【Prologue】

“To obtain it, you must first find her.”

“I know where she is. I also know what needs to be done.”

“Then why haven’t you left yet?”

“You are the only one who knows my thoughts, yet doesn’t try to stop me — not even a word of persuasion.”

“Mm, let me correct that — an old one at that.”

On the East Sea, upon an island easily overlooked, there was a cave called “Lost Pearl.” The name was beautiful enough, but it was a prison. It was said that no one kept watch here — people could enter, but never leave.

Dong’er sat cross-legged before the expanse of jade-green water that floated suspended in mid-air within the cave, staring with dissatisfaction at the short, plump old man who resembled a glutinous rice ball. His beard was so long it had wound several loops around the three-foot lotus flower beneath him, finally spilling over the petals and hanging down.

He was indeed an old fellow. The countless wrinkles on his forehead were nearly stacked upon one another. He had no teeth left to support his lips, so they puckered inward all day. When he spoke, his eyelids were too lazy to open, forever narrowed to slits — making one wonder whether he was talking or talking in his sleep.

He was a prisoner of the Lost Pearl Cave.

How many years had he been imprisoned? Why had he been imprisoned? What was his background? Even the most senior of the East Sea’s Elder Dragon Kings likely did not know.

When a person has been forgotten for too long, their existence merges with time itself — flowing without a trace, disturbing no one.

He seemed to enjoy this state of being forgotten.

When Dong’er was still a child, she had once sneaked away to play and was drawn in by a fragrance drifting out of the Lost Pearl Cave. She ran inside to find this old man sitting within his lotus flower, leisurely drinking soup from a clay pot. The lotus beneath him floated upon a body of water flowing through the air — clear and translucent, with soft green ripples lapping gently.

Her mouth watered. She wanted to fly up to the old man and see what soup he was drinking, yet no matter how she tried, she could not fly over that expanse of green water.

The gentle water, like a cage, allowed no one to approach.

Yet Dong’er became a frequent visitor of the Lost Pearl Cave. She loved listening to the stories told by its occupant — this tiny old man no taller than two and a half feet — and she loved even more how he taught her various peculiar yet delicious recipes. When she returned home and replicated them, the result was invariably the finest of dishes.

The older she grew, the more Dong’er felt he was the most learned and most interesting old fellow she had ever encountered.

“All right, I’ll be off.” Dong’er rose to her feet, the green water reflected in her pale golden eyes. “Once I leave, I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back.”

“Mm, that is your choice.” The old man, ever refusing to open his eyes, responded to her in his unhurried way.

“Before I go, can you tell me — why were you imprisoned here?” She had asked him this long ago, but the old fellow had always brushed her aside with excuses like you’re still too young, you wouldn’t understand even if I told you.

“Very well.” The old man coughed several times and said, “Because I failed to answer a question.”

“Is there a question in this world that you cannot answer?” She didn’t believe it. “What question?”

“I couldn’t answer whether I preferred steamed spare ribs or braised spare ribs.” He replied at a leisurely pace.

Dong’er burst out laughing until she was doubled over. As if she would believe that.

The old man let out a chuckling laugh too, his short, plump fingers unconsciously stroking a white jade plate he had cradled in his arms for years. On the base of the plate bloomed a pair of interlocked lotus flowers, lifelike in every detail.

“I know you don’t believe it, little girl.” He laughed until even his beard floated upward. “But it’s true, you know.”

“I’m going now.” Dong’er turned to leave.

“Child.” He opened his eyes. “When you find yourself unable to make a choice, the answer reveals itself on its own.”

Dong’er turned back, her mind filled with so many question marks they nearly dripped into the water.

“I don’t understand.” It was the first time she had seen the old man open his eyes, the first time she had heard him speak such cryptic words.

“All those who cannot make a choice — they have only one answer.” He paused. “Which is — they love only themselves.”

Having said this, he closed his eyes again, and said lazily, “Beneath the three-leaf clover at the cave entrance, there is a brocade pouch. Take it. Do not look inside until the moment you absolutely must. Now go — don’t speak to me anymore. I’m tired, and I want to sleep.”

Very well. She knew the old man’s temperament — once he declared he would speak no more, he would not open his mouth again even unto death.

Dong’er walked to the cave entrance and found the four-seasons-evergreen clover. Nestled quietly among that patch of green, tied with a red cord, lay an exquisitely embroidered brocade pouch.

When she had come in, it had certainly not been there.

She picked up the brocade pouch, but accidentally discovered a row of small characters on the other side — Proudly produced by Such-and-Such Arts and Crafts Company.

This was clearly something from the outside world — more precisely, from the human realm.

He was a prisoner, cut off from the world. Not only was he unable to leave, but all magic reaching the outside world should have been severed. How could he possibly…

Dong’er ran back and held up the pouch, questioning him: “This is a prison cell and you are a prisoner — not only can you not leave, all spells connecting to the outside world should be blocked. How did you manage this?”

The old fellow kept his eyes closed, and a long, even snoring sound flowed on and on.

“Or is it…” Dong’er frowned. “That this place simply cannot hold you at all?”

The snoring sounded like a song.

“If that’s so, then why do you remain here?” She didn’t care — she asked loudly.

“Because I can think of no reason to set myself free.”

He puckered his already-puckered lips and went back to sleep.

Dong’er stood before him for a long time, unwilling to leave, but in the end she departed all the same.

Beyond the cave entrance stretched a vast expanse of evening glow — deep and vivid reds edged with gold thread, perfectly blended in tone. The East Sea at this hour resembled an elder who had weathered life’s storms and turbulence, distilling from all the winding twists of human experience a kind of serene tranquility. One glance, and a racing heart would steady at once.

Dong’er loved this stretch of sea, loved gazing at it in this rapt, dazed way.

Through countless centuries, the only companion that had always been with her was this sea.

The person she was looking for lay on the other side of the sea.

The setting sun shifted slowly, like a hand gently passing over Dong’er’s body.

Her shadow stretched long and longer across the ground at the cave entrance, forming a winding dragon.

【Chapter One】Air Disaster

I am a tree spirit, born on the peak of Fulong Mountain in the snowfall-filled twelfth month.

I have drifted through time for tens of thousands of years. Countless people have come and gone through my life — some I can never quite remember, and some I can never forget.

On Fulong Mountain I kept company with flowers, grass, birds, and beasts; in the human world I experienced joy and sorrow, bitterness and happiness alongside all manner of humans and demons. I have been the befuddled little handmaid, and I have been the prosperous proprietress basking in glory. I have hated people, and been hated by them; I have loved people, and been loved by them.

As a demon who neither ages nor dies, I have perhaps lived too long — so long that I have no way to summarize my own life. And I am such a lazy creature, too lazy to retrieve the forgotten past.

So let it be. Live as happily as possible. The past cannot be reclaimed; the future cannot be controlled. I may as well treat every present day as a treasure. That is enough.

This simple philosophy grew clearer and more profound after I got married.

Though — about this matter of getting married — I still carry to this day an ineffable sense of unreality about the whole thing.

The airplane shuddered lightly through the clouds. I turned my head and looked at the man sleeping soundly beside me, drooling. His features were still as striking as ever — impossible to overshadow no matter where he was placed, even beneath that foolish, contented sleeping expression. A thousand years of time had left no unwelcome trace upon his face. I thought this was not because time favored him too much, but because he had always looked down upon time. This man looked down upon far too many things — the demons who dared to provoke him, the obstacles that blocked his path, the dangers that threatened him, and even the “rules” he was supposed to follow as a member of the East Sea Dragon Clan.

From the day I met Ao Chi, I had never encountered anything — or anyone — that could stand above him. Even if he lost a battle, all he lost was that one fight, not himself as a person. That stubborn, proud head of his — it simply was not the sort that would bow.

I considered myself not quite as hardheaded and domineering as he was, but I too would never lower my head easily.

We tend to dislike someone because we are too similar; we tend to like someone for the very same reason.

I had “disliked” Ao Chi for over a thousand years. Once upon a time, I despised him so thoroughly — the insufferably arrogant way he carried himself when he dragged me to the Hopeless Sea; despised him for forcing me to survive through those agonizing years when I had given up all hope and wanted to abandon my life; despised him for nagging me like an old woman, managing and restraining me, compelling me to learn all manner of spells I had no interest in; despised his tireless determination to imitate humans, sending me a ring every single year.

And what I despised most of all was that he once vanished from my life for twenty years — for the sake of the “duty” he owed as a member of the East Sea Dragon Clan — without informing me at all, even deceiving me deliberately.

That year, he deliberately said something outrageous. Furious beyond measure, I told him to get out immediately. For the first time, he actually obeyed, and truly left. He left for twenty years, leaving me only a red-gold dragon-patterned peace clasp — one that couldn’t be thrown away no matter how hard I tried, always fastened to my wrist.

I must have spent too long among humans, for even my own thoughts and actions had been influenced by their mundane wisdom — miss them when they’re gone, annoyed when they’re here. And sure enough, I proved the saying true: I began a search that lasted nearly twenty years. I kept walking, kept searching, but he had vanished from this world as though evaporated, leaving me not a single trace to follow. I grew somewhat weary of walking, so in an unremarkable city I opened a small shop called “Bu Ting” — Ceaseless — selling sweets, and my customers, besides humans, included demons. They did not come to cause me trouble; on the contrary, they came seeking my help.

Yet I never felt I was offering them anything remarkable. At most, I brewed them a cup of Floating Life tea — bitter at first and sweet on the finish — and listened while they told me a story from beginning to end. I never imagined they would feel grateful to me, for I truly did not think my insignificant gestures were worth being thanked or remembered.

But in the end, when I met a true enemy — trapped in desperate circumstances, my life hanging by a thread — those very demons, as if by some unspoken agreement, came to my side and fought with everything they had to keep me safe.

As for the details of that sudden calamity of those years, I no longer remember clearly, and I have never spoken of it to anyone. It was nothing more than a disaster born of jealousy and obsession. Yet, as that other old saying goes — a blessing in disguise — the man who had walked away for twenty years returned before me without any warning, at the very moment my life faced its gravest threat.

And so I came to understand: this, too, was a tale as tired as a prime-time soap opera.

Leaving me for twenty years — there was a reason. As a member of the East Sea Dragon Clan, he bore the duty of guarding the axis of time and saving the Earth. He was an Ultraman who had surrendered his very life, to fight to the death against every monster threatening human peace. He had deliberately provoked me to anger because he feared he might never return. If that truly came to pass, better that I hate him than miss him — at least I would not pine long for someone I despised.

Even his so-called “good intentions” were this single-minded and childish. This was the man I had despised for so long.

But in the end, this Ao Chi — infamous across the East Sea Dragon Clan as a reckless, lawless dragon — married me, this tree-spirit proprietress who had descended from Fulong Mountain, on what was the Nth Christmas since we first met.

I still remember our conversation when Ao Chi proposed to me:

Me: Give me three reasons.

Him: First, no one else will have you. Second, no one else would dare take me. Third — I love you.

And so the proprietress of the Ceaseless Sweet Shop found the place where she could finally stop.

And so the proprietress of the Ceaseless Sweet Shop closed her doors, washed her hands to cook, and became someone’s wife.

I know that someone took my story of running the shop — the tea I brewed called Floating Life, and the tales of those demon customers who visited me, including the catastrophe that Ao Chi and I had weathered together — and turned it all into a novel called Tales of a Floating Life. I heard it sold quite well. I was even planning to visit the author someday to thank her for writing me as so devastatingly beautiful and magnificently money-minded. Ao Chi insisted on going with me, ranting and raving that the author had not done sufficient justice to his brilliance and heroism — he wanted to go and protest, and threaten her to either revise the original or write an entirely new sequel in which he would be the undisputed leading man, the kind who makes everyone else pale in comparison! I genuinely feared someone might one day mistake him for a madman and have him hauled away. Such supreme self-centeredness — I suspected it would never change, not across any lifetime.

By rough calculation, we had been married for nearly two years. In the time since I stopped being a proprietress, the two of us had traveled to almost every country on earth. Though I am not human, my love for and curiosity about this world was no less than any person’s. Ao Chi remained his same insufferable self — one moment mocking me for my lack of worldliness, laughing because I had been so astonished by the Nazca Lines on the high plateau; the next moment standing on the heights of the Andes, scolding me for the unseemly way I gnawed at corn cobs while quietly handing out fistful after fistful of the sweets he’d brought to the children in the indigenous village where we were staying.

In Romania, we checked into a hotel run by vampires. He cursed me again for my thoughtlessness — perfectly good luxury hotels available and I refused to stay in them, insisting instead on this rural establishment of dubious repute. He then, without distinction, gave the vampires a thorough thrashing and nearly revealed his true form and burned their inn down. We only later discovered that these vampires were perfectly harmless — just honest business people, occasionally cooperating with the local tourism board on cosplay events, dressing up as vampires to give tourists a fright and set the atmosphere. He naturally refused to apologize, though he was quite generous with money — the medical expenses he paid the vampires were enough for them to open ten more inns of even greater size.

And when we wandered to Bermuda, my magnificent husband began complaining again — the sea wind was too bothersome, the ultraviolet rays too fierce, they would eventually tan me into a dark-faced ghost, and if I turned ugly he wouldn’t want me anymore. While he complained, on that moonless, windy night, he quietly dealt with several sea enchantresses who were luring human souls with their singing, discreetly lifting the danger from a whole shipful of passengers. After handling it all, he turned around and scolded me again, demanding to know why I insisted on coming to this godforsaken Bermuda of all places.

You see — this is how it was. Ao Chi was always lecturing, always impatient, always chattering away. Sometimes I genuinely wondered whether I had married the East Sea’s reckless dragon at all, or rather the famously long-winded Tang Sanzang himself. Could you imagine that a “villain” who had once resorted to physical force against me — savage as a blade — could harbor such a fussing, contradictory side? It took me quite some time to grow accustomed to it, and I attributed the discomfort to a newlywed adjustment period. Though we had known each other for so long, a brand-new relationship had been placed between us, and it was still learning to walk.

At our core, we had both long grown used to being alone. And once you step into something called “marriage,” everything must be multiplied by two. Ao Chi and I still needed time to adjust.

Yet, for all his complaining, for all his nagging — over these two years, wherever we went, however unwilling he appeared, if it was a place I wanted to go, he would go with me without fail. If it was something I wanted to eat, no matter what remote corner of the earth it was in, he would get it for me.

After our marriage, he developed a habit: he absolutely had to be holding my hand when he slept.

He said that the day holding my hand feels like holding his own hand, that would be the day only familial fondness remained between us.

He rolled his eyes and said that it would mean I had become an inseparable part of him — something he couldn’t throw away even if he tried.

Such a nauseating theory, and yet he could deliver it with absolute conviction.

“I just don’t want to wake up one day and find you gone.” After his absurd reasoning, he mumbled this one line, then buried his head deep in the pillow and let out thunderous snoring.

I looked at his sleeping face and smiled.

For as long as I could remember, my hands would go ice-cold every winter — as though they were permanently incapable of generating warmth on their own. But ever since our wedding, not even the bitter cold of winter had made my hands cold again. For they were always wrapped in Ao Chi’s perpetually warm large palms.

Even now, dozing on the airplane, Ao Chi still held my hand out of habit.

We were growing increasingly like an ordinary human couple. Traveling around the world, we bought tickets properly, stayed in hotels, used regular transportation, haggled with merchants, and even harassed vendors after meals for their prize-eligible receipts. If we happened to scratch off a five-yuan win, we would celebrate like lunatics. Except on a very small number of special occasions requiring us to deploy a little of our “abilities,” we had nearly forgotten ourselves that we were a pair of “otherworldly beings” concealing extraordinary powers.

I turned my head and gazed at the clouds sweeping past the window. In about two more hours, I could return to the city I had left for nearly two years.

Wherever I go, I use the word “go” — but for Fulong Mountain, and for this city called Wang Chuan, I use the word “return.”

Home is the place one returns to.

My “Bu Ting” was still on that little street in Wang Chuan City. I planned to go back and look things over, then settle in for a while. Perhaps I could even summon that rowdy bunch of demons for a tea party? Ah — perhaps not. If they knew I was back, who knows what strange new trouble they would drag to my door. But I probably ought to find time to see my honorary nephew Zhong Xiao Kui — the boy had once emailed me, not many words, yet they gave me a profound awareness that a young man in the throes of adolescent uncertainty very much needed his honorary aunt to serve as a collection bin for his troubles. Wait — and there was that old creature Jiu Jue. Word had reached me recently that he, too, was getting married, and that I should have a large red envelope ready. What monumental gossip! Who on earth could have convinced that demanding, discerning old man to willingly walk into love’s grave? My curiosity was killing me!

Well then — I still had rather a lot to do.

On the plane, most passengers were asleep. Ao Chi’s snoring rose and fell in its own cadence. I drifted in idle daydreams, while the drone of the cabin hummed around us.

Suddenly, an abnormal turbulence struck. Everyone’s heart lurched from its proper position along with the shaking of their seats. The faint-hearted cried out in alarm; the bolder ones turned pale and muttered under their breath.

The intercom carried the flight attendant’s sweet, composed voice: “Dear passengers, the aircraft has encountered a powerful air current. There will be some turbulence. Please fasten your seatbelts and remain in your seats. Thank you!”

Being a demon, I always had a premonition about certain accidents — a sense that surpassed ordinary human intuition.

We’re going to crash.

Sure enough — before the announcement was even finished, before Ao Chi had fully roused himself and was wiping drool in a half-dream, before everyone had finished clinging to the hope that all this was “perfectly normal” — we heard the thunderous sound that could only come from mechanical failure followed by an explosion. Passengers seated in the middle of the plane near the windows saw clearly: thick smoke and flames were billowing from the right wing.

The entire cabin lurched into a tilt. The oxygen masks tumbled out from overhead in a dense, frantic cascade — along with the luggage that rolled out from the compartments above, all sizes and kinds, in total chaos.

The screaming that erupted all around nearly ruptured my eardrums.

Plunging, weightlessness, blood failing to reach the brain, the heart seizing — every terrifying sensation capable of killing a person exploded through each passenger’s body. For me, this was a rare, memorable experience. As a tree spirit, I was finally living through a plane crash — another “first” in my life, now satisfyingly ticked off.

At such a catastrophic moment, Ao Chi alone rubbed his bleary eyes and asked, casual as could be, “We crashing?”

“Yes, we’re crashing,” I replied, perfectly composed.

“Damn it!”

The plane, like an iron bird with a broken wing, plummeted in a direction it was never meant to go — the ground below no longer ground, but the gaping jaws of hell, grinning as it waited for the wreck to be pulverized.

No one could believe they would survive. Most could only force their heads down between their knees, clench their teeth, and murmur the names of whatever gods they worshipped — save me, I don’t want to die, we don’t want to die.

The will to live was so fierce, so overwhelmingly loud — I could hear every single voice.

I am not a god, only a demon. But I can grant your wishes.

The thunderous impact. The shattering of metal. A world-shaking catastrophe of a kind to reverse the flow of blood — all of it was over within a few seconds, swallowed into the enormous spray of water that shot skyward like a crashing wave, with the force of a mountain collapsing into the sea.

The plane had crashed into the surface of a vast, wide lake — with a relatively gentle impact.

This great iron beast did not sink. It floated. It had not split apart — not even the smoke and flames from before remained visible. By and large, this was a rather perfect water landing. In the split second after the disaster, I seemed to glimpse through the window a strange shadow flashing past — extraordinarily fast, soaring into the sky. Miraculously, every single person was completely unharmed. The cabin crew swiftly organized the passengers to put on life jackets and crawl out through the emergency exits.

