Wouldn't that be a kiss? No. No! It's not a kiss. I'm saving her life!
"Amitabha."
"A sin. A sin indeed."
The cabin door of the pleasure boat shattered without a sound. Splinters filled the air.
Fahai walked in against the countercurrent of West Lake.
One measured step at a time, his kasaya, a deep, withered-tea brown threaded through with gold. Faint light hung around him. His face was still as a well ten thousand years deep, eyes lowering to the wreckage on the bed.
Bai Su spun around.
Those phoenix eyes—once so cool, so composed—burned red as blood now. She gathered Xu Xian's body to her chest, voice trembling under a grief so total it had gone hoarse enough to break.
"Fahai... it really was you."
She stared at that solemn robe, grief and fury churning together.
"You preach compassion. You wear the Buddha's own robes. And you laid a trap. Used a mortal's hand to break the light guarding my body. Used the bond of husband and wife to tear the one I love from this life. "
"Fahai—is this the Buddha you cultivate?"
"You truly... left nothing to chance."
Fahai met that overwhelming grief without so much as a flicker. Across his face: the same calm. Reasonable to the point of cruelty.
"Amitabha. You are mistaken, benefactor."
His voice stayed even.
"Benefactor Xu died of terror. Not by this humble monk's hand. This was his karma. His fate. Had you not defied mortal bonds, disturbed the Heavenly Dao itself, how could today's calamity have come to pass? The cause lies with you. Not with this humble monk."
"Well... very well."
Bai Su closed her eyes. Forced down the blood and breath surging in her chest. When she opened them again, only resolve remained.
"It was my own carelessness. If you can save him, I will submit to whatever punishment you see fit."
Fahai glanced once at Xu Xian's ashen face.
"His soul has left his body. His breath has stopped. There is nothing left to save. This humble monk can only chant the sutras now. Carry him across to the Pure Land."
As he spoke, he raised the Purple-Gold Alms Bowl in his right hand. Its ancient body seemed heavy with the weight of centuries; inside, ten thousand threads of light were slowly brightening.
Bai Su gave a bitter smile.
Even now—half woman, half serpent, spirit-power scarcely gathered at all—that smile still carried the last trace of a great spirit's pride, two thousand years deep.
"Fahai."
"Even with barely a hundredth of my power left to me today, that bowl of yours might not be enough to kill me."
"At most, you'll trap me for a while. My power will return. This Buddhist treasure might not hold me long after that."
"This humble monk knows the depth of your power, benefactor. I came prepared."
Fahai's expression didn't move at all.
"Though I cannot extinguish you today, body and spirit both, this bowl is more than enough to seal you beneath Leifeng Pagoda. A little quiet meditation in the tower. Might be its own kind of liberation."
"Wait!"
Bai Su's voice broke. Two thousand years on the path of cultivation, and when had she ever pleaded like this—this urgent, this humbled—before anyone at all?
"Isn't compassion the first duty of a monk? Xu Xian's allotted years are not yet spent. I beg you... let me save him."
She tightened her arms around the cooling mortal body, as if cradling the last coal of a fire about to go out.
"Bai Su swears this vow today."
"If I bring back Xu Xian's soul, I will bind myself beneath Leifeng Pagoda of my own will. Never repent it."
The last trace of warmth in Fahai's eyes sank away.
"Knew it would come to this, and still you began? This humble monk already gave you your chance. It was you who acted as you pleased. Forced this mortal romance into being."
"Everything that has happened today, you brought upon yourself. If Benefactor Xu's years truly aren't spent, the Underworld Court has its own laws to answer for it. You need not interfere."
Every word fell like the strike of a wooden fish.
Slow. Measured.
Closing off, one by one, every last path of retreat Bai Su had left.
Before the words had fully landed, the Purple-Gold Alms Bowl erupted—overwhelming as ten thousand claps of thunder, a swastika-marked light blazing at its center.
Bai Su had scarcely a trace of her power left, her body still trapped in that weak, half-human, half-serpent shape. When the bowl came crashing down, that vast weight of Buddhist power struck her spirit and her very serpent bones like Mount Tai falling from the heavens.
"Puh—"
Blood, streaked through with gold, burst from her mouth. Darkness swept her vision.
She never even got to look at Xu Xian one more time before she went under—collapsed across the bed, still holding him. The golden light was already reaching to draw her in— This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
"Damn monk!"
"You'll die for this!"
A furious roar tore open the night sky above West Lake.
