Lady Xuanhe drank her tea in perfect silence, as if each sip reaffirmed the cosmos. She gestured, without words, for Fairy Jin and Lady Yueh to join her—an honour cloaked in serenity, but never casual.
Across the chamber, Liáng Xu and Fei Yan seated themselves beside Ren. He greeted them with that same placid smile—too warm, too constant. It was the smile of a man who had long since mastered the art of hiding knives behind dimples.
They did not understand him. Not truly. Why keep up this fool's mask? Why play the simpleton when his gaze sometimes split the air like lightning?
It made their skin crawl.
Shen Wuyin drank his tea in silence, letting the warmth steep into his bones. Outside, the moon hung low and full, casting silver shadows across the room. The gathering remained hushed—ceremonial yet brittle. Fairy Jin and the others continued their quiet offerings of respect to Lady Xuanhe, who had yet to speak.
Steam curled upward from Shen Wuyin's cup, catching the moonlight. He did not look toward Lady Xuanhe, nor the others. Instead, he let the moment unfold around him, as if his stillness might anchor the shifting tides.
Lady Xuanhe's voice brushed against Shen Wuyin's thoughts like moonlight on still water: "You cultivate well, Wuyin. However, those women have long stepped into a realm of divinity. Why do you linger?"
She awaited his answer—not as a challenge, but as a curiosity held in divine patience.
Shen Wuyin did not look at her. He lifted his cup again, letting the steam rise, and replied with quiet certainty, "There's no urgency in reaching divinity. I've never been fond of rushing. I prefer to steep."
"There's a straightforward truth—the kind that sounds arrogant, but you already know it's real:
The only one who can defeat me is me.
The only one who can kill me is me.
I don't belong to this world.
I was born on Earth.
A place entirely unlike this one. No cultivation, no divine paths, no resonance.
Just chaos—objects, machines, humans, beasts.
But things changed once I awakened.
There's more to tell... but that will have to wait."
Lady Xuanhe's thought drifted to him, lightly amused:
"You make it sound like we still know each other in the future."
Shen Wuyin smiled faintly, his voice barely louder than the rising steam:
"That depends... on you and me."
"Anyhow… did you ever expect to be up there still, side by side with the other five in Heaven? The legendary six of Mìngjiè Xiānlù. First to transcend. Fifty thousand years gone."
"It must have been different back then. To rise before the world had language for it. And then to stay... watching everything around you shift—sects rise and fall, cities crumble, names forgotten."
"People you knew, long since ash. And you? Still young. Still impossibly beautiful."
**"Yes, it was a different time.
The Heavens constantly rewrote the rules, reshaping cultivation to challenge each era anew.
Mine was chaos.
There were no sects, no guiding creeds—
only rogue cultivators locked in brutal struggle,
each one desperate to prove their supremacy.
Kill or be killed. That was the only law.
There were many of us then—countless.
But in the end,
only six survived.
Mìngjiè Xiānlù Heaven found a way for mortals to endure,
though the world teetered on extinction.
I remember standing atop the clouds,
watching the chaos below—everything obliterated.
I turned to the other five,
the last remaining cultivators beside me.
We could have slaughtered each other.
Instead, we stopped.
We chose something rarer than victory:
We decided to rebuild.
We became allies,
friends…
even lovers, for a while."**
"Then one of those three must have been your ex-husband. I already know which one."
"Let me tell you a little about myself—when I became immortal.
I thought deeply.
Turned over everything I had done, everything I had conquered.
And I saw the truth:
When humans obtain power, they do what they've always done—
conquer, consume, seize more.
I succeeded, of course.
I became the Emperor of a place once called Asia.
We took it all.
There were ten of us.
The Eternal Ten Generals, the mortals called us.
Our army was unstoppable—
No nation could stand against us.
We could have taken the entire Earth.
But I chose not to.
"Isn't the moon beautiful tonight?"
"It is," she said softly, sipping her tea while Ren and Mianmian lingered beneath the silver-lit sky.
Later, after the others had retreated to their quarters, Lady Xuanhe remained in Ren's room.
He lay asleep, sprawled across his bed, Mianmian curled atop his head like a dreaming guardian.
Beside him, Lady Xuanhe lay watching—her gaze steady, her thoughts unspoken.
"You already know my name," she murmured into the hush. "May I see your true face up close, too? What is your name?"
Ren stirred. His eyes opened slowly, then turned to meet hers in the quiet dim.
With care, he moved Mianmian from atop his head, placing her gently against his chest.
She snuggled closer, untouched by the shift in atmosphere.
"As you wish," he murmured. "My true name... is Ren Blackdragon."
His form shimmered subtly as he shed illusion, revealing the face beneath legends.
Lady Xuanhe lay beside him, gaze fixed in reverent silence.
After a moment, she raised her hand, letting it hover near his eyes,
as if tracing the edges of a truth too sacred to touch.
"How old are you?" she asked softly.
He did not blink. "I am one hundred thousand, five hundred and two years old.
I've lived for quite some time now."
Lady Xuanhe Yulian met his gaze with a measured breath. Her voice was low, ceremonial, unhurried.
"My actual name is Xuanhe Yulian. I am fifty-four thousand years old.
I, too, have lived… for quite some time."
"I'm still waiting for you to ascend, Ren Blackdragon. Don't take too long—after all, you promised to become my disciple. And I'm curious to see what you'll do when your cultivation finally pierces the Divine Realm.
"I intend to reach the Divine Realm—and to become your disciple, as promised. After all, it would be foolish to keep a goddess waiting too long."
he smiled at him—not out of jealousy, but like someone holding the thread that binds every romantic myth ever whispered beneath moonlight.
"Which goddess, though?" she asked, voice soft but laced with a thousand titles. "After all, your wives and lovers are waiting too."
Ren didn't even blink.
"Then I'd be an even greater fool to keep more than one goddess waiting, wouldn't I?"
Somewhere, a celestial ledger paused—unable to distinguish flirtation from divine prophecy.