Into the emerald-green lake water, innumerable vivid orange figures immediately poured in, swimming in all directions. The lake was not too far from where the plane had come down — yet another stroke of luck.

It was my first time wearing a life jacket, and I found it amusing. Ao Chi refused to put on this garment that “completely obscures one’s figure,” and leaped directly into the water, impatiently accompanying me as we swam toward the shore.

The lake parted under my fingers, small ripples dancing and leaping around me. It was early spring — winter’s chill had not yet fully released its hold, and the tender edge of spring was only beginning to make itself known. The survivors thrashing through the water around me shivered with their teeth chattering —

Yet I felt not the slightest cold. Every drop of lake water that touched my body seemed warm, and that warmth did not feel like it came from outside — it seemed to radiate from within my own body. A very strange sensation.

I am a tree spirit; wood floats on water by nature. Even if I cannot swim, I cannot drown. But I dislike swimming — this has been true for centuries. In my heart, I have always had a resistance to being surrounded by water.

In all my memory, there is only one experience of falling unexpectedly into water, and it was not a pleasant one.

Yet it was precisely that one fall into water that gave rise to the tangled, thousand-year bond of fate between me and Ao Chi.

On the shore, the people who had reclaimed their lives offered ceaseless thanksgiving.

“Thank heavens we landed on water!”

“Thank heavens the plane didn’t explode!”

“Thank heavens we didn’t sink!”

Poor souls — you likely haven’t realized yet that when a plane goes down, whether it strikes land or water, the outcome is the same. That this plane did not explode, did not sink — this already defies your laws of physics.

If Ao Chi and I had not, in that razor-thin moment between life and death, used our own “abilities” to “lift” the plane and gently “set” it down onto the water’s surface…

Well. Tell yourself that the gods heard your prayers. You’ll find it easier to accept that way.

I wrung the water from my hair, breathing slightly hard.

To “control” an entire airplane under such completely unprepared circumstances required, even for me, a small expenditure of vital energy.

Ao Chi shook his hair vigorously like a little dog fresh from a bath, then launched into complaints — saying he had clearly wanted to keep traveling a few more days before coming back, and it was all my fault for insisting on this wretched flight. After that he scolded me for neglecting my cultivation on ordinary days, saying that a mere plane had me panting, and if he hadn’t been there to act alongside me, I would have been helpless.

For the art of inflating his own importance, Ao Chi always had exactly twelve-hundred-thousand percent enthusiasm.

“One more word and I want a divorce!” I don’t engage in verbal sparring — I go straight for the nuclear option.

“You—” He immediately shut his mouth, then muttered resentfully, “I’m only saying it for your own good!”

If they’re not fated to clash, they won’t end up together — and if they’re not fated to clash, they won’t need to talk divorce. Is every married couple like this, bickering their way through? They say marriage is its own discipline — easy to fall in love, difficult to stay together, and not simple to do well.

I looked with equal exasperation and amusement at Ao Chi — his ego thoroughly extinguished by my trump card — and thought, how long will this single-minded creature walk beside me?

The thought came to me without any particular cause.

I looked back at the expanse of lake. The forest surrounding it seemed strangely familiar.

The captain gripped his satellite phone and dialed for rescue.

A little over an hour later, a rescue team comprised of government officials, medical personnel, and police officers arrived with impressive speed and led everyone away from the lakeside into several large buses, which roared off into the distance.

Only then did we learn: we had crashed in a small county in some province — a place called Dai County.

Dai County…

I gazed through the bus window at the fields and houses rushing past. The evening sky carried a damp, grey hue.

Ao Chi was wrapped in a blanket, already fast asleep, his head pillowed on my shoulder, snoring without pause.

I, too, was growing drowsy.

A dripping, tapping sound rose from the window, growing louder and louder.

I opened my eyes and saw only dense rainwater flowing down the glass. The world outside had become blurry, shifting patches.

“Hey, it’s raining again — wonderful!” the driver said cheerfully, switching on the wipers.

“That should put an end to the spring drought in the county!” the person behind him chimed in happily.

“Absolutely — it’s been dry for so long! Feels like heaven finally opened its eyes these past few days!”

I blinked a few times, yawned, and fell asleep.

【Chapter Two】Night Calamity

“Room 406.” The hotel attendant — her hair dyed a violent golden explosion of curls — impatiently tossed the room card in front of me. “Hot water is charged extra, the internet cable requires a two-hundred-yuan deposit, and room service incurs a thirty percent service fee.”

I smiled and thanked her, then grabbed the card and left. Behind me in line were still dozens of people, each regarding this imperious village hotel attendant with the desperate gaze of someone awaiting divine summons.

The county government staff had arranged us in what was reportedly the finest accommodation — the “Auspicious Guesthouse.” They said that first thing tomorrow morning, a vehicle from the city would come to take us to the airport.

At last everything had settled. Everyone relaxed. If only the female attendants here had a slightly warmer disposition — I imagine everyone’s mood would have been considerably better.

I glanced back at the two women working at the front desk with visible impatience — not at their extravagant hairstyles, but at a faint, murky dark cloud hovering between their brows.

I looked again at the attendants passing by us. Every single one of them appeared listless and hollow-eyed, yawning repeatedly. And without exception, each of them bore that same murky shadow between their brows.

Only a person whose vital essence has been siphoned by a demon or malevolent spirit would carry that kind of color between the brows — a lingering, coiling haze.

Thinking back over everything I had observed along the way — this Dai County was remote, surrounded by mountains and dense forest, with a large lake set within it. As they say: many demons dwell in mountain forests, and strange creatures emerge from deep waters. The location of this little run-down guesthouse had the particular misfortune of being built in a north-facing, sunless spot. In front lay the marketplace, behind lay open fields, and from the bedroom window one could see a tall, old pagoda tree growing in the back courtyard.

In the wind and rain, the marketplace outside was completely devoid of life. The fields beyond were oppressively grey. The old tree behind swayed its branches, producing a low, mournful sound — looking at it only deepened the chill.

Such a place would naturally be a favorite haunt of mountain sprites and demons.

Our room was on the third floor.

The “finest” guesthouse — and the room contained nothing beyond a hard bed and a table missing half a leg. The air was saturated with dust and mildew.

After a long period of restrained tolerance, Ao Chi finally erupted.

He pointed at the bed. He pointed at the table. He pointed at the walls mottled with mold. Then finally he pointed at me, and with his last shred of self-control asked, “Can we leave now? Either we go straight back to Bu Ting right now, or we find a five-star hotel and have a proper meal. In any case — I refuse to stay in this wretched place for one more second!”

I hadn’t originally planned to stay either. These people were safe now, and Ao Chi and I could return to our city without the slightest effort.

But not yet. If you’re going to help, help all the way. We needed to clean out whatever shouldn’t be here in this guesthouse first.

Judging by the symptoms of those people, the situation wasn’t yet critical. Nor did it seem like any particularly formidable demon — if it were powerful enough, why leave them merely dull and listless? Something genuinely dangerous would drain their life force in one go.

I explained the situation to Ao Chi. He just fixed me with a glare and said, “Those people have such bad attitudes — serves them right to have their vital essence drained. I couldn’t care less about them. It’s not like they’ll die.”

“They won’t die now, but they can’t hold on indefinitely either. If we hadn’t come across it, fine — but we’ve both seen it. It would be wrong not to act.” I knew his childish temper had flared up again.

He let out a dismissive hmph, flopped down on the bed, and asked in a muffled tone, “You’re staying just because of this?”

What other reason would there be?

And yet — now that he’d asked, I found myself wondering whether it truly was only because of this.

The water of the forest lake, the rain falling from the sky — they were speaking to me from inside my heart.

Don’t go. Don’t go. Stay. Stay.

I ignored Ao Chi and walked to the window, pushing it wide open.

Before me lay only the empty fields. Not far off, lush forest spread across rolling hills. If I wasn’t imagining things — glimmering, fish-scale-like points of light winked at me through the gaps between the trees, as though they were watching me, as though I was watching them. Were they reflections from that lake?

The rain had lightened. A clear, moist current of air came drifting in from between the evening hills and water, like a sprite alighting upon my face, drawing away every trace of weariness and discomfort from my body and spirit. Not cold at all — this miraculous evening breeze. Paired with a shower of apricot blossoms and swaying willows, spring would emerge from it just like that.

I closed my eyes and passed a hand over my face. A thin film of water absorbed into the warmth of my skin — not evaporating, but seeping in.

Almost without thinking, I extended the tip of my tongue and licked a few drops of rain from my lips.

Sweet.

This sensation. This sweetness. I had felt it before.

An indescribable sense of yearning and nostalgia climbed from every raindrop, vine-like, all the way up to my heart.

I suddenly thought of Fulong Mountain — of the cave that had once been my dwelling, the stone walls perpetually damp and cool, covered year-round in green moss. At that time, I was still very young. Just like this moment, I had touched the dew on the moss and lifted it to the tip of my tongue. That faint, delightful sweetness made me leap about with the joy of a little rabbit.

I had thought I no longer remembered that taste. Yet in the instant I pushed open the window just now, the memory — long buried — was startled awake by that intertwined wind and rain.

The sweetness of the rain, and the taste of that dewdrop from the moss all those years ago —

Exactly the same.

That delicate, enduring sweetness — utterly one of a kind.

Bang!

Ao Chi pulled me aside and rudely slammed the window shut, scolding me: “Are you mad? It’s raining, and you’re standing here like an idiot — what are you doing?! Are we leaving or not?”

Ao Chi’s palm waved up and down before my eyes. Lost in a daze, I finally came back to my senses.

“Do you find the lake we fell into familiar?” I grabbed his hand and asked, very seriously.

“Every lake looks more or less the same — what’s there to find familiar?” Ao Chi frowned and looked at me strangely, then reached out and pressed his hand to my forehead. “Did you hit your head when we crashed?”

“You can leave if you want. I’m staying.” I refused outright, plopped myself down on the bed, and glared at him. “Do you really not find that lake the slightest bit familiar?”

“I’ve seen countless lakes — they really do all look alike!” Ao Chi was on the verge of tears from my interrogation, his expression darkening as he scratched furiously at his own hair.

“Keep scratching like that and watch yourself go bald!” I helpfully pointed this out, then shifted my gaze to the bedside table, where a battered little booklet lay — A Brief Introduction to the Auspicious Guesthouse.

I reached for it and flipped through. Beneath crudely printed photographs of the hotel lay a lengthy passage of praise for the Auspicious Guesthouse, along with a general introduction to Dai County.

My eyes stopped on one line — drifted back, moved forward, drifted back again — reading it over several times:

Dai County is blessed with beautiful scenery, simple folk, and a long history. In ancient times it was known as the city of Dai Zhou; after the founding of the new nation, its name was changed to Dai County.

Dai Zhou City… Dai Zhou City…

“Shaluo, it’s getting late — we must be on our way!”

“On our way? Where?”

“Dai Zhou City!”

A fragment of conversation, already so distant it had nearly crumbled to ash, leaped out from somewhere in my memory.

Snap! I snapped the booklet shut, jumped up, grabbed Ao Chi’s hand, dragged him to the window — rain and all — and shoved it wide open, pointing outside: “Dai Zhou City! This place is Dai Zhou City!”

“Dai Zhou City?” Ao Chi still looked bewildered.

“You amoeba!” I stomped on his foot in frustration, pointing at the hills in the distance. “That lake — don’t you remember? Broken Lake! The place where you and I first met!”

“Broken Lake…” Ao Chi started scratching his head again — and then his eyes finally lit up. “Oh! I remember now! Back then I ran away from the East Sea and was passing through Dai Zhou City. I spotted a lake so clear and lovely that I jumped in to bathe… erm…”

I banged him on the head in irritation. “You used Broken Lake as your personal bathtub. You had a fine old time, but the result was flooding water levels, torrential downpours, and the entire city of Dai Zhou nearly destroyed. Then Zi Miao brought me here, and you were…”

At that point — specifically, the moment that name left my lips — I stopped abruptly, suddenly self-conscious.

Ao Chi seemed not to notice my small moment of unease and went rattling on: “Right, right! Hmph — and you called me ugly, I wanted to burn you alive back then. And then I was shot by that one guy — he knocked off several of my dragon scales, it was so painful! And then I escaped to Dongting Lake…” Memory, like a box being opened, released everything hidden inside, flooding out without restraint.

As he recalled, as he talked, Ao Chi’s expression gradually grew somber too.

It was only now that we were both struck by it: all these years, neither of us had ever returned to this place. Dai Zhou City, Broken Lake — the place where Ao Chi and I first met, the lake where I had once left behind a breath of my vital energy, giving rise to a stand of trees — had somehow, without any agreement between us, gone missing from both our lives.

In those days, he had been reckless and wild here. In those days, I had known every shade of joy and sorrow here. Yet when the invisible hand of fate had brought us back, neither of us had recognized it. Rather laughable, really. Time truly is a ruthless blade — it hacks away at the youth and lives of humans, and it hacks away at the memories and attachments of demons.

But now that the memory had returned — why did I feel uneasy rather than relieved?

“And what of it?” Ao Chi drew a breath, stepped forward, and shut the window once more. He came back to my side and took my ice-cold hand. “Look at you — you’ve gone pale. It’s just revisiting a place from the past. At least Dai County is no longer being used as a giant bathtub by a certain dragon the way old Dai Zhou City was.”

“You were genuinely insufferable back then,” I said, giving him a sideways look.

“Who hasn’t been insufferable at least once when they were young!” Ao Chi’s twisted logic resurfaced. He cupped my hand in his and breathed warm air onto it, gently rubbing it between his palms. He clicked his tongue and said, “Of all places to fall — we had to land in Broken Lake. Is heaven trying to give us this as a two-year wedding anniversary gift? Should we go plant some sort of conjugal tree or soulmate tree on the lakeshore to commemorate the occasion? After all, this is where we first crossed paths!”

【Chapter Three】Old Friends

Perhaps because it had been so long since I flew on the wind, I did not travel very smoothly through this wild and driving rain. The rain lashed against my body like a whip, and the fallen leaves caught up in it struck my eyes from time to time — cold, and stinging.

Above my head, black clouds churned in the night sky, revealing nothing. The rumble of thunder never ceased, and blazing flashes of lightning threatened at any moment to slash the sky open. I passed through the fields and pressed into the mountain forest, searching for the one I sought.

Before long, countless beautiful points of light began dancing before my eyes — exactly like the scene I had observed from a distance at dusk.

The rain and trees obstructing my view seemed to suddenly part, the scene opening before me in a great, clear sweep — that familiar yet far-away Broken Lake lay not far ahead, rippling with jade-green water. Every gentle wavelet was threaded with stars of light, so that at a single glance, it seemed as though someone had poured the entire starlight of the universe into the lake.

Broken Lake, Broken Lake…

Long years ago, that tiny, frail little tree spirit — so weak she could not protect herself in any way — had stood right here, hiding behind that tall, upright figure, watching him hold the lake water in the palm of his hand, watching him use a single breath of my vital energy and a strand of my hair to conjure an expanse of lush, emerald trees…

My heart wavered for an instant, then was yanked sharply back —

If only the scattered points of light in the lake right now were not falling from the fierce aerial battle between two figures above — how wonderful that would be.

Above the lake surface, one figure clad in red, one radiating silver — they were locked together in relentless, ferocious combat. I could not make out their faces or movements; it was too fast, far too fast. I could only see dazzling sparks and flashes of light scattering from their savage collisions and raining down into the lake.

I slipped quietly to a concealed spot by the lakeshore, crouched low, and crept forward.

A hand of mild warmth, with measured pressure, covered my mouth. Another hand encircled my waist, halting my advance.

A breath — impossible to capture or define — passed through the two hands restraining me, through my bloodstream, through my entire body, reaching all the way to the deepest corner of my soul.

The person behind me breathed at an even rhythm, the air falling across my body. My back rested against a broad chest. In this lightning-flash of a moment, I was dragged back to a summer night a thousand years ago, when someone had pressed against my body in exactly this way — a spirit that was powerful without being oppressive, drifting toward me on their breath. Beneath the clear moonlight, I had once followed that ice-cold, profound, and yet impossibly soft warmth with curious and greedy fascination.

Eyes can deceive, but feelings cannot — especially not for a tree spirit like me.

A voice in my head said: Do not turn around! If you turn around you’ll turn to a pillar of salt!

I turned around. I did not turn to a pillar of salt.

I was no longer the little demon who used to weep at the slightest provocation, wearing every emotion on her face. A thousand years of the world’s storms and upheavals had urged my growth — or rather, time had buried me, buried me so deep I could not measure it. Only this heart, the heart of a tree spirit, would no longer let itself be seen so easily by others.

Black hair, a moon-white robe, the shifting light of the lake glimmering intermittently, illuminating an exceptional face — brows, eyes, nose, lips — those contours and lines etching their way across his features made one feel an irresistible impulse to reach out a hand and trace them, to discern: real, or illusion?

Were we not supposed to never meet again?

That year of great drought, that year of rain, that year of tears and a parting like death — had all of that not already been written on an unalterable fate?

My eyes held neither surprise nor joy. I only looked at him quietly. That name — buried for far, far too long — circled round and round in my chest, unable, no matter how it tried, to find its way past my lips.

The one I was looking at was also watching me in silence. Slowly, a thread of surprised delight entered his eyes.

“Shaluo? How can it be you…” His gaze moved over me without any conflict, carrying only the relief of old friends reunited.

He never had moments of flying into a rage or of unbridled joy. He was always a surface of undisturbed water — and even on those rare occasions when a small ripple appeared, it was gone in an instant, leaving no trace.

“I…”

I what? Beyond that one word, I had lost the ability to say anything else.

What was there even to say? How is it you? Didn’t you already cease to exist? Weren’t you supposed to have become forever impossible to return to this world? Didn’t you leave me stranded at the Hopeless Sea?

Too many questions — so many that none of them could come out. A flaw that many humans share, and one I had, to my misfortune, acquired.

“Shh — don’t speak.” He pressed a hand to my shoulder, and together we crouched down. He looked out at the battle raging on. “Don’t go disturbing them yet.”

The torrential rain still had not stopped, yet not a single drop fell on either of us. An invisible circle cut the wind and rain off at arm’s length.

Such things only happened around him — irreplaceable, like no one else.

Rivers, lakes, the sea; rain, dew, frost, snow — every source of water in the world was his to command, subject to his control. Even his robes did not dare become carelessly wetted.

A thousand years ago, on the peak of Fulong Mountain, a man and a woman were talking —

Do you have a name?

No.

Then I’ll call you Shaluo from now on.

Who are you?

Before the Heavenly Emperor’s throne — the Sovereign of the Four Waters. Zi Miao.

Sovereign of the Four Waters. Zi Miao.

Zi Miao…

I knew he was not a construct of illusion, nor was he another demon in disguise. I might misidentify the “scent” of many a person — but not his. Even if illusion and demon craft produced ten thousand versions of him, I would recognize the true one at a glance.

My second life was given to me by him — carved into my bones and etched onto my heart. How could I mistake him for another?

Crouching beside him, I did not dare speak, did not dare move, afraid that one word said too heavily, one gesture made too large, would shatter everything before me into pieces — impossible to chase back, impossible to mend.

At that moment, the silver figure suddenly leaped high into the air and, by some unknown method, drew down a tremendous bolt of lightning from above, hurling it at his adversary.

