Prologue

I despise rain — especially the feeling of raindrops splashing onto my face.

For others, it is nothing more than a fleeting mark that passes from sight in an instant. For me, it is the sting of needles and the cut of blades.

That pain has been with me for eighteen years.

It is not an intense pain — but it lingers, following me like a shadow.

I would rather be killed cleanly. That, at least, would be over quickly.

At the base of the mountain, the murky, muddy water had already formed a serpentine stream. Dead branches and withered leaves bobbed and drifted within it — a landscape of decay. From the flooding water, wisps of pale mist rose in curling tendrils.

And yet this stretch of mountain terrain had a name: “Smoke-Rain Gap.” They say it earned the name because whenever it rained, this road — carved into a deep, narrow cleft between the ridges pressing in from either side — would be blanketed in a twin haze of smoke and rain.

The gulf between imagination and reality is, as a rule, vast.

I floated half a foot above the ground, enclosed within a simple barrier that kept me in a world untouched by a single drop of rain.

I was waiting.

This place was thoroughly unpleasant. And yet I came without a moment’s hesitation.

Far below at the foot of the mountain, a patch of jubilant red was gradually drawing nearer.

To send a bride off in weather like this was somewhat inauspicious — and yet red was still red, and a joyous occasion was still joyous. Not even heaven’s poor temper could strip it of a single measure of its luster.

The celebratory sounds rang out brightly. The musicians swayed their heads, drenched to the bone yet faithful to their duties.

But too deliberate a show of joy always falls a little short.

The procession was long, every person’s footsteps hurried. At its center was carried an eight-man palanquin with a silver roof and black lacquered canopy, its outer curtains of red gauze trailing magnificently — opulent and grand, wholly at odds with the desolate and broken wilderness around it.

Today was the second day of the second month. The early spring chill still held its edge, and the mountain wind had shed all pretense of gentleness — no longer a wind, but a wild horse broken free of its reins, crashing in every direction. The bearers were driven back several steps by a fierce gust. The palanquin swayed, its curtain flying up to reveal half a dazzling wedding gown. I caught sight of two hands resting upon a knee, clasped tightly together — fair and slender, delicate beyond what wind or rain could have ever touched. But the focus of my gaze was not only on those beautiful hands, pale as mutton-fat jade. It was also on the bracelet upon the right wrist — colorless and translucent, clear as water in flow, with no outward particularity.

Many years ago, the thing I did most each day was to sit atop that mountain called Fulong and watch the clouds surge and ebb, watch the birds and butterflies in flight. I could remember the exact posture of every bird that had ever soared past, and I envied them the mark of their freedom. I believed that if I could fly, I would fly more beautifully than any bird that ever lived. And as it turned out, I was right. When I leapt from the mountain’s peak, the hem of my robes fluttered in flight more lightly than any wing.

If the people below could have seen me, perhaps they would have thought they were witnessing a celestial maiden who had wandered by mistake into the mortal realm. A pity — they could not. I had concealed my form. A pity — for I was a tree demon. The very opposite of a celestial being.

The wind grew fiercer. My doing. Everyone was blinded by wind and rain alike.

Amid the chaos, I landed in front of the palanquin and reached out my hand toward the curtain.

Part One

Before today, Zhuge Jingjun had never heard the name Long Renyu, nor knew who the Flying Dragon General of this dynasty was. After today, Zhuge Jingjun would know: Long Renyu was the military commander most admired by the Emperor, and was to be her husband — imminently so. He had campaigned northward against the Mongols with distinction in battle. “So long as the Dragon City’s Flying General stands, no foreign horsemen shall cross the Yin Mountains” — these were the words the Emperor had written with his own brush on the golden plaque bestowed upon him, and from those words the title of Flying Dragon General was born.

The Emperor had granted him ten thousand taels of gold, a thousand acres of fertile land, and treasures beyond counting. He had also offered him a beautiful wife — the daughter of the Minister of Works, whose poise and beauty were unmatched in the land. He declined. A man need eat no more than three meals and sleep no wider than three feet — all the beautiful wives in the world were not worth ten thousand volumes of military texts. Long Renyu was known throughout the court as an eccentric of the highest order.

This time, the Emperor arranged a marriage for him again.

Zhuge Jingjun — eldest daughter of the Zhuge Estate. Her remarkable beauty aside, the Zhuge Estate behind her alone was enough: incomparably wealthy, famous throughout the martial world, effectively the Emperor’s second treasury. Had the master of the Zhuge Estate not lent his support in the Jingnan Campaign, the outcome would have been far from certain.

But this time, he did not decline. Zhuge Jingjun was to become, in every sense of the word, the General’s wife.

Word had it that the General’s manor was already bustling with preparations to receive the bride — lanterns hung and decorations strung, a liveliness not seen in decades.

The following month, on the second day of the second month, the day Long Renyu was to return to the capital, would be the day of the wedding.

Everyone believed this was a match made in heaven — talent paired with beauty — and even the Emperor was pleased with himself, certain he had facilitated a union that would be spoken of for generations.

Yes — everyone thought so. Everyone except Zhuge Jingjun.

The Zhuge Estate nestled against mountains and beside water. Its pavilions and towers possessed a grandeur that rivaled the imperial family’s. Tonight the moon was full, and its silver glow softened every sharp edge — even the bronze lions at the gate looked gentler than usual. Red plum blossoms bloomed in full glory across the grounds, their fragrance subtly permeating the air. Maids moved through the estate in flowing streams while attendants busied themselves without pause. Eunuch Liu, who had come to deliver the imperial marriage decree, was one of the Emperor’s most trusted confidants and therefore a person of considerable standing — he was to be received with the finest hospitality.

Everywhere, beautiful sights. Beautiful atmosphere. Beautiful prospects.

“The marriage decree was not issued by the Emperor. It was issued by you. Wasn’t it?”

In the largest study of the Zhuge Estate, candlelight flickered in Zhuge Jingjun’s cold pupils as she fixed her piercing gaze upon the man seated behind the desk, scroll in hand, reading.

“That is your happiness.” Zhuge Jun did not so much as glance sideways. The volume of the Records of the Grand Historian in his hands seemed to be his entire world — though in truth, from a while ago to now, he had not turned a single page.

“You have no right to decide my future.” Zhuge Jingjun walked to the desk, wanting to see this man’s face clearly and hoping he would see hers clearly in return. “You gave me a surname. But that does not make me your property.”

Zhuge Jun raised his head slightly, his fingers lifting one corner of the book. The turn of his angle brought his well-defined features fully into the candlelight. He was thirty-seven this year — and yet time seemed to have shown him singular favor, leaving his appearance entirely untouched save for a few silver threads at his temples. He looked no different from the day she had first laid eyes on him: still composed and accomplished, still in the full bloom of his vigor.

“You are, of course, mine.” Zhuge Jun’s tone was as placid as someone discussing the weather with a passing stranger.

Zhuge Jingjun’s expression shifted. The gaze she had been holding so deliberately cold and hard was shaken by something she could not name — even her breath paused for a moment.

The faint, elegant fragrance of incense wound through the room, and the quiet settled like a cover over the two subtly colliding emotions.

“You hear me clearly,” Zhuge Jingjun pressed both fists against the desk, leaning forward, her posture one of open challenge. “My happiness — has nothing to do with you!” She slammed the door and was gone.

The Records of the Grand Historian fell to the floor with a sharp crack.

