Under the morning sun, the light draped everything in a soft gold veil. Feng Qingyun himself did not know whether in the heart demon realm, or in Long Yin’s eyes, just how beautiful he looked in that moment.
The man froze for a heartbeat. Then, suddenly, he grabbed Feng Qingyun’s outstretched hand and yanked him tightly into his arms.
Feng Qingyun, still crying, tried to lift his arms to embrace him, but his right hand was firmly interlaced with someone else’s fingers. In the end, he could only raise his left arm, loop it weakly around the man’s shoulder, and bury his face in the hollow of his neck, sobbing softly.
Hearing the sound, the man lowered his head and kissed the tears from the corners of Feng Qingyun’s eyes.
“Why are you crying?”
Feng Qingyun shook his head through his tears. “…You never told me… that you carved a lotus hairpin for me.” He drew a shaky breath, pressing down on his choked voice before continuing, “I didn’t even get to see it once… before it shattered.”
“It’s just a hairpin. If it broke, it broke,” the man coaxed him instantly, gentle and earnest. “When we get back, I’ll carve you another. Don’t cry… be good.”
Even though that heart demon embodied Sorrow, he refused to let his emotions spill over to Feng Qingyun, softening his voice as he tried to soothe him.
But the gentler he was, the harder Feng Qingyun wanted to cry.
The heart demon held him like that for a long, long time, so long that the rising sun had already climbed past the treetops by the time Feng Qingyun finally managed to steady his turbulent emotions.
“Alright,” the man murmured softly, “it’s time for you to say my name.” “The hairpin I owe you, I’ll give it to you later.”
Feng Qingyun choked. “…You promise?”
“I do,” he replied solemnly. “I promise.”
With that, Feng Qingyun closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and at last, through tears, whispered the heart demon’s name. But the moment the syllables left his lips, the sunlight around them twisted subtly, and Feng Qingyun felt something inside his heart twist with it.
For an instant, he could not help thinking…
If he had never been reborn… If he had never come back…
Then, just like before, he would have walked straight into the tragic, lonely life Long Yin had once lived. Feng Qingyun shut his eyes again, his heart suddenly filled with a sour, overwhelming ache.
A love deeper than anything he had ever known flooded his chest, so intense it felt like it would tear his soul apart. For a moment, he almost felt relieved that the next realm should be the one representing Love, as his heart had already been shattered across the ground, and he could not withstand any more of Long Yin’s torment.
Two lifetimes’ worth of emotions, all at once, overwhelmed every bit of sense he had.
But soon, Feng Qingyun realized a bitter truth.
There was no guarantee that the next trial would be joyful. After all, only the first illusion had been simple and sweet.
Everything afterward had been harsher than the last.
………………
By the time he opened his eyes again, Feng Qingyun found himself standing upon a boundless wasteland under a dark, ominous dusk, with dried tear tracks still visible on his cheeks. Disoriented, he raised his gaze to take in his surroundings.
Smoke rolled across a savage, barren land. Everywhere he looked, the sight resembled the sky-collapsing calamity of his previous life, except… so much more horrifying.
War. Fires.
Bones that were turning white out in the open, and not a single living being in sight.
A cold premonition tightened in Feng Qingyun’s chest, as though some ancient secret, one that was buried for ten thousand years, was about to be dragged into the light.
…Was that really the realm representing Love?!
With confusion twisting in his eyes, Feng Qingyun walked along what barely qualified as a road, but even the plants and terrain here differed from anything he recognized. He instinctively assumed that must be…
What Long Yin experienced before they first met in the dragon God’s illusion.
But the longer he walked, the more wrong it felt. His dragon God’s realm had no cultivation and no spiritual energy, yet that barren wasteland pulsed with a heavy, rich aura.
So… Where was he?!
Something was stirring.
Something that was about to break free.
Feng Qingyun frowned as he approached a pile of shattered stones. He wiped away the dried tears at the corner of his eye, then turned…
And froze.
Not far ahead, Long Yin leaned against the rubble, dressed in a black cultivator robe and propping himself up with his left hand on his sword.