In the earth-shaking thunderclap that followed, the water of Broken Lake had surely been thrown skyward — towering walls of water surged up and then crashed back into the lake with tremendous force.

I heard a woman’s cry of alarm.

When the spray settled, the surface of the lake grew uncannily still.

The fight had stopped. The scene became clear.

On the still-rippling water, a woman in red lay barely conscious — weightless as a fallen leaf.

Before her stood a man radiating silver light from his entire body, a curved blade in hand, its tip leveled at the woman’s skull.

“Return it to me!”

I heard the man’s low, furious roar.

Zi Miao suddenly spoke: “Stay behind me. Don’t come out.”

It was always something like this that he said to me — whenever he judged the situation dangerous: Shaluo, stay behind me.

Yes — at that time I was so weak. A single attack of almost any kind could have taken my life.

But that was then.

Do you still think of me as that little demon who needed you to stand in front and shield her from every danger?

When a person from your past treats you the way they once did — as though nothing has changed — it creates a disorienting force that pulls at your sense of direction. Move forward, and it is resistance; step back, and it is compliance.

Should I move forward, or step back?

Before I could decide, he had already shot forward. His right palm blazed with a faint blue-green light, which took shape as that bow and arrow that was uniquely his — formed from water itself.

Whoosh! The arrow left the string and cut a fine, luminous line through the air, flying straight for the man’s shoulder.

A direct hit!

For all that he was a man of such gentle, scholarly bearing — his skill with bow and arrow radiated the overwhelming presence of one arrow felling ten thousand men. In those old days, even someone as troublesome as Ao Chi had been gravely wounded by that arrow, fleeing in desperate disarray.

This time, I did not stand behind him.

I descended to his side, hovering in mid-air, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

He glanced at me. Something was hidden in his eyes, yet in the end it receded without form.

The sharp arrowhead, upon touching that powerful body, dissolved into clear water — but this did not hinder it from passing through any obstacle.

In this world, it is not only sharp-edged things that can wound.

I watched as that stream of water being wielded as a weapon passed through the man’s body and emerged from his back — and at that moment, it was no longer its original color. It had transformed into something blooming in the air: a flower of deep blue.

The man clutched his shoulder and staggered back several steps. The curved blade slipped from his hand like a dying flame, tracing a faint arc through the air before vanishing.

“However you feel about her, she is still a girl — that was rather heavy-handed.” He regarded the man coolly.

Only now could I see clearly: the silver radiance covering this man’s entire body came entirely from his silver-scaled armor. Even his face — reasonably striking in its features — was covered in fine scales. Looking further down, what supported his body was not a pair of legs but a powerful serpent’s tail.

No demonic aura, and no ghost. I had never seen anything quite like this.

The armored, serpent-tailed man looked at Zi Miao. His narrow eyes held nothing but a red the color of blood.

“Heh — the Water God himself.” He laughed strangely, then shifted his gaze back to the woman. “What belongs to me — it will be returned.”

With that, he suddenly drew a sharp breath inward, and the black clouds above seemed to pour down like water through a broken dam, wrapping around him, forming a black whirlwind. It spun fiercely upward and disappeared into the night.

Another crack of thunder split the sky. A fireball came rolling down.

Zi Miao called out: “Watch out!”

Before I could even look up, he had already pulled me smoothly aside, his wide sleeve enfolding me completely.

My world went suddenly quiet — except for the familiar sound of a heartbeat, close against my ear.

Several trees along the shore were set ablaze by the fireball from the lightning strike, the flames leaping high.

I poked my head out, and before I could say a word, an enormous fist — unbidden — thrust itself between me and Zi Miao, then pivoted and aimed straight at his cheek. Behind the fist came Ao Chi’s cold, furious voice: “Looking to die?! Daring to put your hands on my woman!”

I could guess: this impulsive dragon, reckless as ever, must not have gotten a clear look at his face. Otherwise he would not have struck — absolutely not.

I was right. Zi Miao effortlessly evaded Ao Chi’s fist without retaliating. His billowing sleeve moved with no apparent effort, and a spray of icy water leaped up from Broken Lake, splashing without ceremony all over Ao Chi’s furiously burning face.

No one had ever had the audacity to publicly throw water in his face — not even I had ever had that particular “honor.”

As Ao Chi’s enraged gaze passed through that face full of water — an announcement and warning all at once — his expression transformed in an instant. That sudden shift in his eyes was something I couldn’t quite describe with precision. It was the look of someone doused with a bucket of cold water, all the roaring flames extinguished in one go — surprise, followed by silence, and then an unmistakable, undeniable sinking of spirits.

“Zi Miao?!”

Ao Chi called out the name without any hesitation, loudly and in shock — far more easily than I had managed. That habitual booming voice startled Broken Lake itself into ring after ring of ripples.

“You really haven’t changed at all.” His smile — clear and shallow as water — spread through the night air. “The wayward dragon — Ao Chi.”

Ao Chi stood frozen for the span of what felt like a century, then darted to my side and said with absolute conviction, his voice dropping to murmur in my ear, “This must be a fake! Watch me burn this imposter to cinders with the Three Flavors True Fire!”

He truly wanted to do it. Ao Chi was using his own method to verify the unbelievable.

I held him back and shook my head. “He’s real.”

I paused. Drew in a deep breath — as if I needed to fill my body with enough air to muster the courage to speak the words.

“He is Zi Miao. I know him.”

I could clearly see something in Ao Chi’s eyes: it lit up — and then went dark.

“He’s not… hasn’t he been destroyed, body and soul? In that great drought.” Ao Chi was asking me, and asking himself.

That great drought of a thousand years ago — that one rainfall of grace — that eternal farewell woven of wind and sand and rain — rose from the deliberately buried earth of memory and thrust itself skyward, challenging the composure and reason of both Ao Chi and me.

No one — not a single soul — had ever meant to Ao Chi and me what Zi Miao did: something so deep, so subtle, so utterly irreplaceable.

The two of us, old creatures between us amounting to tens of thousands of years — we stood before him on this night without a hint of warning, timid, even somewhat foolish.

Long ago, the three of us had clashed bitterly on this very lake and woven together a bond that could never be unraveled. Now, the three of us stood in the same place once again.

Broken Lake was unchanged — only the faces reflected in its water were ones we ourselves no longer entirely recognized.

“I — I woke up and found you gone, so I came looking for you.” Ao Chi, clearly ill at ease with the silence among the three of us, deliberately raised his voice and accused me. “You’re a married woman. What are you doing running around in the middle of the night? Is this how a married woman behaves?”

“With that much noise outside, only a pig like you could sleep through it! If there’d been an earthquake, you’d have been the first one crushed!” I shot back with equal force.

Zi Miao looked down, a smile in his eyes, and turned toward the injured woman in red.

“You—!” Ao Chi, his words cut off, was rendered speechless.

I left him behind and went to look at the woman’s injuries.

Zi Miao helped the woman lying on the water to sit up.

When that face of devastating beauty was fully exposed beneath the faint moonlight just beginning to emerge — unguarded, undisguised — her weakened gaze drifted past me and Zi Miao and settled hesitantly upon Ao Chi behind me. In a voice as fragile as a thread that might snap at any moment, she softly called: “Elder Brother Ao Chi…”

“Dong’er?!” Ao Chi reacted as though someone had stepped on his tail. He charged forward, shoving Zi Miao aside, and gripped the woman’s wrist with rough force. “What are you doing out here?!”

An acquaintance?

Setting aside their relationship for the moment — the way he seized and pulled at her looked, at first glance, unmistakably like a scene of a brute bullying a young woman. He had no sense of his own strength, and this girl let out a cry, her eyes immediately filling with tears.

“Ao Chi! Are you trying to crush her to death? Can’t you see she’s already injured?!” I moved to pry his hand away.

“Speak! What did you come out here for?!” Ao Chi paid absolutely no attention to my words.

“I… I…” The girl faltered.

“I gave you orders never to leave the East Sea!” Ao Chi said through clenched teeth, his voice very low, every word a stick of dynamite straining toward detonation yet unable to fully explode.

“I didn’t go against your wishes — but… I waited so long…” The woman’s words became somewhat incoherent. But for all that her embarrassment and fear were written plainly on her face, those beautiful eyes of hers held steady, maintaining direct contact with Ao Chi’s furious gaze without flinching.

He flung away the woman’s hand.

“Elder Brother Ao Chi…” The woman forced herself upright, as though terrified he would leave her behind, and in turn grabbed his hand. “I… I…”

The words never came. Her breath faltered and she lost consciousness, slumping down.

“What is this situation?” I asked him.

“What do you think! She’s just a relative from the East Sea!” he replied fiercely, hoisted the woman onto his back, and started walking. “We’ll talk more inside.” As he walked he kept muttering, “What a day — nothing but people showing up who shouldn’t be here!”

The moonlight brightened and clarified, as though trying to scrub away all the commotion that had just passed. The true light of Broken Lake — the light that properly belonged to it — like a pair of deep, quiet eyes, watched the figures who had come without warning and now just as suddenly departed.

【Chapter Four】The Dark Depths

Dark, ancient stone formed an unfathomably deep space, stretching endlessly in every direction. Every stone was a different shape, yet they fit together so seamlessly they seemed indestructible and unbreakable.

He sat cross-legged on the elevated, rectangular stone platform — great and jutting — his silver scales flickering between light and dark. He parted his lips slightly and exhaled white mist like a serpent, which coiled around his injured right shoulder.

A river of water wound itself into one great circle, enclosing the stone platform at the center. The gentle sound of flowing water brought clear, melodious echoes through the vast space. In the colorless water, schools of phosphorescent fish swam in gleeful swarms — uncountable, innumerable, their numbers seemingly endless. Each fish bore five colors: black, white, green, red, and blue. As they swam and moved, they were like a permanent rainbow — quite beautiful.

He breathed slowly. The mist he exhaled came and went in thickness. The arrow wound on his shoulder gradually healed.

“Why not sleep?”

Someone spoke from high above.

He opened his eyes and looked up.

His “sky” had always been black — no sunlight, no wind or rain, only hard stone after hard stone.

“Not until I reclaim what is mine can the world sleep in peace,” he said, as if speaking to himself.

“And if you cannot reclaim it?” the voice above asked again.

“No one understands me better than you.” He said, “What I love most, what I hate most, what I am bound to uphold — you know all of it. Why do you bother asking.”

“You hold the position of a god, the heart of a human, and yet you are more stubborn than any stone in this place.” The voice sighed.

“Likewise.” He closed his eyes and laughed coldly. “Zi Miao’s Water God Arrow is one of three things in existence that can wound me — as you know. I very nearly did not make it back. That little woman is actually far more formidable than I am — she knew exactly how to turn someone else’s blade against her enemy. Heh.”

A long silence.

“And your curved blade?” the voice sounded again.

“I gave it away on the way back. A child saved me.” He pressed a hand to his newly healed wound.

“Should I call that child fortunate, or unfortunate? To be capable of lifting your blade means being destined to walk a path of no return. Who is he?”

“He only said his family name is Zhong. In his blood, there is something I have never seen before.” I furrowed my brow. “This is idle talk — let’s spare ourselves the trouble. Leave now. Since you’ve chosen to leave, don’t come back — not even your voice.”

Silence closed in from all sides once more.

He had lived for nearly ten thousand years — perhaps even more.

In his entire life, he had not seen a true open sky very many times, had not bathed in real sunlight very often. He was the emperor of the underground and of darkness — and also its servant.

No — he had seen sunlight before. In a time too long ago to measure, he had risked turning to ash and gone to stand before the sea. From within the figure that came rushing toward him, from those flowing, shimmering eyes, he had seen living sunlight.

He was so fond of her eyes — he could have wished himself shrunk to a grain of sand, to dwell within them forever.

If it were possible, he would have wished that within those eyes he adored, there would never be tears — only the sound of flowers blooming, and the joy of sunlight pouring in.

And so, when she wept and begged for his help, he would have given his very life if it meant stopping her tears.

In the human world of those days, wars never ceased and slaughter never ended. Humans, in the most brutal and savage ways, fought over whatever meager scraps of benefit they could grasp — food, wealth, territory, and power. These children of the earth, created by the great goddess Nüwa, provoked the wrath of the heavenly gods again and again. But still, he gave humans a chance. He sent those beneath his command into the human world to teach them to use their strength for farming rather than war, to teach them to treat one another with courtesy rather than to kill and plunder, to teach them to appreciate all beautiful things rather than to waste their years.

He hoped that humans would mend their ways.

But after yet another devastating war of corpses strewn across fields and rivers running red with blood, the Heavenly Emperor lost all hope.

The Heavenly Emperor gave the order: to wash away the sins of the human world with floods and plague.

Only true death could wake the world to its senses.

She came to him. She begged him — begged him to protect a certain village when the flood arrived.

She knew he had the power to do it.

He agreed at once, without even asking why.

He said, I can protect that village. But I will fall into sleep. When the floods recede, will you come and wake me?

She promised him she would come back to wake him — absolutely, without fail.

He was satisfied, and he went.

The punishing flood came as foretold. Humans paid a tremendous price for what they had done — countless bodies floated in the water. When the floodwaters finally receded, the survivors faced the onslaught of plague.

This manner of punishment at last made some among the living understand: nothing — nothing at all — could be more fortunate than simply living well.

He kept his promise: sleeping, protecting that village, so that neither the flood nor the plague could draw near.

But she did not come back.

The Heavenly Emperor had a message sent to him: Since you are so fond of defying the heavens, from this day forward you shall remain exactly as you are now — protecting this place, for all eternity, unable to move from this spot.

And then a seal fell from the sky.

He fell back into sleep.

No resentment. He would keep waiting — waiting for her to come and wake him.

In truth, seal or no seal, the result was the same.

Until she returned, he would not leave. He would stay right here and protect the land she had entrusted to him.

He, of all people, kept his word. He, of all people, despised broken promises.

A thousand years, then another thousand. He woke once every thousand years — but never woken by her. The seal would pierce him with pain once every millennium, forcing him awake.

Every time he woke, he felt disappointment. Then, holding onto his waiting, he would sink into the next sleep.

He exhaled at length and rolled his shoulder.

He rose, looked over the world that was his own, and said quietly to himself, “One who breaks their word cannot be allowed to remain.”

【Chapter Five】Startling News

The life I had known, so long at peace, had its ending suddenly announced.

Zi Miao stood at the window, the evening sun casting through it, pulling a clear, graceful shadow across the tea table behind him.

I sat across from him, my gaze passing from time to time through the wisps of steam rising from my teacup — arriving, pausing briefly near him, then drifting away.

That silhouette standing in the faint orange light — I had seen it countless times: in the summer rains of Fulong Mountain, in its winter snows, in its spring blossoms and autumn moon. I had seen it so many times it had etched itself into my heart.

“This little shop you’ve opened — hidden within the marketplace, yet possessed of its own quiet elegance. Very well done.” He turned back, his lips carrying a smile of admiration. “Shaluo, you have grown up.”

“Drink your tea.” I raised my cup in his direction and first poured a gulp into myself. I needed to be doing something — anything — to conceal the unease that hadn’t left me since the moment I saw him.

But the tea was scalding, and I immediately spit it back out, frantically fanning my mouth.

Catching my clumsy display, he couldn’t help but smile.

His smile was not the kind that invited embarrassment — and yet I felt my face go red. I no longer dared to look at him.

He sat down across from me, lifted his cup, and gently blew across the surface of the green tea. He took a sip, and not a single trace of discomfort crossed his brow. He took another sip, and said with a smile, “This tea is bitter, yet it carries a lingering sweetness; its fragrance hides in the shadows, its flavor is endless. A fine tea indeed!”

“This tea is a specialty of Bu Ting. I call it ‘Floating Life.'”

I had been away from Bu Ting for so long — yet everything was thankfully the same, and I could still sit here at ease and brew a cup of my Floating Life. Only — the last thing I had ever imagined was that the next time I took out the teacup and brewed that clear, rippling, emerald-green liquid, the one drinking it would be him.

Ao Chi doesn’t drink tea. He sat in the spot closest to me, and had produced from somewhere a pile of walnuts, which he was cracking and eating without pause.

The otherwise serene atmosphere of Bu Ting was repeatedly punctuated by the sound of cracking shells.

I stared at the air with my cup in hand. Zi Miao drank his tea as though no one else existed. Ao Chi cracked walnuts fiercely. In the bedroom, the one not yet awake — that “relative” of Ao Chi’s — still lay resting.

Suddenly, Ao Chi flung down a walnut shell and leaped to his feet. He lunged at Zi Miao and grabbed him by the collar. “You’re really not dead?!”

“Ao Chi!” I shot up and seized his fist — tendons bulging beneath the skin. “What’s gotten into you? Hasn’t he already explained everything clearly?!”

Before returning to Bu Ting, Zi Miao had, with his customary composure, laid out the entire account.

The “accident” that had knocked Ao Chi’s and my three souls and seven spirits halfway out of our bodies — the reason was not complicated.

On that day, the missing me had suddenly appeared in the forest where he and Xue Shang were living. He and I had our first quarrel. In despair, I left. He watched my retreating figure without following.

Three days later, he went into the mountains to search for a fruit Xue Shang enjoyed, a delicious wild variety. Passing by a deep pool, he happened upon a small, young child flailing in the water, calling desperately for help. He entered the water to save the child — only to find that the child possessed extraordinary strength, and clung to him, pulling him downward into the depths with startling speed. In the confusion, he felt his foot land on something hard, and immediately it was as though he were stuck — the object began dragging him deeper. The child kept its arms locked around his waist the entire time, never releasing him. He attempted to break free with spells, but they had no effect. Before him was total darkness; all he could hear was a soft, rustling sound at his ears, like the flow of star-clouds — direction utterly lost.

It was not long, however, before the thing beneath his feet pushed him upward. When light returned, he found himself on the shore of Broken Lake. The child stood smiling in the water and said to him, “Sovereign of the Four Waters — forgive my boldness. Please be so kind as to wait here seven days. You will meet with an old friend.” With that, the child dove into the lake and vanished without a trace.

He took brief stock of the situation and found that Broken Lake had changed from what it once was. Looking further around him, he realized that the entire world had been entirely transformed. By his calculations, in what had seemed like mere moments, thousands of years had passed. Though he did not know the origin of that child, he resolved to make the best of it and remained by Broken Lake.

Then he waited — and down came a falling “iron bird,” and along with it — me.

He said that the instant our plane fell into Broken Lake, he sensed a familiar presence. But he could not be entirely certain. It was only that night — when a man and a woman broke into Broken Lake and began their relentless battle, and he watched from the shadows assessing the situation — that I appeared, unmistakably real, before him. Only then did he know who the child had meant by “old friend.”

“Do you think I’d believe this?” Ao Chi released him, looked at me, and said, “Do you think life is some dull soap opera? Time travel?” He then grabbed Zi Miao again, looking him up and down. “This must be some sinister demon in disguise! You know — weren’t there people pretending to be me to trick you back then?”

“Ao Chi!” I felt an inexplicable surge of irritation and raised my voice. “When it comes to whether he is Zi Miao — who in this world would know better than I?!”

The moment those words were spoken, all three of us went still.

Ao Chi took three deep breaths, released Zi Miao, slumped back into the chair, and said not a single word — going back to taking his frustration out on walnuts.

“Even after marriage, you’re still a restless pair,” Zi Miao said, shaking his head with a smile.

“You’re not in a position to lecture me!” Ao Chi raised his chin, and three hard walnuts crumbled to pieces in his hands.

“Can you try to be even slightly calm?!” I was already nursing a headache — his booming voice only made my nerves more frayed.