Zhuge Jun’s brows knitted tightly. One hand seized his chest, the other gripped the edge of the desk until his knuckles whitened, his jaw clenched tight. The look of suffering on his face was entirely at odds with the calm he had displayed moments ago.

Some force seemed to surge from within his chest, straining to break free — held back only by his desperate effort to suppress it.

Cold sweat the size of soybeans dripped from his forehead. Only after a long while did Zhuge Jun gradually ease the furrow of his brows. The reddened whites of his eyes slowly took on a layer of murky grey — a small thing, yet one with the appetite to swallow everything in its path.

Part Two

She had not the slightest regard for the Zhuge surname. Not the slightest regard for the title of “eldest daughter of the Zhuge Estate.” If she could have had things her way, she would rather never have set foot in the Zhuge Estate, never have made acquaintance with Zhuge Jun, rather have died of illness in that crude mountain hut in the heat of summer.

In the most secluded courtyard of the Zhuge Estate, Zhuge Jingjun sat alone on the boardwalk built over the water. In the center of the man-made lake, the “Water Moon Pavilion” — built of white marble — stood with its gauze curtains swaying gracefully at every window, elegant in every detail.

Most of the estate’s “old-timers” knew that the Water Moon Pavilion had been built by Zhuge Jun specifically for one woman — constructed over the water, a marvel of ingenuity, wrought with infinite care and thought.

The pity was that this woman had lived in the Water Moon Pavilion for less than half a year before she passed away.

After that, Zhuge Jun severed every road leading to the Water Moon Pavilion. He burned the boats moored at the lake’s edge, leaving that exquisitely beautiful structure isolated in the water, to fade with the passage of time, and sink into silence.

The Water Moon Pavilion was a forbidden place within the Zhuge Estate.

Zhuge Jingjun pressed the tears threatening to spill from her eyes and gazed with a complicated expression at the white structure across the water, bathed in moonlight. The longer she looked, the more it seemed as though a figure appeared between those pillars and colonnades — a woman in white robes, graceful and willowy, her every step so beautiful that even the cold, monotone air carried a faint fragrance in her wake. Every place she existed was like an orchid quietly blooming in shadow — with the slowest and most understated of scents, it occupied your eyes and your heart with absolute thoroughness.

Who else but her mother, who else but the woman called Ni Xuechang, could achieve this.

Zhuge Jun had loved her mother for eighteen years. No — longer than that. Even before she herself was born into this world.

Zhuge Jingjun lowered her head. A heavy, bone-deep helplessness crept over her entire body. If the person he loved were anyone else, she would still have the confidence to measure herself against a rival. She would still have the energy to fight for a place for her own feelings. She would still have cause to stand her ground with righteous certainty. But the person he loved was Ni Xuechang.

This woman was not only her mother — she was someone who had already departed from this world. There are two kinds of people one should never pit oneself against directly: one is kin; the other is the dead. To stand against one’s own kin tears at a bond of blood and ultimately wounds both parties. To contend with the dead is to wage a battle separated by the breath of life and death — and the only thing wasted is one’s own youth.

Zhuge Jingjun laughed bitterly to herself. If anyone in the world were to learn that she had fallen in love with Zhuge Jun, they would surely do nothing but curse her for being outrageous and delusional. Nothing else.

Eight years ago, when Zhuge Jun had appeared in the mountain hut where she and her mother were sheltering — when he had lifted her from her sickbed, where death had already stretched out its fingers to touch her — his face was branded into her young and fragile eyes.

“With me here, nothing will happen to either of you.”

Of all the things the man had ever said, that was the only sentence she had kept.

Cradled in his broad and warm embrace, she had felt a kind of security she had never experienced before — a shelter entirely unlike her mother’s arms.

He carried her into the Zhuge Estate, and from that day forward she walked into his life.

She took the Zhuge surname, after her mother passed away.

When he set his brush to paper and wrote the four characters of “Zhuge Jingjun” with such deliberate care, she clearly saw a certain satisfaction and quiet release in his eyes.

Before that moment, she had had no surname. Her mother had only called her Jingjun.

A child without a surname meant a child without a father.

From the moment she came into this world, that important presence had been absent from her life. Whenever the village children mocked her for being a wild child with no father, she would run crying to her mother and ask — where has Father gone? And her mother would always pull her tightly into her arms, saying nothing, only weeping. Her mother’s tears fell upon her face, burning and cold at once — every drop a weight of immense grief.

In her memory, the thing her mother loved most was speaking to water. Whether the clear spring flowing through the mountains or the raindrops falling from the sky — she always watched her mother reach out with careful hands, cup a few droplets in her palms, and gaze at them in a trance, murmuring quietly to herself.

She could not understand her mother’s behavior. But gradually she learned to stop caring about the other children’s mockery, and to stop asking her mother anything about her father. She was a sensible child. A sensible child does not make her mother cry all the time.

Before she was ten, she had lived in that poverty-stricken mountain village without even a proper name. Her mother supported them with her exceptional needlework — embroidering and mending for others in exchange for a meager income. As for her own part, by the time she was four or five, she had already been going up the mountain with a bamboo basket nearly as tall as herself, gathering medicinal herbs and beautiful wildflowers to bring back for her mother to sell at the market.

Once, reaching for a herb growing from the face of a cliff, she lost her footing and fell. By sheer luck she survived, and woke to find she had suffered only superficial wounds.

When her frantic mother came searching and found her — miraculously alive — she pulled her close and held her, crying and saying sorry over and over.

Had Zhuge Jun never appeared, her life would have stilled itself within that village — continuing in quiet hardship until its end.

Everything changed in that scorching summer.

Her mother spent every last coin to bring in a physician, and still could not cure the typhoid fever that clung to her without relenting.

She was ten that year, and lying in bed felt like lying in the clouds. Her consciousness had drifted somewhere far away and could not find its way back to her body — nor did it wish to return. Far off, a hazy figure swayed in the distance, dressed in white, calling her name with both tenderness and urgency…

Jingjun. Jingjun.

But the one who truly called her back was Zhuge Jun — in deep black robes embroidered with a pattern of bold golden clouds, as far from that dream-figure as one could imagine.

Zhuge Jun summoned the most renowned physicians in the land, used the most precious medicines available, and brought her back from the edge of death.

But he could not bring back her mother.

What her mother had swallowed was hemlock.

She still remembered the way her mother looked when she passed away — more like someone drifting into a beautiful dream. Only this dream would never end in waking.

When the name Jingjun was given the surname Zhuge, status and honor and splendor all lay within reach. But parents, and the warmth of family — those had gone somewhere beyond the sky.

The outside world assumed her to be Zhuge Jun’s adopted daughter. She, however, had never once thought of him as a father — not even as he had raised her to this day.

She remained at his side in the closest proximity possible, with a perfectly justified reason, absorbing every aspect of this man. The vigor with which he strategized and commanded, the erudition with which he read and wrote, the languid ease of his fatigue, the way he looked when he smiled, the way he looked when he was furious — all of it, every bit of eight years, gathered into her eyes.

He had never taken a wife. Zhuge Jingjun understood — his heart had remained in that solitary Water Moon Pavilion from the very beginning, and had never left, nor would it permit anyone to draw near.

What kind of love could make a man remain devoted like this.

Zhuge Jingjun dared not dwell on the thought. The more she thought, the more forlorn she became.

And yet even if she had no hope of drawing near in this lifetime — at least she could remain at his side. To watch from a distance was still something. At the very least, she and he still shared the same surname. That, too, was its own small consolation.

