good and how bad, how good-hearted and how villainous — it all depended on who you encountered.

For these two “benefactors” in his life, he did not know how to repay them. The one thing he could do was pray for them in his heart every single day, wishing them safety and long life.

Shen Ziju arranged for them to live in the quietest side courtyard of Eastern Fence Cottage, with a specialist to bring meals three times a day and orders for no one else to disturb them. As for the costly tonics, he was not the least bit stinting. In less than half a year, Yonghuan had transformed back into the lovely, flower-like girl she had once been. The only thing the tonics could restore was her life and her appearance — they could not return her a pair of healthy eyes. She remained unable to see the world. According to her account: after she was taken away, she had been sold to a household, where the mistress locked her in a narrow pool and demanded she cry every day. If she couldn’t cry, the woman pinched her face hard. If she still didn’t cry, needles were used. Her eyes grew more and more painful, her tears fewer and fewer, and so the measures became even more extreme: a red-hot branding iron was pressed to her shoulders and back. In less than a year, she had cried herself dry of every last tear. One morning she woke from a nightmare to find nothing before her eyes but pitch black. As a useless blind girl, this household simply sold her to the marionette troupe for a few silver coins.

When she recounted this past, not only his own heart was cut to pieces — even the habitually composed Shen Ziju slammed the table in fury at these scoundrels.

Afterward, Shen Ziju had also actively sought out several renowned physicians to treat her eyes — but all were powerless.

Since settling into Eastern Fence Cottage, Jiu Jue had visited once or twice. He only learned this person’s name through Shen Ziju’s mouth — the blue-haired man had never introduced himself. This person’s movements were always erratic: arriving suddenly, leaving suddenly. Apart from chatting and drinking with Shen Ziju, he only briefly asked after their situation. He didn’t even bother to ask the name of the poor blind girl — only said: if you need anything, find Shen Ziju. He has money to spare, no need to economize on his behalf. Upon learning that every physician was powerless to help her eyes, Jiu Jue considered for a moment and said that since he was going to wander east and west and many places anyway, he would do what he could to inquire whether there was any method to treat the eyes of a shark-person — but he made no guarantees. If he truly found a treatment method, he would notify Shen Ziju at the first opportunity, and Shen Ziju could have all the needed medicinal materials ready.

He truly did not know how to express his gratitude to this person with whom he had crossed paths by chance. Before Jiu Jue departed, he ran after him and stopped him, then suddenly seized his left hand and pressed something gleaming forcefully onto his palm.

“What’s this for?” Jiu Jue pulled his hand back and looked — his palm was empty.

He said earnestly: “One of my scales. If you are ever in danger — call my name three times, and even if I am dead, I will come.”

Jiu Jue looked at him with an expression caught between laughter and distress: “Are you cursing us both?”

“Of course not.” He clarified quickly.

Jiu Jue gave a hearty laugh, clapped his shoulder, and said: “All right — you don’t need to always worry about repaying or not repaying some debt. I only did what was convenient. Stop fretting over me and take good care of that blind little sister of yours. Farewell!”

With that, he was gone again for a long while. Word had it he only came to Shen Ziju’s estate once — the day of Shen Ziju’s wedding.

Truly a man of mysterious comings and goings, like a dragon glimpsed only at the head and never the tail. If only he himself had even half this person’s abilities, half this ease — Yonghuan would not have had to suffer so much.

At this moment, Duan Wu’s meandering recollections were interrupted by a crisp clatter of hoofbeats. Before he could rise from the ground, a white horse had already drawn up before him, tossing its head — and on its back, Jiu Jue grinned down at him. “Tsk tsk — it’s not even hot out, so why are you hiding under a tree?”

He got to his feet happily. “Long time no see! Thank you for sending back that prescription — it’s working.”

“Good to hear.” Jiu Jue swung down from the horse and looked him over. “Why do you look so dreadful? Is Shen Ziju not feeding you?”

“Not at all — Young Master Shen has always treated us generously.” He quickly corrected the impression, then asked: “Will you be staying a few more days this time?”

Jiu Jue shook his head. “Just stopping by for a look. I’ve been terribly busy lately — soon I’ll be going somewhere quite far away. Might not come back to Chang’an for five or seven years.”

“Ah — then please take good care on the road!”

“Of course — stop worrying about me. Has Shen Ziju come by already?”

“He came early in the morning. He should still be here.”

“Has he been coming often lately?”

“Ever since you sent back the prescription, he comes more often than before — always bringing great quantities of costly medicines and tonics. Young Master Shen’s generosity truly makes me feel I cannot repay his kindness.”

“Never mind that — he’s not short of money. A few medicinal ingredients and tonics in exchange for restoring a pair of eyes — why wouldn’t he? You said yourself you’re grateful to me.”

“Both you and Young Master Shen are rare good people.”

“Heh — I’m not necessarily a person.”

“Even if you were a pig, you would be a benefactor I can never forget.”

“That… couldn’t you find a better comparison?”

The two of them walked and talked toward Eastern Fence Cottage. Along the way Jiu Jue noticed his gait and asked: “What happened to your left leg? You’re walking with a limp.”

“Oh… this…” He said quickly: “I tripped and fell while taking a walk.”

“A walk?” Jiu Jue thought. “Oh! I think Shen Ziju once mentioned you often take your sister to Autumn Mountain Lakeshore?”

“Mm, staying cooped up indoors isn’t good for her either. The scenery at Autumn Mountain Lakeshore is beautiful — a walk there brightens one’s spirits considerably.”

“Indeed — I’ve been there once myself. Just the lake full of indigo lotus blooms alone is worth looking at a hundred times. You chose a fine spot.”

“Heh heh.”

They walked all the way to Eastern Fence Cottage. Before they even reached the gate, the strains of Spring River Flower Moon Night drifted out — breathtaking as heavenly music.

Shen Ziju sat alone in the courtyard, absorbed in playing a brand-new zither before him. It was only when Jiu Jue was standing right in front of him that he looked up — and the music cut off abruptly.

“You — a wedding banquet’s separation, and now more than a year. If you had come any later, I would have assumed you’d forgotten this good friend of yours.” Shen Ziju smiled and rose. “Just received a fine jug of western region grape wine — you’ve come at exactly the right moment.”

“You two go ahead and catch up. I’ll go check on things.” Duan Wu bid them farewell and walked off in high spirits.

He knew nothing of tasting wine, understood nothing of music, and could neither compose poetry nor craft lyrics. He was truly unsuited to joining the conversation of these two men.

Every time he watched Jiu Jue and Shen Ziju leisurely sipping wine and talking by the fire, he always thought: they say a person’s face reflects their heart — what a pure and good heart both these men must have at their core to have been given such fine appearances. As for his own… never mind. It wasn’t worth bringing up. At any rate, his world now lay between Eastern Fence Cottage and Autumn Mountain Lakeshore. No one paid much attention to his ugly face hidden behind its cloth wrapping — and Yonghuan would never see it anyway.

Back in the room, Yonghuan was already awake, pacing back and forth in the room in restless agitation, bumping into chairs and table corners at intervals.

He drew a deep breath, shifted into a different voice, and came forward to steady her: “What’s this? You’ll hurt yourself — what will we do then?”

At the sound of this voice, she went from irritation to delight in an instant, grabbing his hand and saying: “Big Brother A’Jiu — you’re back! The medicine is so bitter. I don’t want to drink it anymore. Let’s go for a walk at Autumn Mountain Lakeshore!”

“That won’t do.” He held up the medicine packet in his hand. “Fresh medicine — I’ll brew it right away, and we’ll go out for a walk after you’ve drunk it.”

“Fine.” Yonghuan sat down sulkily, raised a hand and waved it in front of her own eyes, and then brightened: “Big Brother A’Jiu! I can see white shapes moving!”

“Really?” He was beside himself with joy, grasping her hand. “You can actually see?”

“Mm — a little bit. Which means the medicine is bitter but it really is working. Before long, I’ll be able to see you!” She pulled her hand free and could not help reaching out to touch his face.

He gave a start, hurriedly caught her hand, and said somewhat flustered: “Just sit — I’ll go brew the medicine first.”

Before the quietly bubbling medicine pot, he fanned the flame gently with a fan.

She would soon be able to see — that was something he had dreamed of. His Yonghuan could finally be the same as before.

But what of him?

Big Brother A’Jiu… a Big Brother A’Jiu who did not exist…

Indeed, he had done something that could only be called inexplicable. Among Blue Sharks, mimicking voices was one of their strongest abilities — and as a distant relative of the sea demons who counted this among their foremost skills, it was true for him as well. On the morning after they arrived at Eastern Fence Cottage, when Yonghuan had just awakened, he didn’t know what came over him — he suddenly shifted into a different voice. That’s right, without any forethought, he had mimicked Jiu Jue’s voice, and in front of a startled Shen Ziju, he had gently comforted Yonghuan, while simultaneously fabricating a “Big Brother A’Jiu” — a hero who had charged to the rescue, pulling her from the tank in a moment of righteous valor.

Afterward, he pulled Shen Ziju aside and said: “Yonghuan has always deeply disliked me and resented me. Right now her body is so weak that she cannot bear further shocks. So please…”

Before he could finish, Shen Ziju had already smiled and cut him off: “Say no more. From this day on, there is no Duan Wu in Eastern Fence Cottage — only a Big Brother A’Jiu. How does that sound?”

His gratitude was boundless.

But now, it was becoming clear the lie could not be maintained much longer.

Though there was another possibility: this lie could be kept forever…

That evening, just as Jiu Jue was preparing to leave Eastern Fence Cottage, Duan Wu suddenly called out to stop him.

After knotting and unknotting his hands for a long while, Duan Wu finally spoke: “This parting — I don’t know when we’ll meet again. If Yonghuan’s eyes recover, we will most likely set out on the return journey. After all, we are Blue Sharks — we must ultimately go back to the sea.”

“True enough. The person who gave me the prescription said full recovery would come within a month. It looks like I’ll miss being able to see you off.” Jiu Jue smiled. “Then I wish you a safe journey ahead, and hope you’ll grow a little wiser — don’t let yourselves be taken advantage of again.”

“I have a small wish.”

“What?”

“You are a benefactor to me — and to our entire Blue Shark clan. If we never meet again, would you be willing to leave me a portrait?”

At those words, Shen Ziju, who had come to see him off, immediately clapped his hands together. “What a good idea! If you don’t mind, let me take care of it.”

“Young Master Shen knows how to paint?”

Jiu Jue gave a hearty laugh: “Aside from killing, arson, and fighting — is there anything he doesn’t know?”

Shen Ziju smiled awkwardly: “Nobody gives compliments like that.”

