A lifetime spent seeking immortal bones—and in the end, finding only a fool…
No daylight touched the road to the dead.
Only, on either bank, red spider lilies blazed like a fire that never went out, a sea of crimson stretching down into the deepest reaches of the netherworld—a river of blood, frozen mid-flow.
A ghost wind, unceasing. Underworld mist, thick as smoke.
Immortal bones walk along a shore of fallen flowers;
Only one lonely shadow. The road to the underworld stretches on, and on.
Speak not of winds that chill the dead to the bone—
What sorrow cuts deeper than a soul shattering—breaking apart?
Long-Life Gu—once cast out of the Daoist orders, now a soul-reaping constable—strode draped in cold black robes, a chain of soul-binding iron dragging behind him across the stone road, giving off a sound sharp enough to chill the blood.
At the chain's other end: Xu Xian’s soul dulled, spirit scattered.
"Husband..." At the sight of that familiar shape, Bai Su's heart broke like something turning a blade inside it. Through the cold mist, she called out—low, almost weeping blood.
"My lady!" Xu Xian turned back at once. Instinct.
But the moment he made out her face clearly, the memory of that vast, cold serpent aboard the boat flashed through his mind, and he stumbled backward, terrified.
"Sp—spirit..."
"Husband, don't be afraid." Bai Su stopped where she was. Didn't dare move closer.
"I won't hurt you."
She had come alone into this realm of endless punishment, white robes soaked through with blood; with every step, her shattered bones sent a stab of agony through her.
And still—even now—her first thought was for his fear.
"Husband. Your years aren't spent. Your life wasn't meant to end here. I'm taking you home."
"No... I don't want to." Xu Xian pressed his arms over his head, shrank beneath the chain.
"I don't want to go back..."
Watching this, Long-Life Gu's mouth twisted into something cold.
"Well, well. Bai Su. Great Immortal Lord. Standing here like I don't even exist?" He looked her up and down, blood-soaked robes and all, a smile turning uglier still.
"So many years, and here you are, fallen this low. Aren't you afraid I'll strike while you're weak? Finally take that spirit-core of yours?"
Bai Su forced her grief down. Eyes gone cold as frost.
"So many years, and you still remember my core so fondly. Five hundred years' sentence for the last time, and it taught you nothing. Things that were never yours—better left uncovered."
"Heh heh..." Gu's laugh came out twisted.
"Exactly! Things that aren't your own are better left alone."
He turned his stare on Xu Xian, deliberate. Every word is a blade.
“What a joke to all Three Realms! The Mighty Immortal Lord of Qingcheng, feared throughout the spirit world, turns himself into a woman, marries a pitiful apprentice healer. Pitiful, indeed— the moment that mortal saw his true form, his soul snapped clean in two."
“Oh, aha ha…” He threw his head back. Laughed.
"You scared him to death with that serpent's body of yours!"
"Have you finished laughing?" Bai Su's voice had gone cold beyond anything. Even the spider lilies along the road trembled at the sound of it.
"Not quite." His smile turned grim.
"Immortal Lord Bai's chased all the way down here. For what, I wonder? Hoping to reclaim your mortal husband's soul?"
"And if I am?" Her face had gone white as paper, but every word left her cold and clear.
Bai Su’s spirit aura swept outward; the lilies bowed low, inch by inch, beneath it.
"Then I must regretfully decline." He gripped the chain tighter. "Xu Xian's soul stays with me."
Bai Su's eyes went cold. Fingers forming a seal. Deep in her shattered bones, the last of her power began circulating, desperate, wild.
"Thinking of fighting me?" Long-Life Gu laughed, arrogant.
"In that state? Half dead already? If I seized your core outright, that'd violate underworld law. But if you—a spirit trespassing here, forcing a soul out of our hands, striking an officer of the court first—"
Greed lit in his eyes.
"Then I'd simply be enforcing the law, taking you."
"If words won't move you—" Bai Su knew she was bluffing. Stepped between him and Xu Xian's soul anyway.
"Even with only a fraction of my power left, dealing with you shouldn't be so hard."
The endless mist tore apart. A vast, ancient power, pure past reason, carrying something close to divinity, burst into the empty air.
Bai Su, tattered white, stood like a sword—scarred, broken, and still unwilling to shatter—planted across the center of the underworld road.
Then—
"Ting-a-ling... Ting-a-ling..."
Two chimes of silver from deep in the netherworld. The void split. Ghost energy surged. A tall, silent black shadow stepped first out of the fog. White Impermanence's tall, strange, beautiful shape leaned unhurried at his side, slowly taking form.