And just like before, when the heavens collapsed in Feng Qingyun’s past life, his right arm was… gone.
Nothing left but blood dripping to the ground.
But the most shocking thing was his robe, the very same one worn by that mysterious sword cultivator they saw in Xuanwu’s ruins, right before Feng Qingyun bloomed. In the end, Feng Qingyun stood there like an ancient tree struck by lightning, as every clue, every unanswered question, linked together in an instant. The truth erased by the Mengpo Soup surged back to the surface, but Feng Qingyun couldn’t reconcile one thing.
Inside Xuanwu’s ruins, that man clearly looked nothing like Long Yin, so why…
A crushing pain spread through his chest, making it impossible to breathe, but before he could gather himself, a figure appeared under the dying sunlight.
Someone was walking toward them from afar, but the person looked strangely bulky, as if dragging something heavy behind. Feng Qingyun instinctively straightened and stepped forward, and when the figure came close enough, he saw…
A man who was carrying a severed head in one hand, its face unrecognizable, with three blood-soaked fox tails dragging behind him.
Feng Qingyun’s eyes widened.
A heavenly nine-tailed fox demon.
One that was badly maimed and barely still clinging to his life.
The next second, the fox reached Long Yin, opened his mouth, and raged: “…Tian Dao1!”
Feng Qingyun jolted violently. Frozen for what felt like an eternity, he turned, stiffly, toward the one-armed youth slumped against the stones. He scarcely dared to breathe as the fox demon tossed the severed head at Long Yin’s feet in rage.
“Go find someone else to help you save the world,” he snapped. “I quit!”
But after saying that, he didn’t leave. Instead, he merely shuffled a short distance away and sat down heavily, his tails, once snowy white, now soaked with blood and grime.
Long Yin’s eyes regained the faintest hint of focus. Then, weakly, he spoke in a voice completely unlike the Long Yin Feng Qingyun knew.
“…Why won’t you?”
It was… a boy’s voice. Like a version of Long Yin that might have existed in his youth.
“Why?!” the fox demon scoffed. “Because you can’t kill them all!” With that, he grabbed the severed head, letting it rest beside him. “Immortal cultivators…” he mumbled, “as many as the stars above…”
The young Long Yin’s eyes flickered. “And if you can’t kill them all,” he asked, “you just give up? What about Tong Tian2? Why not just die with him while you’re at it?”
With that, the temperamental heavenly fox fell strangely silent. After a long pause, the young Long Yin turned in puzzlement, just in time to see the fox demon pull something from his robes.
A handful of shattered jade.
But when he saw that, his expression remained natural and almost indifferent. In an utterly matter-of-fact and calm tone, Long Yin said, “Tong Tian is dead. That makes you a widower.”
“The one thing I’ve always been curious about,” the fox demon replied coldly, “is how a heartless, emotionless Heavenly Dao like you managed to take human form. The day your precious rose ever succeeds in transforming, if it hears you talk like this, it’ll definitely run off to find a new master.”
…What were they talking about?!
However, no one present could see Feng Qingyun, who stood frozen on the spot because of a single sentence from the fox demon. As for the young Long Yin, he merely curled his lips in a faint smile upon hearing the fox’s scolding. Then, under Feng Qingyun’s trembling gaze, he let go of his sword and, with his one remaining hand, reached into his robes and drew out a pale golden seed.
Holding it toward the dying sunlight, Long Yin’s voice carried a mixture of expectation and quiet regret as he quietly said: “…I am not its master. And I fear I won’t live to see the day it takes form.”
That Long Yin was unlike any version Feng Qingyun had ever known. His expression held a youth’s wild defiance, yet also a helplessness born from being pushed to a dead end. The fox demon did not answer, as he merely continued silently fitting together the shattered pieces of the jade pendant in his hands.
The sun, already sinking toward dusk, finally slipped behind the mountains, but who knew whether it would rise again tomorrow? As for the severed head, it quickly melted into a pool of blood, the cold moonlight above casting everything in eerie desolation.