Very quickly, a lifelike portrait capturing both Jiu Jue and Duan Wu was born from the remarkable brushwork of Shen Ziju.

“Keep it safe. May we meet again someday.” Jiu Jue vaulted onto his horse and rode away, dashing and carefree.

Duan Wu cradled the portrait as though it were the most precious of treasures.

When the first stars had just appeared, he helped Yonghuan along as always with careful steadiness, walking slowly along the Autumn Mountain Lakeshore.

Shen Ziju truly was an extraordinary person — even in choosing where to build a cottage, he could choose so thoughtfully. Word had it that he had purchased this land and built this simple yet graceful small courtyard precisely because of that expanse of indigo lotus. What an enviable life.

“Big Brother A’Jiu?” Yonghuan breathed in the air — carrying a faint, delicate fragrance — with contentment. “Do you know I am perhaps the last Blue Shark in the world?”

“Mm.” He nodded, then immediately shook his head. “What if some of your clanspeople survived?”

“It’s not possible.” She lowered her head. “And even if there were — I would not acknowledge them as my kin.”

His heart contracted sharply, as though gripped by a fierce hand.

“Why do you say that?” He forced himself to keep his voice neutral.

“If not for him, I might have left this world alongside my father. If not for him, I would not have been taken away and suffered so much.” She frowned. “I disliked him from the time I was small.”

So her view of him had never changed.

He pressed down the pain in his chest and patted her hand. “If not for him, you would not have found me.”

Her low mood lifted all at once, and she could not help giving him a sweet smile. “That’s true. So — never mind. At most, if I ever see him again, I’ll give him a good scolding.”

He smiled. “You see — it’s still better to go on living, isn’t it? Your father never once wished for you to leave this world alongside him.”

She was quiet for a moment, then said: “You perhaps cannot imagine the despair and grief I felt then. When you have witnessed, again and again, the cruel harm done to those dearest to you and to your kin by human hands — it truly is very hard to find the strength to carry on alone. Come to think of it, perhaps it was my father’s blessing, from beyond, that protected me. Because he knew that you would come to my side.”

Her face went pink, and she tilted her head to rest it on his shoulder.

Stars beginning to shimmer overhead, indigo lotus swaying — and her warmth beside him. If only time could stop at this moment.

He helped her sit, and after a long, struggling while, very shyly murmured close to her ear: “Seven-colored stone, covenant of three lives, a pact to remain together always, joy for Yonghuan. When the indigo lotus blooms and smiles, we clasp hands once more and grow drunk together on Qiu Shan.”

She startled.

“I asked Young Master Shen to teach me.” His face flushed; he stumbled a little over the words. “I have always admired those who can produce fine lines without effort. I heard the old ones say: there is in this world a seven-colored divine stone, formed from the love and warmth gathered in people’s hearts. Whoever obtains it will receive a fate of three lifetimes’ perfect match. I could not find this stone — but I have placed it in these lines, and I give them to you.”

Yonghuan’s eyes grew warm. She held his hand tightly and said: “Read it to me again.”

“I’ve already read it to you dozens of times!”

“I never tire of it.”

A cool breeze swept across the lake, setting the entire expanse of indigo lotus swaying like a sea of flowers, endlessly tender.

She settled into sleep in his arms. In her dream, someone was speaking, someone was humming — the melody of the lullaby most familiar to her…

If I could, I would read it to you for a lifetime — these words rang and rang again in Duan Wu’s heart.

But how much of a lifetime did he have left?

The pain had already spread from his left leg through his entire body. His frame now, perhaps, would shatter at the lightest collision. After all, he was missing quite a few bones. For Blue Sharks, interlocking bones were the chain of life — lose any one, and they would gradually lose all support, dissolving into “loose sand.” Many years ago, a clanmate had traded one finger-bone with an inland shaman in exchange for something she wanted. Whether or not she attained her wish, he did not know — he only witnessed her return in reduced circumstances and grow weaker day by day, until one day her body transformed on the sickbed into a scattering of glittering “sand,” ending her life in complete dissolution. The clan leader had warned them: most humans coveted only the Blue Shark’s tears, but some also had designs on their bones. Only a bone taken out by a Blue Shark’s own hand, while still alive, would remain clear and brilliant as blue sapphire, and when ground to powder and consumed could extend life and, remarkably, restore the voice of the voiceless. But bones taken by force from another would yield only a rotten piece of wood, useless. Therefore the clan leader had warned them all: no matter what temptation or ordeal they might face, guard their own bones.

But he — had given his bones away so easily, so unhesitatingly, to the pawnshop owner.

He had begun to feel something was wrong the moment Shen Ziju received the prescription Jiu Jue had sent back. The usually quick and generous Shen Ziju had turned pale upon reading it, and when he asked to see it, Shen Ziju had hemmed and hawed, saying perhaps the prescription was wrong and he’d need to verify it.

Full of suspicion, he had quietly crept to Shen Ziju’s window — and overheard him saying to an aged servant: “Is it true that only Old He at Wan Long Pawnshop has this ingredient ‘Hundred Flowers Moon Mirror’?”

“Only he has it.”

“How much silver would it require?”

“He doesn’t want silver, young master. Old He is an eccentric — he doesn’t lack money. He only accepts world rarities in trade.”

“Whatever treasure he wants, we’ll provide it.”

“Well… this fat fellow has only been accepting one type of thing lately.”

“What?”

“Blue Shark bone. He says it has life-prolonging properties. But where on earth would we find such a thing?”

“Listen carefully — don’t say a word of this to Duan Wu. Find some warming tonic to substitute for now, and I’ll think of how to deal with this. If there’s a way to get it — even if it ruins us — I’ll find it. After all, I made a promise to Jiu Jue to look after the two of them properly.”

“Young master — this is too much trouble. We’ve already done more than enough for them.”

“Say no more. My mind is made up.”

He quietly withdrew from the window. What surged within him was an overwhelming excitement.

Four bones from his left leg in exchange for Yonghuan’s pair of eyes. A fair trade.

Hiding it from everyone, he went to Wan Long Pawnshop.

The fat owner, round as a large mouse, seemed to have known he’d come. He had the wrapped medicinal packet ready and pushed it out through the small window. One bone per packet of medicine — four doses of Hundred Flowers Moon Mirror, the owner said, would heal even the dead. Let alone a pair of blind eyes.

Today was the last packet of medicine. It seemed Jiu Jue’s prescription had been correct, and the pawnshop owner had not supplied fake medicine. Yonghuan’s condition was progressing toward exactly the best possible outcome.

“Big Brother A’Jiu, I’m a little sleepy.” Yonghuan hugged his arm, stifled a yawn, and smiled. “I want to see you soon.”

“Once your eyes have healed, the very first thing you’ll see is me.”

“Good! Read your masterwork to me again.”

“I’ve already read it dozens of times.”

“Never enough.”

A cool breeze swept across the lake, and the whole expanse of indigo lotus became a surging sea of flowers, endlessly tender.

She fell into her dream in his arms, and in the dream someone was speaking, someone was humming — the melody was the lullaby most familiar to her…

Three days later, Duan Wu’s trace vanished from Eastern Fence Cottage.

Shen Ziju sent everyone he could to search. All returned empty-handed. He ordered everyone not to breathe a word of Duan Wu’s disappearance to Yonghuan, but only to say he had gone to Luoyang to seek another medicinal ingredient for her.

As for Yonghuan, she had no energy even for worry. Since taking the last dose of medicine, she slept all day long — great sprawling sleeps that lasted half a day at a time. When she woke, it was only for a brief moment before she sank back under, wanting neither food nor water, her mind growing emptier and emptier.

On the tenth day since Duan Wu’s disappearance — the third day since Yonghuan fell into complete sleep — Shen Ziju placed her inside a coffin woven of golden thread, anchoring the four corners with heavy stone creatures, and sank it to the bottom of the lake.

When the bubbles on the lake’s surface disappeared, he bowed deeply toward the water and said: “Thank you.”

Back in his room at Eastern Fence Cottage, he took the prescription Jiu Jue had sent, held it to the burning candle flame.

On the prescription, only a few brief lines:

“On the advice of one with expertise in this matter: take two qian of white poria, one qian of snake bile, two qian of fritillaria, three qian of lotus leaf; decoct three bowls of water down to one, taken continuously for fifteen days — may treat the blindness of a shark-person caused by loss of tears. These herbs are found everywhere, which is a great fortune. However, the patient will temporarily develop a condition of deep sleep; after they have fallen into unroused slumber, find a safe place and submerge them in water. After three years they will wake, and the eye ailment will be cured.”

— Signed, Jiu Jue

A flake of ash settled on the white jade case sitting on the desk. Duan Wu had voluntarily placed this in his keeping before leaving, and asked him to engrave a short and peculiar incantation in his mind — to be given to Yonghuan upon her recovery, along with the case’s secret and the incantation to open it. In addition, there was a silver cylinder, which he was also asked to give to her. And then — to never, ever let her know that the one who had kept her company through these days was the person she so despised.

He picked up the unremarkable case and murmured softly: “Jin Wan — easy to enter, hard to leave, looping without end?”

Duan Wu had said this case was the last trace the Blue Shark clan had left in this world — and also a dangerous weapon. He asked Young Master Shen to keep it safe.

He would keep it safe — carefully, and permanently. This object was not appropriate for Yonghuan.

He rose and walked to the wall, slowly lifting the brocade cloth covering something —

A brand-new zither, its very strings shimmering with the spirit of a blue glow. No one would ever know that at the four corners of the zither’s base were set four pieces of Blue Shark bone — rarest of all rare treasures.

The ancient text A Record of Famous Zithers stated: In the deep sea dwells a demon called the Blue Shark. If its bone is inlaid into a zither, it becomes a peerless instrument of the ages — the Blue Shark Bone Zither — its tone of unsurpassable beauty, beyond even that of heavenly music. Yet the bone of a Blue Shark, if taken by force, becomes useless — and burns to black stone in light. Only bone taken out by the Blue Shark’s own hand retains its remarkable properties. Bear this well in mind.

His fingers brushed lightly over each string. In the faint tremor of sound, he thought: There are reasons why certain peoples become extinct. It is natural, for their wisdom is yet insufficient to comprehend this world.

He preferred to believe that these two Blue Sharks who had found their way to his door were a precious gift sent to him by heaven — granting him the richest possible resources to grasp the woman who was “destined” for him.

He carefully covered the precious instrument again, thinking that tomorrow morning he would head out on a supply run and be gone three days. By the time he returned, and she saw this gift — what an expression of wild delight it would be…

9

“Madam, it is already past the third watch. Will you not retire?” The maid Xiao Chuan stifled a yawn, looking at Yue Ruyi still at work, needle in hand, learning to embroider.

