Where was A-Xin?
This place should have been a land of lush mountains and clear water, blanketed in spiritual energy. Why was it all withered and yellow? Desolate, as though nothing with life had grown here in a very long time. The dense spiritual energy that had once filled this place had nearly dissipated entirely. The earth itself seemed dead.
Kong Li couldn't accept what she was seeing. She ran to the small river nearby. Its bed was dry—nothing left but cracked mud, and stones that looked as though time had eaten away at them. She stared at the empty riverbed. There was no clear water to reflect her face. A long time ago, her favorite thing had been to come to this river and look at herself—because she was particularly beautiful.
"A-Xin must have moved."
Kong Li pulled herself together and said it with a bright smile—but her eyes were brimming with tears, and she fought to keep them there. "She moved, that's all. A-Xin probably found a better place and decided to go there."
"A-Xin is fine."
"A-Xin went to find me in the small worlds, so of course she's fine. She has to be."
Kong Li channeled her divine power and evaporated the tears before they could fall. Then she turned and flew back toward her palace.
The peacock attendants at Kong Li's Hall saw her return and hurried to greet her with bows. Kong Li swept her gaze across them. "Do any of you know where A-Xin has gone?" She watched their blank faces, and one attendant finally asked, "Your Highness—who is A-Xin?"
"Never mind. You may go." Kong Li thought it through. A-Xin had almost never left that place. Even on the rare occasions she had ventured out, few in the celestial realm knew her. Asking these attendants would get her nowhere. If A-Xin had moved, she would have done so quietly—she wouldn't have announced it to the world.
But Kong Li's heart was churning with dread. Dread was useless. She left the palace and began searching every place she and A-Xin had been together, looking for any trace of her. She stopped many celestial beings along the way, asked every one of them—none of them knew who A-Xin was. Eventually she gave up asking.
A-Xin rarely appeared. Of course they wouldn't know her.
She searched for a full month.
By the end of it, there was a hollow ache where her heart should have been. She stood on that drained, barren earth and felt—again—as though the entire world had cast her aside. The tears she had been holding back finally broke free, sliding silently down her face.
She crouched by the dried-out riverbank, sobbing quietly. She wiped her face—and her eyes filled again before she was done. She couldn't wipe them dry.
Her gaze was unfocused on the desolate yellow landscape, and she said, in a small voice:
"A-Xin. Where are you? Do you think I'm such a fool that you ran out of patience waiting for me to understand? We had an agreement—you're not allowed to leave me behind."
"A-Xin..."
The quiet sobbing became something rawer. Wretched. It was a good thing there were no spirits nearby to be frightened by the sound.
"What are you crying about? You're wailing so loudly the spirits are afraid to fly over."
The voice came from nowhere. Kong Li went still.
She knew that voice. How could she not?
She scrambled to her feet, scrubbing at her face with her sleeve—laughing and crying at once—until she managed to arrange herself into something like a radiant smile.
"A-Xin. I'm back."
"Who are you?"
Clear, light, utterly without warmth. Kong Li's heart seized. She thought of the small worlds. She breathed out slowly. A-Xin had forgotten her, just as she'd expected.
"I'm Kong Li."
Silence.
Kong Li?
"Who is Kong Li?"
The smile on Kong Li's face looked worse than tears. She had no patience left for gentleness. She raised her voice: "A-Xin, I'm Kong Li. I am your wife. Your other half. Your person—the one you like, the one you love."
A-Xin: "…" What on earth was this half-blooded peacock saying.
"A-Xin, where are you?" Kong Li asked again. "I can't see you. Did you move? Where are you speaking to me from?"
She felt the silence from the other side stretch too long and began to panic. Then something occurred to her, and she spoke quickly: "A-Xin—I've finally worked it out. I like you. I love you. I can't be without you. Please come out. I understand my own heart now. I've always liked you. I just didn't know it."
She took a breath.
"Back then, I was too proud. When I heard that Ao Yunxiu was planning to take that little mountain sparrow into a small world, it felt like a humiliation—he was prepared to set aside our engagement for a sparrow. So I followed, out of wounded pride. But A-Xin, I swear to you: if I had understood sooner that my heart was yours, I would never have interfered with them at all. I would have left them alone from the start."
"You are the only person I have ever liked. Following Ao Yunxiu down there was nothing but my pride refusing to bend."
Kong Li laid it all out in a single breath—the full history of what had happened.
Ao Yunxiu had a betrothal arrangement with her. She had never cared for him. When she heard he had fallen for a little mountain sparrow and planned to take her into a small world to test their love, she felt publicly shamed. She was Kong Li—daughter of the Golden Crow Emperor, daughter of the Peacock King—and Ao Yunxiu was willing to break their engagement for a tiny sparrow spirit? The fury she'd felt was real.
Her first intention had been to have her parents dissolve the betrothal and thrash Ao Yunxiu soundly. But the Dragon Mother had come to her with a different offer: she asked Kong Li to enter the small world and sabotage the trial. Stung, feeling outdone by a sparrow, Kong Li had agreed without thinking it through.