But now — he was preparing to deliver her with his own hands into the arms of another man, with the most ostensibly honorable of justifications: happiness.

She knew. It was not the Emperor who had proposed matching her to the Flying Dragon General. It had been him.

The Emperor was a frequent guest of the Zhuge Estate — paying informal visits in common dress was routine. That day, after several rounds of wine, with host and guest fully satisfied, an attending maid had heard with her own ears Zhuge Jun ask the Emperor to decree her betrothal to Long Renyu.

He must have grown weary of her presence. Or perhaps, from the very beginning, she had been nothing more than an appendage of his feelings for her mother — he treated her well simply because she was Ni Xuechang’s daughter. The one who held meaning for him was Ni Xuechang, not her daughter. He had kept this idle dependent for eight years. That was enough.

The more Zhuge Jingjun thought, the more her heart ached.

The cold air and darkness wrapped layer upon layer around her body. But then, across her wrist, a strange warmth suddenly flowed.

She raised her right hand. The unremarkable glass bracelet on her wrist — colorless and clear as water — held, upon close examination, the faintest hint of something like flowing water within.

This was the only keepsake her mother had left her, worn since childhood. Her mother had told her to regard it as she would her own life.

At first she had noticed nothing special about the bracelet. But over time she came to realize that whenever she was truly sad, the bracelet would shift from cold to warm — with a small but extraordinary force, offering a kind and gentle comfort to her low spirits. Like a hand belonging to someone dear.

She pressed her hand around the glass bracelet and murmured: “You know I’m sad, don’t you… In his eyes, I simply don’t exist.”

The moment the words left her, she began to mock herself. What a fool — talking to a bracelet.

Her emotions shuttled between present and past, too absorbed to notice when a second person appeared behind her.

Part Three

I heard the first cry.

Standing outside that crumbling mountain hut, I watched her — barely more than half a life left in her body — cradle that newly arrived life in her arms with pure, radiant joy.

That was the third time I had seen her.

She and I bore a likeness of nine parts in ten.

The first time I saw her, the man I had once cared for most in the world had abandoned me to save her.

The second time, the man I had once cared for most in the world was living in tender dependence with her, the two of them utterly devoted to each other.

The third time, the man I had once cared for most in the world had already dissolved — body and soul gone from this world — and she and her child cried out for sustenance.

Zi Miao. That name was one I had never wished to speak aloud for the rest of my existence.

A Celestial Immortal of the heavenly realm, the Lord of the Four Waters — he had given me, this unruly and wayward tree demon, a brand new life. He had given me a happiness and beauty I had never dared dream of. He had given me an endless, unceasing longing. And yet when I came to understand that I had only ever been a stand-in for the woman before me — the perfect world he had built for me collapsed in an instant.

I had been hating him all this time, I suppose. And hating this woman all this time as well. Even I was not entirely certain.

From the day Zi Miao vanished, I had lived like the walking dead — a ghost haunting Fulong Mountain. Had there not always been a wayward dragon named Ao Chi keeping me company — or rather, keeping watch over me — I would have doubted my own existence even more.

Yes. That period of time, by my own definition, amounted to this: I was alive, but I felt as though I had already died.

I had promised Ao Chi that I would not leave Fulong Mountain for three years.

That wayward dragon, though rough and careless and insufferable, did at least understand the concept of a place stirring painful memories.

And yet I broke my promise all the same.

I wanted to see her — to see the Celestial Lady Xuechang who had once sworn undying vows with him. And I wanted to see her child even more.

This child carried Zi Miao’s blood in her veins — the only proof that he had once truly existed in this world.

I had said I would give up. I had said I would let go. And yet I could not stop myself from searching every place that still bore a trace of him, looking for something nameless to hold onto — some semblance of memory, some flicker of hope.

I had told myself I hated them. And yet at the moment this child came into the world, I found myself weeping with a smile.

Arriving at the same time as this child were cool and sudden threads of rain falling from the sky.

If I remembered correctly, this stretch of mountain land had gone a long while without rain — the ground had already cracked in shallow fissures.

She was the daughter of a water god. Her birth — much like her father’s departure — perhaps nourished this world with life itself.

I stood at the window, watching that small face wailing in her mother’s arms. Those bright, round eyes — dark as black grapes — turned toward the direction where I stood, and the crying gradually stilled. This child — she actually broke into a gurgling laugh aimed at me. Her toothless little mouth stretched wide, pulling her round cheeks into something that looked even more like a rosy apple.

That smile touched the most fragile place inside my heart.

I drew a long breath and turned to leave.

I hoped this child would know happiness.

The thought was only a flash. And then I quickly despised myself for this “sentimental delusion” — this was a child born of him and another woman. Her happiness or misery — what did it have to do with me?

In contradiction with myself, I returned to Fulong Mountain. Of course I had slipped down in secret, and upon returning, I was inevitably subjected to a thorough scolding from that hot-tempered, insufferable wayward dragon — who said I always loved wasting time on pointless, meaningless things.

I ignored him. We were not creatures of the same world. Meaningful or meaningless — I didn’t care. I simply wanted to go and look.

The last time I saw Ni Xuechang was at the Zhuge Estate — in the place called the Water Moon Pavilion.

I had not known that Zi Miao had left a leaf spirit talisman with her. This talisman, made from the leaves of my own true form, was the finest tool for finding me. In the past, no matter where I wandered off to play, the moment Zi Miao burned the leaf spirit talisman, I would know he was looking for me.

When she and I stood face to face, I always had the sensation of looking in a mirror.

She and I looked too much alike. Ha — of course we did. In those early days, Zi Miao had fashioned my human form by recalling her likeness.

She was still beautiful. And yet she was mortal flesh and bone now, and time had left its mark upon her face without mercy — the weathering of years and hardship.

While I was a demon. Time, for my appearance, held no meaning whatsoever.

She would age, and then die. I would not.

Should I feel some superiority from that?

None. Not the slightest superiority — and if anything, the envy I carried for her in the deepest part of my heart was only more profound.

I hated her, and I envied her. I hated that she had claimed that man’s heart before me. I envied her that she had known a love that was whole and complete — though in the end they were separated by the boundary between heaven and earth, Zi Miao’s love, from beginning to end, had belonged to her and her alone. That was its own rare kind of wholeness.

“Zi Miao kept this leaf spirit talisman with him all along, as a keepsake.” She smiled at me with a quiet, composed expression. “See mirror, see you — the child’s name was one he had chosen long before. He said regardless of whether it was a son or daughter, the name would be Jingjun. I never understood why he chose that name. Not until after he was gone — one morning when I was dressing and caught sight of myself in the mirror.” She lowered her long lashes. “Only then did I understand. He had always thought of the person in the mirror — someone who shared my face, yet lived in a world I could never reach.”

I was silent for a long while. And then, unexpectedly, my nose grew sour.

“You burned the only leaf spirit talisman you had left, and all you wanted was to tell me the origin of your daughter’s name?” I used a teasing tone to successfully conceal my own sadness.

She knelt before me.

My heart lurched into confusion. To help her up — or not to help her up? I stood there as stiff as a fool, unable to move.

“Please protect Jingjun. Until she is capable of protecting herself.”

That was the purpose she had summoned me here for.

Inwardly, I let out a quiet breath of relief.