Since she came through the door, over a year had passed, and there were many such nights. Everyone in the Shen household said the young master and the young madam were courteous and respectful to each other — but a little too courteous. More like distant acquaintances than husband and wife. What was more, the young master frequently did not come home at night. Only when the old madam came out to reprimand him for impropriety did he somewhat increase how often he stayed home. At least the young madam was no roaring lioness — she never once questioned her husband’s behavior, never even wore an expression of reproach. One had to say the Shen family had accumulated eight lifetimes’ worth of virtue to have married such a virtuous and gentle woman.

“Once you’ve yawned, go on to sleep.” Yue Ruyi said without raising her head. The embroidery needle worked clumsily back and forth across the deep red silk — the pair of mandarin ducks looked more like plain ducks. After all these years, she still could not master the needlework a woman was supposed to know.

“No, I can’t, young madam — if you don’t sleep, how can I? The old madam would certainly beat me to death if she knew.” Xiao Chuan shook her head vigorously, prying her own eyes wide open and slapping her own cheeks.

She smiled and shook her head, setting down the needlework. “Poor thing — all right. Draw me a bath.”

“Yes!” Xiao Chuan bounded out happily to fetch hot water. Her young madam loved cleanliness — every evening she had to soak in a fragrant flower bath before bed. Even though she was not particularly beautiful, the fragrance about her person could bewitch quite a few people.

“Wait.” She suddenly called Xiao Chuan back. “The bird’s nest congee on the table — you drink it.”

“Ah?!” Xiao Chuan was overwhelmed by the unexpected kindness. “Me? But this is what the old madam made for you!”

Yue Ruyi looked at the rock sugar bird’s nest on the table. “I don’t feel well today and don’t want it. If you don’t want it, I’ll only pour it out.”

“Oh no, what a waste!” Xiao Chuan licked her lips and ran to the table, scooped up the bird’s nest she had always dreamed of, and drank it clean in one breath.

“Was it good?” She smiled and asked.

“Delicious beyond words!” Xiao Chuan didn’t even spare what remained on the spoon, licking it spotlessly clean. “When I was little, my mother always told me that bird’s nest is something only immortals can eat! But our family couldn’t even afford meat more than a few times.” She looked up with round, apple-red cheeks glowing in the candlelight. “So, auntie, the biggest dream of my childhood was to eat a bowl of bird’s nest!”

“Then your dream has come true. No more regrets.” Yue Ruyi pulled out a handkerchief and kindly wiped the crumbs from the corners of this greedy cat’s mouth. “Xiao Chuan — how old are you this year?”

“Fifteen!” Xiao Chuan answered honestly.

“Do you have any family left?”

“None at all. The plague that year took everyone in my hometown. My aunt brought me out, and then I was sold to the Shen household as a maid.” Xiao Chuan was a little puzzled — the young madam seemed to have an unusual number of questions tonight.

She nodded, smiled: “Never mind. Off you go and prepare.”

Xiao Chuan bounced away to get everything ready. Her young madam loved cleanliness — every evening she needed to soak in a flower bath before bed.

A little while later, in the inner room: the door firmly bolted shut from inside, a massive wooden bathtub billowing thick white steam. Fresh flowers floated, layer upon dense layer, across the water’s surface. With special concentrated fragrance powder added, the scent was rich enough to be almost stifling.

Only one candle lit the entire room, the light barely managing to hold back the dark.

Thud!

Something heavy seemed to fall.

Then came the sound of splashing water: a nude figure submerged into the tub. If she could, she wished every strand of her hair were fragrant.

Beside the bathtub lay another woman — soundless, motionless as the dead. In the faint light, a face could be made out: devoid of all color, the white shading toward blue. Slightly ghastly, yet still unmistakably… Yue Ruyi’s face.

Maintaining this dead body was certainly not an easy task. But she would persevere. She had to.

Because — what a magnificent thing she was doing.

Flickers of light from the water played across the snow-white chest. A deep wound dominated it, as though a sharp arrow had been ruthlessly driven in. Small fragments of seven-colored light sparkled and faded along the wound’s edges.

Slender fingers traced slow circles over that scar, while from far away in memory two voices surfaced —

He doesn’t want you. I do.

You?

Yes, me.

Why?

What he would not do — I will. And I will do it better.

Do you know the price of taking me in?

I have long since ceased to fear the word “price.”

Even if it means an arrow lodged in your heart forever?

Ha. I have endured the agony of ten thousand arrows — what is one more?

Very well. Into whose heart I fall makes no difference to me anyway.

The voices receded again. The candle burned out. In the room, only the sound of cold water remained…

The next evening, Xiao Chuan carried a bamboo basket out of the Shen estate. Someone asked where she was going. She said the young madam had sent her to Autumn Mountain Lakeshore to pick some fresh indigo lotus blooms.

But this one errand — until the following dawn — and still Xiao Chuan had not returned.

Old Madam Shen scolded everyone in the household she could reach, declaring that they couldn’t even keep watch over one maid. That Xiao Chuan girl was a wild thing — when she came back, she’d give her a thrashing!

Yue Ruyi stood before Old Madam Shen without a word, her face full of self-reproach.

Seeing her like this, Old Madam Shen swallowed her anger and said: “You need not blame yourself. Perhaps the silly girl sneaked off somewhere to play. Wait a couple of days until Ziju returns from his supply run, then we’ll decide whether to report it to the authorities.”

“It’s my fault — I sent her to the lakeshore for no good reason. What if she lost her footing…” Yue Ruyi suddenly covered her mouth, too stricken to speak.

“What if she lost her footing…” Old Madam Shen shook her head. “Then blame only her own ill fortune.”

“But Xiao Chuan has served in the household for so many years — for her to suddenly be gone like this…” She looked timidly toward the old madam.

“We’ll simply buy another maid.” Old Madam Shen was unconcerned. “Don’t be sad — there will be no shortage of people to serve you.”

Yue Ruyi lowered her head and said nothing more.

In a place unseen, there was a soft, cold laugh.

Occasionally, she did look back and wonder what kind of household could produce someone like Shen Ziju. Now, looking, the answer was self-evident.

People — aren’t they simply like this…

10

Never in all his life had Shen Ziju imagined there would ever come such a day. He returned home at his usual time, and what awaited him upon entering was not the customary fussing of servants, nor the familiar reprimands of his grandmother, not even Yue Ruyi’s bland, expressionless face — but the Shen family, all twenty-some members, laid out beneath white cloth in neat rows, and the pervasive smell of blood.

All of it had happened in the small hours — a few hours before he returned.

The court officers stood guard at the gate, periodically dispersing onlookers who had gathered.

All manner of people murmured and pointed at the entrance. Some said the Shen family must have offended some terrible enemy — first a wedding procession completely wiped out, and now, less than two years later, their own household. Some said the Shen family had done their share of ruthless things to make their fortune, and heaven’s justice had arrived. Others said quite simply that the Shen family had married in a star of ill omen.

But herein lay the peculiarity: this “star of ill omen,” Yue Ruyi, had once again, against all odds, survived both catastrophes.

He charged to the bedroom the officers had secured. Yue Ruyi lay in the bed, a damp cloth across her forehead, burning with fever, an old woman summoned by the authorities at her side, shaking her head and murmuring about poor fortune following such a young girl.

“Get up! Get up!” He didn’t care that Yue Ruyi might have only half a life left — he seized her and shook her. “Why did this happen? Who did this? Tell me! Who did this?”

“Young Master Shen, you truly cannot do this — the young madam’s constitution is very weak right now.” The old woman couldn’t bear to watch and moved to stop him.

“Get out! You have no place to speak here!” Shen Ziju, as though gone mad, seized the old woman’s arm, pushed her out the door in two or three moves, and slammed it with a resounding bang.

Gone was all his refinement, all his poise. He wanted none of it. None of it at all.

Yue Ruyi slumped against the head of the bed, her gaze vacant, as though she could not even hear him roaring.

“Are you dead?” Shen Ziju’s temples pulsed violently. He was nearly crushing her arm. “Who did it? Say something!”

“It was… it was…” Yue Ruyi cried out to him in anguish. “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“You never take three steps outside the house — how can you not know?!” He bellowed.

“I…”

“Tell me!”

“I don’t recognize him!” Yue Ruyi clutched her head, rambling: “He must have been a demon! How else could he move like a tiger — killing everyone! He… he also said…”

“What did he say?!”

“He said — as long as the Shen family vanishes from this world, Wei Lan can go with him in peace…” Yue Ruyi trembled, her mind in complete disarray. “He could do sorcery! Whoosh — flew in! Whoosh — flew out!”

Wei Lan… he said Wei Lan?!

In Shen Ziju’s ears, right now, only those two characters remained.

At this moment, Yue Ruyi suddenly grabbed him: “Quickly go find a Daoist and have him subdued! I know — Daoists all have magical instruments! They have gourds, they have bowls, they have cases! They can seal up demons and ghosts! Husband, go quickly.”

He wrenched free of Yue Ruyi’s grip — he couldn’t even spare a thought for why she had survived — turned, wrenched open the door, and fled.

The old woman was nearly frightened out of her skin by his appearance, and rushed into the room to support the swaying Yue Ruyi.

“Water… I need water!” She grabbed the old woman’s hand, looking thoroughly pitiful.

The old woman rushed to pour water, only to find the pitcher empty, and turned back: “Young Madam Shen — just wait, I’ll fetch water from elsewhere.”

The moment the old woman’s footsteps had faded away, every trace of Yue Ruyi’s madness and frailty vanished from her face. She drew a calm breath, sat up, took the wet cloth from her forehead and tossed it to the floor, and looked at the open door — then gave a cold smile: “Shen Ziju, run faster — otherwise you won’t make it to see your woman’s last moments.”

In no time, the old woman returned with hot tea — only to find the room entirely empty. Nothing left but a lingering trace of the unique floral fragrance that followed wherever Shen Ziju’s young madam went.

11

She was sprawled in the green grass, gasping in great gulps of air. Her azure-colored dress was blooming with red “flowers” — not flowers but someone else’s blood. Her face and hands had lost all their original appearance, covered in layer upon layer of blood that did not belong to her.

Wei Lan of Ling Yuan Feng — the Wei Lan before whom flowers hung their heads in shame — the Wei Lan who drifted like a butterfly from one man’s arms to the next — now appeared in his steady gaze in this horrible, near-savage state.

