TAXIAN-JUN STOOD in midair, his robes roiling at his back like black ink. He narrowed his eyes, his broad sleeves, thickly embroidered with ceremonial patterns, buffeted by the wind. The spiritual energy in his palm thrashed like a dragon attempting to devour the sun, tearing into visible fog and intangible time.
With a deafening crack, a bolt of lightning split the sky like the fall of an ax.
The world seemed to hold its breath. Then the waters of Heavenly Lake surged backward and the snows of Kunlun flurried in rage. The clouds charged across the sky, crowding out the sun and moving against the winds.
When Chu Wanning had come to this world, he'd torn open only a tiny crack; later on, Shi Mei had used all he had to pry open that crack and follow him to this world. Both of those fissures in space and time had been minor injuries, swiftly repaired by the power of primordial chaos. Even Xu Shuanglin's Heavenly Rift on Mount Jiao, torn open with the power of those five holy weapons, was only a temporary rip through the walls separating the two worlds. The difference between them and the tear Mo Ran created this time was night and day. Crimson engulfed the sky; two suns and two moons rose in the heavens, glowing corpse-pale and dim as they hung overhead.
From mild Jiangnan to snowy Mobei, from the far corners of the ocean to the ends of the earth, people stopped what they were doing and looked up at this terrifying sight.
In Wuchang Town, a lisping child sobbed in his mother's embrace. The mother kissed his cheeks and murmured, "It's okay, it's okay, darling, be good. Mom's here, Mom's right here."
In Yangzhou City, an old woman stumbled with her cane in hand, stooping low as she rasped. "How…how are there two moons and two suns… G-good heavens, what's going on…"
On Flying Flower Isle, Third Lady Sun frowned, standing on the shoreline with her arms crossed before her chest. She sharply commanded everyone to return to their houses and put out their lights, then had her servants bring all the homeless elderly, weak, and infirm to the manor for safety. She stared into the eerie skies, her eyes glinting with sparks.
The great sects of Guyueye, Huohuang Pavilion, and Wubei Temple looked up as well. It no longer mattered if they wished to believe it: The Space-Time Gate of Life and Death had indeed been opened.
Mo Ran hovered in midair, eyes red with bloodlust and shining with fervor and madness. Shi Mingjing had hypnotized and enchanted him over and over; he'd come back to life only to die again and return once more. His memories had been crushed to incoherency, his body puppeteered by a single cognizance soul. There was no sanity left in him, his mind even more volatile than before.
He was destruction incarnate.
Soon, half the world was shrouded in thick black clouds. Taxian-jun tipped his face to the sky and burst into laughter—but what was he laughing about? He didn't know; he didn't understand. His mind was a wasteland, and all that echoed in his heart were his master's orders.
He narrowed his eyes, watching the gleaming barrier beneath the storm clouds. A sneer pulled at his mouth. He reached out, voice low. "Bugui."
Bugui appeared. Taxian-jun ran his hand down its length, the blade glowing bright in the wake of his touch. He raised it high and brought it crashing down on the barrier between worlds.
All was silence.
Then a rumble shuddered through the earth; everything fell apart. At long last, he'd opened the Space-Time Gate of Life and Death—opened it, broken it, and destroyed it. Darkness descended. Taxian-jun's ferocious spiritual energy and the power of the holy weapon Bugui combined to ensure the rift was torn wide open, impossible to close for a hundred years.
He'd completed the mission. Taxian-jun stood in the screaming gale by the Heavenly Rift and turned to look back at this world. He paused, then turned and strode across the rift, into the realm to which he truly belonged.
When the wind stopped wailing in his ears, he opened his eyes. Before him lay a pale blankness. He'd returned to the world over which he'd declared himself emperor, to the Kunlun Taxue Palace of the past life.
"Your Majesty."
"His Majesty has returned. All hail His Majesty."
He stood in the middle of an overgrown plain shrouded in snow. His retinue was rushing toward him, falling to their knees in twos and threes like waves breaking over the shore. They bent their heads and kowtowed before him.
Taxian-jun said nothing. His predatory eyes raked over the rows of cultivators wrapped in black cloaks. He couldn't see their end; the crowd stretched to the foot of the mountain. At their head was a doddering old man. The wind scattered his grizzled hair—Liu-gong, who'd served him for so long.
