She can't bring herself to kill you? I will rip you limb from limb with my own two hands.
South of Lin'an stood a small apothecary, steeped day and night in the smell of medicine: Bao'an Hall.
Inside, that smell softened the whole air.
Xu Xian sat behind the medicine cabinet, the gold-and-jade hairpin clenched in his fist. Hours now since the woman in white had vanished. And still that fine, delicate fragrance clung to the jade, hadn't faded in the least.
He frowned. Lifted it to his nose. Breathed in.
"Mugwort?"
No. He shook his head. Tried again.
"Angelica root?"
Still not it.
He got up, pulled angelica off the shelf, chuanxiong, agarwood, borneol camphor—held each one against the hairpin, one at a time. Nothing matched. Not one.
The scent was so pure, so faint, it barely qualified as scent at all—new leaves stirring after spring rain, morning wind cutting through some grove no human foot had ever touched.
He bent over the herbal compendium until his eyes ached. Found nothing. Shut the book at last with a short, rueful laugh.
"So there's still a fragrance in this world I don't know?"
He tucked the hairpin inside his robe, against his own heart, and went back to sorting.
Hadn't touched more than one bundle before the memory came back on its own—white robes, turning through the mist at the Broken Bridge, eyes cool as moonlight and heavy with some grief he had no name for.
Xu Xian couldn't fathom it. How could one woman do that? One glance, and his heart was crushed—he'd call dying under a bolt of lightning a fair trade.
The hairpin was in his hand again before he'd noticed picking it up.
"Miss... will we ever meet again?"
Sun going down.
Bao'an Hall about to close for the night. A small head poked timidly around the door—a girl, seven, maybe eight, both hands wrapped around a few copper coins. She set a prescription on the counter.
"Big Brother... My mother says we don't have enough. Just half the order, please."
Xu Xian looked once at the prescription. Once at the worn coins in her small hand. Asked nothing. Turned straight to the cabinet.
Weighed it out. Wrapped it. Tied the paper shut. Every last ingredient in there. Not one thing missing.
The girl took the heavy packet, staring up at him, stunned.
"But... this is all I have."
He smiled and pressed the coins back into her palm.
"Take it home. Make sure your mother takes it exactly as noted. I'll cover the rest."
Her eyes went red. She nodded—fast, over and over—and bolted out of Bao'an Hall, the packet hugged to her chest.
The door curtain was still swinging when the shopkeeper's voice came, sour, from behind him.
"Again?"
"That family can't even keep the stove lit. How do you expect them to pay you back?"
Xu Xian kept sorting the shelf. "Once they're well, there's always time to pay it back."
The old man stared at his young apprentice—forever fronting other people's medicine—and let out a long breath. "Fine, fine. It's your own wages."
Sunset came in slanted through the doorway, gilding the drifting dust, steeping the whole room in the smell of herbs. Tired now, Xu Xian sat back down at the counter and, without thinking about it at all, pulled the hairpin out again.
A long moment. Then a laugh, low, at his own expense.
"Still can't place it."
In the evening light, that gold-and-jade hairpin, kept close against his heart, gave off the faintest warmth of its own.
If this moment had needed a name, it would have been—
【Twelve Songs of the White Snake — "Threads of Yuan" (also known as "Love Beans")】
Rain over Lin'an, falling without end— and still, that gold hairpin, left behind.
I cannot look away.
One glance by the water—my fate sealed.
wide sleeves caught in the wind.
Is this the yuan that binds you and me?
All day long, I hold this hairpin close to my heart.
All these years, never once have I seen anyone like her.
I thought my days would pass mixing medicine, counting time.
Who knew— one faint thread of fragrance could steal the soul clean from my body.
This furrowed brow will not smooth.
This gold hairpin will not leave my hand.
Ah!
Some old debt from a former life?
Why else would it choose this little apothecary, of all places, to roast me, slow, into one aching little bean of longing?
"If I could only see her once more— struck dead by lightning, I'd still call it a fair trade."
The next day.
Bao'an Hall—warm, cozy, and entirely ordinary—was struck all of a sudden by a strange green wind that had no business being there. None at all. Prescriptions snapped off the counter; paper wrappers spun into the air.
Cold. Unnatural.
It felt like something that had blown straight out of the darkest cave on Mount Qingcheng and forced its way indoors.
"You fool. Were you planning to grind that thing to powder and eat it like medicine?" Sharp and mocking, there was Qing, already standing in front of the cabinet.
Frost coated her face as she looked this mortal up and down, jealousy boiling over in her chest.
This. This is nothing but a mortal man.