The previous night, he had stepped away for only a moment. When he returned to Yin Fang Lou, she was nowhere to be found. A strange salty smell permeated the air — blood mixed with an odd medicinal scent. On the open ground before the lake, a bamboo basket still bobbed in the water. A torn dress lay in a pool of blood still fresh, and a heap of human bones draped with shreds of flesh and muscle were scattered throughout — a sight that turned the stomach.

He frowned and instinctively took several steps back. His foot came down on something that crunched. He picked it up: a blood-stained wooden waist-tablet, engraved with the characters “Shen Estate, Entry and Exit.”

The Shen estate?!

His heart lurched.

Even moving at his greatest possible speed to the Shen estate, all he found was a room full of carnage and rivers of blood.

He found her just as she was extricating herself from a heap of bones draped in white hair, giving a satisfied belch.

“Have you lost your mind?” He stepped forward and seized her wrist, dragging her bodily away from the gore.

“Oh, it’s you.” She smiled strangely. But she had not gone mad — she could still recognize him. “I was so hungry. Such an extreme hunger I have never felt before. Only these people here smelled particularly fragrant. I couldn’t stop myself from eating them all.”

Her words, her smile, and the way she grasped his sleeve — they chilled him to his spine, scattering his thoughts.

“You won’t kill me, will you?” She was still smiling at him.

That tone, that certainty — he knew them far too well.

“I’m exhausted — I can’t fly anymore. Won’t you take me home?” She leaned on his shoulder, making her soft, entreating request.

By now the window was streaked with the first light before dawn. He gritted his teeth and caught her by the waist, disappearing instantly from the estate he was now certain held no living soul.

He was exhausted too — too tired to keep holding her.

He stopped on a stretch of grassland still some distance from Autumn Mountain Lake. In the faint first light, through the mist, he could barely make out the slope he had crossed so many times. She seemed to feel the effects of so much — she toppled to the ground, pressing her stomach: “Did I eat too much? I feel so full.”

He stared at her flatly: “What you ate was people. Not cabbage or chicken.”

“I know.” She gave another satisfied belch. “But I was hungry. Could you bear to watch me starve?”

The last retreat was gone. If she had shown even a flicker of remorse — if she had only said to him I didn’t want to be this way — he could have found ten thousand reasons to say he forgave her.

But from the day they met to now, across thousands upon thousands of years, her heart, like her face, had not changed in the slightest.

He bent down, took hold of his own sleeve, and carefully wiped the blood from her face, smiling: “The moment you arrived at Ling Yuan Feng, even the flowers there feared your beauty — they stopped blooming.”

She startled: “How do you know about Ling Yuan Feng?”

“The fruit was still green, yet you were already impatient to eat it — and every senior brother rushed to pick it for you.” He spoke slowly. “You ran to me, gave me fruit. Very sour. I ate it all.”

Her eyes remained blank. These things were only dust settled in the back of her memory — she could blow it away with the lightest breath, and it would vanish without a trace. Things that were unimportant had never needed to be remembered. This was her eternal habit.

“Third senior brother died by the master’s hand on your account, and you — before his body was even cold — had already given yourself to another.” The old wounds buried in his heart were torn open one by one. The things she had forgotten, he had picked up and carried — and never set down.

She was stunned for a long time, then studied his face and suddenly gave a soft laugh. “Ah — little senior brother?”

He had always been waiting for this sweetly familiar call of “little senior brother.” He had waited so long. But now that she truly said it aloud, he found that what he had been suppressing in anticipation was never a beautiful hope — only the destruction that could only exist in a nightmare.

“Yes, Wei Lan — I am your little senior brother.” He smiled too. “Do you remember what the last thing I said to you was, the last time we met at the home of your new love?”

She tilted her head, thought for a long time, and answered honestly: “I had already forgotten even you — how could I remember your words?”

Yes. Perhaps, aside from your own “loves” and pleasures, you would never remember anything.

He looked into her eyes: “I said — ‘I don’t care what you learned from that. If you harm anyone, I will kill you with my own hands.'”

She appeared to hear the funniest little joke, reached out a dirty hand, and mischievously tapped his nose, then pressed her face to his ear, murmuring as though in a dream: “You will not kill me. You would not harm so much as a hair of mine. Because you love me. Every man loves me.”

He smiled. For the first time, with such intimacy, he pressed his own face against hers: “You and I — neither of us truly understands what love is.”

Before the sound of his words had fully faded, her characteristic coquettish and confident smile suddenly froze. Then slowly crumbled — into shock and pain.

She pushed him away, looked down at her own chest. The short dagger engraved all over with golden runes was driven, with absolute finality, into her body.

Every organ and viscera began to churn — faster and faster. Flesh, blood, soul — all of it drawn into the enormous whirlpool, fracturing slowly, becoming ash, in excruciating pain…

“Little senior brother… you…”

She collapsed to the ground. Her dark hair turned to white in an instant. Her once-flawless skin slowly shriveled to a dry husk draped over jutting bones. “Crack, crack” — deep fissures split open across her skin. White bone gradually showed through. She still had the sight to see. The right hand, now already bone, in despair clutched the hem of his robe. Before all her flesh had dissolved to black ash, the last words she spoke were: “How could you bring yourself to…”

If I could bear it, why would I lose nights of sleep?

If I could bear it, why would I watch from afar?

If I could bear it, why would I sever my own emotional meridian?

Ash drifting upward made his eyes sting and water. Surely it was the ash — for he had long since lost the habit of weeping.

He sat before that collection of bare white bones, dimly recalling the hands — when she was still Wei Lan — that had always liked to tug at the hem of his robe.

The sky grew darker. A cold wind rose. He removed his cape and wrapped the skeleton, which had remarkably not yet scattered, preserving a last fragment of wholeness, lying in his arms.

He carried her slowly toward Autumn Mountain Lakeshore. Since she had said this was the most beautiful place she had ever seen — let her remain here forever.

The small boat rocked gently, the lake shimmering in ripples. He pushed with the bamboo pole, accompanying her to her final resting place.

From the devoted disciple of Ling Yuan Feng’s peak, to the divine Moon God of the celestial hall, to the self — neither god nor mortal — he had become: he felt he should find someone to blame. But he could never determine who to hate.

In the cool wind, he recalled that stone of seven colors, shaped like an arrow. Truly an arrow of exceptional qualities — not only could it fly and walk, it could also speak.

In those years, “that person” had asked him and Gui Yan to each pour their divine power into two separate stones. With that, he bade farewell to his identity as a celestial god. He had assumed the days would pass peacefully from then on — but unexpectedly, some ten years prior, while living quietly in a small southern town, he had looked up from his window one day to see this stone — the one “that person” had called Qing Qi Jian, the “Love-Rousing Arrow” — outside his window.

He still remembered its voice: like a child newly come to the world, in the most naive and guileless of tones, telling him it had just pushed through from a blue-tinted place, had nowhere to go, and needed his “shelter.”

“Why come to me?” he asked.

He had no interest in sheltering anything. By then, he had done everything he could — all matters connected to the celestial realm, the stone, and “that person” were no longer his concern. He wished only to live as a quietly detached hermit, alone.

“My body holds the power you gave me — so the very first person I wanted to find was you!” the stone answered.

“Go away. I shelter nothing — not even a cat or a dog, let alone a stone.” He turned and refused without mercy.

“If no one shelters me, I will ‘die’!” The stone wailed and jumped in front of him.

“Nothing to do with me.” He stepped around it and lay back down on the bed.

“I can do something for you. An exchange.” The stone hopped onto his body, its arrowhead positioning itself of its own accord at his left eye.

What?!

Before he could say yes or no, the stone transformed into a slender needle — a seven-colored thread through its tail — and with a “whoosh” drove into his skin, emerged below his left eye, and in a flash of lightning speed “stitched” several passes before reverting to its original form and standing atop him, quite pleased with itself.

He snapped upright and felt at the suddenly burning, itching skin beneath his left eye. “What did you do?!”

“Reconnected your severed emotional meridian!” the stone said happily. “And with my reinforcement, no method, no matter what, can ever sever it again. Are you pleased?!”

The result: the stone was thrown out the window.

The sensation of love and hate returning — it was unbearable. He fell to the floor, pressing at his wildly pounding heart. He could not allow this. What he had suffered so greatly to attain — his “state of no love and no hate” — had been destroyed by a stone?

His heart was beating so frantically, emotions long-unfamiliar forcing their way back to their proper place — it was distressing and frightening, all knotted together, driving deep into every crack in his soul.

He was afraid. Genuinely afraid…

Then, a few days later, the stone found its way back to his door.

“Why have you returned?” He furiously pointed at the entrance. “You little troublemaker — get out!”

“I’m not a troublemaker! I’m an ancient divine stone!” it corrected him. “Let me do a second thing for you. Then you’ll surely agree to shelter me!”

“Get out!” He offered not a shred of grace. “I don’t need you to do anything for me!”

“I can see the person your heart loves most!” The stone tittered. “The beautiful Wei Lan.”

His heart was struck by that name, nearly stopping entirely.

“You…” He pointed at the stone, working hard to keep himself from looking so alarmed.

“I know where she is! I went to see her just yesterday!” The stone hopped up.

Don’t say it… Those three words were not yet out of his mouth when the stone cried loudly: “Her home and yours are separated by just one more town! Right in the Apricot Blossom Lane of Shuang Xia Town!”

The result this time: it was hurled out the window with even more force. He didn’t even ask how it knew his secret.

“If I see you one more time, I don’t care if you’re a divine stone or a demon — I’ll grind you to dust!” he said with absolute finality, leaving no room for any joke about it.

In the pouring rain, he slammed the window shut.

After that, the stone never came back.

Come to think of it, what he hated most should have been this stone. How easily it had changed the course of his fate…

He pushed hard on the bamboo pole, and gave a wry smile.

Where the small boat had passed, faint ripples remained. On either side, the indigo lotus seemed to have passed the height of its most beautiful season — and was beginning ever so slightly to show signs of fading…

12

A light rain fell in the depths of the night, pattering fine circles on the lake’s surface.

Before the swing frame at Yin Fang Lou, Shen Ziju stood staring at the freshly mounded earth.

After a long silence, he asked, with perfect calm, the man seated at the stone table drinking wine: “Who are you?”

“Ding Yan.” The other was even calmer. “A shameful idler.”

“How long have you been hiding behind us?” Shen Ziju suddenly smiled. “Hiding behind us, watching our moonlit evenings and tender moments — it must have been hard. Hard enough to wish me dead, wasn’t it? Pitiful wretch!”

Ding Yan said nothing and continued pouring himself wine.

“You wanted Wei Lan to go with you. Wei Lan chose to stay with me. You, this beast…” Shen Ziju’s smile gave way to gnashing fury. He pointed at him. “The Shen household — twenty-some lives. How could you do it? Beast! Beast!”