Bound to Bai Su by their immortal pact, Qing had already felt Brother's life hanging by a thread. Fought her way through the festival's crushing yang-fire meant to leash the spirit-kind, raced from the Bai residence straight to the heart of the lake.
Her almond eyes had gone red as blood.
Nearly a thousand years of power, her whole original essence with it, gathered into her palm and became a single bolt of green light, tearing the night in two, striking the bowl with everything she had.
"BOOM—!"
The surface of West Lake split open. A column of mist shot into the sky. The bowl shuddered—cracks tore across its ancient body where that reckless bolt had struck.
Fahai hadn't imagined the resonance between the two serpents could summon a strike this desperate, this all-or-nothing, on this of all nights.
The white serpent's power, forcibly suppressed inside the bowl, answered the green light at once. The two forces entwined and became a backlash strong enough to move mountains, surging back through the bowl itself.
"Ugh—"
Color drained from Fahai's face. Blood burst across his moon-white inner robe. Several ribs cracked, one after another, under the force of it. His vajra body took real damage.
Qing broke through the window. Mist and green light everywhere; her body moved so fast it left only an afterimage. In the instant Fahai staggered back, she snatched Bai Su up in her arms.
Qing cast one final glance at Xu Xian, collapsed on the cabin floor. Hatred in her eyes. Jealousy. And the helpless certainty that once Bai Su woke, none of this would be allowed to rest.
Green light swept up the mist. Both shapes vanished into the dark above West Lake.
Fahai pressed a hand to his chest. Staggered back, step after step. A long while before he found his footing again, palms pressed together, low.
"Amitabha."
"If the white snake survives this and returns to Mount Qingcheng—stays clear of the mortal dust from now on—today's affair can end here."
He looked toward where the green light had vanished.
"If she still can't..." He didn't finish. Only murmured, soft, the old mantra: "Deliver spirits from their evil. Watch over all mankind."
He turned. Looked at Xu Xian. Was silent a moment. Pressed his palms together once more.
"Benefactor Xu is a man to be pitied too. This humble monk will carry you back to Jinshan. Chant the sutras to carry you across."
Mount Qingcheng. The Sanctuary of Eternal Bloom.
Cold moon, silent. Flowers bloom on, unchanged.
Qing laid Bai Su down, careful, on the cold stone bed. She could barely hold, at most, most of a human shape now—scales scattered across her skin, robes soaked through, face gone pale to the point of transparency.
At the sight of her, Qing's tears came all at once.
"Brother! Don't frighten me..."
She fumbled a pill out of her robe, glowing faint jade-green. The Nine-Turn Bamboo-Marrow Pill—distilled from ninety-nine years of bamboo marrow out of Youhuang Valley, refined again with five hundred years of the green serpent lineage's own spirit-essence.
One firing. One pill. That was all it ever gave.
Qing pressed it against Bai Su's lips. Tried to force her own power through with it. Bai Su's jaw stayed locked. Her spirit-sea, dry as bone. The pill sat useless between her teeth, refusing to go down no matter what Qing tried.
"What do I do…It won't go in."
Panic. Qing's tears fell faster.
She stared at the pill, its light dimming by the second, then at Bai Su's bloodless, still coldly beautiful lips, and went very still. A moment. Then she gritted her teeth.
With my mouth?
Wouldn't that be a kiss?
No. No! It's not a kiss. I'm saving her life!
A flush rose across her honey-toned cheeks, entirely wrong for the moment.
"Forget it."
"Worst comes to worst, Brother wakes up, scolds me, hits me, whatever. I'm only doing this to save her. Desperate times. I—I don't have one selfish thought in this."
She nodded, hard. Like she needed convincing herself.
"Right. That's exactly it."
Qing took a breath. Placed the pill in her own mouth. Bent low. Closed her eyes. Pressed her lips, hard, to Bai Su's cold, lifeless mouth.
Lips and teeth, tangled together.
Warm origin-power, wrapped around the slowly dissolving elixir, passed from Qing's tongue. Careful and forceful all at once, she pried open Bai Su's clenched jaw, sent the medicine down, little by little.
"Cough... cough..."
A faint, weak sound broke the dead silence of the cave. The pill's power spread through her meridians. Bai Su's sorrowful eyes, at last, forced themselves open.
But the instant awareness came flooding back, so did everything from the boat. Xu Xian's last look of terror. That breath that never came again. His body cooling in her arms. Grief crashed over her like a collapsing tide.
Bai Su didn't even see Qing, face flushed crimson, turning hastily away. She grabbed the edge of the stone bed. Fought to rise.