Had she known — that the year her daughter slipped and fell from the cliff while gathering herbs, had I not been there, she would never have escaped with only superficial wounds. Had she known — that from the moment of her daughter’s birth, I had remained nearby, watching from the day she first babbled her first words to the day she could run and leap. Had she known — that I had taken the form of a farmer and taught her daughter to identify medicinal herbs in the mountains, because otherwise how would a child so young have made so few mistakes.

Her daughter’s father had once taught me so many things. Now it was my turn to teach his daughter.

Even when the girl was gravely ill at ten years old, I had already prepared a first-rate spirit medicine — only to have another man claim the credit first.

I watched as the two of them were brought into the Zhuge Estate, and I wondered what their lives would hold from then on.

Whatever the case — no more wandering without a home, no more hunger. Fine clothing and fine food, a fine residence. That was the most complete destination I could imagine for them.

Those who were sheltered by the Zhuge Estate — what need would they have of a tree demon’s protection?

Ni Xuechang gave no reasons. She only asked me to consent.

I pressed my lips together and said nothing.

When I left the Water Moon Pavilion, I saw Jingjun sleeping — peaceful and tranquil, her still-childish features already faintly carrying traces of his face.

I liked her name. The way I had once liked my own.

It was only at that moment that I knew — I could no longer bring myself to hate Zi Miao. Looking at that sleeping little girl, all I felt was tenderness. Nothing else.

“Look after yourself,” I said deliberately, my brow arched with a cool indifference — refusing to let this woman see my softness. But in my heart, I had already agreed to her request.

I was only a demon, and not yet a particularly powerful one. My abilities were limited. But I would protect this child called Jingjun. Because she was Zi Miao’s daughter.

Those who knew of Zhuge Jun spoke of him with both respect and fear. Respect, because at no great age he had managed to build a vast and formidable enterprise. Fear, because this ordinary mortal was ruthless in his dealings — what he loved he would seize, what he hated he would eliminate, and what he wanted he would obtain by whatever means necessary, without exception.

Some said Zhuge Jun’s most powerful weapon was a desire unlike any ordinary person’s — it was the force that drove him to conquer and prevail without defeat.

That night, I passed by Zhuge Jun as he returned from outside.

Of course he could not see me. But from this man, I caught a faint and strange scent.

I looked back at that tall, upright silhouette — and from within that frame, I perceived some kind of dangerous signal. Yet I was still a minor demon of shallow cultivation, my sensitivity too low to accurately describe what exactly was emanating from Zhuge Jun.

Even as he disappeared from my line of sight, my gaze did not leave the direction he had gone.

Zhuge Jun…

I fixed that name firmly in my memory.

On the day after I left the Zhuge Estate, Ni Xuechang took poison and ended her not-overlong life.

When the news reached me, I finally understood why, in those years past — when both she and I had found ourselves in danger at the same time — Zi Miao had saved her and not me. It was not solely because she was the woman he truly loved. It was because she was genuinely too fragile — fragile enough that she could not bear any harm at all, whether to her body or her spirit. Had her young daughter not been without anyone to entrust her to, her life would have ended even sooner.

Without Zi Miao, even breathing was more than she could manage.

For this woman, I had no intention of judging her “weakness.” Perhaps in the eyes of the world, a woman like her is precisely the sort one finds more endearing. When a choice must be made and someone must be sacrificed, it is always the one who is “strong enough” who is given up — for one reason alone: she cannot survive without me, but you can. Because you are stronger than her.

Every time I thought of this, my heart still ached, quietly and without resolution.

I went to her grave and left a shy, half-opened orchid.

I stood in silence for a moment, then turned and walked away.

Part Four

“The night is cold and bitter — why aren’t you in bed? What are you staring at out here?”

Zhuge Jingjun was startled by the not-particularly-polite voice from behind her.

He was not from the estate. Somewhere around thirty years of age, dressed in a dark teal long robe with a sword at his waist. His jet-black hair was gathered neatly at the crown with a golden coronet. Tall and powerfully built, with a penetrating gaze. His face was handsome and clean-featured, yet it carried the indelible weathering of wind and sand.

The first person Zhuge Jingjun thought of upon seeing him was, of all people, Zhuge Jun — they shared the same kind of presence, the kind that made one feel one should not stare directly at them. The only difference was that Zhuge Jun was ice — cold in the shadows. This man was fire — burning with heat.

“Who are you? How dare you trespass into the Zhuge Estate?” Zhuge Jingjun’s brows shot up as she rose to her feet in confrontation.

“Long Renyu.”

Zhuge Jingjun’s footing slipped, and she nearly tumbled straight into the water.

“You… aren’t you supposed to be on patrol in the northern desert… how did you…” She steadied herself, words coming out of order.

“When I want to come back, I can always come back.” He studied Zhuge Jingjun with an expressionless gaze, as though appraising an object.

She forced herself to composure. “Why are you here at the estate? This late — shouldn’t you be at your General’s manor?”

“I simply couldn’t wait to come and see my future wife.” The corner of his mouth lifted — a smile that was not quite a smile.

Zhuge Jingjun’s face flushed immediately, with no idea how to respond.

Long Renyu watched her embarrassed expression, then shifted his gaze to the Water Moon Pavilion and said: “Ordinary. Nothing particularly special.”

He said it with complete earnestness and gravity.

Zhuge Jingjun was certain he had been grading her.

“Correct. I am nothing but a common person, ordinary in every way — quite unfit for the illustrious Flying Dragon General with his glittering battle record.” She gave a cold smile and met his eyes directly. “But rest assured, General — I have never had any interest in the position of General’s wife. I would rather spend my days as a nun in a convent. That would suit me a hundred times better. Please, General, do as you please. Jingjun takes her leave.”

Long Renyu was left standing alone on the boardwalk. Her slightly childlike silhouette lingered in his eyes long after she had gone.

“A difficult temper, too,” he sighed. “Beauty is a disaster. Truly an eternal truth.”

Part Five

“Time is running short.”

Behind the bed curtains, Zhuge Jun sat bare-backed before a bronze mirror. Behind him, a hand gripped a cinnabar brush and drew strange patterns upon his back with deliberate force.

“After the Heaven-Granted Seal is repaired, it can hold for a little longer. Before its effect runs out completely, I will find a solution.”

“Ah Yu — what matters is not me, but her.” Zhuge Jun looked at his distorted reflection in the bronze mirror. “Only by entrusting her to you can I be at ease. Take her away — as far from me as possible. The thing inside my body grows stronger. I no longer have confidence that I can suppress it.” He smiled. “My only option is to take it with me into the underworld.”

“Brother — I won’t let anything happen to you.” Long Renyu’s face moved out from the shadows, somber and resolute.

He set down the brush, his expression tight with controlled anger. “Back then you already did one foolish thing for the sake of Ni Xuechang. Are you truly going to do another one now — all for the sake of her daughter? Do you think sending her away and then perishing together with that ghost of a thing is a complete ending?”

Zhuge Jun let out a long, slow breath, put on his robe, and laughed with rueful bitterness: “I only want to make it up to her — in some small way. Perhaps the way I’ve chosen is laughable. But it’s the only method I can think of to keep her out of danger. Her parents both died because of me. If she too were to die at my hands, my life would truly be nothing but a wretched joke. Ha.”

The master of the Zhuge Estate, Zhuge Jun, and Long Renyu, the current Flying Dragon General — two figures with nothing ostensibly in common — were half-brothers, born of the same father but different mothers. This secret was known to no one but themselves — not even the Emperor, with whom they had the closest of connections.