Ding Yan’s hand paused for a moment, then continued, as though nothing had happened, to refill his cup.

“Wei Lan would never leave with a beast like you who has no humanity whatsoever!” Shen Ziju rushed up to him, grabbed his robe. “And you even killed Wei Lan!”

Ding Yan used minimal force to push this man, who could not even tie up a chicken, to the ground, and said coolly: “The only thing I regret right now is not killing her sooner.”

Crack! The wine cup shattered to powder in his hand.

“You…” Shen Ziju staggered up, not daring to physically engage, and could only roar like a madman over and over: “You beast! Worse than a beast! Give Wei Lan back to me! She was mine! She only loved me!”

“She loved no one.” Ding Yan smiled. “Her incomplete emotional meridian determined everything. From the day you hired killers to stage an ambush at Black Fox Ridge — dooming Yue Ruyi’s entire party — you lost the right to call anyone else a beast.”

Shen Ziju’s face went ashen. “How do you know?!”

“Didn’t you just say it yourself — that I’m a pitiful wretch who hides behind you?” Ding Yan drank the last drop remaining in the jug. “I’m also an idler. My favorite pastime is hiding where you cannot see me, watching how you live your life. After all — you were the man at Wei Lan’s side. I was also curious: what abilities did you have to keep a woman like her at your side?” He paused and looked at Shen Ziju. “Yes — I thought countless times about killing you. But in the end I found that you and I are alike. You are simply another pitiful wretch who does not know how to love.”

“Nonsense!” Shen Ziju roared. “Wei Lan said she would be with me always! She said I was her one and only in this life!”

“She says that to everyone.” Ding Yan rose. “She never threw herself into fire or water for any ‘one and only.’ She never reached out to help them in illness or danger. She never shed a single tear for any of their departures. Her ‘greatest love’ is always the next one.”

“You killed her and now you slander her!” Shen Ziju’s face twisted with rage beyond measure.

“Think of it however you like.”

Ding Yan turned and took one last look at the new grave, then turned back toward the lakeshore to leave.

Yin Fang Lou — let it sink forever beneath the lake of memory, never to be seen again.

He looked out at the bleak lake in the rainy night, and somewhere deep inside, gave a long, inward laugh at himself. What a terrible life he had led.

With only a few steps left to reach the shore, Shen Ziju’s voice suddenly came from behind. Not curses, not shouts — but a desperate, loud recitation, as though of an incantation.

Before he could turn around, he could no longer move.

The strangest sensation rose from the soles of his feet upward. He looked down — and found, with a shock, that a surge of blue light had washed over his entire person, fixing him completely in place. The tightness of the binding nearly suffocated him. He strained his head to turn, and saw: in the air before Shen Ziju, an open white jade case hovered, the blue light emanating from within. His body moved involuntarily toward it — countless invisible hands seizing him, dragging him as though absolutely determined to pull him down into hell.

“I hear that what this case contains is a place more terrible than hell.” The wild laughter of madness twisted Shen Ziju’s features. He stood behind the case, watching with immense satisfaction as Ding Yan was reeled in inch by inch. “You killed Wei Lan — only a place like this is fit to be your destination!”

Hell?

Perhaps Shen Ziju was right. Right now, there was nowhere more fitting for him than hell.

If this case truly contained such a place — why resist at all?

Ding Yan suddenly stopped struggling.

“So Jin Wan is truly this formidable!”

A startled, delighted voice came from behind Shen Ziju.

A young woman clapped her hands in rapid delight, exclaiming: “The insect-people were right — Jin Wan truly is a weapon capable of containing even gods.”

Shen Ziju spun around — and saw, in astonishment, a person utterly unlike the Yue Ruyi he knew, looking at him with a completely transformed expression.

The abandoned body crashed heavily to the ground. The cheeks that had always been pink-tinged grew, rapidly, the blue-grey of a corpse.

A strange woman in black gauze stood smiling before the dumbstruck Shen Ziju, deliberately mimicking Yue Ruyi’s voice: “Husband — Ruyi survived two disasters not by luck. She died long ago — the moment you hired killers to set an ambush at Black Fox Ridge to intercept the wedding party.”

Shen Ziju’s body trembled. He stumbled backward, pointing at her: “You… you’re a ghost?!”

“Where do all these ghosts come from?” The woman smiled. “I am more accurately your helper. The killers you hired were too incompetent — the Yue family’s second young master chased them off in a moment. Fortunately I was there to fix things. You see — I even had to sacrifice myself, climbing into your wife’s dead body to play the role of your madam for more than a year.”

“What manner of thing are you?” Shen Ziju grabbed a stone at hand and hurled it at her.

She blocked it — the stone crumbled to dust in her palm.

“Stay back!” He screamed.

“You fear being killed, yet you feel no fear in killing?” She stood before him in perfect ease, fingers moving — from his shoulder emerged an insect the size of a thumbnail, completely transparent. “This little creature is called an Echo Worm. I went to tremendous effort to find even one, and I left it with you. So everything you said and did every day — I knew it all. That I could fulfill my wish so smoothly — even I was a little surprised. So whatever else — I must thank you, dear husband.”

Shen Ziju stared at her in horror, sinking to the floor: “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“You don’t need to understand.” The face — quite unremarkable — flashed with a killing intent. “In any case, your family is gone. Living alone has no meaning. Why not…”

Before she could finish, before his eyes stood not a woman at all — but a boar the size of a small ox. Its snow-white tusks — like curved blades honed to razor-sharpness — jutted from its snout with a chilling gleam. Every black bristle on its body stood stiff as a steel needle. Its four hooves bore sharp claws capable of tearing through anything.

“I will have your Blue Shark bone zither burned for her as an offering.” The boar bared its great maw and gave an eheheh laugh. “So you may rest easy.”

At that moment, Shen Ziju seemed to remember something and opened his mouth to recite again, rapidly, the incantation he had spoken before. After all, Jin Wan could be used twice in a day!

But half the incantation died forever in his throat.

The boar’s tusks — fast as lightning — severed his neck.

Still not satisfied, it raised its forehooves and brought them crashing down hard on his chest.

The sound of blood spraying and bones shattering were the last sounds Shen Ziju left upon this earth.

Ding Yan, less than two feet from the case, desperately tilted his body backward, dragging out the time before being pulled in. His gaze, startled, fixed on the far-too-familiar boar.

“You… you are…” In his mind, vague as mist, arose a mountain peak, a wash of moonlight, and a young woman kowtowing devoutly before a clay idol…

The boar’s massive frame slowly shrank, retracing the shape of a woman. She raised a rough palm and touched her own — far from beautiful — face, turning toward him with a smile of utterly contented relief: “It’s A’Song, my Moon God master.”

“A’Song…”

Her sudden appearance had come with absolutely no warning — he had never in his wildest dreams imagined that this she-demon, written off long ago and left on a desolate mountain peak, would re-enter his life in so earth-shaking a manner. Or — had she ever truly left his life at all?

“You asked Wei Lan if she remembered the last words you spoke to her.” A’Song shrugged. “So let me ask you: do you remember the last words I spoke to you?”

He naturally did not. His only memory of her was that she was a boar who had once grown a red thread — and that thread had been cut by him, the Moon God he was then, without a moment’s hesitation.

“People of great standing are always prone to forgetfulness.” A’Song smiled, showing very white teeth. “I said — I have never, until this moment, felt such a deep and true hatred for the Moon God.”

Ding Yan also smiled. Just as he had in that night so many years before, he said to her: “I am honored.”

Then the blue light vanished. The one who had been enfolded within it disappeared without a trace. The case gave a sharp snap and closed shut, settling slowly to the ground.

A’Song stepped forward and carefully lifted this extraordinary and terrible “Jin Wan,” pressing her lips against its surface to say: “Next time, I will fashion you a truly beautiful likeness.”

Dawn broke, the rain stopped. Deep in the Autumn Mountain Lakeshore, a thick plume of black smoke rolled up, accompanied by leaping fire.

Yin Fang Lou, Shen Ziju, and the white bones long buried in the earth — all of it became, with fire and wind, a permanent secret…

13

I sat at the highest point of the hillside, and the expression on my face must have been rather blank. The blue fish was still tethered to me, though at the moment it was perching on my head — which was a somewhat more elevated vantage point for it.

I had never, until this moment, felt such a deep and true hatred for the Moon God — A’Song’s words rang as clear as though she had just finished saying them to me. The light that had seeped out from Jin Wan still seemed to flicker before my eyes, and every one of those strange, ordinary, and sorrowful stories of love — each of them was so vividly imprinted in my mind that it was as though, as they played out one by one, I was the audience sitting closest to the stage.

And so I was in a daze. Because even for me, when so many loves and hates and joys and griefs came rushing in all at once in so brief a space of time, I also needed time to digest and sort through them.

At the same time, I also had to accept one fact: this creature with its long legs, which used my scalp as a receiver and its own feet as transmitters — it was the first, and until now only, entity of its kind that I had ever encountered. I had said I wanted to know the truth, and this thing had leaped “whoosh” onto the top of my head and given me every truth it had to give…

“Now you understand everything?” The blue fish poked its head forward from my forehead. “What I just transmitted to you was all the past that exists within the one who cast this place. Every outsider who enters a loop loses all secrets in Jin Wan — everything they’ve experienced appears as vivid and real as if it had happened to you.”

“This place… was ‘cast’ by Ding Yan?” I looked around: green grass, blue sky, shimmering lake. Not a single detail short of lifelike.

“More precisely — it is his loop.” The blue fish mentioned this word again. “Blue Sharks are a sorrowful people. The Blue Sharks who died in pain left behind souls of lingering regret and grief. These souls retained none of their former memories, and transformed into peculiar-looking sprites, making this place their permanent dwelling — this place born from them, one could say, or born from all those who harmed them. But if you think Jin Wan works like other ‘gatherings of resentment,’ simply imprisoning people and killing them outright — that would be wrong. We have never ‘killed’ anyone.”

I frowned. Once again, the familiar sound of heavy footsteps came from somewhere distant — Ding Yan, cradling his white-boned burden, appeared at the foot of the slope for the third time. He followed the exact same path, heavily and slowly making his way toward Autumn Mountain Lakeshore, stepped into the boat and left, and ended as always with the black tear-shaped crystal, which the great large one then leaped out to swallow — growing another inch fatter.

“Jin Wan does not kill people. Jin Wan only peers into the heart and creates a ‘loop.'” I thought I should already understand what “loop” meant.

