Fucang drew in a breath. No matter when, she always had endless ways to stir in him the impulse to discipline her.

Twenty-three thousand years, and this still hadn’t changed.

Dark, profound eyes met her cautious and hesitant gaze. Her line of sight almost immediately averted, the agitation and difficulty carefully hidden away. His dragon princess—she hadn’t changed much either.

He grasped the white snow dog head in his hand and said flatly: “Get up. Practice the sword properly.”

Xuan Yi immediately flipped over to turn her back to him: “I can’t do it.”

All morning long she had been this brazenly shameless, stuck to the grass like sticky candy, her fluffy long hair tangled with several withered leaves, her pristine white garments also stained with spots of green grass—all just to avoid practicing the sword.

Fucang picked out the withered leaves from her hair one by one. She immediately gathered all her hair inside her clothes, stopping just short of saying the three words “don’t touch me.”

He gently blew out a breath. The soft, clear breeze carried away all the grass and withered leaves from her hair and clothes. She then used her sleeves to cover her head and face, assuming the appearance of wanting to sleep.

After lying there for a long while, Xuan Yi only felt that there was no sound from behind. She secretly twisted her head to look through the gap in her sleeves, but saw that Fucang was still sitting behind her, playing with the white snow dog head in his palm. As if detecting her peeking, he said quietly: “Don’t want to get up?”

She only had three words: “I can’t do it.”

He accommodated her readily: “Fine.”

Watching the sun climb to mid-morning, the attendant female immortal punctually brought the meal. Knowing that this Zhuyin Clan princess had picky and peculiar tastes, disliking proper meals and only loving tea and tea pastries, she had specially prepared a box of peach blossom hundred-fruit cakes and a pot of Radiant Luminance Flying Scenery Tea for her today.

Smelling the fragrance, Xuan Yi sat up with a start, when unexpectedly her shoulder was lightly pressed. Her body was pressed back down onto the grass. She stared wide-eyed at Fucang. His expression was calm: “Continue sleeping.”

Xuan Yi frowned: “I’m hungry. I want to eat.”

His hand pressed on her shoulder: “Can’t do it.”

She drew in a deep breath. She was practically hanging by a single hair, with thousand-pound boulders suspended from her body, and below was an entire sea of poisoned wine. She was teetering on the brink.

The attendant female immortal waited in the room for half the day without seeing them come in, and could only carefully speak up: “Princess, Fucang Shenjun, it’s time to eat.”

Fucang nodded: “Please bring out my portion.”

The attendant female immortal’s heart fluttered chaotically, but in the end she didn’t dare forget about the princess: “But the Princess…”

“She doesn’t need any.”

Xuan Yi’s eyes were fixed deadly on Fucang. The attendant female immortal placed the small table on the grass before him. With one hand pressing her down and the other holding chopsticks, he began to eat, neither fast nor slow, just right.

That single hair was about to snap. She reached out to push his small table, but unfortunately he was now a battle-hardened general, and such small movements couldn’t escape his eyes at all. He immediately pressed down the small table as well, his dark eyes glancing at her: “Today’s task is to lie here all day.”

Xuan Yi didn’t know if it was from anger or suppression, but with tears glistening in her eyes she looked at him, her voice sweet and soft: “I’m really hungry.”

His experience on the battlefield had probably hardened his heart as well, for he was completely unmoved: “Can’t be hungry.”

Xuan Yi painfully clutched her head. This guy was going to drive her mad. He would definitely drive her mad. She abruptly lowered her sleeves, like a warrior severing his own wrist: “I’ll practice.”

Fucang’s hand left her shoulder swiftly and decisively. The attendant female immortal obediently brought the meal. As Xuan Yi drank tea and ate tea pastries, she felt her stomach was full of nothing but tears, a thousand times more bitter than the Zhuyin White Snow of years past.

A food box was pushed over. Inside were three untouched peach blossom hundred-fruit cakes. Xuan Yi unceremoniously grabbed them all into her own box. At least he still had a conscience!

“Next time when practicing the sword, you must change into different clothes and wear soft boots,” Fucang reminded her once again.

Xuan Yi said coldly: “I don’t have soft boots. I don’t have clothes.”

He was completely unaffected: “I’ll instruct Emperor Qingyuan to have a set of battle general attire made.”

Whatever. Whatever he wanted. In any case, once his injury healed, her tormented days would also come to an end.

After finishing the tea pastries and resting for a moment, Xuan Yi struggled to try to stand up from the grass. Probably because she was wearing wooden-soled shoes, the soles of her feet felt like they were about to break, hurting so much she kept frowning.

Her body was pressed down again. Fucang bent down and removed the wooden-soled shoes from her feet: “Don’t wear wooden-soled shoes anymore. No practice today.”

Xuan Yi immediately became vigilant: “…I’ll still be hungry in the evening.”

He said flatly: “With your feet hurting this much, you won’t practice well anyway.”