And yet, because a fortune-teller had once declared them “as incompatible as water and fire — one must be harmed,” Zhuge Renyu had taken his mother’s surname, changed his name to Long Renyu, and been sent away from the Zhuge family as a young child. He grew up at Qingfeng Monastery, far from the Zhuge family, under the tutelage of the Daoist Master Chiheng — a man renowned for his moral character, martial ability, and scholarly learning alike. Though the brothers rarely saw each other, their bond was in no way diminished by the distance. After their parents died, they became each other’s only family, and the brotherly attachment between them grew all the more precious for it.

“Master will have a way. I’ll go back to Qingfeng Monastery tomorrow.” Long Renyu gripped his elder brother’s shoulder firmly, his eyes carrying a sharp and fierce killing intent. “I don’t care whether it calls itself the Six-Desire Demon or the Seven-Desire Demon — whatever it is, if it dares try to harm my family, be it human or demon, I, Long Renyu, will reduce it to ash and dust!”

“You know — perhaps this is retribution.” Zhuge Jun patted his brother’s hand, laughing with self-deprecating irony. “You hold your loved ones with such devotion — and so does everyone else. And yet back then, for my own selfish desire, I struck that bargain with the demon, causing Zi Miao’s body and soul to be destroyed — and indirectly causing Xuechang’s death. Now even Jingjun is caught up in it because of me. Ha. Zhuge Jun — fine-looking on the surface, and rotten underneath. Nothing but a shameful and ugly soul.”

“Brother…” Long Renyu was momentarily at a loss for words, and sighed. “Loving without hope, wanting without receiving — it truly can drive a person to madness. What you did back then was a mistake…”

Before the words were finished, his right hand reflexively seized the hilt of his sword. He moved swiftly to the bedroom door and wrenched it open.

A startled cry — and Zhuge Jingjun stumbled in from outside.

Zhuge Jun walked over. No reproach. No anger. Only a calm question: “How much did you hear?”

Zhuge Jingjun bit down on her lower lip. Only after a long pause did she answer: “All of it.”

The air within the room pressed down without form, an invisible weight slowly gathering.

Part Six

In the alchemy room of Qingfeng Monastery, medicinal fragrance coiled thickly amid wisps of purple smoke. The white-haired, white-browed Daoist Master Chiheng — who had lived nearly a century — held a slender sword, its tip pointed directly at Zhuge Jingjun’s throat. The black brocade pouch she had been clutching in her hand had not yet been slipped inside her robes.

“Please return it to its rightful place.” The master’s composure was absolute. “Theft is not an honorable act. Do not bring dishonor to the Zhuge family’s name.”

Zhuge Jingjun shook her head, teeth clenched: “Is it not the duty of those who practice the Way to drive out demons and uphold righteousness? When you possess a sacred object that could save a life and yet stand by and do nothing — is that an honorable act, Master?”

“Little girl — you only know one side of things, not the other!” Chiheng’s sword lowered slightly.

At that moment, the door was flung open. Long Renyu charged in and, at the sight of these two facing off, could not help but change his expression.

“Master — this girl doesn’t know what she’s doing! Please don’t waste your energy on her!” He took hold of Chiheng’s sword hand, then turned to snap at Zhuge Jingjun: “Return the item immediately! I brought you to the monastery for help, not for stealing!”

“He’s willing to let someone die right in front of him!” Zhuge Jingjun would not yield an inch. She glared at this insufferable old Daoist with fierce resentment. “He said himself that only the Bifang Spirit Pearl can draw out that demon — and yet he refuses to lend it! What is that if not abandoning someone to their death?”

“Ahem…” The old Daoist stamped his foot, sheathed his sword, and pointed his finger directly at Zhuge Jingjun’s nose: “The Bifang Spirit Pearl can only draw the demon out. It cannot destroy it. Do you know what will happen once the Six-Desire Demon is drawn out of its host?”

A bone-piercing cold wind crashed into the aging windows and doors, rattling them in their frames.

The howling of the wind swallowed the voices of all three people inside.

A long while passed. The wind stilled, the clouds parted, and a half-moon emerged with effort from beneath the black curtain of sky. The monastery fell into absolute silence on all sides.

“I am the daughter of a water god. Though I only carry half of immortal blood — what you speak of, perhaps, will not happen in my case.” Zhuge Jingjun broke the long silence with a smile directed at Chiheng.

“Jingjun, do you understand—” Long Renyu looked at this stubbornly unreasonable girl: “If the way things unfold is the ‘perhaps’ you are not hoping for…”

“Do you have a better method?” She cut him off.

Chiheng hurled his sword to the ground, shaking his head and crying out repeatedly: “Ill-fated bond! Ill-fated bond!”

“Whether the bond is good or ill — does it matter so very much?” Zhuge Jingjun lowered her eyes and smiled. “What matters is that I know what I have to do. That is enough. If it truly is an ill-fated bond — then let it end with me. I only want him to live on, no matter what unforgivable wrongs he committed in the name of love. What I am now and what he was back then — we are the same. For one person’s sake, willing to stop at nothing.” Zhuge Jingjun gripped the brocade pouch tightly in her hand, and stepped out of Qingfeng Monastery into the first faint light of dawn.

Part Seven

When the insect-person — widely known among the demon world as an omniscient intelligence broker — brought me back the news I had asked for, my first thought was: if I don’t kill Zhuge Jun, I have lived as a demon in vain.

Zi Miao should have lived on properly in this world. Even if the person at his side were no longer me.

My bone-deep agony at Zi Miao’s disappearance had never left me. In eighteen years, beyond the pain, I had occasionally wondered — how could the old beings of the heavenly realm have found out so swiftly about his love affair with a mortal woman? I had even suspected at one point that the wayward dragon who had once had a falling-out with Zi Miao had informed on him. After the wayward dragon’s categorical denial, I — drained of all strength — had stopped pursuing the truth of what had caused that calamity. During that period, my heart held nothing but emptiness. Nothing but emptiness.

But eighteen years later, when the fractured pieces of my heart had gradually begun to mend, when I saw Zi Miao’s daughter about to be married, when I learned that the man she had fallen in love with was Zhuge Jun — the very man from whom I had once sensed some indescribable and nameless danger — whether out of curiosity or idle convenience, I went to those insect-people who roamed the three realms ceaselessly and sold information for a living, and asked them to look into Zhuge Jun’s background.

An inquiry with no particular purpose — and yet it pulled out another truth that struck me like a thunderbolt from the clearest sky.

The insect-person who delivered the news, upon seeing the expression in my eyes when I learned this truth, fled without even collecting payment.

I sat on the highest rock on Fulong Mountain, in the howling cold wind, from sunrise to sunset.

Fulong Mountain’s scenery — I had looked upon it for centuries. Yet never before had everything I saw been a single shade of blood-red: the sky, the cloud layers, the mist, the stones.

My eyes, every vein in my body — all flooded with the emotion called fury.

Zhuge Jun, Zhuge Jun… My fingernails dug hard into the solid rock.

The one who had informed the heavenly realm — it was him.

Eighteen years ago, in order to “reclaim” the Ni Xuechang he believed rightfully belonged to him, he had forged a covenant with that category of dark and malevolent demon called the Six-Desire Demon — offering his own body in exchange for the eternal separation of Ni Xuechang and Zi Miao.