“Yes. Those who come to Jin Wan suffer no physical harm. In this world, they will only loop endlessly through the most despairing, grief-stricken moment of their lives. Each time the loop completes and before they crystallize, there is a blank period when they are lucid — aware that they are trapped in a terrible cycle. In that period, they have two choices: endure the identical suffering again, or end their own lives. So before the one who cast this place arrived, more than half had chosen to end things.”

“And the remaining ones?” I pressed.

“We are always searching for food here. Once someone enters, the first to find them becomes their ‘companion’ — just as I was the first to find you.” The blue fish was a little despondent. “If you had not awakened from that scene, but instead let those negative emotions seize your mind, you would not have broken free from the loop. And I could have stayed quietly beside you — as long as you didn’t end your own life, I would have had a reliable, endless supply of food. This place has always had more mouths than food. Most of us are like me — chronically underfed. Ever since the one who cast this place arrived, he has never ended his own life — looping his suffering again and again — and so the great large one grew bigger and bigger. In the end it grew large enough to prey on its own kind as well as on the outsiders paired with them. So the remaining ones were all eaten by the great large one.”

“So you call Ding Yan the ‘caster’ precisely because his ‘companion’ has eaten everyone else, the corresponding scenes have all vanished, and only him — Ding Yan — remains as the sole source?” I suddenly understood.

The blue fish nodded. “By now there’s no way anyone can outgrow the great large one. Even if you fall into a loop, I could eat as hard as I could and never catch up to the great large one’s rate of growth. As long as no one can deal with the great large one, Jin Wan will keep the same scene indefinitely.”

“Which means: as long as Ding Yan remains caught in this endless cycle, the great large one will just keep growing? How large will it get?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it will grow until it stretches the walls of Jin Wan itself — and break through to the outside world, possibly.” The blue fish admitted openly. “At that point its own power will also mutate, and it may be able to directly pierce through Jin Wan’s shell — which is to say, the case — without needing the incantation to open it at all. From that point on, every person outside could be pulled, one by one, into a loop.”

That was absolutely unacceptable.

Yet looking at things now — just with me alone, I would likely have a very hard time handling something that enormous and well-fed.

“Can you find the others who came in with me?” I quickly asked.

“Very difficult.” The blue fish shook its head. “The one who cast this place has brought his memories of Chang’an, Luoyang, and a southern small town all here. It’s an enormous space. I have no idea where they might have ended up — perhaps in a distant marketplace, perhaps in some random person’s back courtyard.”

Hearing this, I rose to my feet and pointed at myself: “Then do you think I alone could handle that fat one?”

“Even with many helpers it would be no use.” The blue fish told me the unvarnished truth. “The sprites in Jin Wan are the souls of Blue Sharks. Unless a living Blue Shark appears right now — with their hand alone, even using just an embroidery needle, they could make the great large one disappear.”

Right now I honestly felt like kicking it away. Where on earth was I supposed to find a living Blue Shark?!

I slapped my forehead in frustration, and then a thought flashed. “Listen — we’re both from the sea. Is a dragon also close enough kin to you? Could a dragon deal with the great large one?”

“How could we ever claim kinship with a dragon?” The blue fish once again dashed my hopes.

Then what was to be done? Not only was I unable to handle the great large one — it being the wrong species — but I still didn’t know where Ao Chi and the others were. What if… what if one of those idiots had fallen into a loop… I quickly pushed the thought away, pressed my hand to my chest, and told myself: it will be fine, it will be fine — they had survived so many storms and tempests; they couldn’t possibly be undone by a little case and a school of foolish fish.

Whatever the case, finding Ao Chi first was the priority.

I looked left, I looked right — there was genuinely no clear direction. Forward? Backward? Wait and see?!

My pocket suddenly gave off a fierce wave of heat, jolting my temporarily short-circuited mind back to clarity. In Hua Yue Jia Qi earlier, I hadn’t even had a chance to check it before being dragged into this wretched place. I’d been so caught up in everything that I’d completely forgotten this most important tool — good thing it had a “continuous heating mode.” Also: even if it couldn’t tell me where Ao Chi was, it at least could point me toward the Qing Qi Jian. The Tian Fei Dun was still hot, which meant that the unfortunate twice-discarded talking stone was somewhere nearby. My instinct said: if I found it, other problems might resolve themselves as well.

I quickly pulled out the always-warmly-red Tian Fei Dun. Three characters on it: “Don’t look back.”

What? Was it telling me to walk straight ahead in the direction I was currently facing, without turning back? Forward from here was Autumn Mountain Lakeshore — it was telling me to walk into the lake?!

I turned this over for a moment, then thought: no choice. It says don’t look back — so I don’t look back!

I moved quickly, the whole way without looking behind me. The blue fish’s little short legs could barely keep up. Given that it had been reasonably honest and bore me no real ill will, I allowed it to hop onto my shoulder.

Land ran out, lake ahead. Heart burning with urgency, I tossed Ao Chi’s repeated warnings about not using too much magic lest it cause early labor into the back of my mind, and flew straight across the water’s surface.

“Whoa, you’re so impressive — you can even fly!” The blue fish stared in amazement at the lotus blooms rapidly receding below us. “What kind of person are you exactly?”

“Don’t you all know everyone’s secrets?” I shot it a sidelong glance.

“Only those who enter a loop have no secrets.” The blue fish answered. “How I wish you’d fallen into a loop too — maybe I could have grown even bigger than the great large one. Perhaps I could have eventually left Jin Wan and seen the outside world. There’s something important out there, I feel it — but I can’t remember what.” It let out a small sigh. “I just want to go out and see. I always feel there’s something important there, but I can’t recall what it is.”

“Set aside your pointless dreams. Let me tell you something — you all…”

Before I could finish, a heavy, anguished howl from some large animal came from ahead — interwoven with sounds of furious cursing.

Hm — I knew that voice.

Very soon, a wooden cottage built on a small island in the lake came into view. Inside the bamboo-fenced courtyard, dust swirled and chaos reigned: a healthy, massive wild boar seemed to have been bound by some kind of spell, all four hooves suspended half a foot off the ground. It thrashed and shrieked, and behind it, a tall man had a feather duster held upside down, beating the boar’s backside with vigor.

Between strokes, still cursing: “Let that teach you to impersonate the Moon God! That’ll teach you to say you don’t know where my wife is! That’ll teach you for your self-righteousness and your poisonous scheming! That’ll teach you for causing so many deaths!”

And not only him — standing nearby were one, two, three, four… five people!

I was so overcome with joy I nearly cried. These wretches — they had actually all gathered here, beating a wild boar?!

Bliss arriving too violently: Don’t Look Back, Don’t Look Back — truly, because there was something better ahead! I went too far without looking back!

For the first and only time, abandoning all dignity, I charged, laughing and crying at once, toward the wild boar — no, toward the man behind the wild boar.

Everyone was startled by me, even the perpetual stone-face Yi gave an “ah.”

“Oh my goodness, you cannot come flying at me like this!” Ao Chi hastily threw down the feather duster and stood there at a complete loss, catching me. “Are you hurt? Did anyone bother you?”

I shook my head hard against his chest, while simultaneously wiping emotional snot on his clothing. Every time — every time without exception — no matter what pit I had stumbled into, no matter how dangerous it had been, the moment he was beside me, I had no fear of anything. And now not only was he here — Jiu Jue, Gui Yan, Yi — not a single one was missing. Bu Ting’s most formidable formation had assembled without question.

Though wait — the extra person standing right beside Jiu Jue — who was that?!

“Yonghuan?!” I was utterly stunned. I grabbed her face with both hands and squished. “Is it you? The living Yonghuan?”

Yonghuan squeezed out one sentence from her smooshed-up mouth: “It’s me, Proprietress.”

I couldn’t control my wild joy. I pulled her into my arms and thumped her on the back hard. “You came — that’s wonderful! Just wonderful!”

“What’s gotten into you?” Jiu Jue looked at me in alarm. “You’ve never been that glad to see her before!”

I released Yonghuan, restored a semblance of reason, and asked her: “How did you get in here? I clearly remember you weren’t there at the time — and Jin Wan can only be used twice a day!”

She raised her head. Between her brows seemed to be considerably more on her mind than before. She looked at me, then at Jiu Jue, then pointed at both their wrists: “It’s because of this ‘fate-binding thread.’ When I went to Hua Yue Jia Qi seeking help, that person told me: once I agreed and they bound me to Jiu Jue, no matter where Jiu Jue went, as long as the thread was intact, I could use the thread’s power to appear at his side. When I woke up in Bu Ting and couldn’t find any of you — that’s when I…”

“Alright, I understand.” I cut her off. “Whatever the case — you came at exactly the right moment.”

At this point, Yi, who had been channeling his energy into containing the boar, coldly spoke up: “Do you want to continue the interrogation? If not, I would rather not waste any more of my spiritual power.”

“Right — and these ones. Do we keep tickling?” Gui Yan added. On the short tree beside him, four blue-fish creatures identical to mine were tied in a row, hanging there. Several magically enchanted leaves were tickling their feet in rotation. The four were crying and laughing simultaneously, tears flying as they cried out: “We’ve told you everything we know, haven’t we?! Hahaha! Great heroes, please release us! Hahaha! We only got close to you because we were hungry — but you haven’t lost anything, have you? Hahaha!”

The blue fish on my shoulder immediately panicked, clutching my leg: “Don’t tie me up there too! We really have said everything we know!”

I had Gui Yan let them go and asked the blue fish: “Did they put their feet on everyone’s heads as well?”

“Mm. I woke up and it was already there.” Gui Yan nodded. Apparently his experience had been similar to mine!

“What about the rest of you?” I asked Ao Chi.

“Same. It seemed like I’d taken a nap — woke up very quickly. First thing I saw was this creature standing on my arm.” Ao Chi pulled a face. “And not only it — this one too!” He pointed furiously at Yi. “This young man — not a word of thanks when he saw me. He even said I drool in my sleep!”

“I was only stating a fact.” Yi released the binding technique. The furious boar tumbled to the ground — still unable to move, but able to lie there awkwardly, eyeing each of us with small blood-red eyes full of fury.

“How did you catch it?” I asked Ao Chi.

“It fell in front of us by itself.” Ao Chi gave it a disdainful look. “When it landed, the face cracked open — it was just a mask of human skin stretched over its body to look like Ding Yan. One fall and it split open: pig snout, pig face, pig trotters — all exposed. This enemy delivered right to us — of course in my style we had to catch it and give it a beating.”

“Do you all know what happened with Ding Yan?” I asked. “And how did you manage to gather at Yin Fang Lou? Why were you all together when I got sent off to the grassland on the other side of the lake?”