Across the wasteland, not a trace of life remained, as though the sunset had wiped away the last breath of existence. Blood dripped from the Heavenly Dao’s severed arm, but the youth behaved as if he could not feel pain at all. After a long while, suddenly recalling something, he struggled to sit up and carefully placed the golden seed against the stump of his severed arm, letting the flowing blood pour over it.
The fox demon, still piecing together the jade pendant that was as broken as his heart, finally snapped back to himself. He stared at the scene in disbelief and, after a long silence, squeezed out: “…Now I know why we lost.”
Long Yin ignored him.
“The Heavenly Dao takes form, ascends, gains its divine seat… the tales make it sound grand and awe-inspiring…” But the fox demon went on regardless, continuing his biting mockery: “Who would’ve thought that the so-called Heavenly Dao is actually a lunatic, already on the verge of death and still clinging to a seed for a melodramatic farewell?!”
The youth did not react to the taunt as he merely wiped the seed clean after it drank its fill of blood, asking softly: “…Do you know why I transformed?”
But the fox demon had mocked him only for the sake of mocking, and wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the Heavenly Dao’s story. So he offered no response, lowering his gaze back to his broken jade treasure.
However, the Heavenly Dao continued anyway, indifferent to whether the fox listened or not. “People say the Great Dao is emotionless, but it was only because of it that I came into being. It’s a blood rose, so it requires blood to germinate; without blood, it cannot sprout at all. I don’t know when I began to take notice of it. I watched it drift from river to sea, from sea to lake, then be carried by mountain winds into the sky.”
“And still, it lived.”
“I had thought a lone seed surviving that long must owe everything to luck. But once, when a bird almost swallowed it, it used all the spiritual energy it had to change its color to gold. Someone mistook it for a golden melon seed and picked it up, thus escaping death.”
The youth wiped the seed with gentle care.
“From that moment, I knew it had consciousness. But after I began watching over it, it barely touched blood again. A blood rose should have died from lack of nourishment, yet it survived by absorbing moonlight alone.”
The Heavenly Dao paused, and in the shadow of dying, recalled his own beginning. “I came into existence because its persistence moved me. The first thought I ever had, the first thought that truly belonged to me, was this:
‘What kind of world allows a seed to live with such stubbornness?’
…So I want to see it.”
And so, just as spirits and beasts gained consciousness, the Heavenly Dao too transformed, taking on a physical form. A blood rose seed, by its sheer instinct to survive, shook the Dao itself, enough to stir heaven and earth, enough to move the Great Way, enough to shape a Heavenly Dao into human form.
But the seed knew nothing of it.
It was only a barely-sentient seed with the faintest ability to gather Qi, not yet capable of true thought. But the Heavenly Dao’s first act after taking form was to find that seed and water it with his blood every day.
And just like that, a century passed. And like a solid lump of gold, it still showed no sign of sprouting.
The fox demon broke out in goosebumps at the story, his remaining tail fur bristling in horror. “…You’re insane,” he snapped. “It’s just a seed, not your lover!”
But the Heavenly Dao’s face darkened instantly. “You’re clutching a broken stone,” he retorted sharply. “How is that any different?!”
The result of stabbing each other straight in the heart was utter, suffocating silence. The fox demon stared wordlessly at his shattered jade, while the Heavenly Dao lowered his gaze to the seed in his palm.
He had nurtured it for so long, but it was too starved. So dry that even the blood of the Heavenly Dao itself could not satisfy it enough to sprout.
And yet, Long Yin did not grow discouraged, only regretful.
Regret that even if he bled to death, the seed would never know anything.
The Heavenly Dao would not die, but simply return to emptiness, to chaos. But he, in that form, would die. And even if ten thousand years later, some emotion stirred the Dao into forming again, it would no longer be him.
No one would remember his blood rose.
So regret filled him. And the deeper the regret grew, the more desperately he wished to make up for everything here and now.
As for the fox demon, he, too, still brooded over his own “lover.” Clinging to his already cold body while fitting the jade pieces together with trembling paws, he muttered sourly: “Fed so much blood and still no sprout. Either it finds you ugly, or it’s just a rock that’ll never bloom. Stop wasting your time.”