Zi Miao had once told me: in the darkest swamps of the demon world, there bred a demon called the Six-Desire Demon — resembling a spider, with six heads, six eyes, and six legs. They used the fulfillment of human desires as bait, forming pacts with those who burned with some overwhelming craving, using their demonic power to obtain whatever their counterpart most desperately wanted. But as the price of exchange, they would enter the counterpart’s body and devour everything belonging to that “host” — whether quickly or slowly — until they became the master of that shell. And that was not all. Once fully integrated with their human vessel, the Six-Desire Demon would proceed to consume every person close to that individual, one after another. The more people they consumed, the stronger the creature would grow.

Naturally, when forming the pact, the Six-Desire Demon would reveal none of this. They would only say: I will fulfill your every desire. All you need do is lend me your body to dwell in for a few days. Once my strength is restored, I will leave of my own accord.

The moment one allowed the Six-Desire Demon to enter one’s body, there was no possibility of ever making it leave. From that point on, a smug, shadowed voice inside one’s own body would remind the host at any moment — Forgive me — your body, your identity, will very soon be mine. Beginning with those you care for most, everything around you will become the food I love best.

Over countless ages, those who fell for this trick were legion.

Zi Miao had once said: the Six-Desire Demon was the most inexhaustible and indestructible demon in this world. As long as humans still harbored near-frenzied desire, they would always have a place to exist.

To have wants, to have hopes, to have desires of all kinds — all of that was entirely natural. But the one who can master desire is a human being. The one mastered by desire is only a monster.

Zhuge Jun was the finest example of a human being becoming a monster.

I began to understand why, after the Zhuge family enterprise passed into his hands, it had grown at such a frantic rate. And why he — once gentle, even timid — had become so ruthless and decisive, stopping at nothing to achieve his ends.

These were the manifestations of the Six-Desire Demon eroding his flesh and mind. This demon creature twisted and inflated human desire to limitless proportions, seeking to use that grotesque yet formidable power — with the host as its starting point — to eventually swallow the entire world.

Ni Xuechang was Zhuge Jun’s greatest “desire.”

Zhuge Jun and she had been childhood companions. Zhuge Jun loved her to his very core, and their betrothal had long been settled. Then Zi Miao appeared and shattered Zhuge Jun’s dream entirely.

He could not understand how years of affection with Xuechang had been unable to outweigh a chance encounter with a stranger at the shores of Lake Dongting.

Xuechang felt she owed him an explanation and told him: she and Zi Miao were bound by destiny — from the very creation of heaven and earth, from when she was still Lady Xuechang the celestial orchid incarnate, she had belonged only to Zi Miao. Even though this bond had led to her being banished to the mortal realm and reborn through several lifetimes, Zi Miao would always find her. They were each other’s fated ones — a fact that would never change.

That day, he left in silence, drowning in despair and hatred, consumed by the desire to reclaim Xuechang at any cost…

The Six-Desire Demon’s promise was: to make Zi Miao disappear.

He accepted without hesitation. He signed his name on the demon’s contract, and opened the door for the Six-Desire Demon to take residence within his body.

The news spread quickly through the heavenly realm: the Lord of the Four Waters, no less, had taken a mortal woman as his lover and even fathered a child with her. This was the greatest desecration of divine status, a disgrace to the entire heavenly realm. Those immortals who had long harbored grievances against Zi Miao seized the chance to pile on, submitting memorial after memorial to the Celestial Emperor — calling for a three-year drought to punish the mortal world, to teach those lowly mortals that the divine were above all and beyond all reach.

Their actions, in the end, drove Zi Miao to use his entire vital essence as rainfall — nourishing the world, saving all living things from the depths of suffering.

Zi Miao’s disappearance brought peace to the mortal world. And brought me an unending pain.

Zhuge Jun — what could you ever use to repay this debt?!

In all these eighteen years, had it not been for his younger brother — who had some knowledge of Daoist arts — using the Heaven-Granted Seal to suppress the Six-Desire Demon within his body, Zhuge Jun would long since have been entirely consumed. And yet even so, the demonic nature of the Six-Desire Demon still periodically compromised his judgment — beyond its manifestation in the extreme actions of expanding the Zhuge family’s power, even something as petty as forcibly placing Zi Miao’s daughter under his own surname gave him a strange and abnormal sense of “satisfaction.”

But the longer the Six-Desire Demon remained within its host, the more powerful it grew. The one that had been forced into dormancy would have its day of fully waking. And Long Renyu’s Heaven-Granted Seal had a potency of no more than eighteen years — it could no longer hold it back as of now. Within a month at most, the Six-Desire Demon would completely replace Zhuge Jun. And the first to suffer at that point would be those closest to him.

Zhuge Jingjun would not escape this disaster.

And the simplest and most effective method I knew — was to kill Zhuge Jun before the Six-Desire Demon broke free of the Heaven-Granted Seal’s hold. If Zhuge Jun died, the Six-Desire Demon would vanish along with its host, without a trace. The world would be at peace.

But at this moment, the gaze with which Zhuge Jingjun looked at him rose unbidden into my mind.

It was the most genuine, most profound, most devoted signal in all the world.

Yes. If I were to act, I would be killing the man she loved most.

And Jingjun — Zi Miao’s daughter — was the person whose happiness I most wished for.

That contradiction made my head split with pain.

In the end I drew a long breath, leapt down from the rock, and walked quickly toward the mountain’s base.

Part Eight

Zhuge Jun lay on the bed, breathing steadily, as though simply asleep.

But Long Renyu was sprawled sideways on the floor several steps from the bedroom door, drenched through, pinned to the ground as though glued there — completely unable to move.

The room was in disarray. Signs of a struggle.

What held Long Renyu down was a water barrier — not yet the work of an especially seasoned practitioner. This was Zi Miao’s signature technique, as well as the divine power innate to a child of the water god. Only she had not yet mastered it with full proficiency — perhaps it had been a desperate, improvised use of what strength she had.

But it was more than enough to immobilize Long Renyu, a mortal man.

Long Renyu of course recognized immediately that I was not human. His instincts also told him that I was, in this moment, the only one he could trust and turn to for help.

I released the barrier holding him down — though even so, he could not stand. Even at only half of Zi Miao’s power, Zhuge Jingjun’s technique was still not something a mortal like him could simply absorb. I estimated it would be at least three days before Long Renyu returned to normal.

This was the power of a god.

“She — swallowed the Bifang Spirit Pearl!” Long Renyu didn’t even ask who I was, only cried out with urgency. “Go find her! Hurry!”

This fool!!

I cursed inwardly, furrowed my brow, and shot out of the Zhuge Estate at full speed.

The Bifang Spirit Pearl — refined from the feathers of the ancient divine bird Bifang — was in truth not an object of any particularly extraordinary power on its own. Only when swallowed by a person, and merged with that person’s vital energy, would it produce a remarkable kind of “pull.” Using the supremely yang force of the fire god Bifang, it could draw every demon from the darkest yin depths into the swallower’s own body — using flesh and bone as a cage, preventing such creatures from ever escaping.

There had been certain reckless sorcerers throughout history who used this device to capture demons.

But the Six-Desire Demon was no ordinary demon. They fed on human desire as their most fundamental sustenance. Once inside a human body — as long as the host had any “desire” within them — the Six-Desire Demon had the means to feed upon it and grow. They were impossible to eliminate completely.

And you — Zhuge Jingjun — do you think you are without desire?!