“These ‘fish-sprites’ have already shared Ding Yan’s entire story with us — you too?” Jiu Jue glanced at the blue fish beside me, his usual glib expression somewhat less natural than normal. “As for why you weren’t with us — possibly a matter of luck, or perhaps gender. “

“There are times when that happens.” The blue fish quickly added. “Outsiders of the same gender tend to land in closer proximity.”

“But it’s female too!” I pointed at the boar.

“That… possibly due to species difference…” The blue fish got flustered.

I kicked it aside, walked up to the boar in two strides, and tried calling: “A’Song?!”

The boar, mid-rage, stopped struggling. It glared at me. “Kill me if you want,” it said, rough and gruff.

“Your meat’s too tough to eat.” I smiled, then turned to Yi: “Let it go. We ought to have a more comfortable setting for this conversation.”

Yi considered, then withdrew his binding technique.

A’Song exhaled heavily and slowly rose from the ground. It shook its enormous head with force. Its tusks remained ferociously bright and sharp, keeping a particularly vicious eye on each of us. Yet strangely, I kept noticing that this black-bristled boar occasionally gave off a rainbow-like shimmer.

“You’ve always been near Ding Yan?” I built on the details from the transmission and hazarded a guess. “Ever since he severed your red thread — you’ve followed him?”

A’Song let out a long breath and gave a cold laugh. “I have nothing else to do with my time — so spending great quantities of it ‘following’ the Moon God is not particularly strange, is it?”

“Seeking revenge on a celestial god, for you, was harder than climbing to heaven.” I could completely understand the depth of resentment A’Song felt toward Ding Yan. “Since we’ve come this far anyway — tell us. I’m rather curious.”

A’Song thought for a moment, then bared its teeth in an odd smile: “Since none of us can leave anyway, I’ll tell you about the interesting parts concerning me.”

No one spoke. Not Yonghuan, not Jiu Jue, not Gui Yan. All their faces wore a grave and waiting expression.

“I am a boar. Even the jade-green jade beetle cannot escape my nose — and the scent on Ding Yan’s person was far finer than any of these demons. Once it entered my nostrils, it was like seeing a wash of cool clear moonlight. Heh heh. That night, I tried jumping off the cliff a few times — but could never go through with it. I didn’t dare. And I wasn’t resigned to it. I couldn’t end my life carrying such deep hatred and regret. Before long, I came down from the mountain. I left my home forever. My only direction — wherever Ding Yan was. Over many, many years, as I worked hard to cultivate my sorcery, I searched for him. Finally one day, in the increasingly flourishing and crowded human world, I found his whereabouts. By then he was living alone in a small southern town, existing like a solitary village man, and the celestial aura had left his person. By that time, I had also long since heard through other demons that the celestial realm had a new deity — the Moon God was Moon God no more. Yet what did it matter? Even fallen to the mortal world, he was no ordinary mortal. Killing him — I wasn’t necessarily his match. Transforming into a beauty to seduce him and then cause him harm was even more impossible with someone like this, who had no love or hate in him. So I was rather stuck. Beyond lurking near his door day after day, using evil arts to plant listening-charms at his window so I could hear his every word — I could find no opportunity to come any closer. Until…” it gave a heh-heh laugh, “that stone came looking for him.”

I startled and blurted out: “You took the Love-Rousing Arrow?!”

“I didn’t take it — it chose me.” A’Song corrected me. “At first I didn’t know what it was. But it had reconnected Ding Yan’s emotional meridian and had told him where that woman was — on just those two grounds, I knew that the opportunity I had waited so long for had finally arrived. What I had even less expected was that this stone — discarded by him — actually asked me if I could shelter it. I was surprised. I asked what ‘sheltering’ would mean. It said that being away from a living heart for too long, it would lose the ability to speak and to think, becoming a true stone, and it wanted to keep living like this. So if I agreed to make a pact with it, it would pierce into my heart and be my companion. In return, its power would transfer into my body.” It paused, looked down at itself, and smiled. “The ability to connect or sever anyone’s emotional meridian at will, the fate-binding threads produced with just a breath, and the power to see through to the person one loves most in another’s heart — three abilities unique to the Moon God. I had them too. Then I followed him for ten years, watching him unable to stop himself from going to that woman’s side, yet unable to bring himself to approach her. From the south of the Yangtze, to Luoyang, and then to Chang’an. This woman lived like a butterfly — he could only watch from afar, doing nothing. I could too easily see his anguish. It turned out this woman was his fatal weakness. So I stopped rushing. His emotional meridian having been restored, he was no longer an invulnerable deity. I would wait — and wait for the best possible moment.”

“So you waited for Shen Ziju.” No wonder people said pigs were neither dull nor clumsy — when fixated enough on a target, a boar was the most perfect schemer. Its account was deceptively casual — but just that single word ‘wait’ had consumed untold endurance and suffering.

“Yes. I had not imagined he would be the key to everything.” A’Song said with contentment. “When Wei Lan and Shen Ziju were deep in their infatuation, I knew his forbearance had reached a limit. In the very first year after he followed them to Chang’an, I heard through the insect-people a piece of news: that the most formidable weapon of the Blue Shark clan — Jin Wan — had appeared on land, not far from Chang’an, kept by a Blue Shark named Duan Wu. I was told to be careful and never be taken inside, because the one trapped in it would loop endlessly through the most painful moments of their life. I was thrilled. What could be better than letting a deity who so easily destroyed others experience his own suffering over and over? So I went to enormous lengths to search for the Blue Shark — but for a long time found nothing. Two years later, just as I had given up searching for Jin Wan, it was from Shen Ziju — whom I had been surveilling with the Echo Worm the whole time — that I learned he had taken in a pair of Blue Sharks, one named Yonghuan, one named Duan Wu, introduced to him by his good friend Jiu Jue.” A’Song paused, turned to look at Jiu Jue, whose expression was very unpleasant, and smiled. “So sometimes we truly cannot disbelieve in fate. It was you who brought them — yet you have absolutely no memory of ever having done so. Perhaps for you, they were only minor figures you helped in passing. But I must sincerely thank you.”

Yonghuan’s expression was even more unpleasant than Jiu Jue’s. Even her hands were faintly trembling.

“The events after that, you’ve all just witnessed. After thorough investigation, I confirmed Jin Wan’s power, and I knew that only one incantation could open it. Even if I killed Duan Wu and took Jin Wan, it was useless. How to extract the incantation from Duan Wu was the greatest difficulty troubling me. But that very year, Shen Ziju — that hypocrite — committed the despicable act of hiring killers to target his own wife. When I arrived at Black Fox Ridge, the Yue family lay in corpses everywhere. Young Yue Ruyi, only a young woman, had been stabbed multiple times and died with her eyes open. Of course, I didn’t go out of idle curiosity — I had long planned to step out from behind the scenes and come in closer. So I climbed into Yue Ruyi’s body and became the Shen family’s quiet, seldom-speaking young madam. I hid behind Yue Ruyi and carefully planned every move. I knew it would be impossible to get the incantation from Duan Wu directly — unless he was near death. Given his devoted and loyal nature, only then would he pass the incantation and Jin Wan to Yonghuan as his final bequest. As long as he told the incantation to Yonghuan, I was fully confident I could extract it from that naive girl’s mouth. So I deliberately placed an ancient text about the Blue Shark Bone Zither into Shen Ziju’s hands. Given his obsession with Wei Lan and his ruthless nature, I was betting he would find a way to cheat Duan Wu out of his bones. And a Blue Shark who loses even one bone is already on the path to the grave. As it turned out, I was right. Though the method Shen Ziju used was even more despicable than I had anticipated.”

Jiu Jue clenched a fist and said in a heavy voice: “He… exploited the prescription I sent back.”

“Precisely. He staged a scene to make Duan Wu believe the medicine to heal Yonghuan was impossibly difficult to obtain, and just like that, took four of his bones. Duan Wu — that young man was honestly too guileless.” The boar chuckled. “Though I will say — for all that Shen Ziju was without conscience, the pawnshop owner did give Duan Wu the medicine as prescribed. He also followed the prescription’s instructions to submerge Yonghuan in the lake, and honored Duan Wu’s last wish by tucking Jiu Jue’s portrait into the silver tube and placing it in Yonghuan’s hands. You tell me — isn’t it pitiable, that throughout everything, this girl never knew the one willing to go through fire and water for her was him all along?”

Yonghuan’s head drooped lower and lower. She pressed further and further behind Jiu Jue, hands covering her ears, murmuring: “It wasn’t like that… it wasn’t like that… stop…”

A’Song, seeing her reaction, was in an even better humor, and continued: “I hadn’t expected Duan Wu’s trust in Shen Ziju to run so deep — he even gave him the incantation. And so my plan had only one last step remaining. I knew that whenever Shen Ziju went away on business, he would return precisely on time — say three days away, always three days exactly. So I deliberately chose the window when Shen Ziju was away on his supply run. I took the hair of all twenty or so of the household, dissolved it in the ‘Locust Consumption Curse’ I had bought at great expense, placed the curse in the bird’s nest, and had Xiao Chuan eat it clean. Then I sent her to Autumn Mountain Lakeshore… Ah — I trust with your capabilities you need no explanation of what the Locust Consumption Curse is?”

No need. Everything was now without mystery.

There will always be sorcerers who profit from evil — curses made of locust-demons, with the targets’ hair or nail clippings dissolved in. The cursed item is placed inside the “lure’s” body and the lure is sent near the intended victims. The living dead, having smelled the lure’s flesh, will be overcome by insatiable hunger, and will eat through every target. Wei Lan had already been feeding on young girls’ flesh and blood to sustain her youth and life — already one of the living dead. A’Song had targeted the entire Shen household, placed Xiao Chuan as the “lure,” and Wei Lan’s demonic nature erupted out of control, consuming the Shen family’s twenty-some souls. By the time Shen Ziju returned, A’Song — in the guise of “survivor” — told him this catastrophe was Ding Yan’s doing. Knowing Wei Lan’s power, Shen Ziju naturally had no doubt that a man would go to such lengths over competition for her. A scholar with nothing but a ruthless heart and no other abilities — his fury having stripped away his reason, he would produce Jin Wan in the shortest possible time to destroy Ding Yan. And she — could sit back and wait for Shen Ziju to recite the incantation, and collect the prize.

Whether it was destiny, or her careful step-by-step scheming — the boar A’Song had won. With a patience far beyond what I could have imagined, with calculated ruthlessness and absolute resolve, she had locked a former celestial god inside the Blue Sharks’ Jin Wan.

Thinking on this, it was not only me — everyone present who now understood the full story had hearts that could not rest easy.

Who could have imagined that one severed red thread would set off such a wave of consequence?

If Ding Yan had only shown a little mercy back then… but of course — a person without an emotional meridian is incapable of showing mercy.