“Where am I not being calm?” Ao Chi tossed a walnut at my head. “I’m not a man made of water — don’t expect me to stay silent like some woman. Not a chance!”

“How dare you throw that at me!” I grabbed a fistful of walnuts and hurled them right back — pure reflex.

Zi Miao observed us causing mayhem, calmly sipping his tea with a smile.

Walnut shells flew through the air, joined by cushions, teacup lids, and various other objects. This kind of domestic chaos was apparently Ao Chi’s and my normal way of life.

Mid-skirmish, a red shadow crept cautiously in from outside.

Ao Chi’s “relative” — the young woman who had nearly lost her life at the hands of the scaled man — came drifting toward us. She moved with a delicate, unhurried grace.

The restorative tonic I had fed her appeared to have worked well.

The instant she walked in, four words came thundering unbidden through my mind like horses racing across open ground: beauty like carved jade.

She truly deserved every one of those words.

Her features — beyond exquisite, beyond all need for further description — were accented by a single vermillion dot between her brows, which gave her an indescribable, lively spirit. The light red gauze she wore seemed always to move with a gentle breeze — cloud-soft, drifting before my eyes with her every motion. The intangible presence flowing from her gaze and her fingertips, from her sleeves and the hem of her skirt, filled the air with a natural, unhurried purity that seemed to belong to mountains and rivers. I imagined that no one who saw such a woman could bear to look away.

How could someone so gentle and beautiful be entangled with that fierce, armored man — and have so nearly lost her life in the process?

The moment Ao Chi caught sight of her, his expression darkened instantly to something so stormy it seemed about to drip water.

“Go straight back to the East Sea!” He stood up, stepping in front of her.

“But I had such difficulty getting out here,” she said, looking at Ao Chi with a look of gentle suffering. “It was such a long way to come, and I only just…”

“I order you to go back at once!” He completely disregarded her wounded expression, hand pointing toward the door. Her eyes brimmed with tears, her body trembling slightly.

I found myself unable to watch any further. I stepped forward and hit Ao Chi. “If you have something to say, say it properly — who are you trying to intimidate with all that temper?”

He seemed still well within the grip of his anger, and paid no attention to my mediation — in fact he raised his voice louder, and stepped up to seize her wrist. “Can’t you understand what I’m saying? I told you to go back to the East Sea this instant!”

She bit down hard on her lower lip and was silent for a long time. At last she lifted her head, and with what seemed like a great mustering of courage, she cried out loudly: “I… I’ve come to see my husband! Is that so wrong?!”

Husband?!

The sun shone outside. The tea filled the room with its fragrance. And yet — I could have sworn I heard a thunderclap, one that left my ears ringing.

“You’re calling him… your husband?” I asked her. She gave a firm, certain nod.

I took a breath, turned, picked up the teacup — and it didn’t matter that the cup was Zi Miao’s and not mine — and slowly drank a mouthful. Slowly swallowed.

As the tea flowed down my throat, it extinguished certain things along the way.

“Let her go,” I said, holding the teacup, looking at Ao Chi with perfect composure. “Do you think other people’s hands are made of iron?”

For once, Ao Chi’s gaze carried an unusually complicated expression.

He released her. He moved in front of me, with something almost like urgency. “This… I…”

I stepped aside, avoiding the hand that had reached for my shoulder. I glanced at the girl and smiled. “Since you’re an acquaintance, and guests are to be welcomed — make sure she’s properly settled. I’m a bit tired, I need to rest for a while. Wake me in three hours, and then you can give me your explanation. That’s all.”

With that, I left them behind, sealing away all those gazes I didn’t want to feel at my back.

I said I wanted to sleep, but the direction I walked was not toward my bedroom — it was toward Bu Ting’s front door. Apparently I had already forgotten what I had been meaning to do before all this.

Someone wanted to follow me. Those impatient footsteps — I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

“Don’t.” I still did not turn back. The footsteps stopped.

I stepped out of Bu Ting’s front door into what remained of the day’s last light.

I was not angry. Today was even the Lantern Festival — such a fine day, how could I be angry?

I just felt the shop was too crowded, suffocating — even with only a few people inside.

【Chapter Six】The Water Tomb

Eight hundred li of Dongting Lake — the scenery is endlessly fine.

Distant shores and returning sails, evening light over fishing villages — already the finest sights in the human world, yet in this moment, each and every one was outshone by the great silver disc of the moon overhead.

Which was only natural — tonight was the Lantern Festival, the night of the year’s most perfect full moon, and everyone’s hopes had been poured into it.

The last ferry of the evening, filled with excursion passengers, cut joyfully through the vast expanse of Dongting Lake, gliding steadily homeward. The spray in its wake seemed to sing with delight, celebrating the end of another day’s work.

Junshan Island — singular and elegant — stood apart within those misty immortal waters. The island seemed to have grown eyes, watching with quiet attentiveness as every vessel departed into the distance: the familiar fishermen, the unfamiliar travelers — go home, all of you. At such an hour, even the restless birds that haven’t returned to their roosts would be better kept away.

On a night like this, beneath a moon like this, it was best enjoyed alone.

Jiu Jue felt exactly that way.

The branches of a century-old tree deep on Junshan Island had, to their misfortune, become his bed. An empty wine jug — not a drop left — was wedged between the rough bark and a length of lake-blue hair, serving as a most reluctant pillow while bearing the constant danger of being smashed to pieces — both it and the man resting his head upon it were a dozen meters or more above the ground. Looking down, the moonlight scattered into fragments; the blue-green water lay deep and still, not a trace of soil visible — only an expanse of lake that secretly connected to the great Dongting beyond. And this old tree was something else entirely: it simply grew straight up, lush with jade-colored leaves, right out of the water.

It was green year-round, never fading.

Though — only someone peculiar would plant a peculiar tree, one that grows from water, one without even a proper name.

Only a tree spirit who had lived a thousand years could do such a thing.

This water-grown tree in the lake-within-a-lake had been planted with her own hands, centuries ago — planted for protection, planted as a mark.

For beneath this water lay the tomb of an old friend’s daughter.

He stretched with a lazy yawn. The wine jug finally tumbled and rolled off the branch, hitting the moonlit water below with a plop, the resulting ripples spreading in silent, indignant protest.

“So noisy.” A low, muffled voice emerged from the tree trunk itself. “Must you drink? Can’t you simply not drink?”

“You really have no gratitude!” Jiu Jue slapped the tree branch. “I came all this way out of pure kindness to help you recover!”

“But I didn’t ask you to come and drink!” the tree insisted — confirming beyond doubt that it was indeed this tree doing the talking.

“Without wine, my life is just drifting clouds!” Jiu Jue sat up straight and launched into a lecture directed at the tree. “If not for your half-dead distress signal reaching me, and if not for me being so inexcusably kind-hearted — abandoning fine wine and good company to come all this way and play your savior — you’d have rotted into pulp by now, not even fit to be used as firewood. And you still dare to be rude to me?”

“I never called for you!” the tree shot back, not at all cowed. “I thought my tree-spirit elder sister would come. She’s far better than you — she doesn’t drink, and she doesn’t go around randomly hitting my head!”

“Hitting your head?!” Jiu Jue burst out laughing despite himself and deliberately slapped the branch again. “I’m only trying to knock some sense into you. Your tree-spirit elder sister — who knows what corner of the world she’s wandering around in right now. Do you think the distress signal you managed to send in your dying state, and that somehow reached me — do you think that’s anything less than a miracle? You actually expected her to hear it? She was probably playing around in some remote corner of the globe. You think that basic mind-transmission technique of yours is a satellite phone? Lucky for you I’ve been staying in China this whole time without going anywhere — otherwise, by the time your tree-spirit elder sister came back, all she’d be able to do is collect your remains.”

“If I’m not clever enough, it’s your fault too. Back when I was first planted, you used ‘celebrating my new life’ as an excuse to feed me a whole jug of wine. You know perfectly well that minors cannot drink wine — it damages brain development. And I, as a juvenile tree, was equally harmed by alcohol!”

“A juvenile tree…” Jiu Jue roared with laughter.

Several days ago, this talking tree had had all its roots severed and lay dying. Barely managing to use what remained of its mind-transmission technique, it had sent a call for help to the only two beings who could hear it: this wine-brewing immortal, and the one who had planted it here — its idol, the tree spirit Shaluo. But it was too weak; the technique could only carry so far, and reached only Jiu Jue. The tree spirit, far away in a foreign land, remained entirely unaware.

“Are you certain you couldn’t see who attacked the water tomb?” Jiu Jue stopped laughing and asked suddenly.

“I’ve said it six hundred times already — I only saw a mass of cloud and mist, shifting between light and dark, moving with incredible speed, plunging straight down into the water. I had no time to fight back before whatever weapon was hidden in that mist severed all my roots.” The tree heaved a long sigh, deeply ashamed. “I was entrusted by elder sister to guard this water tomb for centuries. Until now there has been nothing but peace. All the petty water spirits and minor demons coveting the tomb’s treasures never even had the chance to get close — let alone them. Even the Dongting Dragon Lord regards the tomb with reverence and has never dared cause any disturbance.”

“Now that is interesting.” Jiu Jue scratched his nose. “What kind of bold character would dare to be so brazen and blatant…”

Dongting Lake. Junshan Island. A lake within a lake. A tree that stands over a water tomb — this tree growing from the water, with its dense and supple root system, had wound itself tightly around the tomb buried in the deep, guarding in the simplest, most effective way the person who slept within. Its tree-spirit elder sister had told it: the woman in the tomb, named Zhuge Jingjun, was the daughter of the most important person in elder sister’s life. While she had lived, elder sister had protected her. Now that she was gone, elder sister would still ensure she rested in peace. And so the tree had been planted here, this hidden underwater resting place entrusted to its care. Any uninvited visitor would find no approach.

But several days ago, that mysterious something that had descended from above had breached its defenses with ease and thrown open the tomb undisturbed for centuries. At the edge of death, all the tree could recall was that the thing came fast and left even faster — it had circled the tomb once, done nothing particularly outrageous, and gone.

“You went into the water tomb earlier, didn’t you? Did you find any clues?” the tree asked.

Jiu Jue’s legs dangled in mid-air, swinging idly. “Right. No clues at all — the attacker was clean and efficient.” He paused, and a sly smile crossed his face. “But — this person did take one thing from the water tomb.”

“What was it?” the tree grew a little anxious. It had never seen the interior of the water tomb with its own eyes — only heard elder sister mention that something very precious lay within. That very thing was what so often drew water spirits and demons to hover in the vicinity.

“What good does it do to tell you? Can you go retrieve it?” Jiu Jue knocked on its “head” again. “Focus on healing. Talk less.”

The tree let out another long sigh and fell into dejected silence.

Jiu Jue lay back again, hands pillowed beneath his head, eyes on the slowly rising moon.

In truth, he was here neither for moon-watching nor for drinking himself to oblivion. By the time this trip to Dongting was over, it had become something considerably more than nursing a half-dead tree back to health.

Zhuge Jingjun, resting in the water tomb — dead for several centuries, her body uncorrupted, as though in deep sleep.

Nothing to do with preservation techniques. It was because her body had once carried within it half the blood of an immortal lineage — the Water God Zi Miao, and the mortal woman Xue Shang: her biological parents.

Zi Miao had never seen his daughter come into the world. In the great drought that used his love for a mortal woman as a pretext for punishment, he had transformed his entire vital essence into merciful rain, saving countless lives from catastrophe.

The world believed the Sovereign of the Four Waters, Zi Miao, had been destroyed — body and soul — in that rainfall.

What the world did not know was that before he chose to become the rain, he had drawn from between his own brows a single drop of water, sealed it within a bracelet, and left it for the daughter who had not yet been born.

That drop of water was a part of his spiritual essence — the only eye he left behind in the world, to watch over and accompany his daughter.

This bracelet had been on Zhuge Jingjun’s wrist from the moment of her birth.

What had been stolen was precisely this bracelet.

Because this bracelet contained the Water God’s “eye,” as more and more demons came to know of it, obtaining the “Eye of the Water God” became the greatest ambition among them. They believed that by absorbing the divine presence of the Water God, their own cultivation would advance by leaps and bounds.

This, too, was the fundamental reason that particular tree spirit had planted this particular tree here.

Of course — all this background information, he had no intention of explaining to the tree, which was not exactly brimming with cleverness. Far too much effort.

After coming up from the water tomb, he had sat in the tree and thought for a considerable while: just who had stolen the water bracelet?

From the tree’s description, this being was no minor demon of shallow cultivation. If one were already so formidable — what need was there to steal the “Eye of the Water God” to aid in cultivation?

Most peculiar!

Jiu Jue rolled onto his side and looked down at the sleeping lake water below. How peaceful it was — not even a ripple.

And yet — why did he keep feeling that something unseen was stirring beneath that surface, restless and churning, on the verge of emerging?

He furrowed his brow and let his unease dissolve into the moonlight.

【Chapter Seven】Lantern Festival

I picked a direction at random and drifted at a leisurely pace through streets I did and did not recognize. I had lived in this city for over a year, and yet today was the first time I looked at its face with any real attention.

Wang Chuan City. Wang — to forget. Chuan — the river.

The street lights shone extraordinarily bright, light flowing everywhere in brilliant profusion, quite unlike ordinary evenings. Along the way, at several street corners, large banners had been strung up, all bearing the same message: Lantern Festival Night Celebration.

Once again, the Lantern Festival had come. I had apparently chosen a lively direction to walk — more and more children came running past, holding all manner of paper lanterns, laughing and rushing ahead. And here and there were couples, every one of them wearing smiles, walking hand in hand.

I no longer understood myself. I was not angry — yet my smile was gone. I was not unhappy — yet I was putting as much distance between myself and others as I could. I was not tired — yet my feet moved as though weighted with lead.

The noise of the crowd grew louder. Fireworks bloomed in the night sky, one after another without pause. Each burst of light illuminated countless joyful, excited faces. Before I knew it I had arrived at the city’s largest and most prosperous pedestrian street, where this year’s lantern fair was in full swing all along the freshly decorated road. Smartly dressed crowds jostled shoulder to shoulder. Both sides of the street were packed with stalls selling all kinds of snacks and interesting trinkets. On temporary stages, performers gave their all. And all along the way hung lantern riddles on strings of rope, surrounded by clusters of people murmuring their guesses. Everyone was pouring their enthusiasm into this ancient festival. To be unhappy on such an occasion would truly be a crime.

I found a spot near to the sea of people but not in it — sitting down on the pavement on the opposite side of the pedestrian street. From here I could see the brilliance and bustle across the way, at least enough to keep from feeling too lonely. Everything was moving; only I was still.

Suddenly, a mischievous little rabbit lantern seemed to “hop” right up to me. It was exquisitely crafted — white and thin paper, propped into a satisfyingly round, plump shape by delicate strips of bamboo. A candle burned inside the rabbit’s belly, and the red rabbit eyes, trembling slightly with the candlelight, appeared to blink and blink — endearing and cheerful to look at.

Every other lantern on the street used light bulbs. This one alone used a candle. And it successfully broke through my stillness.

“Light bulbs are so much better — bright enough and safe. That’s what modern people use,” I said, poking the rabbit’s head and speaking to the one behind me.

“Candles suit an old soul like me better.” Zi Miao smiled as he stepped out of the shadows behind me, holding his rabbit lantern, and sat down beside me. “Light bulbs are too rigid — candles are far more alive.”

“Candles burn out,” I said, watching the flickering flame.

“Precisely because they burn out that they are worth cherishing.” He held the lantern a little closer, and that radiant, beautiful face seemed to transform into another kind of lantern itself. From the moment he appeared behind me, I had known. His arrivals were always unexpected, yet always utterly natural — never bringing with them any unease.

“Do you know what a light bulb is?” I suddenly laughed, shifting the subject.

“Though I am missing a thousand years of time, that hardly prevents me from acquainting myself with this new world.” He tapped me on the head. “Don’t underestimate the comprehension and adaptability of an immortal — and especially don’t look down on a time-traveling old god.”

Another enormous firework bloomed directly above our heads. People’s laughter and cheers rushed up into the brilliant sky. In such a night and such an atmosphere, everything softened — including the subtle, invisible distance between Zi Miao and me that had persisted since our reunion.

“Shaluo.” He said my name quietly. “Do you know why I said you’ve grown up?”

“Because I have wrinkles now?” I made an exaggerated show of pulling at the corners of my eyes.

“Because when you’ve grown up, joy and anger stop being written on your face.” He looked at me with great care, the candlelight and his smile complementing each other beautifully. “You see — in the old days, you smiled when you were happy and cried when you weren’t.”

“Did I?” I paused for a moment. “Then tell me — am I happy right now, or not?”

“No matter what — the way you’ve handled things tonight is something I find reassuring.” He turned away and fiddled with the rabbit’s ear. “If you want to talk, I’ll listen. If you don’t want to talk, we’ll watch the fireworks together. And if you’re feeling adventurous, I could even teach you how to make a rabbit lantern.”

He was always like this — always capable of dissolving your anxieties and restlessness with the lightest, most effortless touch. His presence was like water flowing in at precisely the right moment, seeping into dry and cracked places, extinguishing fires that had no business burning. You could put up no resistance to him — you could only receive him with an open heart. This was Zi Miao.

I looked at him in a daze. The painful parting of those years suddenly felt like a dream — as though nothing had ever happened. No punishing drought, no destruction of body and soul. Look — here he was, sitting right beside me, fireworks from the Lantern Festival blooming overhead. If everything that happened before had truly been only a dream — then what were Ao Chi and I? Another dream not yet come to an end?

“I married Ao Chi,” I said, looking at the sky, stating the obvious.

“I have never misjudged people.” He continued fiddling with the slightly lopsided rabbit ear. “He must have told you — when you fell unconscious in the forest, it was I who entrusted you to his care.”

“After that, we have always been together,” I continued uselessly. The fireworks were taking their time coming — the night sky was far too plain.

“I know.” He looked at me with a smile. “Have you forgotten — on the way back, he talked without pause from dusk until dawn, telling me all about your life together? Your ‘Bu Ting,’ your bickering and reconciliations, and standing by each other through life and death.”

Right — when Ao Chi returned from Broken Lake, he had, without any modesty, filled Zi Miao in on every moment he had missed. The entire point of it could be condensed into one thing: all these years, it was he — Ao Chi — who had been with me. And now, he was my husband, and I was his wife.

“What the girl in red said — it was the truth.” The fireworks finally came, filling my eyes with brilliance and filling them with ice.

“You didn’t even require his explanation?” Zi Miao did not look at me, admiring the continuous beauty in the sky.

“Ao Chi’s nature — impulsive and volatile, unable to tolerate being unjustly accused.” I lowered my eyes, turning the rabbit lantern over in my arms. “If it were not the truth, he would have denied it on the spot — killing the one who falsely accused him would have been entirely possible. His greatest virtue, I suppose, is being willing to own what he does. He says lying is tedious and exhausting, and that if you’ve done something — even if it was wrong — admitting it doesn’t cost you anything. There’s no flesh missing from your bones.” I paused and looked at Zi Miao. “In all the years I’ve known him, apart from the twenty years he left me, he has never lied to me.”

“Do not rely too heavily on a single side of the story — not even your own judgment of yourself.” He patted my shoulder. “You still need to go back.”

“After this festival ends,” I said. I truly loved this rabbit lantern — holding it, I felt warmth even in my arms.