Even if she used the Bifang Spirit Pearl to draw the Six-Desire Demon out of Zhuge Jun’s body and into her own, it would not solve the problem at its root. It would only give the Six-Desire Demon a new host. And for this demon, Zhuge Jingjun’s value as a host would actually be greater than Zhuge Jun’s.

Because Zhuge Jingjun carried the blood of a half-god. Recklessly using the Bifang Spirit Pearl like this, combined with a Six-Desire Demon that had been concealed within Zhuge Jun’s body for a full eighteen years — I truly did not dare speculate what would happen next.

I was familiar with her scent. Finding her would not be difficult.

The direction she had gone was toward Smoke-Rain Gap.

I knew — through Smoke-Rain Gap was the highest cliff for a hundred li in any direction. Below the cliff was a deep pool of water, its bottom unfathomable. It was a place from which, once one fell, there was no coming back.

Part Nine

The palanquin curtain I flung aside revealed an exquisitely stunning red wedding gown — but the face beneath it was not the beautiful-as-a-celestial-maiden Zhuge Jingjun. Instead, there was an ugly, distorted head that had grown six eyes.

“Ahhh!! A demon!! A demon!!” Those who saw this screamed and fled.

Those six constantly rotating eyes were waiting for me.

I was certain — the “demon” before me was undeniably Zhuge Jingjun.

This was the consequence of her reckless misuse of the Bifang Spirit Pearl!

The Six-Desire Demon drawn out of Zhuge Jun was consuming her at a speed far beyond the ordinary.

A strange, droning, humming sound issued from within her body. The ugly head suddenly began to sway left and right, and those six eyes clearly showed an expression of agony.

The head swayed faster and faster — until all I could see was a blur of grey motion. The sight was grotesque in the extreme.

When that unnatural “movement” finally stopped, Zhuge Jingjun’s ashen face reappeared before me. She bit down hard on her lips and pressed both hands against her head, murmuring to herself: “Hold on… you are Zhuge Jingjun. Not a demon… you cannot let it take control before you reach there…”

She climbed out of the palanquin and lurched forward at a run, her vivid robes stained and filthy with rain and mud.

My suspicion was confirmed. The place she was heading for — was that point of no return.

To perish in the depths of the pool, leaving no trace of bones — that was the most complete way to destroy the Six-Desire Demon. She must have thought so.

Time was short. For the first time in my life, I revealed my form before her.

“Jingjun!” I called her name, seizing her arm with one hand.

She turned. Her eyes were frantic and unrecognizing.

“Who are you? Let go of me!” She struggled like a person gone mad, trying to wrench herself from my grip.

“You are not going anywhere!” My fingers flicked, and a talisman appeared between them. I pressed it swiftly against the center of her back.

White smoke rose from beneath the paper. She cried out in pain. Her body froze in place.

But, far beyond what I had expected — in only a moment, a layer of black mist surged from her body, and it physically knocked my immobilizing talisman off and away.

Her head transformed in an instant back to its ugly form, and the previously frozen limbs began to show signs of movement.

I knew I was not a particularly powerful tree demon — at least not yet, in terms of my current cultivation. But I had not imagined my technique would be broken so quickly by that Six-Desire Demon.

In an instant, the one whose actions were constrained — was me. The no-longer-human-nor-ghost Zhuge Jingjun’s arms became as sinuous and sharp-edged as a serpent, and they coiled around my arms in ring after ring, then extended from my arms to wrap around my entire body, and then — naturally — my neck.

I could not break free. The arms restraining me had no weight, yet had immense strength, like solid chains that had bypassed skin and flesh to lock directly around my bones.

“Don’t…” At the moment of crisis, she shook her head in anguish. That strange face reverted to her own.

Two forces within her body were in constant contention — one her humanity, one the demonic nature.

Watching a person continuously shift their appearance before you — now human, now demon — would in any other setting be something of a darkly absurd spectacle. But I could not laugh now. If Zhuge Jingjun’s battle with herself failed, I would become that Six-Desire Demon’s first meal.

After a strange and prolonged shriek, she stopped shifting. Her head locked into its demonic form. And not only had she six eyes — the head itself began to split. From one it became six, each mouth stretched wide, exposing rows of dark green fangs.

Those ferocious, rotating eyes fixed me with a gaze of pure greed.

I have never feared death. But I did not want to die at the hands of something this repulsive. Besides — if I died, who would save Zi Miao’s daughter?

I gathered every bit of spiritual energy within me and tried to break free. But the harder I pushed, the tighter the coiling arms constricted. The force I exerted seemed only to produce the opposite effect.

Those arrogant, writhing heads broke into hideous grins. Their mouths stretched wider and wider — and then, as one, they lunged toward my body to bite.

I shut my eyes and turned my head aside.

At the most critical instant, a blast of scorching heat grazed past my ear, accompanied by a sound like lightning splitting the sky — and the grip around my body, which had nearly choked the breath from me, suddenly loosened entirely.

I opened my eyes. Those two serpentine arms had released me. The demonically transformed Zhuge Jingjun had been struck by a fierce and vigorous force, hurled heavily to the ground ten feet away from where I stood.

I turned back. A massive dragon armored in purple scales stood coiled in the air, head held high, tail upright — great nostrils breathing out heat.

Ao Chi?!

I was taken aback.

Zhuge Jingjun picked herself up from the ground. Her six heads swayed in evident discomfort, and her blood-red engorged eyes glared with fury at Ao Chi, who had arrived so unexpectedly.

She let out a strange cry and launched herself into the air — heedless of her own life — hurling herself at Ao Chi.

The look Ao Chi turned on her was the look one gives a particularly despised cockroach. This dragon who was always insufferably full of himself opened his mouth in the manner of someone about to yawn.

“Don’t hurt her! She’s Zi Miao’s daughter!” I shouted.

Knowing Ao Chi’s explosive temperament — if he struck, it would be with the intent to annihilate.

But he seemed to hear nothing of what I said.

A golden flame edged in deep blue shot from his mouth, instantly enveloping Zhuge Jingjun where she lunged.

I watched her — surrounded by a sea of flame — without even the strength to scream, only writhing desperately in what was futile struggle.

The East Sea Dragon Clan was the master of both water and fire. This lawless wayward dragon was clearly intent on her life.

I watched as Zhuge Jingjun, beneath the roaring flames, was reduced to a large mass of blackened charcoal and fell from the sky to the ground.

Ao Chi retracted his flames and reverted to human form, walking to stand beside that “black lump,” clicking his tongue: “Done…”

“Ao Chi!” Fury and panic surged through me. I stepped forward and grabbed him by the front of his robe. “Have you lost your mind?! The one you just burned to death is Zi Miao’s daughter! His daughter!”

“I saved your life,” Ao Chi pointed out.

“Who asked you to save me! Who asked you to breathe fire wherever you please!” I was beside myself — nearly wanting to bite this man who made decisions without consulting anyone.

“Hysterical woman!” Ao Chi shrugged with the air of someone too superior to argue.

Just then, a strange movement came from the “black lump.”

I looked closely. Countless cracks were spreading across it, and from each fissure a faint blue light shone through.

A sharp crackling burst — and the black lump was suddenly riven apart by those blue rays of light, shattering into countless pieces that flew in all directions.

A completely whole and unharmed Zhuge Jingjun lay with her eyes closed, curled in on herself, in the space left by the shattered black lump — her chest rising and falling faintly. She looked like a butterfly that had just broken free of its chrysalis, resting serenely.