"Xu Xian... Xian'er is dead. I have to save him... I have to go to the Underworld Court..."
"Bai Su! Have you lost your mind?"
Watching Bai Su, her spirit-essence nearly spent, still try to force herself up, Qing felt the grief she'd held back too long finally break—all of it, at that moment. She pinned Bai Su's trembling shoulders down, eyes red, tears falling like rain. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping dot com.
"You're half-dead! And still, all you can think about is him? Xu Xian, Xian'er—Didn't you see how he looked at you? How afraid he was? How you frightened him to death with your own true shape?"
Qing's voice had gone hoarse.
"He couldn't even accept the real you! Why keep throwing away two thousand years of cultivation—your very bones—for a mortal like that?"
Bai Su was pushed back down. Hair in disarray, blood soaked through her robe. Under the cold moon, the pale scales still clinging to her cheek looked achingly forlorn. She watched Qing shake with sobs, and felt her own eyes begin to mist.
"Qing... I'm sorry. But I can't just let him die."
Her voice came weak. Unshaken.
"If it weren't for this trial of mine, how would he ever have met with such a disaster? No matter how he fears me now, how he can't stand the sight of me—This life, I owe him."
"What do you have to be sorry for? To me, or to him?" Qing bit down on her own lip, turned her face away. "In your heart, there's only him to be sorry for."
"Qing." Bai Su wiped the blood from her own mouth. Those cool, distant eyes now held something close to pleading, glistening.
"Help me. Save him. Please."
Five hundred years, side by side—when had Qing ever once seen Brother this humbled? This without defense? Heartache. Bitterness. Fury with nowhere to go. All of it rose together.
"Brother..."
Qing rubbed at her swollen eyes. Let out a long breath.
"You know full well there's no one in my heart but you—that I could never bring myself to say no."
"Fine. I'll help."
She looked back at Bai Su.
"Tell me what to do. Go to the Underworld Court, hunt down his soul myself?"
Then, abruptly, her face changed.
"Wait!"
"When I got to the boat, I think I saw that wretched Long-Life Gu. No—should call him a soul-reaping constable now. Could he be the one who took Xu Xian's soul?"
Something sharpened in Bai Su's eyes at that name.
Long-Life Gu had once schemed to defy the Heavenly Dao itself, steal a longer life, set his sights on her spirit-core. When the plot failed, he was cast down, forced into servitude beneath Black and White Impermanence as a soul-reaping constable.
Old enemies, meeting again. How would he ever show mercy?
"Brother, what are we going to do?"
Qing's worry only grew.
"That Daoist's not especially strong, but he's cunning. Vicious. And now he holds rank down there—won't dare act too openly, but he won't make it easy either."
"Of course not."
Bai Su's phoenix eyes narrowed, a new thread of resolve rising.
"But I've calculated his fate. He was never meant to die today. Even if I have to take this all the way before the King of Hell himself, I will bring his soul back."
"Then I'm coming too." Qing said it at once.
"There's something more important I need you to do." Bai Su took her hand.
"Fahai will have carried Xu Xian's body back to Jinshan Temple by now. He took your full strike, and the backlash of my own power on top of it—by now he's most likely sealed away, healing."
"Slip into the temple while he's weak. Bring the body back. Keep it cold, preserved, with your own serpent's chill. Otherwise, even if I bring his soul home, what will remain for it to return to?"
"No!"
Qing shook her head, still refusing.
"You've barely any power left. How can I let you go into the Underworld Court alone?"
Bai Su looked at her. Voice not loud. Utterly certain.
"Listen to me, Qing. The gates down there don't open for anything under a thousand years of cultivation. What little I have left is still enough to pass through. I'm going to argue my case. Not to fight. I will bring Xian'er's soul home safe."
Qing stared at her for a long time. Finally understood there was no talking Bai Su out of it. She wiped her face hard. Stamped her foot. Half sobbing, half cursing:
"Fine! I'll go steal that wretched carcass back from Jinshan for you!"
Eyes red, she pointed a finger straight at Bai Su.
"But you... If you die down there—if you don't come back—I will not collect your body! I'll throw Xu Xian's corpse to the dogs on the mountainside myself!"
Bai Su looked at her. Across that pale face, a faint, tender smile finally rose.
"Good. It's a deal."
Cold moon, thick as frost. Two wounded serpents parted, quiet, before the Sanctuary of Eternal Bloom.
One to enter the underworld. Hunt a soul.
One to storm Jinshan. Steal a body.