But the Heavenly Dao shook his head with earnest conviction. “It’s not a rock,” he answered, “I’ve seen its future. It will one day become a very beautiful blood rose.”
He was the Heavenly Dao, so even maimed and dying, his divine sight remained unquestionable. And this time, not even the fox demon could refute him. Instead, he only curled his lips and sneered: “And what does that have to do with you?! You won’t be around to see it. We’re both about to die.”
The words stabbed straight into the Heavenly Dao’s chest as he fell silent. After a long time, something flickered in his fading eyes, a last scrap of hope he conjured for himself.
“If I cannot see it, someone else will. But before I die… I should give it a name. That way, even if someone picks it up someday, they won’t dare bully it.”
“You don’t even have a name yourself,” the fox demon said irritably, bleeding out and failing to put the jade back together. “And you’re naming a seed?! What’s the point? The moment someone plants it, it’ll happily call them master. Nothing to do with you.”
“I said I wasn’t its master,” the Heavenly Dao frowned. “It shouldn’t have a master… but you reminded me. I can’t let whoever finds it put a slavery contract on it.” With that, he added, suddenly turning to the fox: “…Back then, didn’t the human race create blood deeds specifically against your kind? Is there a way to prevent that contract from taking effect from the start?”
“…You’re thinking too far ahead,” the fox demon said sharply. “All the ants under Heaven are almost dead. Who’s left to bully it?”
But the Heavenly Dao only shook his head. “…There will be people later.”
The fox stared at him like he was mad, but seeing that the Heavenly Dao refused to be dissuaded, he finally sighed and said, “Fine! First, draw out your blood again and pour it on the seed…”
But as he spoke, the moonlight was swallowed by rolling fog, and his voice grew faint with exhaustion. However, Long Yin did not hesitate. He tore open his half-closed wound, let the blood gush out again, and poured it onto the golden seed.
“Then what?”
“Then use your Qi to form a spell with the blood…” The fox began reciting a spell.
The Heavenly Dao followed with blood, but halfway through, the fox fell silent.
“…Fox? Old fox?”
He called a few times with no response, clicked his tongue, and barked loudly: “Qingqiu Yuan!”
“…Stop yelling!” The fox demon’s voice trembled with weakness. “I just… forgot the last part of the incantation. If you’re naming your precious rose, do it while I try to remember…”
Then he went quiet, as if truly sinking into memory.
The Heavenly Dao paused, and after a long silence in the darkness, spoke: “On the first day I took human form, I found it on Fengwu Terrace. That day, I heard heavenly music, carried by the wind.”
“The phoenix clan’s Patriarch said I was born of providence, and that the celestial music invited me to go back to Heaven and take my divine seat.”
“But I believed all of it was for him.”
The Heavenly Dao paused again. Then, as though making a solemn vow, he continued, “I’ve chosen. My blood rose… will be called Feng Qingyun3.”
He thought he had chosen the perfect name. But when he spoke it aloud, no one praised him.
No one responded.
Even now, he realized… He, too, was growing cold. Turning his head took effort, and when he finally managed it, there was nothing but darkness.
He squinted through the blur and at last made out the silhouette of a small white fox, curled around the shattered remnants of a jade pendant, silent and still. Six of its tails had been severed at the root, with blood pooling across the ground. But the remaining three were wrapped tightly around the shattered jade.
The ill-tempered fox Patriarch, in the end, died together with his taciturn Dao companion. But even until the very last moment, he still failed to piece his lover’s body back together. As for the blood deed’s incantation, it hung incomplete in the air, suspended and unresolved. However, there was no one left alive on earth to know what the latter half of the spell was.
Long Yin stared silently at the fox demons’ corpse for a long time. Finally, with nothing left to lose, he did the only thing he could: he added the new name he had given his little rose into the half-finished incantation, and let the spell slowly fall onto that golden seed.
A faint radiance descended with the spell. The Heavenly Dao hoped, at the brink of death, to witness a miracle, but nothing happened.
