In the Desolate City, there was no distinction between day and night. However, no matter how grievous their crimes might have been before entering, the city’s inhabitants were still human. Accustomed to being active during the day and resting at night, they maintained this rhythm. At fixed hours, the great bell hanging on the city wall would toll, its sound echoing across the entire desert, marking the passage of time.
The dwelling Nu Yuan arranged for Er Sheng and Chang Yuan appeared to be an ordinary small house from the outside, but its interior was entirely different from the homes of common people. Inside was only a dark hole in the ground. Following the stairs down, one would find the actual living quarters below. In the Desolate City where night never fell, people were accustomed to sleeping in darkness, hence the habit of living underground.
Er Sheng lit a candle and sat quietly in the pitch-black cave for a while. Finding herself unable to sleep, she grabbed her blanket and tried to sneak into Chang Yuan’s room. However, just as she stepped outside, she encountered Nu Yuan again.
Er Sheng pouted, “What do you want now?”
Nu Yuan gave her a bland look: “You wish to share his bed?”
“Of course,” Er Sheng assumed she would interfere again and quickly adopted a defensive stance. “Don’t think you can separate us by constantly interrupting our intimate moments. We’ve already shared a bed before!”
“You two truly care for each other,” Nu Yuan spoke softly, her gloomy voice still frightening but somehow more genuine than usual. “I can sense it…”
She lowered her gaze and turned away, her figure appearing somewhat desolate in the wind. For a moment, Er Sheng seemed to understand what Chang Yuan had mentioned—envy. She envied them.
Er Sheng watched her retreating figure and blinked, “If you want a man, why not just take one?”
“Er Sheng?” Chang Yuan heard the commotion outside and opened his door. Seeing Er Sheng standing there with her blanket, he asked, “Are you afraid to sleep alone?”
Er Sheng was naturally bold and wasn’t afraid of sleeping alone—she simply wanted to be with Chang Yuan. She casually replied, “Mm, scared,” and immediately squeezed her way into his room. “Let’s sleep together tonight.”
After saying this, she scampered down into the underground chamber, leaving Chang Yuan standing alone outside. Lost in thought, a sudden blush crept up to his ears. Chang Yuan covered his chest, feeling his increasingly unstable heartbeat, and muttered worriedly, “Such matters… I have no experience…”
But as it turned out, Chang Yuan had overthought things.
When he stiffly entered the underground chamber, Er Sheng had already spread her blanket on the bed and burrowed underneath it. She patted the space beside her and said, “Come sleep, Chang Yuan. Today was exhausting.” With that, she covered her head and promptly fell asleep.
Chang Yuan stood foolishly by the bedside. His usually stoic and slow-witted self suddenly felt the urge to smile wryly.
So it was just sleeping together…
For a moment, Chang Yuan couldn’t tell if the feeling in his heart was relief or inexplicable disappointment.
That “night,” a haunting song drifted through the Desolate City, floating and disturbing the dreams of countless people.
Chang Yuan lay in bed, tilting his head to study Er Sheng’s sleeping features, just as he had done for all these years. The immortals of Wu Fang all said Er Sheng had changed much over the years, but to Chang Yuan, she remained exactly as she had been when they first met—straightforward to the point of recklessness, with clear and spirited eyes, absent-minded yet not at all confused.
If anyone had changed, it was probably him…
Whenever he looked at Er Sheng now, he increasingly wanted to bite her—her cheeks, her lips, as if taking a bite would taste as sweet as honey…
The next day, when the bell on the city wall tolled, Er Sheng was holding a lock of Chang Yuan’s hair, gripping it tightly as if afraid he would run away. Chang Yuan remained awake, watching her. Only when Er Sheng’s eyelashes began to flutter, showing signs of waking, did he close his eyes and pretend to be asleep.
Er Sheng let out a big yawn next to his ear, then wiggled around, her fingers still clutching his hair, pulling it somewhat painfully.
After a while, Er Sheng finally woke up completely. Seeing the person beside her, she froze for a moment. The first thing she did was pinch Chang Yuan’s nose. At Chang Yuan’s level of cultivation, holding his breath for several months wouldn’t be a problem, but since Er Sheng wanted to play, Chang Yuan couldn’t bear to disappoint her. So he pretended to run out of breath and opened his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Chang Yuan’s voice sounded strange with his nose pinched.
Er Sheng dazedly released her hand and said, “I wanted to check if it was really Chang Yuan… Good, you’re alive and warm.”
Chang Yuan’s heart stirred at her words, feeling an inexplicable pain. He stroked her head: “I’ll stay with you from now on, alright?”