Then what was that just now? Was he deliberately frustrating her to provoke her into bickering with him?! This guy was truly too vicious now, too vicious! Even though she had a bellyful of sinister and cunning schemes she could use against him, she wouldn’t use them again. Whether bickering or being intimate, wasn’t it better not to go back to that?

Xuan Yi flipped over to turn her back to him, picking at the embroidered pattern of the sleeping dragon on her sleeve until it was a complete mess. The hair that had been gathered inside her clothes was gently drawn out by a pair of hands and placed in his palm to be slowly combed through. She tried to pull it back, but he wouldn’t let go, so she could only give up.

Their two positions seemed to have reversed.

Xuan Yi was dazed for a long while, then slowly drew out a ball of white snow and pinched a pig’s head, using her fingernail to carve out two nostrils. She suddenly turned her head and asked him: “Does Great Lord Zhanghai look like this?”

The cute and harmless imagination made those fierce and brutal ancient demon clan great lords of the lower realm seem not so terrifying anymore. Fucang smiled. In any case, this great lord had already been annihilated, so he nodded in tacit agreement.

Xuan Yi hesitated for a moment, then said softly: “…You were injured by this pig’s head?”

He didn’t know whether to be angry or to laugh. After pausing for a while, he said slowly: “Why do you keep asking about the injury?”

Xuan Yi lowered her head and used her fingertip to make the pig’s head wobble back and forth: “Just asking casually.”

Fucang looked at her for a while, then slowly rolled up his sleeve, exposing his firm and tight forearm. From elbow to the back of his hand ran a long, deep gash, with pitch-black turbid qi coiling around it.

“Scratched by Great Lord Negative Dog’s claws. Won’t kill me.” He answered the question she hadn’t voiced.

Xuan Yi instinctively reached out wanting to touch it, but was stopped by him: “Don’t touch.”

She drew her hand back and stared at the wound for a long time, then said softly: “Does it hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

The sleeve was lowered. Fucang bowed his head to gaze at her eyes. She instinctively avoided them, shrinking back. He slowly extended his hand toward her. She simply rolled backward in a circle. He pressed closer one step; she rolled again. He advanced further; she continued rolling. As a result, her head bumped into the chair leg that the wooden sword had transformed into. With an “aiya,” the next moment the place she’d bumped was covered by a hand, and her body was also irresistibly encircled by an arm, pulled up and kneaded into his embrace.

Both her hands and her head pressed hard against his chest, resisting his approach.

Fucang lowered his head to look at the nape of her neck exposed through the gaps in her long hair. There it flushed a crimson color, yet she still maintained a posture of resistance. The same old way.

“I… after returning to the upper realm, I went to Zhongshan to find you,” Fucang’s voice was very low. “Qi Nan told me you didn’t want to see anyone.”

He could see the regret and heartache in that divine official’s eyes, as well as remorse. He waited outside Zhongshan for fifty years. Then suddenly the timing for the Thousand-Year Dream arrived, and he could no longer hold on, could only fall into slumber. Afraid that after many years this seemingly hard but actually fragile dragon princess would feel lost, he sent her a letter of blank white paper without a seal.

She would surely understand.

But he hadn’t expected that this parting would be twenty-three thousand years. Countless times he lingered outside Zhongshan’s barrier, imagining what she was doing inside, what she would be thinking, whether she had completely forgotten him.

He was no longer that immature Shenjun who hurt others and hurt himself. The moment he saw her, he understood that what had been separated by that misty barrier all these years was not his solitary isolation alone.

“The return of the divine soul to the Nine Netherworlds and Yellow Springs requires one day in the divine realm, and returning to the upper realm requires two days. By the time I went to the lower realm, you were already gone.” Fucang gathered her scattered long hair behind her back. “That nine-headed lion was pinched very beautifully. Little Nine really liked it.”

He could never forget the feeling in that moment when he saw the white snow trinkets piled on the stone tablet. His fragility and immaturity had made him miss too much. He could have accompanied her for a very long time, not letting her spend her days in the company of loneliness.

Don’t leave me—he understood her unspoken words. He had said the same words to her. They truly should be together, never to be separated.

Xuan Yi closed her eyes, not saying a single word from beginning to end, as if to protect that fragile loneliness she had with such difficulty grown accustomed to again.

The heavy snow in the imperial mausoleum that day seemed to fall before her eyes again. The youth she loved lay in that cold tomb. In that half city of moon and half city of snow, she had carefully carved those white snow trinkets for him. She hadn’t imagined he could wake again. Or rather, she didn’t hope he would wake again either.

Her chin was grasped. He lifted her face and gazed for a long time. She kept her eyes closed, as if evading everything.

His thumb rubbed over her soft, plump lips. Fucang lowered his head. His lips were about to descend when her ice-cold fingers blocked them.

Let me go. She opened her eyes. Those three words were all that was written in them.

He grasped her hand and pulled it away forcefully, kissing down hard on her lips, biting down heavily.

“I remember everything,” he murmured against her moist lips. “As for… hide all you want.”