The seed lay quietly in his palm, utterly unresponsive.
In the end, the Heavenly Dao let out a self-mocking laugh, lowered his head, and pressed a kiss to the golden seed.
The sun rose as usual.
In the dim morning light, he lifted his hand and flung the seed, the one he had nourished with his blood for a century, toward the east.
Sunlight spilled across the land as countless divine consciousnesses surged in from all directions. But he acted as if he sensed nothing, dragging his severed arm as he stood, using his remaining strength to bury the little fox and his jade in the valley.
Once he finished, he slowly turned around and cast his gaze toward the immortals who had appeared behind him at some unknown moment, fear and resentment written on their faces.
“I’ve been waiting for you all night. Never thought you were this useless… only now did you manage to find me.”
The young Heavenly Dao’s tone was slightly different from the Long Yin Feng Qingyun would one day know, but his sharp tongue already showed signs of what was to come. “Are you coming to die together, or do you plan on coming one by one?”
The leader’s hair stood on end, but he forced himself to speak boldly: “You’re no longer this world’s Heavenly Dao! The Qilin is dead… you’re nothing but a walking corpse! Surrender!”
Long Yin only let out a cold laugh. “And why should I surrender to the likes of you?”
The other immortals snapped, “You, as the Heavenly Dao, took human form, seemingly bringing great fortune to this realm and descending with countless spirit veins, but in truth?! For such a small world to have hundreds of Golden Core cultivators within ten thousand years, what is that, if not a mismatch of virtue?! It is you whose virtue failed to match your power!”
“Water overflowing brings disaster! As the Heavenly Dao, you ignored the safety of all living beings! Now the realm is in ruin, and your selfish desires caused every calamity! Had you not clung to mortal life, had you not insisted on living, how would the world come to this?! The Four Ancient Beasts have all died; being torn apart is the death you deserve! Better for you to offer your neck and die, so this realm might still have a sliver of hope!”
“Because of me?”
The young Heavenly Dao lifted his sword and casually swung it. The immortal who’d loudly sworn he was doomed immediately staggered backward in fear. Seeing that, Long Yin sneered. “Wasn’t all of this because you filthy parasites in the upper realm couldn’t obtain a divine throne, so you came down here to steal scraps?”
“There are only eight thousand divine thrones. Other than Tong Tian, I’ve never heard of any God abandoning his throne to descend to the mortal realm4.” The young Heavenly Dao’s voice dripped with malice as he continued, “Look at you lot, scrambling like rabid dogs over bones. But up above, weren’t you no different from livestock?”
The immortals, enraged, released their weapons, and the land below was nearly vaporized in an instant. “So what if you think you’re the Heavenly Dao?!” the leader barked, laughing in fury. “Heaven collapses, the Dao falls!”
“But if Heaven doesn’t perish,” Long Yin laughed coldly, “every one of you, immortal or not, dies.”
And with that, as if unwilling to waste another breath, he sheathed his sword. His flood of insults had already made it clear he wasn’t about to surrender, and the immortals froze in uncertainty, not daring to move.
“Death by being torn apart?” Long Yin scoffed. “My manner of death is not for trash like you to decide.” His words struck them all at once, and their faces changed.
“Not good! He’s going to…!”
But it was already too late.
A massive surge of Qi exploded outward. None had expected that the Heavenly Dao, who once took human form to survive… would choose to destroy his own foundation and die.
The force of his self-destruction was so great that it overwhelmed heaven and earth, and even the sun and moon dimmed. The immortals closest to him were obliterated instantly, their souls wiped out completely. But the cowards who’d hidden far away survived, with shattered foundations and reduced to cripples, barely held together by their artefacts.
The bodies of the dead immortals fell like fertilizer across the ruined earth, patching the fractured land. In the end, the battlefield collapsed upon itself, and everything returned to chaos.
However, the Heavenly Dao still hadn’t managed to see his little rose even once.
He didn’t even have a name before returning to extinction.
…
The world quieted.
A thousand years later, a few remaining low-level cultivators finally reached the ascension stage once more, only to discover the truth: there was nothing above it.