“You’ve said such things before…”
Faced with Er Sheng’s doubt, Chang Yuan struggled to respond. After a long pause, he said, “Before, I didn’t let you see me firstly because I still had unsealed bindings and couldn’t return to human form or speak, and secondly… seeing you living happily in Wu Fang, I thought perhaps spending your life that way wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Being with Chang Yuan is the best,” Er Sheng said. “Although Master and Senior Sister treat me very well… they’re not Chang Yuan.”
Perhaps Er Sheng herself didn’t know what was truly best for her. She simply stubbornly believed Chang Yuan was the most important person in her life, like an imprinted bird, once determined, never to change.
Chang Yuan could only stroke her head again, feeling the urge to bite her resurface.
He got up from the bed, almost hastily: “Let’s… go wash up first.”
Er Sheng obediently got out of bed and ran to Chang Yuan’s side. Before he could react, she stood on tiptoe and planted a quick kiss on his cheek, saying, “I just like you and want to be with you.” Having said this, she strutted out of the underground chamber without waiting to see his reaction.
In the chamber lit by only two lamps, Chang Yuan touched his cheek, lowered his gaze in a daze for a long while, and then suddenly broke into a foolish grin.
Besides the constant wind and sand that drifted through the air and its human inhabitants, there were no other living things in the Desolate City.
Er Sheng was bored, and the other people in the Desolate City were even more bored. Before long, she had become familiar with the city guards. These guards had been in the Desolate City for a long time and had long lost the fierce temperament they had when they first entered. They passed their days idly until their destiny plates showed their time was up, and then they could die.
They liked to ask newcomers about the outside world, hearing what new things had happened, and what discoveries had been made. That sense of life’s endless cycle and the world’s vibrant vitality was completely absent in the Desolate City.
Er Sheng loved telling stories. Any small matter became fascinating when she told it, capturing everyone’s full attention. Their emotions followed her narrative—cursing Ji Wu’s rigid ways when hearing how she entered Wu Fang only to nearly be expelled, sighing in sympathy when she broke her senior sister’s things and was punished.
Whenever she was animatedly telling stories to people, Chang Yuan would stand behind the crowd, watching her with gentle eyes. Though he didn’t smile, his expression was extraordinarily tender.
After several days of this, just as Er Sheng was becoming familiar with the guards, Nu Yuan suddenly sent word that the time to send Chang Yuan out of the Desolate City was approaching, and she would allow Er Sheng to leave with him.
Er Sheng had thought she would need to negotiate with Nu Yuan for much longer and was surprised by her easy agreement. Chang Yuan, however, spoke as if he had expected this: “Though she was formed from resentment, her heart isn’t bad. As a woman herself, she naturally understands the suffering here and won’t make things difficult for you. Just remember not to commit any serious crimes in the future…”
Before Chang Yuan could finish, Er Sheng interrupted him. She had only heard the first part and said, “If the Desolate City is so miserable, and she can send us out, why doesn’t she send herself out? Does she like it here?”
Chang Yuan gazed at the towering city walls in the distance and said, “Perhaps there’s something she can’t let go of.”
Er Sheng didn’t understand: “I heard the guards say that Nu Yuan was already the city lord long before they came. What could make someone willingly stay in such a place for hundreds of years?”
Chang Yuan shook his head, saying he didn’t know. Er Sheng thought for a moment, then said, “But if Chang Yuan were here, I would willingly stay too.”
Chang Yuan stroked Er Sheng’s head, keeping the words “Me too” buried in his heart.
He wasn’t good at saying such things. Precisely because they remained unspoken, he remembered them more firmly and acted on them more thoroughly.
That day they went to see Nu Yuan, who maintained her usual lifeless demeanor: “Every fifty years, I can open the Infinite Desolate City once to grant special pardon to one person and let them leave. But every time, those qualified to leave no longer wish to go.”
After staying in the Desolate City for fifty years, with no knowledge of the outside world, what was the point of leaving? Everything they once knew would have changed. For them, that world might just be another “desolate city.”
“I have accumulated many unused quotas here. Given your special circumstances, I’ll give you two.” Nu Yuan gave them each a red pill. “This medicine will help you pass through the barrier outside the city. Tomorrow when the bell tolls, the city gates will open. You can walk out then, but remember—don’t look back.”
That “night,” Er Sheng tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Perhaps it was the thought of leaving this place tomorrow that excited her. Around midnight, an eerie chanting drifted in from outside, seemingly calling to spirits, singing enough to make one’s heart cold.
Er Sheng found it even harder to sleep.
She knew Nu Yuan enjoyed howling like this every night, and normally wouldn’t mind if she heard it during midnight trips, but tonight the singing was particularly mournful. Er Sheng recalled her conversation with Chang Yuan and thought that Nu Yuan might be a pitiful person too. She put on her outer clothes and got out of bed to seek out Nu Yuan’s chambers.
Chang Yuan, lying beside her, saw Er Sheng leave. He blinked twice, turned over, and pressed his head against the pillow where Er Sheng had been lying. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes.