No one had expected it.
Grand Tutor Cangsong had not come down from his mountain in more than ten years.
And yet, he was there that evening, in the Great Imperial Banquet Hall, his hands behind his back, serene like someone out for a stroll.
Whispers erupted the moment they crossed the threshold.
“That’s Grand Tutor Cangsong…”
“He’s really here…”
“And that girl…
holding his arm…”
“Who is she?”
Tianyin was not looking anywhere in particular.
She held the Grand Tutor’s arm with natural ease, her head slightly tilted toward him, and imperiously ignored the stares.
Yanlong walked to the master’s right.
His arms crossed.
Tall.
Impassive.
Beautiful enough to take one’s breath away, a beauty that many people in that hall would have paid dearly not to admit.
Those who hated him smiled at him anyway.
The kind of smile learned in childhood, polite, hollow, never reaching the eyes.
Yanlong knew them all.
He had counted them long ago.
They bowed before the Emperor.
The Emperor raised a hand with the benevolence of a man who had eaten and drunk enough to be in a good mood.
“Cangsong.
It has been more than ten years since your mountain kept you for itself.
It is a great honor to receive you tonight.”
The old master bowed with the tranquility of someone who no longer needed to prove anything to anyone.
“The honor is mine, Your Majesty.
The occasion was too good to pass up.”
His gaze slid toward Yanlong for a fraction of a second.
Yanlong said nothing.
“Take your seats,” the Emperor said.
“Tonight, we eat, we drink, and we are happy.
That is an order.”
Polite laughter spread throughout the hall.
The food was good.
The wine flowed freely.
Yanlong stood, a glass in hand, and swept his gaze across the table.
“Allow me to introduce Tianyin.
My wife.”
Brief.
Without unnecessary details.
The way Yanlong did everything he disliked, with perfect economy.
Tianyin felt the gazes settle upon her like physical pressure.
She kept her back straight.
A servant approached and filled her glass with rice wine.
The scent rose toward her.
Tianyin hesitated.
She knew what this alcohol would do to her.
She knew precisely, with the painful certainty of someone who had already learned that lesson the hard way.
Alcohol stripped away her filters.
All her filters.
Everything she managed to restrain in everyday life—the words, the gestures, the thoughts left unsaid—all of it became uncontrollable.
And the others would suffer for it.
She raised the glass to her lips anyway.
She brought the glass to her lips without drinking, simply letting the rim brush against her mouth to keep up appearances.
From the corner of his eye, Yanlong watched her.
He said nothing.
His hand reached out.
Slowly, naturally, with the ease of someone making an ordinary gesture.
He took the glass from Tianyin’s hands at her lips and emptied it in one gulp.
Tianyin looked at him.
He placed the empty glass back on the table.
Still said nothing.
Looked away.
As though it had never happened.
A figure stood.
Tall.
Lean.
With the same bearing Tianyin immediately recognized because it was the same as Yanlong’s.
The same lines, the same presence, a little older, a little more carved from the marble of time.
He approached with a glass in hand, his gaze resting on her.
Tianyin shifted her gaze from the uncle to Yanlong, then back to the uncle.
His exact copy, she thought despite herself.
The uncle stared at her for a long moment.
That calculated, constructed kind of silence that gives words time to carry weight before they are even spoken.
Then he spoke.
“Our kingdom has never held celestial people in its heart.
They disgust us.
Even more so, what they represent.”
He let the word resonate.
Then his expression changed.
A smile appeared, slow, almost sincere.
“But I must say that the legends were lying.
We were told that celestials were hideously ugly.
I see now that this was a mistake.
You are…
remarkable.”
He tilted his glass toward hers.
“Which changes nothing about the fact that this marriage displeases me deeply.”
He poured alcohol into Tianyin’s glass.
He kept pouring.
To the brim.
Until the liquid spilled over the table in golden streams.
He smiled.
Drank his own glass in one gulp.
And every gaze turned toward Tianyin.
She raised the glass.
Yanlong’s hand settled on her wrist, firm without being rough, just for a moment. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
With her other hand, Tianyin seized the glass and drank.
“Good,” the uncle said.
He poured another.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Yanlong’s hand came down on his uncle’s arm.
“Enough.”
His uncle stopped.
Looked at him.
That long, assessing gaze of a man taking a measure.
“Your Majesty,” he said, turning toward the Emperor with the ease of a man who had done this sort of thing all his life.
“My dear nephew has become so gentle.
He used to be as sharp as a blade.
Impossible to rattle.
What have they done to him?”
Silence fell over the table.
The Emperor laughed.
Loudly.
Warmly.
With the laughter of a man deciding that a heavy atmosphere would end now.
“Enough!
It is my birthday and the official presentation of my daughter-in-law to the family!
She is of noble blood and should be respected as such.
She is the Seventh Princess of the Celestial Emperor!
Tianyin!”
The whispers exploded.
“The seventh?
Wasn’t Yanlong supposed to marry the eldest?”
“The one they say is cultured, gifted, a prodigy…”
The Emperor dismissed the question with an elegant gesture.
“Plans change!
And look at her, doesn’t she have that flame in her eyes?
I think she is perfect for the Crown Prince.
She’ll know how to tame him!”
He laughed.
The hall laughed with him.
The uncle stared at Tianyin.
She met his gaze without blinking.
He turned on his heel, returned to his seat, and ate in silence with the concentrated expression of a man chewing his thoughts along with his food.
Further away, the Grand Tutor and the Emperor discussed rare plants and mountain flowers that no one else in the hall knew anything about.
Tianyin felt the ground slowly give way beneath her, as though something inside her were yielding, thread by thread.
She clung to the edge of the table.
Stared at a point in front of her.
Tried to focus on the flame of a candle.
The candle split in two.
She stood.
Without a word, without drawing attention, with all the dignity she had left, she made her way toward the exit.
The outside air struck her like cold water.
She walked.
She didn’t know exactly where.
Her footsteps on the cool stone guided her.
The garden.
The lanterns far behind.
The silence.
Then the smell of water.
Several minutes passed.
Yanlong did not see her return.
He waited a little longer.
Nothing.
He rose without making a sound, left the banquet behind, and slipped outside.
Where is she?
He questioned one servant, then another.
Nothing.
The courtyard, the corridors, her room—everything was empty.
He quickened his pace.
That was when he arrived before the lotus pond.
And stopped.
Clothes.
Shoes.
Lying on the stone edge.
He recognized them immediately.
Don’t tell me she…
He ran to the edge.
The water was black in the darkness, the lotus flowers motionless, the surface perfectly still.
Too still.
He dove.
The cold seized him all at once.
He swam, eyes open in the black water, searching for a shape, a silhouette, anything.
Nothing.
He surfaced for air.
Where?
Where is she?
He dove again.
Deeper this time.
Beating his arms through the darkness.
The burning came without warning.
His forehead.
The symbol.
It lit up, a sharp, insistent heat, like a compass awakening.
She’s not far.
He followed the burning.
And he saw her.
At the bottom.
Tianyin was there, motionless, her hair spread around her like a veil of black silk in the current.
As though the bottom itself wanted her for its own.
Yanlong dove toward her.
He was pulling the algae away one by one when he felt something.
A hand gripping Tianyin’s ankle.
The little bell began to vibrate, a deep, discordant sound, like a call.
And the bottom opened.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Gray.
Silent.
Rising from the black depths as though the pond had always known she would come.
They pulled downward with the quiet patience of things that had nothing left to lose.
Yanlong seized Tianyin around the waist.
The hands pulled.
He held on.
He could not let her go.
He would not let her go.
In his mind, there was only one thing, one word, a call to the one thing in this world that always answered his voice.
Lingzhi.
Come to me.
His sword plunged downward.
It cut through the water like lightning, its blade spinning, cutting, slicing with a precision that had nothing human about it.
The hands let go.
One by one.
A hundred by a hundred.
The bottom of the pond turned black with thick blood that spread through the water like ink.
Tianyin was free.
Yanlong tightened his arm around her waist.
Body against body.
He looked at her for a fraction of a second, her face right there, only a few centimeters from his, her hair floating between them in the black water, her eyes closed, her lips motionless.
He surfaced.
Air struck him all at once.
The sky was clear.
Star-filled.
Silent.
No one.
He pulled Tianyin onto the stone edge and leaned over her.
She wasn’t breathing.
He was crouched above her, his wet strands of hair sticking to his forehead, drops of water falling from his face onto Tianyin’s.
He raised his hands toward her chest.
And stopped.
Touching her like this.
Placing his hands on her.
It was accepting it.
With no way back.
This was no longer a medical gesture.
It was something else.
Something he refused to face.
He looked at her face.
Pale.
Motionless.
Her wet eyelashes.
Her lips slightly parted.
She still wasn’t breathing.
He placed his hands down.
And pressed.
Once.
Twice.
Luo Feng had taught him long ago, laughing at him because he didn’t know how.
He remembered every movement.
Every pressure.
The rhythm.
Nothing.
He leaned down.
His lips had to touch Tianyin’s.
He stopped one centimeter away.
Looked at her again.
Then he closed his eyes.
And made the gesture.
Once.
Twice.
Tianyin coughed.
Water burst out.
She struggled, coughing again, her breath returning in painful waves, as though her lungs had forgotten how to work.
Yanlong straightened.
She opened her eyes.
Slowly.
The night.
The stars.
A figure above her, blurred, wet, dark strands dripping onto her face.
The alcohol was still there.
Somewhere between her veins and her head, it clouded everything, making the world thick, warm, disconnected from its usual consequences.
She slowly sat up, still seated.
Yanlong drew back by a breath.
Her fingers found the collar of his wet robe.
They seized it.
“How dare you…” she whispered.
The next instant, she kissed him.
The world stopped.
The pond.
The lotuses.
The stars.
Everything.
Yanlong did not move.
His hands were placed beside her on the cold stone, and he no longer knew exactly why he wasn’t moving, whether it was because he didn’t want to or because something inside his chest had decided to pause and stop having an opinion about anything.
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