“Heh. I find myself wondering,” he said, tilting his head and looking me up and down, “how would the you of the past have responded to what happened earlier? I suspect — a tigress charging down from the mountain, crying, raging, and threatening dramatic ends.”

“Nonsense! Even back then I wasn’t that dramatic! The only person I was ever truly fierce toward was that old rascal Jiu Jue.” I gave him a sideways look.

“Yes, yes — when he’d come to visit me to play chess, he’d always tease you. You couldn’t stand him.” He nodded repeatedly with a laugh.

The two of us fell without arrangement into the same fond memory. These, too, were among the few things Zi Miao and I shared.

“Would you like to see your old friend? I can find him.” I asked. I had not yet told anyone I was back in Wang Chuan — including Jiu Jue.

“No need.” He smiled and waved the suggestion away. “Seeing that drunkard, and peace and quiet go out the window.” Understandable — knowing Jiu Jue’s style, the way he would express his shock and joy would certainly involve drinking, and he’d likely drag Zi Miao along until both were unconscious. Now that Zi Miao had just arrived in this new world, and strange things kept occurring, visiting old friends was truly not the right moment.

Always thinking matters through fully, rarely letting sentiment overtake reason — this was what I admired about Zi Miao, and what I had once resented most in him.

“Why do I never see any sign of you wanting to go back?” I suddenly asked. “Are you truly just at ease wherever you are?”

“When the time to go back comes, I will naturally go back. The word that humans love most to torment themselves with is ‘hurry.'” He said with a laugh.

Talking with him always carried that peculiar sensation of flowers seen through mist or the moon reflected in water — clearly visible, yet always just out of reach, impossible to grasp.

“If you were to go back…” I hesitated a moment. “What would you do?”

Ao Chi, with no filter at all, had told Zi Miao everything — including how Zi Miao had transformed into rain to end the great drought, and even his daughter Zhuge Jingjun and Zhuge Jun’s story. He spoke purely for the pleasure of telling it, with no consideration for Zi Miao’s emotional capacity.

Fortunately, the audience was Zi Miao — and these weighty matters of life, death, and bloodline appeared not to have disturbed him in the least. He listened carefully throughout, occasionally furrowing his brow, occasionally smiling faintly, but with no intense or volatile reaction at all.

Zi Miao was exactly as I remembered him — not changed in any way.

“The direction of fate has already been set.” He answered with characteristic serenity.

“I trust in fate, but I don’t surrender to it.” I looked into his eyes and said lightly, “Once, I was so certain that fate had taken you from my life permanently. And yet fate has now sent you back. Tell me — should I believe in fate anymore?”

“Do you want me back?” he asked suddenly.

A gust of wind blew through. The candle inside the rabbit lantern swayed violently. I could not answer. Because I had long assumed this question had ceased to have any reason to exist — he could not return, regardless of whether I wanted it.

“Wanting or not wanting — you’ve already come back.” I imitated his manner and gave no answer. Then, as I finished saying it, I stuck out my tongue in spite of myself — and then felt immediately embarrassed. How old was I, still sticking out my tongue?

“In that moment, you were exactly like the little Shaluo I remember.” He must have caught the unbecoming sight of me sticking out my tongue, and he gently touched the top of my head, his eyes as warm as they had always been. I looked down, my heart in complete disarray.

Zi Miao’s hand, Ao Chi’s panic, the girl in red’s grievance — all of it rolled through my emotions, unceasing.

“Not going back?” he asked.

“After dawn.” I held firm.

“Then come — let’s look at the lanterns.” He rose and reached his hand out toward me.

“You’re going to appear in public? Dressed like that?” I looked over his appearance — dark black hair, a moon-white robe, tall and graceful as jade. If he appeared, the ordinary people here would lose their minds entirely.

“It’s the Lantern Festival — what’s wrong with being dressed like this?” He dismissed the concern. “Or are you ashamed of my appearance and unwilling to accompany me?” His gaze turned mischievous, like a playful elder who’d never quite grown up.

Well then — a holiday. Do as you please; who cares what anyone else thinks? I took his hand and stood up. My clothes transformed in an instant — the fashionable outer garments and high heels disappeared. In their place: a robe of translucent mountain green, with embroidered lotus-tip shoes. A thousand years ago, this was how I looked.

No more thinking. I walked boldly into the crowd and onto that flower-lantern-lined avenue stretching into the distance. Many people looked at us — I even heard a small girl gasp in wonder. Not from anything unpleasant, entirely from admiration.

Zi Miao held his rabbit lantern in one hand and my hand in the other, walking easily and lightly with the flow of the crowd. From time to time he told me the answers to the lantern riddles, or the stories behind this or that food. It was as though the one who had been missing a thousand years was not him, but me.

Many, many years ago on an autumn day, I had walked just like this through a marketplace with him. I had been happy as a bird let out of its cage that day — every ordinary, unremarkable scene and passerby was a source of excitement and wonder for me. No matter how far or fast I ran, he was always behind me, never more than one step’s distance. I had thought that walking through a market with him again was a dream my life would never fulfill. But now that the dream had become real — I could no longer find even a trace of the ecstasy of those days. This human world had grown as familiar as my own hand; nothing remained to wonder at.

I followed him obediently, only allowing myself one small act of mischief as we passed a certain stall: like I used to, I quietly tapped the back of a young woman who was examining mirrors. The butterfly painted on the mirror immediately flapped its wings and flew into the air. Once again, I succeeded in startling a girl half to death with her flower-face going pale — and I slipped away laughing quietly. Lights of every color drifted around us like fireflies, more beautiful than any dream.

The further we walked, the fewer people there were. Glancing at the time — already three in the morning. The owner of the sweet snack stall was packing up happily. A few minutes later, I was sitting on the pavement at the side of the street, holding a bowl of fragrant, sweet red-sugar glutinous rice cake.

“Want some?” I scooped up a piece and asked him. He shook his head. “Aren’t all girls these days afraid of getting fat and avoiding sweets? Are you not afraid of becoming a plump little round thing?”

“Fat is fine,” I said, defiantly stuffing two more pieces in.

“You always do the opposite of what you’re told.” He laughed. “Even back when you were still a tree, you were this stubborn.”

I choked. He patted my back, suppressing his laughter. Once I swallowed the last piece and let out a satisfying belch, I said to Zi Miao without any particular thought, “You know — every single night, that simple-minded Ao Chi wants me to make him something sweet before he’ll sleep. If I don’t, he won’t go to bed, and he won’t let me sleep either. One time I absolutely refused to make anything, so he deliberately farted under the blankets on purpose — he made me so furious!”

Zi Miao burst out laughing. I laughed too. I had no idea why I was telling Zi Miao something like this — yet over the course of this whole evening spent with him, the one who came naturally to my lips was that Ao Chi. As naturally as breathing.

“Is your cooking any good?” Zi Miao asked between laughs.

“Depends on your standard.” I stuck out my tongue again. “Anyone can eat it without dying, I suppose. I was a sweet shop proprietress for a whole year, after all.”

“In the East Sea, rare and exquisite delicacies abound, and every dragon there has a thoroughly spoiled palate.” He said it offhandedly while carefully wiping a smear of sugar from the corner of my mouth. “Shaluo — you understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

I paused. I knew my cooking was nothing remarkable. Back in Bu Ting, almost all the sweets had been the work of “Fatty” and “Skinny” — or in other words, made by Ao Chi. After we married, he stopped cooking entirely, only threatening and coaxing me into handling all the meals and midnight snacks. No matter how badly my dishes turned out, he would sweep through them like a garbage disposal, never complaining, always looking satisfied. I had for a long time assumed he simply had an iron constitution and no preferences. And yet now, Zi Miao was telling me that every dragon in the East Sea had a palate thoroughly ruined by indulgence.

The distant sky still held the occasional trace of fireworks — sparse now, compared to before. The street below had gone silent. There was no one else, only the two of us. I probably looked quite blank. The light in my eyes dimmed as the last flower of fireworks faded.

“Pretending not to be angry, pretending not to care, pretending not to be afraid — none of these are good habits.” He placed the rabbit lantern at my feet. “Hungry? You eat. Tired? You sleep. When everything comes from an honest place within you — that is best. From the outside world’s perspective, you have already been tempered by wind and rain, your heart unstained by dust. But…”

I interrupted him: “And from your eyes?”

“Not enough.” He said it directly. “A thousand years of cultivation can raise your spiritual power and refine your techniques. But to truly cultivate one’s heart — a lifetime may not be sufficient. To train your heart to be honest with itself is, more often than not, the hardest thing of all.”

The person who could see through me with a single glance had always been him. Yes — I was not nearly as calm as I appeared. I simply… didn’t want to lose my temper like some shrew. I was a proprietress whom many people and demons looked up to as a kind of spiritual guide — I possessed abilities worthy of the divine, and a stillness worthy of the enlightened. Before that beautiful red-clad woman appeared, I had nearly convinced myself I was exactly that kind of “elevated being.” And now I understood: I had simply been over-idealized.

“I’ve become dishonest.” I laughed at myself quietly. “I should have dragged Ao Chi by the ear right then and there, and made him kneel on computer memory sticks or a computer mouse.”

“The way you chose to handle it was not wrong — only in the future you’ll do better.” He leaned back against the bench, looking at the sleeping city in the distance. “If you’re willing to keep ‘growing up.'”

I was beginning to understand, just slightly, how he could remain forever untroubled, his emotions undetectable. Zi Miao — how long had you been cultivating your own heart…? I too leaned back against the bench, looking in the same direction he was looking, both of us simply watching in silence. Neither spoke again. He had his own thoughts too — thoughts I had never been able to see into.

The night air of Wang Chuan, wide and generous, wrapped around us. The sparse stars overhead each looked like my increasingly drowsy eyes. Every faint sound of his breathing was a quietly reassuring lullaby.

And so I slept — right there on a Wang Chuan street. Not far away, a shadow materialized in some unseen place, and then was gone. Without any sense of time passing, with no dreams, I slept in complete peace.

At dawn, I woke to Zi Miao’s smiling face. The morning light gathered in soft beams and fell from above his head. He looked at me with a smile. “Your sleeping expression is still quite unfortunate.”

I blinked several times and looked down — sure enough. I was sitting on the ground again, my head resting on his thigh, both hands hugging his calf in a tree-koala grip. I had a vague memory of one year on Fulong Mountain: I had been drunk and ended up in exactly this undignified position, and had slept in his arms until dawn, while he, not wanting to wake me, held perfectly still the entire night.

“Time to go.” He smoothed the wrinkles I had pressed into his robe.

“Where?” I stood up and stretched in a long, satisfying yawn.

“A married woman who stays out all night — once is enough.” He laughed and shook his head.

Very well. Back we go. There was an explanation waiting for me at Bu Ting.

【Chapter Eight】The Strange Mark

I had imagined that waiting for me back at the shop would be a feverish outpouring of defense, and perhaps also a familiar eruption of temper. On the walk back, I rehearsed all the various ways Ao Chi might react when he saw me.

All of them were wrong.

When I appeared in Bu Ting’s front room, Ao Chi was seated at the window with the best light, reading a newspaper and spooning fragrant congee into his mouth.

His table was piled high with all manner of gorgeous, enticing breakfast dishes — a kaleidoscope of colors and aromas.

Ao Chi had never been an early riser, and asking him to make breakfast was absolutely out of the question.

He appeared not to have noticed my presence at all — didn’t even lift his eyelids. The only sounds in the room were the pages turning and the slurping of his congee.

From behind me came light, graceful footsteps. I turned — a sweep of red drifted into my eyes.

This “relative from the East Sea,” wearing the apron I normally used, was carrying out a plate of steaming hot dumplings. She still moved with the same careful, cautious manner as before, but the aggrievement was gone — instead, there was a faint, quiet happiness, a glimmer of satisfaction she didn’t quite succeed in concealing.

I’ve come to find my husband! That was what she had said — she called Ao Chi “her” husband.

A beautiful morning. A husband eating and reading the paper. A gentle, devoted wife bringing out breakfast. In all my memory and habit, Ao Chi had never read the paper, never woken early. When mealtimes came, all you’d ever see was a disheveled, grease-covered me leaping out of the kitchen holding a giant spatula and shouting, Come and eat, you pigs! Get out here! Never a neat and virtuous domestic scene.

This was our married life — in name, husband and wife.

And now I stood between the two of them, and suddenly felt like laughing. This scene before me was so beautifully clear — a simple and vivid contrast that squeezed me out of somewhere I had always occupied. The woman, noticing my return, stood momentarily still — then lowered her head and drifted past.

I walked over, sat down across from Ao Chi, casually picked up a dumpling, bit off a large mouthful, and smiled at this so-called “relative” who stood there with her small cherry mouth agape. “Thank you — it’s quite good.”

“You really have no sense of occasion,” Ao Chi said, continuing to turn his newspaper — which was clearly held upside down.

“She…” Ao Chi twisted his head and glanced at the woman who didn’t even dare to breathe, “Her name is Dong’er. Same clan as mine — my grandfather chose her as my prospective daughter-in-law long ago. That’s all.”

“We… we have bowed to heaven and earth together. Everyone in the East Sea knows.” The woman named Dong’er added quietly.

Ao Chi didn’t deny it. He gave her a cold, hard glance and drained every last drop of his congee.

That was the truth of it, then. Fate had not only brought Zi Miao back to me — it had also delivered Ao Chi’s “original wife” as an additional gift. So what did that make me now?

I’m sorry — I genuinely have no experience handling this kind of situation. Even when I’ve helped others through it, finding the same situation on my own doorstep is an entirely different quality of composure. My mind was blank; only continuous eating gave me the appearance of some dignity. Once, a certain Xue Shang’s appearance showed me what it meant to feel everything inside burning to ash. Today, a dragon princess’s appearance had me eating six or seven dumplings in one go.

“What are the two of your plans?” I let out a small belch, maintaining my smile.

“I… it’s not… the Dragon King has always hoped Ao Chi would return to the East Sea, and wishes to pass the throne to him.” Dong’er looked at me with tentative eyes. “I made a great decision before quietly slipping out of the East Sea and traveling far to find him. I…” She bit down on her lip, words on the verge of forming, then stopping.

“Please speak freely. I respect every guest’s right to speak.” I put the emphasis squarely on the word guest.

“However many years he has been gone from the East Sea, I have waited for him that many years.” Dong’er’s hands clasped tightly together. “I know he does not hold me in his heart. But I am, after all, his wife.”

Six dumplings. I was definitely going to have indigestion. The man who always chattered away like a crow had now gone completely mute. He wasn’t denying it — which meant it was true. And I wanted to hear what he had to say.

“That… Miss Shaluo, we know about your situation.” Dong’er appeared very afraid I would lose my temper. “If you don’t mind — you’re welcome to come back to the East Sea with us.”

“Ha.” I finally let out a real laugh. “Go back to the East Sea with you? Does the East Sea Dragon Clan practice Eastern and Western Palace arrangements?”

“What is an Eastern and Western Palace arrangement?” Dong’er looked puzzled.

“From that, I gather you’ve made your decision.” I paid no attention to her and stood up, turning to Ao Chi with a smile bright as flowers in bloom. “Safe travels.”

God only knows how desperately I wanted to hurl every remaining dumpling at his face.

“Thank you,” he said, not looking up from the paper.

I hurled them anyway — every dumpling an embodiment of all the resentment and bewilderment and confusion and pain I had nowhere to put.

The plate hit the floor and shattered.

“Elder Brother Ao Chi…” Dong’er cried out in alarm, hurriedly pulling a handkerchief to wipe his face, and simultaneously trying to soothe me: “Miss Shaluo, please don’t be angry. I’ll speak to Elder Brother Ao Chi and get him to agree to take you to the East Sea as well.”

My lungs ached. Zi Miao had said: keep cultivating the heart. All right. I had no desire to die in confusion.

“Ao Chi.” I breathed in deeply. “If you say it didn’t happen, I’ll believe you.”

Silence. That damned silence.

“Miss Shaluo, don’t rush. I’ll keep talking to Elder Brother Ao Chi.” Dong’er looked genuinely apologetic.

“Much appreciated.” I set down the cloth and met the gaze of this original wife who had not an ounce of temper but whose every word was capable of setting off an explosion in me. “Toothbrushes, gold, men — these are not things I share. My rules. When you leave, please remember to turn off the gas and lock the door. Goodbye!”

I charged out of Bu Ting without looking back, running without direction or thought. Until someone caught my arm.

“You’ve grown younger again,” Zi Miao said from behind me with a sigh. “When you threw those dumplings at his face—”

“You said: when you’re hungry, eat; when you’re angry, don’t pretend not to be angry. Did you see the look on his face? I genuinely wish those dumplings had been made of iron!” I raised my voice and took my anger out on him. Rage and indignation — once a crack appears, it pours out without stopping.

“On that point, I agree entirely.” Zi Miao patted my head. “But what are you going to do next?”

“I…” How would I know what I was going to do? I dropped down on the curb, watching the people passing by and the occasional odd looks sent our way. My nerves felt raw. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten married. That thought kept scratching at me from inside.

I began laughing at myself. Was I really going to start running again? Was “stopping forever” truly just a joke?

“You haven’t wandered too far; the road back is still familiar.” Zi Miao stood behind me — neither stepping closer nor stepping away, still that perfectly measured distance.

“I’m not going back!” I stuck out my lower lip, my chin on my knees.

Only in front of him could I be like a child. Right now I didn’t want to control my emotions. Left or right, wander further or go back — I didn’t want to think about any of it. I was just fed up. Just utterly, simply fed up. That very human, very mundane emotion had its claws in me.

Then my phone rang.

I ended the call. It rang again. I ended it again. It rang once more — persistent, relentless.

“Hello?!” I gave in.

“I’ve been dumped…” Jiu Jue’s long-missed voice trembled from the other end, a theatrical misery practically leaking out through the speaker.

“Should I understand that to mean I don’t need to prepare a red envelope?” I was suddenly — genuinely — paying attention. A very bad-hearted smile broke onto my face. “This is honestly the best news I’ve heard all day!”

“You heartless old hag!!” The phone practically vibrated in my hand from the volume.

I ended the call, got to my feet, and turned to shrug at Zi Miao: “Looks like you have no choice but to see him after all. Right now, he needs companionship.”

“And what about you?” he asked with a smile.

“I need to clear my head.” I grabbed him. “Come on. Let’s go drink.”

And Zi Miao let himself be pulled along, following me forward.

We had barely taken a few steps before the normally steady ground gave a sudden, inexplicable tremor. A force surging up from the deep earth was somehow suppressed just at the surface, unable to find release, and spread helplessly in all directions.

Even the ordinary humans nearby seemed to sense it. A child of five or six, holding its mother’s hand, tilted its head up and said, “Mama mama, the ground shook! It’s scary!”

“Silly child — that was just a big truck going past, shaking the ground. Come on, don’t stay under tall buildings.” The mother comforted the child and walked quickly away. And at the same moment, a commotion broke out ahead and to the side —

Several hundred meters ahead, a building under construction partially collapsed without warning. The safety netting and steel rebar and concrete that scattered across the ground below were followed by people’s cries and rolling clouds of dust coming steadily toward us.

“Was that an earthquake just now?”

“Seems like it!”

“Impossible — this city isn’t even on a fault line!”

“Who says it isn’t? Go home and look it up — cities near us have earthquake histories! I’ve always wondered — why has Wang Chuan never had one?”

“Don’t say things like that!”

At the scene, speculation ran rampant. I looked down at the ground — a thin, unremarkable crack ran forward from beneath my feet, extending so far ahead its end was invisible.