Long-Life Gu's arrogance stiffened into a bow. "This lowly servant greets the two lords of Impermanence."
White Impermanence closed her fan of black and gold. Didn't even spare him a glance.
"Still thinking about her spirit-core? What—five hundred years in the River of the Dead wasn't enough for you?" She raised her hand.
"Get lost. This sovereign will handle things here."
"But..." Long-Life Gu's expression shifted.
"My lord, this isn't proper procedure. Xu Xian died suddenly today, this lowly servant was only carrying out—"
"You know full well Xu Xian’s years aren't spent." She cut him off, cold.
"Even if you dragged him before the Bridge of Naihe, one check of the Ledger of Life would send him straight back to the living. But you used the chain instead. Do you think this sovereign can't tell?"
"You provoked Bai Su into striking first—so you could seize her core by law!"
Her sleeve swept aside; ghost wind rose.
"This sovereign has no patience for you today. Get out."
Gu's steps froze. Centuries of suppressed madness finally forced threads of blood-red into his eyes.
"My lord, I do not accept this!"
"Back then, my own sect used a forbidden art to transfer their whole weight of sin onto me—cursed me to nine lifetimes in a loop, never past twenty-eight in any life. All I did, stealing power, taking cores, was… was trying to survive!"
His voice had gone hoarse, nearly weeping blood.
"What wrong did I ever do? If the Heavenly Dao is truly just, why has it treated me with such cruelty?"
The dead wind stopped.
White Impermanence bent, slightly, something close to a god's pity crossing her pale face.
"Long-Life Gu. Even now, do you still believe your five hundred years was punishment for coveting Bai Su's spirit-core?"
No more laughter in her eyes.
"Your true crime was this: after your revenge, you slaughtered the whole sect. Heartlessly. Root and branch. You knew exactly how that forbidden art had ruined you—and turned around and did the same to the innocent."
He shuddered, violent, head to foot.
"Defy the Heavenly Dao. Set yourself above it? You?"
White Impermanence's voice held nothing warm at all.
"Do you truly think the Heavenly Dao is something—creatures like you get to overturn? If it bent for anyone at all, it would never have been the Heavenly Dao to begin with. "
"Then no more." She straightened. Tapped her fan against her palm.
"Get out."
Long-Life Gu. His expression shifted, again and again. In the end he didn't dare argue further. Gripped the chain. Retreated into the mist, resentful, and was gone.
With the troublesome ghost dealt with, something teasing rose across White Impermanence's cold face.
She circled Bai Su, once, twice.
At her pale ear, the half-translucent Crimson Frost-Flow Scale swayed in the ghost-light, a strange sheen caught somewhere between red and white.
"Well. My dear Immortal Lord of Qingcheng." She tapped her fan against her palm again, clicking her tongue.
"Back then this sovereign asked you for one little scale, and you fussed half a day. And now look at you—folded into a woman, playing dutiful mortal wife. Throwing your very life away to save this husband of yours?"
That crimson scale, swaying, sent a faint ache through Bai Su's eyes. Her mind, already at the edge of collapse, pulled itself back centuries, to that most wretched, most helpless molting.
Back then, White Impermanence had saved her life.
Grievously wounded, Bai Su had still, with what remained of an Immortal Lord's grace, folded her hands and said: "A life saved is a debt to be repaid a hundredfold. Should you ever have need of this one, I will not refuse you."
Even now, Bai Su still wondered—why on earth had he bothered with that one extra polite line? Why, of all the things he could have said?
White Impermanence had laughed then, bright as a blossoming flower.
"Why wait for some other day? Today will do. As it happens, I've already set my eye on something you carry."
She'd hidden half her face behind her fan, peach-blossom eyes running over her, top to bottom.
"Everyone knows the Immortal Lord of Qingcheng is unmatched in bearing, unmatched in beauty—this sovereign envies you terribly. I wonder, might you spare that Frost-Flow Scale at your most private place?"
"This sovereign's been hoping to carve it into a soul-warming earring. Good for the spirit. Good for the skin."
"What?"
White Impermanence had said it with perfect calm. Bai Su, meanwhile, was utterly shocked. Most private place—was that really the sort of thing a Divine Sovereign could say straight to his face?
For a moment, he thought he'd misheard. His ears flushed red on the spot.
"What's the matter?"
White Impermanence's smile had only deepened.
"You can't even spare one little scale? And here you were, going on about repaying a debt a hundredfold."
Her eyes had turned sly.
"Or else—give yourself to me instead. My dear Black Impermanence is still short a companion, as it happens."
"No—absolutely not!"
Black Impermanence had appeared at once, panicked, his usually deathly voice rushing faster than she'd ever heard it.