The year Taxian-jun died, he'd first sent Liu-gong and the other palace attendants back home. He'd thought everything had come to an end. He hadn't expected a grandmaster of medicine named Hua Binan to appear out of nowhere and bare his fangs as he made a corpse puppet of Taxian-jun's body.
But this revenant still had some emotion and lucidity; he was dissatisfied with the mute servants Hua Binan sent to wait on him, and only settled down once Hua Binan brought back those who'd served him in life.
Then, for reasons Old Liu wasn't privy to, Hua Binan disappeared from the world—leaving only the revived emperor, stuck among the living no matter how badly he wished to die. As time passed, even the stupidest observer could see that the emperor had always been a puppet dancing on someone else's strings. Old Liu was no exception. But what could a wrinkled old man with one foot in the grave do? He had no kin left, and all his friends were dead and gone. He could only take serving Emperor Taxian-jun to be his final mission, handling the emperor's daily needs slowly and clumsily in his dotage.
Thus Liu-gong's eyes shone with joy and sadness alike when he saw him again now, his expression the most genuine among the crowd.
Taxian-jun's lips parted. "Old Liu."
"Your Majesty." Liu-gong knelt and kowtowed. "Your Majesty, you've finally returned."
"You'll never guess what happened." Though he didn't realize it, he sounded like a little boy excitedly sharing good news with his guardian. "This venerable one saw him again."
Liu-gong blinked. "Chu-zongshi?"
"Mn. I saw him lots. This venerable one's core is repaired now, too, and once everything's over, this venerable one can—"
Perhaps Taxian-jun saw his own overexcited image reflected in the old man's rheumy eyes; he fell silent and looked uncertainly at those kneeling around him.
Thank goodness. No one dared to mock him.
He pressed his lips together, reshaping himself back into someone ominous and powerful. With a toss of his sleeves, he said, "Enough. Get up, all of you. Return to Wushan Palace with this venerable one."
They mounted their swords and flew back to Sichuan. The land that passed beneath their feet was abandoned earth, barren of anyone or anything. There weren't many living people left in this world. Taxian-jun had long grown used to the state of things here—but after spending time in the other world and all its noisy bustle, returning to this hell on earth did feel strangely lonely.
That night, he opened a jar of aged pear-blossom white and drank it alone in the empty Wushan Palace. Since receiving Mo-zongshi's spiritual core, he'd recovered quite a bit. He could do almost everything a living person could, such as drink wine or eat food—but a corpse was a corpse, no matter how enhanced. The taste on his tongue was scarcely a third as vibrant as it had been in life.
But still he was satisfied with his lot.
After a few rounds, he felt the wine go to his head. He lay on the daybed with a hand to his forehead in utter boredom, recalling past events. But they were unhappy memories and made a poor accompaniment to the wine, only soaking him in sadness.
He'd been avoiding these memories for years, but he feared them no longer. The two worlds were connected; all the suffering of his past would soon be erased. He narrowed his eyes, tangling his slender fingers in the tassel of the wine jug. "Chu Wanning…" he mumbled.
He rose and let his feet carry him toward the long-sealed Red Lotus Pavilion. At the door, he bumped into Liu-gong, who was just leaving. Both were surprised by each other's presence.
"Greetings, Your Majesty."
"What are you doing here?" asked Taxian-jun. His eyes fixed on the basket in Liu-gong's hand, which held a feather duster and cleaning cloths, among other things. "Cleaning up?"
Liu-gong sighed. "Yes. I didn't know when Your Majesty would want to return, and feared some things would rot or break if left too long. I've been coming every day to keep things tidy." Old Liu paused. "Everything inside is just as it was. Please enter, Your Majesty."
Taxian-jun was suddenly at a loss for words.
He strode to a bridge over the lotus pool, which bloomed year-round thanks to its infusion of spiritual energy. Frogs croaked endlessly from the depths of the blossoms with no care for the season. He cocked his head and listened for a while, remembering a bygone afternoon upon this same bridge.
It'd been a hot summer day, the kind of sultry heat that made one long to lie still. On a whim, he'd grabbed Chu Wanning and kissed him on the forehead.
At the time, there was little warmth between them beyond sex. This kiss out of nowhere held no trace of suggestive desire, and so Chu Wanning was rather startled.