Worth Brother throwing away two thousand years of pride—reversing yin and yang to remake his whole self into a woman—just to court you? Back then, when I was running wild back on Mount Qingcheng, I should have snuffed you out.
Smashed you dead, and fed you to the dogs!
I should never, never have let you take human form at all! You, little bodhi twig, stop playing innocent. The thought alone squeezed her chest tight. Even her breath tasted sour going down.
She wore a lovely green silk skirt… And still, in every motion, there was that masculine ferocity straining on a leash too short—set against the softness of the shape she wore, it landed strange.
Wrong. Almost dangerous to look at.
"And where'd you find that hairpin you keep hugging to your heart?" Qing twisted a plain white handkerchief between her fingers, playing coy, her eyes swimming with counterfeit warmth.
Then her hand shot out. Spirit-power came with it. She had him by the collar before he'd registered the movement at all.
Xu Xian had no way to stop it.
A hard pain in his chest. His vision went dark at the edges. He staggered back half a step, one hand still clamped over the hairpin under his robe.
"You—who are you? This hairpin, it's—"
The pressure coming off her was faint. Unmistakable anyway. He couldn't get the rest of the sentence out.
"Listen." Qing cut him off flat.
"That hairpin belongs to my young mistress. I'm her personal maid, of the Bai household. Call me Qing."
She looked him up and down the way you'd size up merchandise you already knew you were disappointed in.
"The woman you gawked at on the Broken Bridge. That was my mistress. And as it happens—the Bai family bought this apothecary yesterday. Part of her dowry now."
"What?" Xu Xian's mind went blank.
"Miss Bai is—getting married?"
His heart dropped straight through the floor the second the question left him.
That moonlight that had only just walked into his heart—already promised to someone else?
Qing caught the naked collapse on his face. Jealous as she was, she couldn't help taking a little pleasure in it. She leaned in, breath thin as silk against his ear.
"A marriage? Oh, yes. My young mistress fell for you at first sight. Right there on the bridge."
Xu Xian's head snapped up.
Jealousy had gone nearly to poison behind Qing's eyes. But the smile stayed on anyway.
"You're the one she wants. Marry her, and this apothecary—plus the Bai family's land, their whole estate—goes with her as dowry. Satisfied?"
"Love at first sight... with me?" Shock and joy hit him in the same breath, his heart slamming so hard it threatened to crack straight through his ribs.
"Miss Bai truly wants to marry someone like me?"
"Why would I lie about this?" Qing rolled her eyes to the ceiling, smile all teeth, no warmth in it at all, and waved toward the back room.
"Shopkeeper. Get out here. Hurry."
The old man came scurrying at once, bowing so low his spine curved like a boiled shrimp, addressing this so-called steward-maid of the Bai household with every ounce of nervous respect he had.
"Miss Qing. What can I do for you?"
Qing dropped onto a bench without ceremony, eyeing him sideways.
"You took the silver yesterday. Signed the deed. Wasn't that supposed to come with an explanation? How does your own apprentice still not know who owns this place?"
Cold sweat broke across the old man's brow.
The whole business had baffled him from the start—why would some wealthy family from outside the city pay several times market value for a shop this small, on the single condition that Xu Xian stay put?
He'd spent all day trying to figure out how to break the news gently. And only just now, eavesdropping from the back room, had he stumbled onto the actual, astonishing reason.
"Oh, Xu Xian, my boy—my good, dear boy!" The shopkeeper grabbed the young man's hand, all warmth, all earnest concern—the kind that comes free once the money's already changed hands.
"The Bai family paid three times the going rate and named you specifically to stay. And now Miss Bai herself has taken a shine to you? That's good fortune enough for three lifetimes!"
He clapped Xu Xian hard on the shoulder, already half-turned toward the back room.
"Your old master's getting on in years now. Finally made it out, though, didn't I—time I packed up, went home, lived out what's left of my years in peace."
One more slap on the arm, quick, almost an afterthought.
"Bao'an Hall's yours now. Every last bit of it."
He caught one glance of Qing's darkening face—and was gone, bowing himself backward into the storeroom to pack, before his own words had quite finished landing.
Xu Xian stood alone in the apothecary, dazed, like he'd stumbled into someone else's cloud dream by accident.
"Well? Understand now?" Qing pulled a pale slip of paper from her sleeve. A faint jade-green glow drifted off it, and on it, an address—an estate beyond Qingbo Gate, near West Lake.
"Then go to the Bai residence. Return the hairpin."
The words snapped him out of it. He took the paper with both hands, too fast. "Ye—yes. Certainly! I'll go at once!"