The Heavenly Dao was long dead.
The world mourned. They lamented his fall and despaired at their own frozen fate. And with ascension impossible, even Nascent Soul cultivators would one day become nothing but dirt. But in truth, the Heavenly Dao was born of fate, and as long as fate remained, he would never die. Even shattered and falling apart, his remaining soul refused to return to nothingness.
That would truly mean to die.
So with one last thread of life, he forcibly constructed an isolated, illusory realm, attempting to rebuild a body without relying on heaven and earth. But that sliver of the Heavenly Dao’s soul, refusing to revert to chaos, lost all memory inside the illusion. Yet instinctively, he still pushed the world’s fate forward across tens of thousands of years, seeking a path of survival for his favorite little realm. However, he could not face the betrayal of the ones he had blessed, so he could only search for answers again and again within the illusion.
And naturally, with no memories, he never knew that his rose seed had been only a breath away from sprouting. Fate was cruel, and even the Heavenly Dao, once burdened with emotions, could only be dragged along by them.
In the end, things unfolded exactly as the fox demon had warned: the seed he nurtured for a century reached the brink of sprouting, just as the Heavenly Dao reached the end of his life. And a thousand years later, the golden seed was picked up by Mu Hanyang, who was still but a young and spoiled human prince.
He treated it like a treasure and brought it to his Master, but she said it was a blood-rose seed, one that would only sprout if watered with blood.
The young Mu Hanyang froze.
Born to royalty, pampered from birth, now newly accepted into a cultivation sect, how could he willingly injure the body chosen by the heavens for the sake of a tiny seed?!
So he hesitated for three full days. At last, he decided to try feeding it a bit of blood, and if it didn’t sprout, he’d simply throw it away. But the very next day, after only a few drops of blood, the seed sprouted, as if fate had tied them together, brushing its tender shoot affectionately against his palm.
Mu Hanyang rejoiced, but because of his mother consort’s past suffering, a dark thought flickered in his mind.
Demons had no hearts. Only by binding them tightly could they truly be possessed.
So with that prejudice, he decisively attempted to place a blood deed on the newly sprouted, still mindless blood rose. However, halfway through, whether due to his weak cultivation or the seed’s stubbornness, the spell jammed and failed.
Mu Hanyang paled from depleted Qi, but he dared not ask his Master, terrified of punishment. With no other choice, he left the half-formed blood deed buried in the seedling’s bloodline, planning to complete it after it bloomed. Normally, any demon with a blood deed in their bloodline would sense it immediately, even if dormant, as Feng Qingyun experienced in his second life.
But in his past life, he never once felt that pressure.
Feng Qingyun had always assumed he was blessed or uniquely gifted, and only now did he realize that was not the case.
His suffering had simply been foretold.
The one who had watered him with blood for a century died without ever laying eyes on him, perishing in that ancient war. And he, ignorant of everything, mistook a villain for his benefactor, devoting hundreds of years of loyalty to the wrong person.
Feng Qingyun’s pain numbed to the point of emptiness. Only now did he understand, in extreme grief, that he could no longer cry.
He had already shed all his tears.
Helpless, he could only watch as the Heavenly Dao repaired himself inside the illusion for ten thousand years, eventually forming a dragon body through the hopes of his believers. Then everything unfolded as Feng Qingyun already knew.
Stripped of memory, the Heavenly Dao trusted humans again.
And was betrayed again.
Nailed alive to a stone pillar, forced to bless the ones who backstabbed him once more.
And only then did he finally see the rose he had yearned to meet. Yet he failed to recognize it, and his rose never knew that the dragon God who died for him again and again was his true nurturer from the very beginning. But in that illusion, they were not the only pair who met without recognizing each other. The dream that spanned millennia, crossing mountains and seas, could not be fulfilled in the end. Feng Qingyun watched the dragon cave collapse and finally watched his Master, Zhong Yulan, numb and sorrowful as she lit the first flames.