He'd paused, then added, sincere: "The scale, though—I do hope you'll still grant it to us. My lady only admires your bearing so much. Though there's perhaps a touch of the fool imitating the beauty, in wanting it—"
"Who are you calling a fool?" White Impermanence's brows had shot up, striking her fan hard against his chest.
"Since my cousin has no interest, then, this matter's settled."
She'd turned back to Bai Su.
"But that scale—you may as well just give it to me. It'll grow back in a few days anyway, won't it?"
"Brother, I think you'd better just say yes." Qing, beside him, had grinned ear to ear.
"Trading one scale for a debt this enormous—we're clearly getting the better deal. And if Brother's afraid it'll hurt too much, little Qing can take it for you instead. I'll even apply the salve myself after. "
"I promise, it won't hurt too much."
Teased in turns by that co-dependent pair, and his own Qing turning traitor besides—that day, Bai Su hadn't known where to look.
Bai Su's thoughts returned, now, to the underworld road. Looking again at these two knowing, familiar spirits, feeling swept up all at once.
Black Impermanence stood silent still, within the mist. White Impermanence looked at her blood-soaked robes, let out a soft, distant sigh.
"A lifetime spent seeking immortal bones—and in the end, what did you find? A heart hopelessly, foolishly in love. Yourself, my dear Lord of Qingcheng. "
Bai Su folded her hands toward them both, a trace of bitterness at her mouth.
"My two elder brothers. Please, stop making fun of me… Bai Su has met with great calamity today. My husband's years aren't spent. I ask you both to show mercy."
White Impermanence gave a soft laugh.
Reached out one corpse-pale finger, tapped it lightly against Xu Xian's weak, wavering soul. "Click." The unbreakable chain shattered at once. Dissolved into black mist on the ground.
"Very well. Xu Xian was never fated to die. Take this mortal soul, and go."
She stepped forward. At her ear, the scale swayed. She let the playfulness fall away, voice sinking low and calm as water. "But—even if you save his life, how will you save that mortal heart of his? Shattered as it is by terror?"
Bai Su's body trembled, faint.
"This sovereign offers you one piece of advice." White Impermanence looked at her and spoke, word by word, grave now.
"If you truly want to keep him—let that night disappear entirely."
"Not you forgetting it. Him."
The color slowly drained from Bai Su's face. A long moment before she finally bent down, gathered Xu Xian's dazed soul into her sleeve with the utmost tenderness. Turned.
Bowed deep to Black and White Impermanence both.
"My thanks to you both, elder brothers, for allowing this."
The words fell, and that slight, resolute white shape dissolved into a trailing streak of light, breaking through the mist without a moment's hesitation, returning to the mortal world that had already, once, shattered her.
"I only fear—"
White Impermanence murmured, watching the direction she'd gone.
"—that night will never truly be forgotten."
Jinshan Temple. A moonless, wind-torn night.
Qing had drawn her spirit-energy in close, still dressed in her usual green.
She carried Xu Xian's body silently out of a side hall's meditation chamber. That mortal shape, its soul scattered, hung heavy across her shoulder. She'd only just rounded the corridor when a single dim lantern, without warning, flared to life.
Dao'an stood at the far end, lantern in hand.
Their eyes met.
Killing intent flared in Qing's eyes at once.
Spirit-power gathered, ready, at her fingertips. Had she not remembered her brother's teaching—never take a life carelessly—that palm would already have struck.
The lantern flickered.
Dao'an, too, finally recognized that face—the same green-robed woman who'd stolen his cooling jade pendant and left him red-faced at the festival market.
He stared at the spirit-light coiling around her fingertips, then at the lifeless Xu Xian across her shoulder. By temple rule he should have cried out at once that a spirit had come.
The cry caught in his throat. Wouldn't come no matter how he tried.
Qing watched him, cold and silent. His fingers tightened around the lantern's handle, knuckles slowly whitening.
A long moment.
Then, as though driven by something beyond himself, Dao'an drew the lantern back to his chest and stepped aside without a word. The corridor ahead stood open. Nothing barred her way.
Qing froze, briefly.
Then, as though understanding something, the corner of her mouth curved up—strange, seductive, knowing.
"My thanks, little Monk."
The words scattered at once into the night wind. A flash of green, and she was gone into the deep dark of Jinshan Temple, Xu Xian's body across her shoulder.
Dao'an stood frozen where he was.
The lantern hadn't gone out. But for the first time, a thin, hairline crack had opened somewhere deep in the precepts he'd held his whole life.
The storm above West Lake had, at last, quieted. For now.