Time flowed on, and in the blink of an eye, dusk had arrived.
The setting sun blazed like fire. Night was drawing near.
It was long past the hour when the editorial department should have gone home — and yet, here they all remained.
The editors stood around watching Bai Qing, who had collapsed face-down on her desk and had been crying without pause for the better part of an hour. A chill crept down more than a few spines.
"How long has Ah Qing been crying now...? She's still not showing any signs of stopping... Just what on earth did that Fang Qiu write? This is terrifying."
"What do you mean 'what'? I kept count today — Ah Qing cried a full five times going through this manuscript. By the end, the hand holding the pages was trembling. This surpasses even Sword and Fairy 1, if you ask me..."
"Then let's just wait a little longer. Give her time to calm down, then we'll all go out for drinks."
"Mm... Good thing I was clever enough to make an excuse about having other manuscripts to review. After I finished 5 Centimeters Per Second last time, I couldn't sleep properly for two whole days — every time I closed my eyes, I wanted to stuff a carriage full of gunpowder and blow the whole thing up. And now even battle-hardened Ah Qing is crying like this... I estimate I won't be sleeping for at least half a month."
"Uh... I have a question. Are we still going to see the Sword and Fairy film adaptation when it comes out?"
"Uh, that's actually a pretty good question... I'll drag my husband along, I suppose. At least if I cry, there'll be someone to comfort me."
"You're something else, you know that? Let's all go together then — to the Heyu Tea House. I heard they've put up some lines of verse left by a mysterious white-haired poet from Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. Been so slammed lately I haven't had a chance to go look."
They chatted on, watching Bai Qing cry.
It was a good while longer before her sobbing finally began to subside. She pressed a handkerchief to her face and dried her tears.
Fang Qiu's Sword and Fairy 2 was brutal in the extreme — knife after knife, each one cutting deeper than the last.
Liu Mengli was bound to inherit the demon realm and forbidden from leaving it for a hundred years.
Han Lingsha had only a few short years left to live, and the Wangshu Sword had drained what little life force remained to her.
Her end was near.
Just as Fang Qiu had given no miracle to Kaori, she gave none to Han Lingsha either.
Mu Rong Ziying had entered the immortal sect as a child, and even when his parents breathed their last, he never once got to see their faces.
He had no family left by his side.
Yun Tianhe had acquired the Breath of the Candlelight Dragon and could live for hundreds of years — yet all he could do was watch helplessly as Han Lingsha died. And for the sake of the people of the world, he had gouged out his own eyes.
Xuan Xiao, consumed by his obsession, had transformed into a demon. He had screamed those words — My fate is mine to command, not Heaven's — at the Jade Lady of the Nine Heavens, yet he was still mercilessly sealed away in the Great Vortex of the Eastern Sea, never to break free again for all eternity.
Yun Tianqing, for Su Yu's sake, had disregarded his own life to help her purge the killing cold from her body — and in the end, he followed her into death.
And along the way, there had been knife after knife, countless cuts.
The tangled affair between Qin Ji, her late husband, and Jiang Shi.
It was only when they ventured into the Ghost Realm that they learned: Jimo Lianbao's previous life had been the lover of Xia Yuanchen. Out of devotion to staying by his side, she had reincarnated over and over — sometimes as a tree, sometimes as grass — and when she finally returned as a human being, she came back as a simpleton.
Jiang Shi, too, failed to find the one she loved in the Ghost Realm, because he had already passed through the cycle of reincarnation long ago.
In the great battle of the demon realm, Huaishuo gave his life to save Mu Rong Ziying. Even in his final moments, his thoughts were only of Xuanji...
And from that day on, Xuanji never left the doorway of Huaishuo's room. She sat there holding the summer cricket cage he had once given her, listening to the familiar sound of the crickets chirping — but the familiar face she longed to see would never appear again.
Afterward, the Qionghua Sect ascended to immortality under the combined swordsmanship of Xuan Xiao and Shu Yao, and spiritual energy surged wildly throughout the sect grounds.
Xuanji, who had been keeping watch outside Huaishuo's door, was too young and her cultivation too shallow to protect her own heart meridians. She died alone in the bitter, bone-chilling cold, the summer cricket cage Huaishuo had given her still clutched in her hands.
And the entire Qionghua Sect was destroyed in an instant. Everything they had spent decades searching for — in the end, it had all amounted to nothing. They had walked the wrong path.
On Mt. Buzhou, Fang Qiu had even written of Long Kui and the Demon Sword.
Bai Qing lifted her eyes and looked at the manuscript before her. The final page read: In the blink of an eye, a hundred years had passed.
Qingluan Peak.
Mu Rong Ziying stood at the edge of the cliff, gazing up at the sky. And then, Liu Mengli came to Qingluan Peak from the demon realm.
"Ziying — have these years treated you well?"
"Well or not — what does it matter? Life is but one great empty dream. Youth and white hair come and go in a single breath. Only the Way of Heaven endures, turning and returning, forever unchanged."
"You...they've been waiting for you a long time. I'm sure they have much to say. I'll head back to Jianjia first."
With that, Mu Rong Ziying swept his hand, stepped onto the Demon Sword, and vanished into the wind.
Liu Mengli came before the small cottage. Beside it stood two graves. One headstone bore no inscription. On the other, four words were carved: "Beloved Wife Han Lingsha." The Wangshu Sword was planted in the earth beside it.
Just as Liu Mengli stood there, expression shadowed with grief, leaning down to touch the Wangshu Sword, the cottage door opened. She turned — and there was Yun Tianhe, blind and sightless, stepping out from within.
End.
And on the final page, Fang Qiu had written one last song.
Its title: "Return to the Dream, Wander Among Immortals."
"Tears frozen like ice, falling like shooting stars, shattering whose longing — between the turns of fate, all past lives are buried. The face in the dream grows blurred. At the peak of Kunlun, the jianghu stretches far, flowers fall and bloom and fill the sky... Love cannot be refused, love binds us fast — better to envy the mandarin ducks than the immortals above. A love in this life, a love in the next — let not this tender bond become a parting."
At this, the tears broke from Bai Qing's eyes once more in a rush, and she wept like rain falling on pear blossoms.
"Ah Qing — let's go out for a drink later."
Li Ling sighed, walked over to Bai Qing, and said softly.
"Mm."
Bai Qing replied between sobs.
Li Ling gently patted Bai Qing on the back in comfort. As she did, she stole a glance at the manuscript.
In that one glance, the words "Beloved Wife Han Lingsha" leapt out at her, and she instinctively swallowed.
Fang Qiu... killed off the female lead again.
That gentle, fragile little girl — the author really had no mercy at all.
Seeing this, the other female editors couldn't help but sigh.
"I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again — having an author like Fang Qiu... honestly, I still can't tell if we're lucky or cursed..."
"Right? On the one hand, Fang Qiu is one of our publishing house's star authors — she even caught Miss Ningguang's eye, and Sword and Fairy 1 is being adapted into a film. By any measure, she's the brightest rising star in our editorial department's future. But on the other hand, every time she starts a new book, she puts Ah Qing through absolute hell. And the worst part is she writes so fast — Ah Qing probably hasn't had a decent night's sleep in ages. You can see it on her face. She's worn to the bone."
"I honestly worry that if Bai Qing keeps going like this, her mental state is going to start slipping. That's not going to make things easy when it comes to finding a partner, you know."
"Personally, I'm more worried about Miss Fang Qiu. Don't you think... writing so many storylines like this, over and over — doesn't some part of that have to come from a real wound inside her?"
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