Fire consumed the village, then the mountain, then the entire illusory world. And from the fire, a Demon Emperor stepped toward him, one slow step at a time, softly calling: “Little Rose.”
The call that had crossed ten thousand years finally reached him, and Feng Qingyun couldn’t hold back anymore. Tears finally burst forth once more, but he cried without sound, trembling like a child. His emotions surged like a tide, drowning his reason, as countless questions clawed at his heart.
He wanted to ask if the Heavenly Dao had truly suffered dismemberment.
He wanted to ask how much blood he had shed over those hundred years.
How many times has he cut himself?
But those questions were too bitter.
Too bitter for him to speak. Too bitter for him to bear the answers.
In the end, all his anguish condensed into one small question, trivial compared to all else:
The fox ancestor said that the Heavenly Dao had no name.
Then why, the moment you were born into that illusory world, did everyone already know you as Long Yin?
But when Feng Qingyun opened his mouth, he couldn’t speak, only cried harder, choking as he struggled not to sob aloud. Seeing that, the Demon Emperor hurriedly wiped his tears, asking, “How come you’re always crying as soon as you see me?”
Feng Qingyun shook his head. After a long struggle, he finally managed to ask his question through tears.
The man blinked, then chuckled softly. “When I was born in the illusion, the moment I formed a body, I naturally knew what name I should have… All of it was because of you. What, you don’t remember?”
Feng Qingyun froze, then something clicked within him.
Long, the first impression he had when he saw the almighty, and reverent serpent-like silhouette of his God.
And Yin, from the hidden Heavenly Dao.
“Don’t be discovered. Live well.
Live until I sprout.
Live until I can repay you.
Live until I can finally see you again.”
The only thought he ever had as a seed, wandering the world in that youth’s palm. A thought that was etched into his bones, surviving the ages and remaining in his subconscious.
And together, it became his name.
Long Yin5.
But the ancient past scattered like sand in the wind, with no one left alive to remember it. And just as Feng Qingyun never remembered the blood poured over him from that broken arm, Long Yin never knew the rose he thought grew under someone else… was his from the start.
They had simply both forgotten.
Tears spilled from Feng Qingyun again, uncontrollable. No matter how the man wiped them, they wouldn’t stop.
He stood there crying silently, heartbreaking to look at.
Though that was the realm of the Love heart demon, it seemed strangely inexperienced at comforting him, unsure what to do. After a long moment, Feng Qingyun finally calmed enough to speak, his voice hoarse: “So back at the Xuanwu ruins… the person I saw was actually you…”
The man was silent for a moment, then said, “Yes. Xuanwu died not long before the scene you saw.”
He didn’t spell it out, but Feng Qingyun understood the hidden meaning.
Not long after Xuanwu died, he lost his right arm.
Before that, to hold up the collapsing sky, he had personally severed Xuanwu’s four limbs to support the heavens…
…So that was no different from dismembering himself.
Feng Qingyun shut his eyes, his chest aching as though carved by a thousand knives. After a long time, he whispered another question: “…Then why, back then, did you look different from now?”
The man paused, surprised, then his appearance subtly shifted. His aura and features remained similar, but his clothing changed from the robes worn by the Demon Emperor to those worn by the young Heavenly Dao Feng Qingyun had seen in the illusion.
Yet the face itself remained the Long Yin he knew, not the one from the ruins.
“That’s because I already died once,” said the heart demon of Love, with a small, embarrassed, and almost youthful smile. “In ancient times, that old fox and his silent companion always teased me about it. Over time, even I thought you refused to sprout back then because… You didn’t like how I looked.”
“So when I formed again in the illusion, even without memory, I still shaped myself into the appearance your subconscious preferred most.”
Feng Qingyun trembled, lifting his gaze in disbelief, while the young Heavenly Dao smiled honestly.
“I only wanted you to like me a little more.”