“In the end, you took Jin Wan, became Ding Yan in appearance, and have continued peacefully until now — opening your Hua Yue Jia Qi.” I looked at this boar with a complicated expression. “You believe you could fully replace the Moon God — and even be more competent than he was?”

“I understand love far better than he does. And I understand what it means to give someone what they truly need.” A’Song’s eyes flashed a knife-sharp light, then immediately softened. “After leaving Chang’an, I spent several hundred pleasant years, and then felt a bit bored. So I thought to put my talents to use and opened Hua Yue Jia Qi. I will not cut anyone’s correct fate-binding thread. Even for someone without a fate-binding thread — as long as they come to me, I can use the red threads I craft to bind them to their beloved, so they can stay together forever. Of course, quite a few people have also come to me saying they never want to love again, asking me to help them. I understand them and can grant their wish — I quite simply sever their emotional meridian. Though I do have professional standards: married people claiming to be single cannot slip past me. After all, I have an arrow in my heart.” As she said this, she smiled again. “As for troublemakers — if I can avoid them, I do. Those I can’t avoid, I send to Jin Wan. Like the young man your side sent in — he saw through my true nature at a single glance. Very formidable indeed.”

Yi fixed A’Song with a cold sidelong stare and said not a word.

“A pity — no one can escape Jin Wan once it is opened.” A’Song’s small eyes swept the scene with contempt at each of us. “You have no chance of leaving. As for me — it doesn’t matter whether I can leave or not. Even if I stay here, watching the Moon God’s great lord loop through his suffering every day — it’s enough to make me happy every single day. Isn’t that right, Miss Yonghuan?” She turned again, smiling at the pale-faced Yonghuan. “I never imagined that hundreds of years later you would come to Hua Yue Jia Qi, asking me to find the ‘Big Brother A’Jiu’ who took care of you in those years. Tut-tut — who would have thought we’d have such a connection?”

“Enough! You monster! You heartless beast!” Yonghuan suddenly screamed, charging out to fight A’Song to the death, and was only barely caught by Jiu Jue.

“You’re calling me names?” A’Song was displeased, flicking her trotters. “Wasn’t it you who came crying and snotting to ask me to find the person in the portrait and bind you two together?! Really — you don’t know how to show any gratitude.”

“I’ll kill you!” Yonghuan thrashed wildly in Jiu Jue’s arms, intent on dying together with A’Song.

But I couldn’t allow anything to happen to her — not when all the truth had finally surfaced. Right now the most pressing issue was: how to break Ding Yan’s loop, and cut off all of the great large one’s danger at its source.

“Heh heh. You can’t beat me easily and you can’t kill me — even if you could break free of today’s loop, tomorrow you’ll face the same challenge again. Can you guarantee, every time, that you’ll break free of that bone-deep grief?” A’Song bared its massive maw in a laugh. “Or you can kill me right now, and spare yourself watching me laugh when the time comes.”

I startled, grabbed the blue fish and asked: “Is this true?”

The blue fish shook in terror: “Yes, yes — I was afraid you’d panic, so I didn’t dare say it. After dawn, you’ll encounter the same scene as when you arrived. If you can break free, you’ll be safe for another day…”

“You!” I genuinely wished I could make it into a pot of water-boiled fish seasoned with eight jin of heaven-fire chili peppers. “And there’s truly no way out?”

“I… I… I feel there might be… but I truly can’t remember.” The blue fish kept shaking.

Gui Yan came forward and rescued the blue fish from my hands, then said to me: “Let’s not rush about getting out — first we should rescue Ding Yan from that… disturbed state. Then we can think about leaving.”

“East China Sea’s ice prison couldn’t hold me — let alone a little case. Come on now, deep three breaths, don’t get mad, I’m here for everything.” Ao Chi hurriedly pulled me close and patted my shoulder. “Think about it — if you rush and the baby comes early, what then? They say whoever a baby sees first is who the baby takes after. Look around at this bunch of freaks — either a wild boar or a freak fish, no more, no less. You have to stay calm! Come on, breathe with me. Inhale! Exhale!”

Ao Chi’s one saving grace was making me cry and laugh at the most inappropriate moments. All right — deep three breaths. The great fortune in the misfortune was that Yonghuan was here.

14

The blue fish truly hadn’t lied.

Our Yonghuan only used a nail file — provided by Jiu Jue — to deal with the enormous great large one.

When the tiny file pricked the great large one’s backside, the creature’s enormous body — like a balloon with all the air let out — flailed wildly across the lake surface for quite a while before, mid-air, going boom and exploding. Black liquid scattered from its deflated belly all over everything.

The moment the great large one disappeared, Ding Yan — walking toward the lake for what would have been another loop — suddenly stopped. Looking again, the white-boned burden in his arms had become a wisp of blue smoke, drifting up and away without trace.

He stood there for a long time, then drew a sharp breath and pulled himself free from a long and terrible dream. Even his dim eyes gradually regained their light.

The first name he called was naturally Gui Yan’s.

Easy to feel, easy to move — Gui Yan, the moment he saw his long-lost good friend standing before him alive, “whoosh,” tears came down. He threw his arms around Ding Yan and pounded on him, unable to say a single word.

“All right, wild ginseng — one more hit and I’ll be dead.” Ding Yan shoved him away with effort, his face breaking into a long-absent smile.

“So many years! You scoundrel — why did you never contact me?” Gui Yan couldn’t help landing another punch. “If you had found me, everything…”

“Even if I had found you, you couldn’t have untied my knot.” Ding Yan cut him off, shaking his head with a smile. “What I had gone to every length to avoid — in the end I still couldn’t escape. You see: even people like us, who were once gods, cannot escape the teasing of fate.”

“Having your emotional meridian back — you’ve learned to joke?!” Gui Yan looked carefully at his left eye — indeed, not the faintest scar remained.

“Could the brotherhood feelings be saved for later?” I rushed to stand between them, poking Ding Yan hard on the chest. “Don’t forget — once dawn comes, we’ll be facing the same trial again. Ding Yan — in your current state, you may well fall into a new loop. Are we supposed to come and deal with whatever ‘companion’ waits for you — every single day?”

“Who is this tigress?” Ding Yan looked me over. “She seems to have some demonic energy — apologies, my sensitivity to it has dulled.”

Without another word, I raised my high-heeled foot and brought it down hard on his: “You should be quite sensitive to pain.”

Ding Yan winced slightly. “Ladies ought not be so rough.”

That scoundrel Ao Chi was actually giggling beside me…I gave him the second stomp. He yelped.

“This is the proprietress of Bu Ting — the tree demon — and it’s thanks to her help that we found this place and found you!” Gui Yan rushed forward to intervene. “This gentleman is her husband, the full-blooded grandson of the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea. And over there seems to be a celestial immortal official who brews wine…”

“And this one…” Ding Yan interrupted. His gaze settled on the small-dog-sized, furiously baring-its-teeth, turn-in-circles-trying-to-bite-off-its-rope little black-bristled boar — with, balanced one by one on its back, five identical long-legged blue fish.

My doing.

When A’Song had tried again and again in every extreme way to provoke us into losing our temper, I had indeed lost mine.

But I hadn’t lost my mind. I wouldn’t kill her — though she desperately wanted us to. She had no small amount of cultivation, but before the Bu Ting formation, she was still no match. From the start she had known that any one of us had the power to take her life. She had poured out every one of her crimes, not because we had her cornered with nowhere to go — but because she wanted to whip our fury to a peak, in hopes that we would strike her dead in righteous anger.

I wasn’t going to fall for that.

I had no reason to drive the killing blow. We were all, in the end, demons — I knew deeply how hard and bitter the path of cultivation was, and I was deeply unwilling to use my instrument against one of my own kind unless absolutely necessary.

But I believed — clearly and simply — that A’Song needed a thorough “fresh start.”

“Even saving someone you care for, you couldn’t be bothered to keep company with them — if you had gotten closer to her from the beginning, perhaps Duan Wu would have given Jin Wan to you instead of Shen Ziju!” Ao Chi had gone on nagging and turned his aim at Jiu Jue, grumbling over “Duan Wu” again. “Eyes wide open now, aren’t they! And Duan Wu, and Duan Wu, and Duan Wu — always harping on it! I admit that at the time I only helped by chance, didn’t think anything of it, didn’t even bother asking Yonghuan’s name, thought that with Shen Ziju looking after them I didn’t need to worry, and besides I was so busy, and I saw them so few times total, how was I supposed to know this would all lead to so much trouble! Can you stop going on about Duan Wu and Duan Wu and Duan Wu?! Even I am now…”

“Lord Jiu Jue?!”

Before Jiu Jue could finish, the blue fish on my shoulder suddenly opened wide its mouth. A plume of white vapor came streaming from it — shapeless, not dispersing. And from within this white vapor came an entirely unfamiliar voice.

Everyone was shocked. Jiu Jue also started, hopped back a few steps, and warily fixed his gaze on the white vapor: “You’re speaking? What are you?”

“You called me.” The white vapor swayed. “I said: as long as you call my name three times, even if I am dead, I will come before you and lend you what aid I can. This is the most precious promise of the Blue Shark people.”

I was taken aback, thinking: could it be that Duan Wu — who left Yonghuan behind, whose soul had returned to Jin Wan, transformed into a sprite with no memory — had almost treated me as food?!

“Duan Wu?!” Jiu Jue’s jaw dropped. Then he slapped his forehead hard: “Right — I remember now! You once pressed a scale into my palm!”

“Yes. A life-saving grace must be repaid.” The white vapor said earnestly. “But I am now only a remnant soul, and will soon fade. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Jiu Jue quickly said: “We only want to know — how does one leave Jin Wan? Do you know?”

“Ah — that,” the white vapor considered. “‘Blue Sharks who enter Jin Wan may reverse the incantation to exit. For non-Blue Sharks: find one who knows love, outside Jin Wan, to speak the reversed incantation. Then the nine-bend stars will light, the snow-vine cord will appear — climb the cord upward, and one may leave. Be warned: do not let go. If one falls back, there is no way out.’ That is all I can remember. I can only help you this far. Jiu Jue — come close, and I’ll recite the incantation once more for you. Not a single character can be misremembered!”

Jiu Jue hurried over, committing every word to memory.

“Duan Wu… Duan Wu!” Yonghuan, coming back to herself, ran over and pointed at herself. “It’s me! I’m Yonghuan!”

The white vapor wavered: “Yonghuan? Do you know me as well?”

“You don’t recognize me anymore?” Yonghuan was stunned.

“Young lady, I am only a remnant soul — this promise’s power is what allows me to appear. I know only Jiu Jue, and can only respond