And those fragments of black charcoal — they began to crawl across the ground like insects, gathering together at last into a black spider-like creature with six heads, six eyes, and six legs, scrambling frantically forward.

Ao Chi moved only one finger. A bolt of lightning flew from its tip and struck the creature precisely. After a strange chittering cry, the creature dissolved into a heap of black ash — and in moments the passing cold wind swept it cleanly away.

“That was…” I stared somewhat blankly.

“Just a Six-Desire Demon.” Ao Chi was entirely unmoved. “What else did you think it was?”

The legendary Six-Desire Demon — fearsome, said to be so difficult to destroy, the problem that so many had gone to such lengths to solve — had just been dealt with by this wayward dragon?

I gave him a skeptical sideways look and said: “Didn’t they say that the Six-Desire Demon will never leave its host unless the host dies?”

“Believing everything you hear makes you a fool.” Ao Chi cast me a proud glance. “We of the East Sea Dragon Clan possess a divine nature that innately restrains all evil gods. I can tell you with complete and absolute certainty: the South Sea True Flame breathed by the East Sea Dragon Clan is the sharpest weapon for eliminating all demons. Any person burned by the South Sea True Flame — no demon can remain within their body. To put it simply: what I breathed was not destruction. It was purification. This woman is fine now. No Six-Desire Demon will trouble her again.”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?” I struck him.

“Did you ever ask my opinion?” Ao Chi pursed his lips with a dismissive air. “You always make decisions on your own.”

“You…” I knew I was in the wrong.

That wayward dragon had accompanied me for eighteen years. And for those eighteen years, my greatest pastime had been to pretend he did not exist.

“I’d rather not waste words on you.” I stuck my tongue out at him and went to lift the unconscious Zhuge Jingjun, my heart aching a little as I brushed the mud from her body.

“No good deed goes rewarded,” Ao Chi said with displeasure. “I might as well have let the Six-Desire Demon eat you.”

“How did you know all of this?” I remembered I had not told him much about Zhuge Jingjun’s situation.

“The insect-people know everything.” Ao Chi grew smug. “The payment I gave them was ten times what you promised. Also — your outstanding debts with that crowd. I settled them. No need to thank me.”

His expression was that of a child who had successfully stolen a treat.

In truth, I had wanted to thank him.

But the moment I looked at his shameless, breezy manner, every word of gratitude was blocked back inside.

“She should wake before too long.” I looked at Zhuge Jingjun lying in my arms.

“Three days at most,” Ao Chi confirmed. “But there may be some lingering effects after she wakes.”

My heart skipped. “What kind of lingering effects?”

“The South Sea True Flame purged the Six-Desire Demon from her — but it also removed most of the divine power within her body.” Ao Chi continued: “In other words — she is no longer the daughter of a water god. She is now no different from an ordinary mortal woman. You should know: we of the East Sea Dragon Clan are extraordinarily powerful. Even gods are not something we’d take seriously.”

Hearing this, I felt something release in me.

Being a mortal woman — for her, that was probably a good thing.

“Let’s take her back to the Zhuge Estate,” I suggested. “When she wakes, the person she most wants to see certainly isn’t you or me.”

“As you like.” Ao Chi’s eyes shifted. “Wait — are you really not going to deal with Zhuge Jun?”

“If I were going to deal with him, I would have done so back at the Zhuge Estate.” I let out a slow breath. “After the Six-Desire Demon was forcibly extracted from his mortal body, he’s little more than a breath above death.”

“You’re truly letting him go?” Ao Chi disbelieved this entirely. “Weren’t you just a moment ago with a face full of blood-deep vengeance?”

“See mirror, see you — can you understand what that means?” I turned the question back on him.

“I loathe flowery language,” he said bluntly.

“Every other person is a mirror to us. In them, we will always see some reflection of ourselves.” I looked at Zhuge Jingjun’s face. “Zhuge Jingjun, Zhuge Jun — what they have done, we ourselves have done at some point. What they have struggled with and been bound up in — we have felt as well. Everyone who has ever had a desire, an obsession — they are all, at heart, alike.” I looked up at him. “If that is so — then to spare another is to spare yourself.”

Ao Chi thought carefully over my words, and after a while said: “I don’t quite understand it. But it seems to make a bit of sense. In any case — as long as you don’t do anything as foolish as nearly getting yourself eaten by another demon again, I’ll be at ease.”

My face flushed immediately.

I knew. From this day forward, Ao Chi had one more thing to tease me about.

But from the bottom of my heart — I was grateful for his existence.

He carried Zhuge Jingjun on his back, one hand steadying her, the other hand gripping mine firmly.

Above the clouds, we turned in the direction of the Zhuge Estate.

I looked at Zhuge Jingjun draped over his shoulder, and wondered — when she swallowed the Six-Desire Demon, intending to perish with it — why had she dressed in a wedding gown, choosing to walk toward her death in the form of a joyous bride?

There was only one answer.

To wear a wedding gown for the man she loved — that was her most pure, and most impossible, “desire.”

I did not know what would unfold after we returned her to the Zhuge Estate.

I only knew — when she woke, I already knew who she would most want to see.

In truth, I still carried a knot in my heart over letting Zhuge Jun go.

But measured against that knot — Zhuge Jingjun’s happiness mattered more.

Since I had promised to protect her — why not see it through as a true act of kindness, all the way to the end…

Epilogue

I raised a cup of clear water and let it fall from the highest point of Fulong Mountain.

Sunlight from the horizon pierced through every droplet, and within each one, a tiny yet brilliant arc of seven-colored light appeared.

This was how I paid tribute to Zi Miao.

The night before, I dreamed of him. He held Xuechang’s hand and walked toward me with a smile — that smile, as warm as it had ever been.

They said only one thing to me: Thank you.

In the dream, there was also a glimpse of Zhuge Jingjun. I watched Zi Miao take a single glowing droplet from between his own brows, place it in a glass bracelet, and fasten it onto his daughter’s wrist.

I asked him — what is this?

Zi Miao smiled and said: It is one eye I have left behind.

And then Ao Chi’s booming voice woke me.

These days, he supervised my cultivation every single day, and taught me all manner of techniques — with no regard for whether I was willing to learn.

I had not set foot in the Zhuge Estate again, nor had I appeared in Zhuge Jingjun’s life again in any form.

What I had promised Xuechang — was done.

The Zhuge Jingjun of today no longer needed my protection. On the contrary — she had already begun protecting others.

But the insect-people, now entirely under my authority, would bring me news of her from time to time. Free of charge.

Life is not a fairy tale. Sometimes it simply never arrives at the perfection we have longed for.

After the Six-Desire Demon left his body, Zhuge Jun had remained sunk in unconsciousness without cease — beyond the help of any physician.

Zhuge Jingjun stayed by his side, tending to him with devoted care. She spoke to him as one would to any ordinary person, and read to him from the Records of the Grand Historian.

Time flowed past in quiet peace.

Only — in her wardrobe, every year, one more new wedding gown appeared.

She said: someday, there would certainly be one she would wear.

At last I set my worry to rest. When a person learns to use hope in place of desire — that is when they have truly grown up.

Though I am only a tree demon, though I am still imperfect — I too am learning to grow. Learning to hope. Learning forgiveness. Learning to let go.

This path of growing is not an easy one.

But I will keep walking it.

The future of this tree demon — should look quite different from the now.