【Chapter Nine】Dragon Scale

“You—!”

“Mm.”

“You’re back. That’s what matters.”

No cries, no tears. Two men needed only one firm embrace to contain within it a separation spanning countless centuries.

This was how Jiu Jue and Zi Miao reunited. I had known it would be this way. These two men — who had once brewed wine together, played chess, and talked leisurely about the world — had a familiarity between them as though they shared the same flesh and blood. Their understanding of each other was deeply rooted, unrelated to time or distance. And precisely because of that deep familiarity and understanding, they could accept any parting in peace, and any reunion just the same.

“In the early years, you barely took one sniff of the wine I’d brewed and you were out cold.” Jiu Jue poured a small half-cup into my glass and said with complete seriousness, winking at me, “With a track record like that, I really shouldn’t let you touch my wine at all.”

“Today is different from before.” I grabbed the cup and downed it in one, then fixed him with a straight-eyed glare. “I came all this way — not easy — to sit at this barely-worth-mentioning little winery of yours. And I’m even devoting my abundant affections to consoling heartbroken old men. And you won’t even give me a proper drink? I am disgusted by you.”

“You dare say that to me? You came back to Wang Chuan ages ago and didn’t breathe a word to me — I thought you were still gallivanting around abroad somewhere. If I hadn’t used the heartbreak bombshell to summon you, would you have appeared this quickly?” Jiu Jue let out a disdainful noise, then poured me another half cup.

“Your mastery has grown again.” Zi Miao lightly inhaled the scent from his cup, took a small sip, and extended a thumbs-up toward Jiu Jue. “Only you could command the essence of what’s in this cup with such precision — and every cup a different flavor.”

“A fine brew needs someone who knows how to taste it before it’s truly perfect.” Jiu Jue raised his cup toward Zi Miao. The light was set to exactly the right level — neither too bright nor too dim — casting down around them. The glasses of the two men produced a clear, crisp sound as they met. On the wall, two silhouettes of exceptional bearing lay soaked in the mellow fragrance of the wine — easily the equal of any living ink painting.

Jiu Jue’s winery — it was perhaps fair to also call it his home — was located in the outskirts of another city. Flying from Wang Chuan would take about three hours by plane. Zi Miao and I had done it in twenty minutes; if I hadn’t taken a wrong turn, it would’ve been even faster.

I seldom came here. For one thing, there was nothing but wine — dull, and Jiu Jue himself was rarely here. He had once said, with great feeling and literary flair, that he was not a homebody — only a man, like the wind, who liked to wander the world with himself. For another, Jiu Jue rarely extended invitations to me. He said he was afraid I couldn’t resist the intoxicating wine fragrance here and would drink all his stock dry without paying a cent. If not for the heartbreak, he certainly wouldn’t have called me to the winery. This place was not only his home — it was an important space that held his life’s work and his innermost thoughts.

The interior décor was just as before. Apart from the large, modern floor-to-ceiling window, everything else was steeped in the classical style: white walls and red pillars, curtains of pale sheer gauze, pear-wood furniture, blue-and-white porcelain decorative pieces, antique scrolls and calligraphy, all perfectly placed. Orchids in the corner bloomed in quiet, hidden fragrance. On the wall behind: a work of running script, brushed with free and easy strokes — Verdant trees lean over the house corner to shade it; green mountains exactly fill the gap above the wall — which described perfectly the deep green hills and lush forest visible through the window. A single glance at such a setting was enough to refresh one’s spirit completely.

And yet — from the time Zi Miao and I had arrived, Jiu Jue had not said a word about the heartbreak. He’d been catching up with Zi Miao and teasing me, his expression as serene as ever, without the slightest trace of someone recently heartbroken. Clearly, all his howling on the phone had been an act!

“Hey — weren’t you supposed to be getting married? Weren’t you just heartbroken? You, you…” I grabbed Jiu Jue’s sleeve, my tongue tripping over itself, “Are you going to hang yourself or jump in a river?”

“Looks like someone’s had too much!” Jiu Jue said, delighted at my misfortune, poking me in the head, then turning to Zi Miao. “Look at what your protégé has become — still not one iota of improvement after all this time.” He steadied my swaying form. “The heartbroken one is you, isn’t it?”

That remark was apparently the world’s most effective sobering medicine.

“You went to Bu Ting?” I was suddenly sharply alert. I was certain I had not told Jiu Jue anything about the ridiculous events that had just befallen me.

“I had no time to visit your little shop.” Jiu Jue shook his head and laughed. “One look at your miserable face and I knew. That’s what your old Uncle Jiu Jue is made of.”

I hit him hard. “Tell me — how did you know?”

“Let me think.” Jiu Jue tilted his head theatrically toward the sky, deliberating, then said after a long pause, “Honestly, I really did guess.”

He lowered his head, looked at me — and then at Zi Miao — with a smile that was more than a smile. “An uninvited guest. Turbulence on the sea of feeling. Men and women across the world — all the same predictable story.”

He had the audacity to compose a little couplet about it? I grabbed Jiu Jue by the collar with wine-fueled courage. “So you live up to your reputation as an old hand — you can guess anything. Yes — a relative arrived from the East Sea, claiming to be my husband’s first wife. Ao Chi didn’t deny a word of it. I stepped aside for both of them and came to drink with you. Let them fly away together in perfect bliss!”

If I wanted to say it, I said it. Incoherent or not, I threw out every last bit of resentment and grievance I’d been holding in. I didn’t mind Ao Chi thinking little of me. The world that had once been nothing but rubble — a world I hadn’t even realized was being rebuilt, one brick and step at a time, by Ao Chi — I had once been so certain Ao Chi deeply loved that world. Because I was in it. This world, built with so much time and effort, belonging only to him and me — could not be violated in the smallest way. He would not allow it, and neither would I.

And my deepest grievance right now was simply this: the one who had set fire to that world was Ao Chi himself. That particular desolation and helplessness — of one’s own home catching fire — no amount of dumplings could extinguish.

I clung to Jiu Jue and spoke, my voice growing smaller and slower. Tears washed away the words I still wanted to say. I was only grateful that the ones before me now were Jiu Jue and Zi Miao. In front of them, I could go as mad as I needed to without feeling ashamed. I trusted them — thought of them as family. In front of family, anything was permissible.

Family. This concept, always vague and ill-defined, became with perfect clarity in this moment — once I had let every emotion out with nothing held back. In my disordered, emptied heart, I suddenly discovered that Zi Miao had been placed, entirely without effort and without resistance, within that definition.

“Ah — women in love truly have nothing to do with wisdom. Even a thousand-year tree spirit is no exception.” Jiu Jue gently patted my back, his words still as cutting as ever. “That’s why they say — love carries risk, marriage requires caution. Cry then. I won’t laugh at you.”

Zi Miao said nothing at all. He drank in silence, one cup after another.

In the end, I punched Jiu Jue hard, wiped my eyes dry with force, and said after a deep breath, “I’m fine.”

“Are you certain — both here and here — that you’re calm, and you feel better?” Jiu Jue pointed at his own chest, then his head.

Much better. Zi Miao was right: hungry, you eat; angry, you let it out. That’s the only way.

“I said I’m fine.” I glared at him and yanked his sleeve to wipe my nose.

“My outer robe is expensive, madam!” Jiu Jue yanked his hand back with a shout and frantically wiped the sleeve, shaking his head repeatedly. “All right — looking at you, you’ve recovered your right mind. I can now talk to you…” He glanced at Zi Miao, “…and to both of you, about certain things.”

“Are you finally going to talk about your heartbreak?” I blew my nose with determination.

“The heartbreak is real, but what I truly need to discuss with you is a hundred times more important.” Jiu Jue rose and pulled a small wooden box from the antique desk drawer, opened it, and said, “Take a look at this.”

On the white satin lining at the bottom of the box lay a single scale, roughly the size of a thumb. The base was luminous white, and from it extended a streak of red that deepened as it rose — vivid and intensifying — like a rosy cloud blossoming from within. Crystalline and translucent, it seemed to radiate its own shifting light. Zi Miao studied it for a moment, then said, “A dragon scale?”

“More than that — it is a scale from the most noble bloodline of the East Sea Dragon Clan.” Jiu Jue looked at me. “Do you know where I found this?”

“What were you doing in the East Sea?” I blurted.

“I found it in the water tomb at Dongting.” Jiu Jue looked at me gravely. “Not long ago, the water tomb was forced open, and the bracelet on Jingjun’s wrist was stolen.” He then looked at Zi Miao. “The bracelet’s origin — you know it, don’t you?”

“They’ve filled in what I missed.” Zi Miao nodded.

“Who had the power to force their way into the water tomb?” I was genuinely alarmed. Could it be a demon desperate to boost their cultivation, who grabbed the “Eye of the Water God” in reckless haste?

“At first I was completely baffled. I went through the water tomb and found no trace of anything. Last night, before leaving Junshan, I went back into the water tomb one more time on impulse — and there, beneath a severed section of the foolish tree’s root, I found this dragon scale.” Jiu Jue held the scale up like a precious gem. “I could tell it was a dragon scale, so I grabbed the Dongting Dragon Lord and questioned him, and learned that the thing comes from the East Sea Dragon Clan.”

“Though the Dongting Dragon Lord is not as noble as the East Sea Dragon Clan, he is still a divine dragon in his own right. Small domain, but not without his own authority. How did you manage to get him to cooperate?” Zi Miao asked with a smile. “I suspect you used some underhand trick.”

“That’s a mischaracterization. I simply brought out a jug of century-old Snow-Red. The old Dongting Dragon Lord went mad with joy — a few cups down, and everything came out. When it comes to the art of wine brewing, who in all three realms can rival me?” Jiu Jue said smugly, flicking the wine jug with his finger. “You two don’t know this, but the old fellow’s eyes nearly glowed when he saw the scale — he kept shouting ‘Third Princess, Third Princess.'”

“Third Princess?” I grabbed Jiu Jue and asked urgently, “And then? What happened next?”

“Then?” Jiu Jue paused. “Well, what came next probably has something to do with you. Otherwise why would I be calling you here?”

My mind, which had been muddled by wine and outrage, was gradually clearing. The water tomb burgled, the dragon scale, the sudden turbulence between Ao Chi and me, and all those impossibly coincidental coincidences — they began to fall into a coherent order.

“The old fellow said that among the East Sea Dragon Clan, there is a Third Princess whose scales are all the color of rosy dawn — every dragon in the East Sea, only hers have that hue. This Third Princess’s maternal grandfather is the current Dragon King’s own brother. Because the Third Princess is gentle and lovely by nature, and extraordinarily beautiful, she has been showered with adoration throughout the East Sea. The old Dragon King even made the decision early on to select her as the bride for his grandson.” Whenever the topic turned to this kind of gossip, Jiu Jue’s eyes and face positively shone.

And yet every word landed on me like a blade; every sentence was a dumpling, choking me. Third Princess. The Dragon King’s grandson’s bride. Every individual word cut deep.

Catching sight of my darkening expression, Jiu Jue gave a mischievous grin and touched my head. “Easy, easy — close family lines don’t have happy endings among the dragons. Calm yourself.”

“Dragons don’t need to follow human reproduction rules.” I brushed away his hand. “Continue!”

“Right on the very day of the Third Princess’s wedding with… ahem… with Ao Chi — this wayward dragon had the nerve, in front of the full bridal hall of guests, to say something to the old Dragon King right after the bowing ceremony, and then abandon his bride and walk out of the East Sea. He was caught and hauled back not long after by the old Dragon King and locked in the ice cellar of the Dragon Palace for many years. In the end, whether because the old Dragon King was simply no match for his grandson in stubbornness, or because the wayward dragon Ao Chi forced his own way out of the ice prison with his own power — the story varies. What’s certain is that after that, no one in the East Sea could restrain him, so they had no choice but to let him go and make trouble in the outside world.”

“So — he was imprisoned in the ice cellar because of this matter.” Zi Miao shook his head with a smile. “All this time I thought he’d committed some truly unforgivable crime. This wayward dragon is quite something.”

“What did he say to his grandfather? During the wedding.” I suddenly very much wanted to know this.

Jiu Jue shrugged. “Ao Chi only said it in the old Dragon King’s ear — so only the two of them ever knew. The Dragon King treated the whole thing as a family shame and forbade anyone to spread it, so not many people know the inside story. The Dongting Dragon Lord was an invited guest that day, which is why he’s so familiar with the whole affair. And this old lecher couldn’t stop going on last night about how beautiful the Third Princess was — breathtaking, gentle as water, and even when abandoned by her groom before the assembled guests, she didn’t lose her composure for a moment. She was busy comforting the old Dragon King, who had been so enraged he was half dead.”

My body sagged — the original wife was real, the wedding was real, he didn’t deny it, because all of it was real. She had said she had been waiting for him — waiting all that time, for how long? A thousand years of time, as his wife.

My anger, my aggrievement — in an instant, they lost all their footing and all their justification. The one who should be angry and aggrieved — that shouldn’t have been me…

“I have a great deal of admiration for this Third Princess of the East Sea.” Zi Miao spoke up suddenly, wearing a smile on his face that only he himself could fully decipher.

“Me too!” Jiu Jue said with a grin, leaning over and assuming an exaggerated pose of brotherly solidarity with Zi Miao.

“You two…” I pushed down a vague, inexplicable twinge in my chest and said, “I know — you admire her gentle graciousness, her calm dignity. Not like me — running away when I’m unhappy, stuffing dumplings when I’m angry, not a shred of feminine virtue.”

Jiu Jue burst into loud laughter, his lake-blue hair swaying in the lamplight; Zi Miao remained as steady as a boulder, only allowing the faintest lift at the corner of his mouth, shaking his head helplessly. The way both of them looked at me was unchanged from a thousand years ago.

Time froze in this instant and turned back. I was once again that little tree spirit who would flare up at the slightest provocation. Zi Miao was still Zi Miao, Jiu Jue was still Jiu Jue — no one had changed, whether we were in the mountain cave on Fulong Mountain or here in this small winery.

That feeling — it settled a chaotic heart, and gathered back the emotions that had almost scattered to the wind.

“What I admire,” Zi Miao said with a smile, “is this Third Princess’s extraordinary capacity for restraint. You and she are different. You can wait too — for as long as necessary — but the purpose of your waiting and the purpose of hers are not the same.”

“Exactly.” Jiu Jue nodded in agreement. “What we may also admire about the Third Princess is, I would guess, her calculated mind — and her breathtaking audacity.”

Hearing them put it this way, and thinking it through from beginning to end, the one who had broken into the water tomb and stolen the bracelet was undoubtedly Dong’er — setting aside the matter of coming to find her husband, why on earth had she gone to the water tomb? What could she possibly want from someone she had no connection to, someone who had been dead for many years?

Laying out each recent event in sequence and examining them carefully — the plane crash, Broken Lake, Zi Miao’s reappearance, the water tomb burgled, Dong’er seeking her husband… scheme, trap, snare — words like these kept leaping before my eyes.

A chiming sound came from Jiu Jue’s person.

“News alert on my phone.” Jiu Jue pulled his phone from his pocket, scanned it, and paused. “Wang Chuan has had an earthquake.”

“Mm?” I thought of those strange cracks in the ground I had noticed before coming here.

“Magnitude was small — a few buildings partially damaged, a few people with minor injuries.” The news should have been reassuring, yet Jiu Jue’s brow drew into a tight furrow.

Zi Miao’s expression was identical. He extended his left hand, palm open — in the center of his palm, a round, vivid red dot, deep as vermillion, stood out sharply.

I knew perfectly well that Zi Miao’s palm bore no such “birthmark.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Jiu Jue said suddenly.

Zi Miao closed his hand and said with a smile, “In this vast world, there are still far too many things that can surprise even the two of us.”

“There’s something you two should be telling me!” I couldn’t take any more of these two men showing off their private understanding right in front of me. I could plainly see in their eyes that we were all looking for the same thing.

“Have you heard of Wang Chuan?” Jiu Jue asked.

“Of course — the city where I live.” What kind of a terrible question was that?

Jiu Jue shook his head. “Not your Wang Chuan — though you could also say it is that Wang Chuan.” I wanted to hit him.

“Enough preamble.” Zi Miao stepped forward, took my hand, and headed for the door.

“What’s happening now?”

“Back to Wang Chuan!”

【Chapter Ten】Black Tortoise

When the first stars appeared, we stopped in the sky above Wang Chuan.

The familiar city glittered below with its own particular lights, and when viewed in a daze, it looked like a mirror lying face-up on the ground, locking every ray of light from the sky within itself. I asked why we had suddenly stopped.

“Look at the city below.” Zi Miao looked at the ground with quiet composure, his moon-white robe giving off a faint luminous haze in the air.

I looked down — for the first time observing the city below from this height, with this degree of attention. I couldn’t spot anything unusual. “What’s special about it?”

A sweep of lake-blue drifted past. Jiu Jue pushed back his wind-tossed hair and reminded me, “Look carefully! Infuse your spiritual power into your eyes, then look at this city. What does it look like?”

I widened my eyes and channeled my spiritual power into my weary gaze.

The lights of Wang Chuan gradually blurred and dimmed — yet a single outline, like a bold boundary line, grew sharper and clearer instead. It snaked, connected, and closed in upon itself across the city beneath me. This “boundary line,” impossible to assign to any physical material, traced out Wang Chuan — surrounding it, enclosing it — and presented before me a strange shape.

“Do you see it?” Jiu Jue asked again.

I lifted my head and answered with uncertainty, “A turtle?”

The “boundary line,” visible only through infused spiritual power, had drawn the city of Wang Chuan beneath me into the unmistakable form of a massive turtle — head, tail, all four limbs intact, lying flat and motionless upon the broad earth.

“It is the sacred beast — Black Tortoise.” Zi Miao corrected.

“Black Tortoise?” I was taken aback. “Wasn’t that creature destroyed in the great primordial catastrophe thousands of years ago?”

The story I had heard: in the most ancient times, the great goddess Nüwa had once ridden a divine beast — a creature with the body of a tortoise and the tail of a serpent — which became known as the Black Tortoise. After the goddess Nüwa passed from this world, this sacred beast wandered through all creation, until eventually the Heavenly Emperor took it into his service. Because the Black Tortoise had an affinity for darkness, the Heavenly Emperor sent it to dwell in the depths beneath the human world. It was said that any land protected by the divine power of the Black Tortoise would be as secure as a fortress — no matter how mountains might crumble or floods might rage, not a single disaster would befall it. Yet after the devastating great flood several thousand years ago, the Black Tortoise vanished without a trace. The most widely circulated version held that it had grown too old and drowned in the flood.

“‘Destroyed’ is only ‘reportedly.'” Zi Miao smiled faintly. “The Black Tortoise is just this creature’s title — it has its own proper name.” He paused. “It is called — Wang Chuan.”

“Wang Chuan?!” I looked again at the city below. The outline of the great turtle was gradually fading. I thought for a moment. “Beneath Wang Chuan City — lies that vanished Black Tortoise?”

“More precisely: this giant turtle is bearing the entire city of Wang Chuan on its back.” Jiu Jue said with admiring clicks of his tongue. “Only it could endure this for so long.”

“It was never meant to face such a fate — blame it on a certain someone it met long ago.” Zi Miao shook his head and sighed, descending toward the ground.

“The dragon woman you mentioned?” Jiu Jue followed. “What happened to her later? You never actually told me.”

“Nothing dramatic — she gave up her dragon body and went to live out her days in the nameless village that Black Tortoise had saved, growing old with the one she loved.” Zi Miao said lightly.

