The Gate of Life and Death never stopped making noise. Claws scraping. Echoes of wails. The distant crack of bones breaking. Even when there was no danger… the sound lingered.
That’s why it took Yun Yun a moment to recognize that other noise. A new one.
One that wasn’t death.
One that came from Zhu Xian.
He was… humming.
It was faint. Without melody. Just a soft murmur, like warm wind over stone.
She didn’t interrupt him.
She simply watched from the other side of the small, makeshift fire, while he patiently warmed a thin cut of meat. He didn’t use bright flames, only controlled embers laid carefully over a bed of bone dust.
He knew how to cook.
Not like cultivators improvising with haste and fury, but like someone who had truly learned.
She wanted to ask, Who taught you this?
But she didn’t.
Instead, she just watched the way he turned the meat, checked its texture with a flat blade, blew over it gently… and then split the portion in two.
He handed her half, without looking at her directly.
She took it.
The meat was seasoned with root powder and marrow oil.
And it tasted… like home.
Zhu Xian ate in silence.
So did she.
After several minutes, he spoke.
—We didn’t hear a single roar today.
—I noticed, —she replied.
—Does it bother you?
A faint smile curved her lips. —A little. I’d gotten used to everything trying to kill us.
He smiled too. The kind of smile that didn’t show teeth. But it was enough.
—Maybe today we’re not here to survive, —he said, eyes on the fire.
—Then what are we here for?
Zhu Xian blew the ash from his blade, wiped it clean with a strip of cloth, and said:
—To live.
She lowered her gaze.
Took another bite. Slower.
And in that instant, in that silence… the world felt farther away than ever.
After the meal, Yun Yun sat on a flat rock.
She pulled out a bone needle she’d kept since the beginning. And a strip of serpent leather. She began to stitch it with tendon thread, her hands steady.
Zhu Xian watched. Said nothing.
Until she lifted her eyes.
—What?
—Nothing.
—Are you judging me?
—I’m admiring you.
She looked away, but couldn’t stop the small smile that tugged at her lips.
—It’s just habit. I was taught to mend my things when I was a child.
—And yet, you have the hands of a noble cultivator.
She tilted her head slightly, studying him.
—And what’s that supposed to mean?
—That you can kill with a needle… or stitch a wound with the same grace.
Yun Yun paused, lowering the needle.
—That was… unexpectedly poetic.
—It wasn’t, —he said, his gaze drifting upward to the invisible sky. —It was just the truth.
That night, when they lay down back to back to sleep, Yun Yun didn’t close her eyes right away.
The rock beneath them was cold. But his back, brushing lightly against hers, was warm.
They didn’t press too close. But they didn’t leave enough space to forget that they weren’t alone.
And for the first time in years, in lives… in souls…
Yun Yun thought something she didn’t dare say aloud.
If this were a normal world… maybe I’d be in a wooden house, with a pot of tea, and he… reading beside me.
But this wasn’t a normal world.
This was the Gate.
And yet… that sound. The humming. The quiet laughter. The faint sound of him blowing over the meat…
Those were sounds that didn’t kill.
And that’s why Yun Yun treasured them more than any Dou Qi technique.