What she hadn't known: the Dragon Mother was after her divine power and her bloodline. Kong Li carried the Golden Crow's bloodline. Ao Yunxiu was a four-clawed golden dragon who had long been unable to cultivate a fifth claw—but if he could absorb Kong Li's divine power and bloodline during the trial, his odds of achieving that fifth claw were nine in ten.
"A-Xin—I've confessed now. You should be remembering me."
"I remember."
Kong Li heard the warmth in that voice—the feeling that had always been there—and broke into a smile so wide it nearly hurt. "Then come out! I've already had people start preparing our wedding. Let's be married right now—is that alright?"
"I am very far from you."
"Then I'll come to you. I want to see you right now. Can I?" An uneasy feeling stirred in Kong Li's chest. "No—even the farthest distance is nothing to you. A-Xin." Her voice quieted. "Something happened to you. And—why does the place where you used to live look the way it does?"
"A-Xin, can you come out?" She was pleading now. "I don't want to lose you. I mean it."
"Kong Li." A-Xin's voice was very serious. "If you choose to be with me, there is no going back. Think carefully."
"I don't need to think. A-Xin, we've lived through so much together across so many worlds—how could I go back?" Kong Li answered without a moment's hesitation. She meant every word of it.
"Then come," A-Xin said.
A black passage opened in front of her.
Kong Li studied it, paused—then walked forward.
Her heart was pounding. All those years away. What had happened to A-Xin while she was gone?
The passage was narrow and dark, with only the faintest trace of white light at the far end. As she went deeper, a cold pressed against her—heavy and profound, not natural. Not the cold of winter or the cold of high altitude. Something older.
"The Abyss Between Worlds?"
Kong Li pressed a hand over her mouth. Her voice came out small with horror. "A-Xin—how did you end up in the Abyss Between Worlds? What happened? All these years—what happened?"
"Nothing happened." A-Xin's tone was perfectly even, as though this were of no great consequence. She could feel Kong Li's thoughts beginning to spiral and added, "Don't imagine the worst. It isn't what you think."
Kong Li forced herself still and leapt toward the farthest point of light.
And found A-Xin at last.
White-robed, seated on a jade stone that breathed cold air, in the middle of utter darkness. The surroundings were bare: the jade, and at its edge, a single small silver flower. And seated on the jade, looking up at Kong Li with a quiet smile—A-Xin.
Kong Li ran to her and held on.
All the longing of all those years filled up and finally had somewhere to go.
"A-Xin."
A-Xin touched her face. "Kong Li—are you certain? Being with me means no going back."
"I've never thought about going back." Kong Li smiled. "The person I like is you. It has always been you."
A-Xin seemed to recall something. "Then why, in the small worlds, did you seem so attached to the Dragon Prince and the little sparrow?"
"That was an act." Kong Li dearly wished she could reach back in time and give herself a thorough shake. "I had no feelings for either of them. I needed a persona—someone interfering in their trial had to seem emotionally invested. I didn't know the Dragon Mother had arranged everything to use me. That old woman—we are not done, she and I." A pause. "As for Ao Yunxiu: his divine power is damaged, his fifth claw is a dream, he didn't get Bai Xiaoqiao, and I gave him a beating. Entirely deserved."
Kong Li settled comfortably against A-Xin on the cold jade, resting her head against her shoulder. "A-Xin—Bai Xiaoqiao never had any feelings for Ao Yunxiu. His whole obsession was delusion. He probably doesn't even know—when I was in the small world, I accidentally broke the seal he'd placed on Bai Xiaoqiao's soul. She's most likely recovered her real memories by now. She knows perfectly well she doesn't like him. She'll never end up with him."
"Now." Kong Li looked up. "Why did you move to the Abyss Between Worlds? Your old place was so beautiful—mountains, rivers, full of spiritual life. Perfect for living." She stared at the surrounding darkness. "There's nothing here. It's freezing cold. And—where is your true form? Why are you appearing as only a spirit?"
"Would you like the true answer, or a comfortable one?"
"The true one." Her voice was steady. Though she could already feel it—this answer was going to hurt.
A-Xin lifted her sleeve. The darkness around them peeled back—and Kong Li saw, spread across all of it like an infinite tapestry, the ten thousand worlds. All of the celestial realm laid out before her: great worlds and small worlds woven together, each visible from where she stood.
Between them: cracks. Fractures running through the fabric between worlds. But something threaded through every one of them—holding them together, keeping them from widening—while the ambient spiritual energy of heaven and earth worked, slowly and steadily, to heal them.
When Kong Li saw what it was, she nearly came apart.
She gripped A-Xin's sleeve with both hands. Disbelief and grief welled up together and her eyes filled.
Threading through every crack, holding the ten thousand worlds together—was A-Xin's true form.
A vine of white as snow. The first vine that had ever grown when heaven and earth first parted from one another at the beginning of creation.
"Why?" The word came out broken. "Why?"