The wind rushed past. If I didn’t listen carefully, I wouldn’t be able to make out what they were discussing at all. Fed up, I grabbed both of them and said loudly, “What are you two talking about? Why have you never mentioned Black Tortoise before?”

“My dear — it’s a fact that we are considerably older than you, and naturally know a great deal more than you. But we’re not storytellers — when would we find the time to tell you everything we know? Who could have known this old turtle was going to show up?” Jiu Jue flicked my forehead. “Even I’m confused by all this.”

“Something has happened, and there must be a reason. You’ve likely already worked out the whole picture.” Zi Miao glanced at the vermillion mark on his palm, then looked at Jiu Jue. “After the Third Princess’s confrontation with it on Broken Lake — I’m afraid things are about to get somewhat troublesome.”

“It despises oath-breakers above all things.” Jiu Jue sighed. “That girl has gotten herself into serious trouble.”

“You two—” I stamped my foot.

“Don’t rush.” Zi Miao smiled gently. “What you need to know will make itself known.”

The three of us flew toward the ground; the sky grew further and further away. The closer we drew to Bu Ting, the harder my heart pounded. And events proved that my racing heart was indeed a prophecy —

The first time I had ever seen Bu Ting in such a state — furniture and objects overturned and shattered, scorch marks of fire across every surface, water spread in chaotic streams across the floor like miniature rivers, voices and commotion outside, firefighters proceeding with careful cleanup work amid the lingering smoke, the warning lights on the fire trucks spinning rapidly. The neighbors — the old woman from the sundries shop next door, the bespectacled man who was always trying to sell insurance nearby — a whole crowd of people stood outside, pointing and speculating.

The three of us concealed ourselves and stood in the shop, which now resembled a scorched, blackened rice cake, and looked up at the night sky — easy viewing, since the ceiling of the main hall had gone missing somewhere. In the short half-day since I left Wang Chuan, something had gone catastrophically wrong and Bu Ting had been the site of a fearsome explosion. I picked up a small piece of blackened, charred wood and found that the edges of the wood glowed faintly with a trace of blue — not visible to ordinary eyes. I said to Zi Miao and Jiu Jue, “Only the Three Flavors True Fire that Ao Chi breathes out would leave this kind of blue light.”

“The boy dragged his original wife back to the East Sea? He must have lost his temper when you left without a goodbye — and set your shop on fire!” Jiu Jue speculated with a wicked grin.

“Impossible!” I rejected his theory immediately. Ao Chi might be infuriating, but he wouldn’t sink to that level. Zi Miao, examining the other side, looked carefully and said, “More likely a creditor has arrived to collect a debt.”

I searched every corner of Bu Ting. Apart from the fire, Ao Chi had left no trace. He had vanished again — once more in this abrupt, sudden way. I struggled to conceal my panic.

“This doesn’t look like arson — it looks like a battle.” Zi Miao moved aside a heap of wood planks and bricks, revealing a crack in the floor as thick as an arm, which ran forward and out through the main hall.

Jiu Jue stood in the middle of the room, formed a hand seal, closed his eyes, and after a long moment opened them and shook his head. “Apart from the three of us, there’s no trace of anyone else’s presence here. With my spiritual power alone, I cannot determine Ao Chi’s whereabouts.”

“What’s the point of finding him? He’d be better off dead!” I kicked aside a chair with only half its frame remaining.

“Growing younger again.” Zi Miao shook his head with a laugh, then composed himself immediately and said, “If we don’t find him and the Third Princess quickly, the one in danger may be the entire city of Wang Chuan.”

My heart gave a sudden lurch.

“Give me the dragon scale.” I reluctantly extended my hand toward Jiu Jue.

Most of my techniques were taught to me by Ao Chi. He had also taught me that to track a dragon, all you needed was one of their scales — use a specific incantation, and you could determine their whereabouts. He had once, with quite a lot of self-importance, taken one of his own scales and said it was a gift for me: if he ever disappeared one day, I could use it to find him. And I had only said to him, “If I go looking for you because you’ve suddenly vanished, then I wouldn’t be me anymore. If you choose to leave, don’t leave behind anything that keeps us tethered. I respect all your choices.” When I finished saying this, he took back the scale with irritation and scolded me for not knowing a good thing when it came my way — then added, “Fine, don’t want it, I wasn’t going to give it anyway. I’m always right here — I’m not the one who’d disappear. The one who disappears might be you.”

That day, I watched his somewhat sulking departing figure, and I smiled quietly.

Not taking his dragon scale wasn’t because I didn’t care. It was because I believed. I believed he wouldn’t suddenly “disappear.” Of course, I never told him that in the twenty years he was the one who did leave — the only twenty years — I quietly regretted it countless times: if I had his scale, I wouldn’t have spent twenty years unable to find him. It was after those twenty years that I finally understood: what he wanted to give me back then wasn’t a dragon scale. It was a rope that couldn’t be cut — no matter how far to the ends of the earth, I would never be able to lose him. He, who so loved his independence, his freedom from constraint — was willing to let a rope be tied to him, and to hand me the other end.

Now: who had lost whom?

The moment I took the dragon scale Jiu Jue handed me, a tremendous tremor surged up from beneath the floor. The walls began to shake. Broken bricks and wood pieces fell from above, clattering and crashing. I could imagine the streets and buildings above — how many people must be crying out, how many structures must be collapsing. All of this was connected to the great turtle beneath the city.

I placed the red dragon scale in my palm and murmured the incantation Ao Chi had taught me, drawing my finger in circles over the scale. I pressed my palm down against the floor. The scale transformed into a beam of sharp light that shot out from the ground, tracing a faint red luminous trail pointing directly ahead.

The three of us followed the trail and found its endpoint in Bu Ting’s kitchen — this small space already destroyed beyond recognition by some tremendous outside force. The stove and cabinets had become a thick layer of rubble on the floor. A large slab of collapsed concrete lay in the center of everything, and the red trail of the dragon scale pierced straight through it.

Zi Miao stepped forward and struck the concrete slab aside with one palm. As the dust and debris settled, a black hole more than two meters in diameter was exposed. Standing at the edge, I leaned forward to look down — no light source of any kind inside, only blackness. No unusual scent, only a stifling sense of pressure that seemed to squeeze the breath out, drifting up from the mouth of the hole.

“If Ao Chi is still with his original wife, they’re definitely down there.” I tapped the edge of the hole with my foot. As soon as the words were out, a hand suddenly shot out of the hole and seized my ankle. A voice from that bottomless darkness — barely audible — reached my ears: “Help.” Before I could react, I felt my body pitch forward, and I was dragged — without any warning, without any ability to do anything about it — straight down into the hole.

Icy, damp air streamed past my body at terrifying speed. I could see nothing. The hand gripping me had the strength of someone clutching their last lifeline — it was almost enough to crush my bones. I had no way to gauge how deep this hole went. All I knew was that I kept falling, as though it would never end.

【Chapter Eleven】Choice

I must admit, the landing was rather painful. The jagged stones beneath me were sharp enough to shatter an ordinary human’s bones.

Before my eyes, darkness gave way. A slow, dim blue light drifted through this vast space constructed entirely of stone. Was this underground? I had never seen a subterranean world of such grandeur. Or — had I died, and arrived in the realm of the dead?

“It’s you… how is it you…” A weak yet indignant voice came from behind me. I turned — Dong’er lay on the ground, her face drained of color. A fine thread glowing with blue light passed through her right ankle, and dragon blood trickled slowly from the wound. Without a doubt, she was the one who had grabbed me.

“Where is Ao Chi?” I stepped forward and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Help me… help me get out!” Dong’er clutched her ankle and cried out in panic. “I want to go back to the East Sea!” The East Sea Third Princess, whom I had once thought to be an absolute vision, was now nothing more than a small, pitiful creature consumed with fear and despair — so frail that anyone could crush her with a single palm.

“I’m asking you again — where is Ao Chi?” I saw no reason to be gentle with her. I’ll admit my grace has limits when it comes to certain people.

“Help me break this awful thing!” She seemed incapable of hearing my words, and pounded the ground as she screamed at me. I saw large beads of cold sweat running down her forehead — the bone-deep pain was clearly not something an ordinary being could endure.

“Please… please…” She grabbed my hand and broke into wailing sobs. “I can’t bear it! It hurts so much!”

All right. I’m terrible. I went soft. I lowered my head and examined the blue thread. If I could break it, then I would just break it.

I gently picked up the thread — soft, cold, smooth as silk. One end passed through Dong’er’s ankle; the other end extended forward toward a large shadow I couldn’t quite make out, stretching endlessly ahead. How to break it? I tried channeling enough force to cut through a block of stone and directed it at the thread like a blade.

The result was that I let out a sharp yelp and a gash appeared across my palm. If I had pressed even a little harder, the thread might have cut my hand clean in half. I tried biting it, yanking it, summoning a sharp blade to slice through it — the thread remained entirely unharmed.

While I stood there at a loss, whoever held the other end of the thread seemed to give it a hard yank. Dong’er screamed and was dragged sliding backward. On instinct, I grabbed her. And directed my voice toward the front, where the thread disappeared, and shouted furiously, “Who is that? Get out here!”

“Heh — you are an outsider to this matter. Why involve yourself?” The shadow gradually brightened; all the blue light in the space converged toward it. A great rectangular stone platform rose into view, and atop it sat the serpent-tailed, silver-armored man — his fingers wrapped in the thread. A river of water wound itself into one vast circle around the stone platform, enclosing it at the center. Clear water rippled past, and schools of luminous, jewel-colored fish swam through freely.

When I shifted my gaze to the other side, I could no longer hear or see anything else. My eyes were fixed on one single fact — a man, five-flower-bound by thread of the same glowing blue material, tied to the left side of the stone platform. His head hung slumped down. Whether alive or dead was unclear. Most of his body was submerged in the river, the strangely colored fish circling him with the frenzied excitement of creatures competing over food. Dragon blood spiraled through the water, expanding outward.

That wretched man — if not Ao Chi, who else? By my nature, I should have been laughing at him mercilessly. This insufferably arrogant creature had finally taken a tumble in a ditch, and thoroughly deserved to be this miserable.

And yet — looking at this scene, how could I possibly feel any satisfaction? Watching the water grow darker and darker with red, I felt as though the fish were biting not only him but the very tip of my heart. A tangled surge of hatred and pain rushed straight to my head — and I stopped caring about anything else. I poured every last drop of my spiritual power and vital energy into my palm, formed it into a concentrated, invisible force, aimed at the water, and struck.

The surge of force scattered the fish swarming around Ao Chi in an instant. Quite a number of them turned belly-up on the spot. And I certainly wasn’t finished — I launched myself into the air, the force in my palm crystallizing into several shards of sharp jade-green crystal, unstoppable and unyielding, aimed straight at the head of the one responsible on the stone platform.

A few sharp clangs. The serpent-tailed man simply waved his hand — and every one of those crystals, which carried the full strength of my attack, crystals that could have destroyed most demons and spirits in existence, were brushed aside. In that casual gesture, the hard crystals crumbled into a mist of green fragments — they had been dissolved into smoke.

“Outsider — you still have the chance to leave. I won’t hold this against you.” He half-opened his eyes and looked at me like a man examining an ant on the ground. “I have no fondness for fighting. I only want to remain somewhere quiet.”

He was right — for all the menace of his appearance and the seeming brutality of his behavior, from the very beginning I had not detected a single trace of murderous intent from him. He just sat there, as still and impassive as the stones surrounding him. Even at Broken Lake, his battle with Dong’er — as fierce as it looked — had only ever been aimed at recovering something Dong’er had taken. And earlier at the shop, Zi Miao had also said, “More likely a creditor has arrived to collect.”

I shifted my gaze to the sniffling Dong’er, and said loudly, “What did you take from him?”

“I… I didn’t!” Dong’er flushed and protested weakly. “It belonged to me in the first place — it was never his!”

“A promise was made; a promise must be kept. One who goes back on their word is no true person of integrity.”

“For an East Sea Third Princess, your mind is still remarkably unclear.”

Two familiar voices drifted in from behind.

I turned — Zi Miao and Jiu Jue stood smiling by the river. Jiu Jue was even picking up a dead fish, examining it with great regret: “These Wang Chuan river fish make excellent brewing ingredients — and you’ve gone and killed them all. What a waste.”

“You can think about fish at a time like this? Lives are at stake!” I glared at Jiu Jue in outrage. “Why aren’t you helping?!”

“Help with what? Didn’t you say Ao Chi would be better off dead?” Jiu Jue grinned at me. Upon seeing Zi Miao, the serpent-tailed man’s half-closed eyes opened slowly. He smiled. “The Sovereign of the Four Waters — we meet again.”

Zi Miao gave a polite nod. “Indeed, it has been a long time. Black Tortoise Wang Chuan.”

“How rare that you and I can meet again. And how rare that you gave the place above this spot the same name as mine.” The serpent-tailed man pointed to the ceiling overhead. “Otherwise, I might have forgotten my own name by now.”

“In those days, you defied the will of heaven and saved the people of an unnamed village without authorization, angering the Heavenly Emperor, and so were sealed here — carrying this land upon your back, waking once every thousand years, and returning to sleep again, in an endless cycle.” Zi Miao stepped across the water, his footsteps sending a few drops spraying upward. He snapped the threads binding Ao Chi with a single motion and brought us back to dry ground. “You were entrusted with a task, and saved countless lives. There was no fault in what you did. Only, it’s a pity that…”

“Right or wrong is not worth discussing. The Water God need not reproach himself either — in those days you were only a small envoy serving beneath the Heavenly Emperor’s throne, carrying out your orders was your duty.” The serpent-tailed man cut Zi Miao off. “On Broken Lake, you wounded me with the Water God Arrow — I hold no grievance over that either. I have only one matter on my mind now. You are a person of great wisdom, so I imagine you have already seen through the whole of it. I ask only that you do not keep interfering. Otherwise — I will no longer be able to be courteous.” They know each other?! And yet Zi Miao had never told me.

“What’s going on? If you don’t tell me I’m going to bite you!” I dragged Jiu Jue to my side and fixed him with an intense stare.

“Ask her!” Jiu Jue pointed at Dong’er, who lay on the ground no longer moving, then lowered his voice and said to me, “Black Tortoise is not a demon — it is a god. Only a being of equal divinity could match it. Even dragons are no match for it. Look at what happened to your husband to understand. Except for Zi Miao, no one here can touch it. Stop doing reckless things.”

The badly battered Ao Chi was gradually regaining some strength, forcing himself to sit up. He pointed at Dong’er and demanded, “What trouble have you caused now? Speak!”

Zi Miao and the serpent-tailed man both stayed silent, gazing coldly at Dong’er. Every eye in the room, every ounce of pressure, converged on her alone in an instant.

“I…” Dong’er’s fingers dug hard into the ground.

“Speak!” Ao Chi bellowed.

“I cannot give him the dragon core!” Dong’er finally cried out in anguish, then broke into sobbing. “I can’t give it to him! Without my dragon core, I’m nothing!”

The dragon core! For any dragon, the dragon core is the pillar of its life, the source of all its spiritual power. A dragon stripped of its dragon core can no longer take human form — it can only scrape by in its true dragon body, until the next winter arrives and it dies and rots.

In a state of astonishment, I tried to imagine: what could be worth a dragon trading its own dragon core for?! Ao Chi trembled with rage and pointed at Dong’er. “You… you’ve gone mad? Is the dragon core something that can just be swapped as currency?! If you want to go mad, fine — but why drag others down with you?” At these words, Dong’er’s tears abruptly stopped. The grief on her face was in an instant utterly shattered by a hatred that had been buried for far too long. She let out a sharp, strange laugh, looking at Ao Chi, speaking word by word: “Yes — I went mad long ago. On the day of our wedding, you stood before the full bridal hall of guests, bowed to heaven and earth with me, and then said something to my grandfather and left without looking back. At that time, I did not cry, did not make a scene — I held to my dignity and my status, and I waited. One year. Ten years. A hundred years. You treated me as though I did not exist. Still I did not cry, did not make a scene. I kept waiting. And the news that found me was that you had taken another wife. Ha — if you had married someone of equal standing, I might have borne it. But you married a tree spirit, a thousand-year vagabond who never walked the righteous path! What standing did that leave me?” Her furious eyes blazed like fire, and when they fell on me they seemed to want nothing so much as to grind me to dust and scatter me to the wind.

“You and I were never husband and wife in any true sense.” Ao Chi now strangely turned composed, and spoke, “That wedding was nothing but a farce the old man concocted. He claimed he was gravely ill and wanted to see me settle down and marry before he died. I agreed to the wedding only for the sake of that wish. Who knew the old man would get so happy during the reception that he let something slip.” Ao Chi took a breath, looked at Dong’er, “I despise being deceived above all things. The truth behind all this — you later came to know it as well. I even drew up a written dissolution of the marriage, requiring only your signature to fully end the matter — and you would remain the East Sea’s Third Princess, free to take any path ahead. But to this day, you still refuse to sign it.”

“I will never sign it. Without my name on it, we are husband and wife forever.” Dong’er’s expression curled into a cold smile. “You said: as long as I do not sign the dissolution, you forbid me to leave the East Sea. I obeyed you. I stayed there and waited for almost a thousand years. At first, I waited for you to have a change of heart. Later, when I waited for you — it was no longer for you.” Her body twisted to point at the one on the stone platform, with a strange, shrill laughter. “I’ve been waiting for him!”

Ao Chi and I were both stunned.

“Black Tortoise Wang Chuan — waking once every thousand years. That is the moment I have been waiting for.” Dong’er’s laughter rang out, shrill and eerie, and her eyes — desperate yet full of something more — looked deliberately at Zi Miao, who had not said a word, and then turned back to me. “Tree spirit — I’ve been helping you. Helping you see clearly. Helping you make a choice! You’ve cultivated for a thousand years, yet you don’t even know who you truly love! Stop lying to yourself! The only reason you turned to Ao Chi for comfort and dependence was because Zi Miao was dead! The moment Zi Miao returns, your heart will turn in a new direction!”

Those words flew like arrows, striking me — and striking Ao Chi. Dong’er laughed until her whole body shook, her soft frame writhing on the ground, uglier than a dying snake.

“You’ve been hit where it hurts, haven’t you?” Zi Miao suddenly spoke, wearing an expression that only he himself could decipher. “This Third Princess had quite the plan.”

“I also admire her — very much!” Jiu Jue grinned and leaned over, adopting the same exaggerated pose of brotherly unity alongside Zi Miao.

“You two…” I pushed down an inexplicable pang and said, “I know — you admire her gentle grace and dignified composure. Unlike me — running away when unhappy, stuffing dumplings when angry, not a shred of feminine virtue.”

Jiu Jue burst into loud laughter, his lake-blue hair swaying playfully in the light; Zi Miao remained as immovable as ever, only the faintest lift at the corner of his mouth, shaking his head helplessly. The way both of them looked at me was exactly the same as it had been a thousand years ago.

Time froze in this moment and turned back. I became once again that little tree spirit who would flare up at the slightest teasing. Zi Miao was still Zi Miao, Jiu Jue was still Jiu Jue — no one had changed, whether we sat in the stone cave on Fulong Mountain or in this small winery. That feeling settled a chaotic heart and gathered back the emotions that had nearly scattered to the wind.

“What I admire,” Zi Miao said with a smile, “is the extraordinary restraint this Third Princess possessed. You and she are different. You too can wait — for as long as necessary — but the purpose of your waiting and the purpose of hers are not the same.”