The cicadas in the trees cried, and the frogs in the pool croaked their incessant chorus. Taxian-jun stared into those slightly widened phoenix eyes, engrossed, and said, "Since there's nothing else to do, why don't we play a game?"
Before he could say no, Taxian-jun put a finger to Chu Wanning's lips. "Shh. Let this venerable one finish."
Chu Wanning stayed silent.
"Let's make a bet. This venerable one will count to ten. If one of the frogs in the courtyard cries first, you lose, and you have to bring this venerable one a bowl of sour plum soup. If the cicadas in the trees cry first, this venerable one loses, and this venerable one…will take you for a nice little trip down the mountain."
Such a trip was an irresistible temptation. Chu Wanning obviously wished to ignore him, but over time, Taxian-jun had come to a deep understanding of his weaknesses. He knew Chu Wanning couldn't refuse such an offer.
The handsome man smiled. "Then, let's begin. One, two, three…"
That low and magnetic voice counted off. Both of them listened carefully for shrilling or croaking, but this emperor of the mortal realm had encountered a run of bad luck. The cicadas cried louder and louder from the moment he started counting, while the lazy frogs had stopped their song. It seemed they were going to forfeit the match.
"Eight… Nine…" The closer he got to ten, the slower he counted. By the end, it was blatantly cheating; Chu Wanning turned and glared at him.
Taxian-jun was far too shameless to care. Impervious to that glare, he stopped at nine and turned to Chu Wanning. "Do you think the frogs died?"
His question was met with stony silence.
"Why aren't they croaking?"
Chu Wanning didn't deign to respond.
"Hold on, this venerable one is going to check if they're still alive, or it's not fair." He picked up a pebble and tossed it at one hale and hearty green frog—"Ten!"
With a startled ribbit, the frog plunked into the pond. The sound of that croak spread with the ripples on the surface of the water, and Taxian-jun burst into laughter. He dusted off his fingers and said, "You lose. The frog croaked first."
Chu Wanning turned to leave with a flick of his sleeves, but Taxian-jun grabbed one fluttering hem. The cheater Taxian-jun was delighted; within the drifting fragrance coming off the lotuses in the lake, he grinned in the face of Chu Wanning's fury and said, "I want chilled sour plum soup. Extra cold."
"Do you have any shame?" said Chu Wanning, teeth nearly cracking as he clenched his jaw.
"If it can't cool me down, what's the point?" Taxian-jun poked his forehead. "Go on now; remember, not too much sugar."
He must've been in a wonderful mood. By the time he finished the entire jug of sweet and icy sour plum soup beneath the beating sun, even the croaking of the frogs sounded pleasing to the ear. At dusk, he said to Chu Wanning, out of the blue, "It's almost been three years."
"What?"
Displeasure appeared on the emperor's youthful face. "My enthronement. It's been almost three years since this venerable one became emperor."
Taxian-jun searched Chu Wanning's eyes for any flicker of emotion but found himself thwarted. He wrinkled his nose, vexed. "You've been with this venerable one," he said after some thought, "for three years."
No reply came.
"Since that jug of sour plum soup tasted all right, this venerable one will bring you down the mountain. But not far—we'll stay in Wuchang Town."
The carriage was made ready, complete with bamboo curtains, cooling cushions, cups of tea, and folding fans. Standing by the thrice-enlarged gates of Sisheng Peak, Taxian-jun ran his hands along the circlet of gold and jade on the white horse's forehead and turned to look at Chu Wanning. "Recognize it? It's the carriage you liked best back then. It wasn't taking up too much space, so I let them keep it around."
Chu Wanning expressed no happiness; instead he stepped onto the rosewood stool just as he'd done in the past and brushed the bamboo curtain aside to go in.
The servants stared in tongue-tied shock. They turned in panic to Emperor Taxian-jun, who stood bathed in the light of the setting sun. Their master had a dark temper and often slaughtered innocents for less. Chu-zongshi must've possessed impossible courage to ignore etiquette and step into the carriage ahead of His Majesty the emperor. It would have never occurred to those poor servants that Taxian-jun didn't mind at all. His eyes narrowed as he smiled in amusement. "Would you look at that? He still thinks he's the Yuheng Elder."
Just as he was about to follow him in, a woman's silky voice sounded from behind him, speaking gently. "A-Ran."