- 天道- tiāndào- literally Way Of Heaven. Ancient Chinese philosophy uses 天道 to refer to the laws governing the movement of celestial bodies such as the sun, moon, and stars. Idealism believes it’s a manifestation of the will of God, while materialism believes it is an objective law governing the development and change of nature. ↩︎
- So, I have made a translation mistake before. Back in chapter 27, we were introduced to Tong Tianpei, a sort of celestial jade pendant that remained as the only artefact of the former fox Patriarch, now a pretty trinket that fox children worshiped for good luck in love, placed inside a shrine in the fox territory. Back then, I translated it as the pendant being the ascended fox Patriarch, who abandoned the Heavens and came back to earth in the form of a jade stone to assist his lover, the former Demon Emperor, in that Ancient war we’re about to learn more about. Now, I see that it was the other way around. The one who ascended was the former Demon Emperor, named Tong Tian, and during the ancient war, he came back in the form of a jade pendant to assist his fox lover. So, my mistake, sorry, I went ahead and changed chapter 27 as well. So now we know that Tong Tianpei might translate as “wear something that opens the sky” as I translated it back in chapter 27, but most likely, it simply means “to wear Tong Tian”, as in he’s now the jade pendant that the former fox Patriarch is wearing. ↩︎
- 凤清韵 – Fèng Qīng Yùn, where 凤 (Fèng) means phoenix; 清 (Qīng) means clear/clean; and 韵 (Yùn) means rhyme. Long Yin named him like that because he heard heavenly music while in the phoenix clan’s territory, and while the phoenix Patriarch thought the music was for the Heavenly Dao, Long Yin believed the heavenly music was to greet his little seed. ↩︎
- So, how I see it, there are multiple lower, middle, and upper worlds, with the heavenly realm above it all, where actual Gods live. All cultivators, coming from all of those little words, struggle to “ascend” as in becoming a God themselves and move from their word to the Heavenly realm. But apparently, the God places are limited, so unless one of the Gods voluntarily gives up his powers and becomes a mortal again, as Tong Tian did, no other cultivators can ascend. When Long Yin, as the will of Heaven itself, became interested in Feng Qingyun’s seed, he came to this little, lower realm to meet him. However, his coming here gave a lot of energy and opportunity to this particular small world, so its cultivators were blessed, and a lot of them managed to cultivate until they were just about to ascend, more than would have naturally been possible if the Heavenly Dao hadn’t come. Therefore, there were suddenly a lot of contenders for the limited God spots, all of them coming from a small, insignificant world. That annoyed the so-called “immortals” from the middle and upper worlds, who considered that their own opportunities were being robbed by the Heavenly Dao and given to unworthy ants. So they all came to this little world to basically annihilate everyone, so it would still be them who have a chance to ascend. ↩︎
- Okay, let’s see. So, Long Yin’s name is 龙隐, translated before as “hidden dragon”. While 隐 indeed means “hidden”, 龙 refers specifically to the Chinese dragon, or a loong, as I just found out the word exists. Some voices on the Internet are very adamant on translating 龙 as “loong” and not “dragon”, as the animal it refers to is vastly different from the Western impression of a dragon. So, in my ignorance, I have called him Hidden Dragon for so long, but he’s not really a dragon. Okay, now, loong is a mythological creature that looks like a combination of many animal parts, including the body of a snake, the head of a horse, the talons of an eagle, and the antlers of a deer. It’s often depicted flying in the clouds, though it does not have wings like its European counterparts. Another difference is that the loong is associated with water, and not fire like dragons, and it’s regarded in legends as the king of water who rules over rain. It is also a divine being and a sign of fortune and good luck, and not an evil creature like the dragons in Western stories. So in our story, Feng Qingyun’s wish as a seedling was for Long Yin to survive and absolutely thrive. He wanted him to hide his origins as the Heavenly Dao, so history wouldn’t repeat itself, but he also wanted him to have a long and blessed life, with the best fortune and as good a karma as possible. That led to Long Yin’s remaining soul taking the form of a loong, since in Chinese mythology, it represents just that: an extremely auspicious symbol, the sign of the Emperor himself, something that is the herald of good luck and power. Just a complete winner in life with great karma all around, and just the best of the best, fulfilling Feng Qingyun’s wish for him to be reborn as something that won’t have to suffer anymore. ↩︎
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