“Agreed.” Jiu Jue nodded. “What we admire in the Third Princess is, I suspect, also her hidden cunning — and her breathtaking audacity.”

Hearing this, and thinking from beginning to end, it was clear: the one who had broken into the water tomb and stolen the bracelet was undeniably Dong’er. Setting aside the matter of seeking her husband, what business did she have going to disturb the water tomb — someone who had nothing to do with her, who had been dead for many years?

I laid out each recent event in sequence and examined them carefully — the plane crash, Broken Lake, Zi Miao’s reappearance, the water tomb burgled, Dong’er seeking her husband…

I now understood fully why Zi Miao and Jiu Jue had repeatedly said they “admired” Dong’er.

In response to Dong’er’s pleading, only one sentence came from the stone platform: “The dragon core, and nothing else.” Ao Chi swayed to his feet, walked to Dong’er’s side, raised his fist and held it frozen in the air — then let it fall uselessly, lowering it back down. “Foolish woman!” he muttered under his breath.

Before the last word was out, everything around them lurched violently. Countless stone blocks tumbled from overhead. Dozens of cracks ran out from beneath my feet, climbing up the stone walls. The sound of cracking echoed without cease.

“You all think I am nothing but a debt collector — relentlessly pursuing what was promised to me.” The serpent-tailed man looked up at the space above. “But what you don’t know is that I want the dragon core only to replenish the vital energy I expended when I reversed the flow of time. If I cannot consume a dragon core, my vital energy will run to nothing, and my true body will be destroyed. And if that happens — the land I carry on my back, this Wang Chuan that has grown from a small village into an entire city, will sink into the earth and cease to exist.” He lowered his head and closed his eyes again. “For you, the life or death of one small city is easily disregarded. Give or don’t give the dragon core — the choice is yours. But time is running short.”

Zi Miao surveyed the space around him, then looked more carefully at Black Tortoise. “The underground world we stand in right now is Black Tortoise’s true body. Its divine essence has taken the form of a serpent-man, keeping watch here for countless millennia. I don’t know that reversing the flow of time cost him such enormous vital energy, but the fact is — his divine essence is indeed diminishing. Once it can no longer sustain itself, his true body will shatter apart, and the city of Wang Chuan built upon his back will inevitably be swallowed into the earth. The cracks we saw on the surface — including the earthquake — all arose from this. His true body is already collapsing.” His gaze fell upon Dong’er. “Without a dragon core…”

“No! Don’t even think about it!” Dong’er screamed and clutched her own chest. “I will not hand over my dragon core! I don’t want to become a powerless dragon waiting to die! What does one small city’s life or death have to do with me?!”

Saying such a thing — I genuinely felt the urge to kill her.

Wang Chuan was directly above my head. There, the most ordinary of humans lived quiet and happy lives. There, too, were countless demons, wandering through or making their homes there — many of them old acquaintances of mine, mischievous or kind-hearted, existing without causing harm. And there was my “Bu Ting” — the place second only to Fulong Mountain in my heart — all my most important memories were stored in that city.

I had said it before: that place was my home. As a guardian of one’s home, how could I watch the living, breathing Wang Chuan become a city of the dead, buried forever beneath the earth? But he said only a dragon core could replenish his vital energy. Where would we find a dragon core? And besides — what dragon would ever willingly hand over its dragon core? That would simply be suicide.

The tremors grew stronger and stronger; the cracks multiplied and multiplied. The entire underground world began to shake and shudder.

“Let me out! Release me now! I don’t want to die in this place!” Dong’er clawed with terror at the thread around her ankle. Jiu Jue said from nearby, “Can the combined spiritual power of all of us here hold up this turtle’s back?”

“No — Black Tortoise’s true body can only be sustained by itself alone. No matter how high our spiritual power, it would be useless.” Zi Miao shook his head.

Suddenly, a voice called out — “Take it!” A one-inch round pearl, wrapped in blazing purple-gold flame, spun through the air toward Black Tortoise.

I turned in astonishment. Ao Chi was no longer there. In his place crouched a massive dragon with purple scales, breathing with effort, its great muzzle open.

“If it’s for replenishing vital energy — my dragon core is far more suited to the purpose than hers.” The Ao Chi who had lost his human form stated this as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Every person present — including Dong’er — was so shocked by what Ao Chi had done that no one could speak. Even Black Tortoise himself was taken aback, cradling that burning-hot pearl in his hands without a word.

I threw myself at that enormous dragon head, seized it, and cried, “Take it back!”

“My affairs are none of your business.” Ao Chi gave a shake of his head and flung me aside, then pinned me down with his tail to keep me from causing trouble. He then addressed Black Tortoise, “Are you going to swallow it or not? Afraid of choking?”

Black Tortoise tilted his head back. The dragon core went into his mouth.

Seconds later, every tremor ceased. Even the cracks that had formed before disappeared as if by magic — the fallen stone blocks flew back to their places of their own accord, as though the earth-shaking upheaval of moments ago had been nothing but an illusion.

“Elder Brother Ao Chi…” Dong’er stared at him blankly, no longer laughing like a madwoman, her face holding only bewilderment. A dragon stripped of its dragon core would, by the next winter, die and rot. And every dragon’s core is unique — irreplaceable and impossible to copy. Ao Chi’s tail slowly released its hold. The head he had been straining to hold high crashed down onto the ground with a thunderous impact.

“You…” I rushed to him helplessly, cradling that great head, now unable to lift itself. “Don’t play dead! Get up and argue with me! You’re too huge — I can’t carry you! Get up right now!” As I said this, the words ran out, and with them ran out everything else. Tears fell, drop by drop, landing on his scales.

“I haven’t died yet — what are you crying about?” He rolled his eyes, then looked at Zi Miao. “Come here.” Zi Miao walked over and crouched down in front of him.

“When you entrusted her to me back then, I’ve been watching over her all this time…” he said slowly. “Though I truly cannot stand you — I know that in this world, the only one more suited than me to care for her is you. Since heaven has arranged for you to return — this troublesome burden, it was always fated to be handed back to you.”

Zi Miao smiled, on the verge of saying something, but held back.

“Ao Chi — I am not an object. You can’t just pass me around!” I said, distressed and panicked, my words coming out without filter.

“Ha! ‘Not an object’… ha…” Ao Chi seized on my blunder, and still managed to laugh. Laughing, his eyes found mine. “I really do… love you very much. Only — that evening, when I saw you sleeping so peacefully beside Zi Miao, it was the first time I truly began to reflect: why do you never turn toward me and show that gentle smile? After all these years — what have I ever truly given you…”

“You idiot — you completely misunderstood! It’s not what you imagined!” I was frantic. How could he never be bothered to look clearly at what I was really feeling? He always saw half and treated it as the whole. Why, after all these years, wouldn’t he change even a little of that?

“You said Wang Chuan is your home. I gave it to you to keep.” He let out a long, slow breath. His eyes drifted closed. “Tired — going to rest for a bit.”

“Don’t you dare sleep! Get up and argue with me!” I smacked him again and again. The rough scales scraped cuts into my palms. I didn’t stop.

Zi Miao took my hand. “The next winter is still a year away.”

“Right — don’t rush.” Jiu Jue scratched his head and paced.

Everyone knew: without his dragon core, one year or ten or a hundred — Ao Chi was on a path to certain death. No one would believe that Ao Chi could hand over his precious dragon core for the sake of “one small city.” The exchange seemed hopelessly lopsided.

He only said — this was my home, so he wanted to “give it to me to keep.”

Dong’er sat on the ground as though struck dumb, murmuring Ao Chi’s name over and over. Then, like someone electrified, she shot upright, reached into her garments with urgent hands, and pulled out a brocade pouch. She tore it open and shook out its contents — a small slip of paper. She picked it up and read it. On it were only four characters: This time — never again.

Before she could make sense of it, the paper burst into flame of its own accord. In moments it was ash, and then the ash rose into the air — and arranged itself into the shape of an arched gateway floating in midair.

Accompanied by a cough, the “door” in the air swung open, and a little white-bearded, rotund old man not quite two and a half feet tall tumbled out. Taking in the scene around him, he clicked his tongue repeatedly and said, “What a crowd of troublemakers — I have to come and clean up the mess again.”

With that, he walked to Dong’er’s side, lightly pinched and broke the thread around her ankle, helped her to her feet, and shook his head. “Child — I always hoped you wouldn’t open this pouch. But I also knew you inevitably would.”

Dong’er looked as though salvation itself had arrived, and dropped to her knees before the old man. “Please find some way to save Elder Brother Ao Chi! He gave his dragon core to Black Tortoise!”

“Oh? He chose to give Black Tortoise his dragon core?” The old man stroked his beard and nodded. “Mm — that was his choice.” He then looked carefully at Dong’er kneeling before him. “And you? What is your choice?”

“I…” Dong’er was timid, flushing, and said nothing.

“You had the chance to use your own dragon core in place of his before Black Tortoise swallowed it.” The old man said with a smile.

“I… I only hesitated for a moment…” Dong’er’s head bowed lower still.

The old man helped her up and said mildly, “Child — do you still remember what I said to you when you left the Lost Pearl Cave?”

Dong’er pressed her lips tightly together.

“All those who cannot make a choice have only one answer — they love only themselves.” The old man chuckled quietly, then composed himself. “My dear girl — you do not love another person as deeply as you believe you do!” He then looked toward Ao Chi and me. “They are a different matter entirely. Heh heh.”

“This elder is…” Zi Miao stepped forward, studying the old man.

“Heh heh — Black Tortoise Wang Chuan.” The old man answered with a smile, then pointed toward the stone platform. “That one over there is my own younger brother.”

Two Black Tortoises?!

“You could not call it two.” The old man drifted unhurriedly toward the stone platform. “Black Tortoise Wang Chuan has always had two divine essences — one of a turtle and one of a serpent. I, being rather fond of wandering, left this heavy true body for this honest, easygoing younger brother to manage. Ahem — that’s not something outsiders know.”

“What brings you here? Weren’t you keeping yourself confined in the East Sea as penance?” The serpent-tailed man didn’t even look at him.

“To let you carry the Black Tortoise name alone all these years — I’ve had my share of guilt over it.” The old man settled down beside him and sat shoulder to shoulder. “Younger brother — the dragon woman you were so devoted to will never return. She could never come to wake you. You have known this truth for a long time — you simply refuse to accept it. Our true body may be sealed, but our divine essence is free. And yet you have spent all this time shutting yourself here — only to wait for someone who will never come. This is not right.”

“And are you any better? The two flower spirit sisters both cherished you — one made you steamed spare ribs, the other made you braised spare ribs, and they asked which you preferred. You couldn’t answer. In the end, you also couldn’t make a choice, and left two devoted souls to wither and die in despair. You have been hiding in the Lost Pearl Cave playing prisoner ever since, refusing to engage with the world. Cowardice!” The serpent-tailed man fired back with contempt.

“Being a prisoner was not entirely wasted — at the very least, I arrived at a truth concerning choice.” The old man said, lips pursed, then spoke more seriously. “All right — we can talk about our own affairs later. That dragon core — return it to its rightful owner. I have returned to my true body, and I am more than capable of sustaining the city above. The vital energy you lost, I as your elder brother will help you rebuild over time. Release these young people who made the same mistakes we once did.”

I truly thought my ears were failing me. He said — he was going to return the dragon core?!

Before I could even ask for an explanation, Ao Chi’s dragon core was already flying out of the serpent-tailed man’s mouth. The old man snapped his fingers, and Ao Chi’s jaw fell open. The dragon core shot inside with a swoosh.

Did this mean — Ao Chi wasn’t going to die?!

Wild with joy and disbelief, I threw my arms around the great dragon’s head and pressed my face against his, weeping tears of overwhelming relief. But within a few seconds, my arms were empty — I nearly toppled over. When I opened my eyes, the great dragon was gone. In its place was a small purple dragon not quite two feet long, plump and round, sprawled lazily on the ground.

What the— what is happening?!

“Don’t worry.” The old man chuckled. “Simply because his dragon core was borrowed for a short time, some spiritual energy was depleted. Once it returns to his body, it will naturally take some time to fully restore. With the core diminished, his dragon form will change along with it. What you see now is his infant form — nothing to be alarmed about. Give him plenty to eat and drink, and in no more than a year he should be back to normal.”

Ao Chi’s infant form… I picked up this chubby little creature from the ground — at which point he rolled his eyes at me, let out a yawn, burrowed his head into my arms, and went straight to sleep.

After everything that had twisted and turned in every direction — I suddenly realized: I was going to be a babysitter for at least a year.

“It grows late — those of you who need to go, go back. My brother and I are due for another thousand-year sleep. Black Tortoise needs sleep to stay strong.” The old man waved his hand at us all, then looked at Zi Miao with an expression of meaningful significance, and said, “Go on, go on — heh heh.”

“I…” Dong’er stood below the stone platform, at a loss for what to do.

“As for you — you are of noble birth, pampered and spoiled, seeming gentle but in truth willful. You had to burn your own hand to learn that boiling water is not something to be carelessly touched.” The old man waved his hand at her. “Go back to the East Sea, and cultivate yourself in earnest. Know that all things have their predestined course — what is forced never ends well.”

Dong’er lowered her head and dragged her feet as she turned to leave. As she passed by me, she looked at me with an expression of extraordinary complexity. I stood there holding Ao Chi, in this place that would soon be left behind, feeling a kind of flavor I couldn’t name — only grateful that I possessed a strong and healthy heart.

【Epilogue】

In recent days, the biggest news in Wang Chuan was the earthquake. But after that one most powerful tremor, there was never another. What was strangest of all was that the cracks in the ground disappeared on their own, overnight. Some of the older residents said Wang Chuan was a place of good fortune, with a great turtle bearing it from below — ten thousand years without quake or flood, Amitabha. Everyone listened, smiled, and moved on.

The early spring chill was swept away by swaying willow branches and bright sunlight.

Zi Miao and Jiu Jue stood at the entrance of Bu Ting, saying farewell.

“Where will you go?” I asked him.

“Everywhere. Wherever there is water, there is my presence.” Zi Miao smiled at me, took my hand, and placed a single drop of water upon my palm — crystalline as a mirror, reflecting my own face back at me.

“Will you come back to see me?” I was reluctant to let him leave — like a child reluctant to part from a parent.

“Of course. If he doesn’t object.” Zi Miao pointed to my shoulder.

The miniature Ao Chi had taken to perching on my shoulder at all times, demanding to be carried, fed, and constantly tended to. Right now he was crouched on my shoulder, rolling his eyes at Zi Miao.

“You can ignore him.” I gave Ao Chi a sideways glance. “This one loves being jealous — let him be as jealous as he wants. He actually followed us that night and listened to that woman’s provocations, and imagined that you and I were…” I let out a dismissive sound.

Zi Miao smiled, gently clasped my hand, and said, “Shaluo — this reunion, and this disaster, was something good for both of you.”

“Mm?” I looked into those eyes, clear as water.

“True love must be able to endure great stretches of time, must be able to weather suspicion, must be able to bear wind and frost. Remember — love is love, and it has nothing to do with friendship, and nothing to do with familial bonds.” Zi Miao rested a hand on my head, then patted Ao Chi’s. “As for this — you two still need to keep working at it. But you have plenty of time.”

“Then you and I — what are we?” I lifted my head and asked, clear-hearted and open.

“You answer.” He smiled.

I took his hand and wrote four characters in his palm.

His smile nearly dissolved into the spring breeze. He drew me into an embrace — with a small Ao Chi wedged in between.

“Ahem… about my marriage and heartbreak business…” Jiu Jue poked me and said quietly, “I’ll tell you next time. But you still need to have the red envelope ready!”

I watched the backs of the two of them as they walked away, fading into the afternoon sunlight.

Wherever there is water, he exists — infinitely reassuring. But I always felt he had left something unsaid. However — where Zi Miao went no longer mattered. What mattered was that I knew where I was going.

“What did you write in his palm? Tell me!” The Ao Chi on my shoulder bared his claws and gnashed his little teeth.

“When you’re grown up, I’ll tell you!” I picked him up with all the authority of a queen and tossed him aside. Thinking about having a whole year to boss little Ao Chi around — I found myself feeling genuinely delighted.

Back inside the shop, I picked up the plain little notebook sitting on the table.

Dong’er — that willful woman — had never apologized to me. In the end, before leaving, she threw this object at me in fury and said it was the birthday gift Ao Chi had prepared for me, which she had intended to steal and destroy. She only said sorry to Ao Chi, left a dissolution document bearing her signature in front of him, tossed her head, and went back to the East Sea.

My birthday was still quite a ways off. I opened the notebook. There, greeting my eyes, was Ao Chi’s crooked, utterly graceless handwriting —

One day, you stood before the Sphinx and asked it — Was it Napoleon who broke your nose? Or was it time, jealous of your noble face, in the golden desert sands, wanting you forever incomplete?

The sunset over Giza had just reached the pyramid’s tip — circle and edge, light and shadow: the perfect geometry you had always hoped to see.

Your hat brim shadowed your eyes. Wings grew from the lens, and flew past four thousand years.

One day, morning light fell over the Little Mermaid’s bronze form, on the Copenhagen shoreline, morning air passed through every soul walking by.

On the rocky shore, the hem of your skirt caught the sea foam carried by the wind.

When the handsome prince had long since become a bald, pot-bellied old man — my little mermaid, are you still singing sad songs on the surface of the sea?

One day, you circled above the Nazca Plateau, the noise of the small jet making the temperature outside seem even higher.

Beneath your feet, the ground drawings, in every magnificent and wondrous form, bloomed, spread wide: eagle, spiral, triangle, octopus — without limit.

Once there was a people — the Inca — who stubbornly waited for the gods to descend again, to grant the earth one more miracle of pattern and precision.

But the miracle never came again. Perhaps the extraterrestrials are still watching — waiting to see what happens.

One day, you stood silent in the crowd, while the Ganges sent up its not-entirely-pleasant smell.

In the filthy water, so many devout and earnest faces and bodies. Women’s beautiful eyes, shifting with shyness and uncertainty beneath their veils. The children’s hands may be dirty. But even the dirtiest little hands reach out, hoping for sweets — and for the future.

The Buddha said: in a grain of sand, an entire world. In a single tree, enlightenment.

One day, in Provence in February, the owner of Simon’s Restaurant brought out fragrant wild mushrooms, drowning in thick, rich, mellow sauce.

The dogs in the snow barked and barked, round as little bears, diving into snowdrifts, and tumbling out again with white-dusted fur.

This corner of France — it is not only lavender and wine, but the clear delineation of four seasons, and the olive press.

One day, you will walk to every corner of this world. To keep walking, always walking, is the greatest reverence you can offer it.

And I — will always be by your side.

I have no idea when this person was “struck by poetic inspiration” — sneaking away to write something like this in every place we visited together. All I know is that he does not love reading, and has no particular gift for words. These short few hundred characters are crossed out and rewritten countless times.

For me, he was willing to do the things he was worst at.

This was perhaps the finest birthday gift I had ever received in all my life.

I closed the notebook. Sunlight passed through the latticed window and fell into my teacup, the emerald-green tea rippling gently. I drank a sip — this was a cup of Floating Life I had brewed for myself. From the kitchen came a commotion, and Ao Chi’s strident little voice: “Where’s my strawberry milkshake?!”

I thought — Ao Chi’s and my story had entered an entirely new chapter. And stories are always unfinishable — other people’s, and one’s own.

Very well. My “Bu Ting” had been rebuilt fresh and new. I was considering whether to reopen for business.