"Returning it isn't enough." Qing gave a cold laugh, something strange and satisfied flickering across her face.
"My young mistress says—since you're the one who found it, fate's already bound the two of you together. You come to the Bai residence yourself. Ask for her hand."
"Ask for her—" His voice caught, disbelief and joy tangling too fast to sort out.
"Her hand?"
"What?" A cold arch of the brow.
"Not willing?"
"No—no, of course I am!" He shook his head, frantic.
"I could ask for nothing more. Only—asking for a lady's hand, that's one of the great events of a man's life. I have to prepare for it properly. I'd never treat Miss Bai's honor lightly."
"Good." Qing stood.
"Three days." She stepped in, and something like a whole mountain of jade, invisible, thousand-year-heavy, came down across the room with her. Soft form or not, her voice had gone to pure frost.
"Three days. Bring your finest betrothal gifts. Come to the Bai residence and ask for her properly. And if you don't show—"
Her eyes narrowed. Each word landed like a weight set down deliberately.
"I'll break your legs myself and drag you there."
Xu Xian's knees went weak under that pressure.
The maid who'd seemed, only moments ago, merely lively, merely lovely, had turned into something that made his blood run cold. Terror dropped him into an ice cellar. Joy lifted him straight to the clouds. Both at once.
Nowhere else in the mortal world could fortune turn this hard, this fast, this fantastically.
"I—I'll be there! Without fail!"
Qing didn't step back. She stared at him, and the smile in her eyes drained out, inch by inch, until nothing was left of it at all.
"Xu Xian. You had better treat her well for the rest of your life."
"If you ever fail her—even if she can't bring herself to kill you—"
Her green sleeves stirred though no wind moved at all. Her voice had gone soft. Almost tender. Which made it worse.
"I will rip you limb from limb."
"With my own two hands."
A cold shudder went straight down Xu Xian's spine.
And still—still—he gritted his teeth against the crushing weight of her spirit aura, steadied his own feet, and bowed deep, his spine held rigid.
"I will never betray Miss Bai's true heart."
Watching this man lose himself entirely over the promise of some mortal love, Qing felt something sharp twist through her own chest.
She thought of Brother. Of Bai Su.
For this ignorant fool of a mortal, Brother had turned himself into a woman. Swallowed every indignity that mortal female flesh had handed him, one after another.
And for five hundred years it had been him at his side. Every single day. Him who guarded him. Him whose whole fate had been stitched to his, thread for thread.
It had always been him. Qing.
She couldn't stand another second of it.
She turned, strode out through the door, and once she was past the reach of mortal eyes, dissolved into a thread of green smoke, swept the eaves of Bao'an Hall once, and was gone into the sky.
The wind died with her. The bell went still.
Xu Xian stood right where he'd been left, clutching that slip of paper from the Bai household, still faintly warm in his hand.
He looked through the doorway at the sky going dark.
Was this a match promised across three lifetimes—or a lightning bolt of heavenly fire, waiting to burn him to ash, flesh and bone alike?
At that same hour, beside West Lake—the Bai residence.
Bai Su sat rigid before a carved mirror.
Rouge and powder laid out in front of him. A stranger waiting in the glass. He raised his eyes. The woman in the mirror raised hers to match.
An Immortal Lord, caged inside a mortal shell. Her divinity sinking, degree by degree, under rouge and paint.
Only the eyes were still his own.
Everything else felt like something borrowed from a stranger and never given back.
Soft silk pressed against every new curve of this woman's body, and its terrible, exquisite sensitivity kept saying the same thing, over and over, with every breath: he was not that white-robed Immortal Lord anymore, sword at his back, walking the snows of Mount Qingcheng like he owned them.
In the mirror: willow-leaf brows, drawn fine and dark. Lips painted a vivid, bleeding crimson. Every stroke of rouge felt like a small, deliberate insult aimed straight at his Dao heart.
And without warning, Bai Su's ears—always so cool, so pale—flushed again, that same bewitching, blood-warm color rising with no permission asked at all.
The clouds hang slate-dark, on the verge of rain; the water lies still, breathing mist.
Beyond the window, the rain-mist slowly thickened. Moisture seeped quietly into the wooden lattice.
Bai Su drew a comb through the black hair at the back of his neck.
And when he finally spoke, the voice that came out was soft, delicate, strange even to his own ear—wavering, gentle, and underneath it, a fear he hadn't known, until this exact moment, that he was even carrying.
"For the rest of this life..."
He stared at the face in the mirror—familiar, and not. Both at once.
"Must I truly wear this? This face. And walk beside him. Through all of it. The whole burning length of the mortal dust?"