The road to the south began where our world ended: at the thinning edge of the bamboo grove, behind the house he had built for us. The slender, spaced stalks that had accompanied us since our earliest days of training soon gave way to the true forest, the one that stretched for league after league without any mortal daring to penetrate it.
The bamboo thickened into a wall of dark, tall stems, so dense that sunlight was reduced to mere slivers of gold falling onto the dry leaves. The ground was a mat of years‑old fallen leaves, and the air, which in the first few paces still carried the familiar scent of the village, quickly became only moisture and earth and the green perfume of stalks rising like pillars of an endless temple.
We did not walk as mortals. We did not need to.
Qi flowed through us continuously, perfectly, our millions of open pores breathing the world around us. With each step, Qi propelled us forward, making us glide through the forest with the speed and lightness of the wind itself. The bamboos passed by like a curtain opening and closing, and I felt the pure joy of moving without effort, without weight, without the fatigue that, in another life, would have made me stop.
I did not care about the landscape. I never did.
My eyes were where they always were: on him.
Zhì Yuǎn moved beside me, his broad shoulders relaxed, his posture as flawless as a warrior who need not show strength because strength is what he is. The dark tunic I had sewn for him draped over his body as if woven from the night itself, and the black silk cloak I had given him fluttered with each stride, brushing the air like a folded wing.
I watched the play of his muscles beneath the cloth, the perfect way his tempered body cut through the air without effort. The curve of his shoulders, the line of his jaw, the way his fingers opened and closed at his sides, ready for anything. He was a living painting, an entity the world did not deserve to shelter, yet was, in every fiber, every breath, absolutely mine.
He is mine—I thought, and the thought was sweet, thick, intoxicating as aged rice wine.
Dozens and dozens of leagues fell behind us, and the forest seemed endless. The stalks rose taller and taller, the stems darker, the leaves denser. I remembered the two men who had died on our veranda, complaining about the bamboo grove that never ended, the heat, the weariness, the distance.
They did not know—I thought, with a hint of disdain that was not disdain, only the certainty of one who no longer belongs to the same world. They did not know that Qi can carry you. That the world can be crossed without pain, without sweat, without the weight that mortals carry.
But for us, there was no fatigue. The Qi we spent to move was replenished instantly by the environment, by our open pores, by the constant flow that kept us light, fresh, eternally ready. We could run like this for days, weeks, years, and never feel the weight others felt.
This is how he makes me feel—I thought, and the thought was a secret I kept only for myself. Light. Eternal. As if time cannot touch me as long as I am beside him.
He slowed gently, drawing even closer, until our shoulders almost touched as we advanced. I felt his warmth through his tunic, his Qi mingling with mine, as it always mingled, as it always would.
He turned his face to me, and his eyes—black, deep, full of that spark that undid me completely, that made me forget the world existed beyond him—met mine.
"Do you know what I'm thinking?" he asked. His voice held not a trace of fatigue. It was soft, velvety, vibrating in the exact tone he used when we were alone in the dark of our room, when there was nothing between us but skin and desire.
"That this bamboo grove really is an endless maze, like those idiots complained about before you buried them?" I answered, and I could not suppress the smile that always bloomed when he looked at me like that. The smile that was only his. The smile no one else saw.
He let out a low laugh, a rich, warm sound that made my own dantian pulse in answer. The laugh he kept only for me.
"That too," he agreed, his eyes shining with pure adoration. "But I was thinking about how the Qi here seems crude compared to the way you move through it. You flow, Qíng. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
Heat rose up my neck. Not the heat of effort—there was no effort, never any effort when he was near. It was the heat of being seen by him, of being desired by him, of being the only thing his eyes sought amid the vastness of the world.
I drew a little closer in the air, lacing my fingers with his as we moved. I felt his palm against mine, warm, firm, certain.
"If I flow, it is because I follow your current," I whispered, squeezing his hand with the strength I used to hold everything that was mine. "You spoil me too much with those looks, Zhì Yuǎn. One of these days I'll convince myself I'm a goddess."
He pulled my hand to his lips. He kissed my knuckles without even slowing our relentless pace through the trees, and the touch of his lips sent a wave of heat straight to my belly, to the place only he knew, only he touched.
"You are much more than that to me," he said, and his eyes never left mine.
---
The journey continued like that. Hour after hour, league after league, devouring the world beneath our feet with the speed of those who know no obstacles. The bamboo grove stretched before us like an ocean of green and gold, and we crossed it as if we were made of the same wind that swayed the stalks.
Our conversations filled the forest's silence. Words that were not just words, but caresses tossed into the air. Half‑finished promises that needed no completion. Jokes only the two of us understood, because only the two of us shared the same world, the same breath, the same rhythm.
He told me about what he had read in the old man's scrolls, about the nine mortal realms that ordinary cultivators spent decades crossing. I listened to his voice, deep and calm, and thought that I did not care how many realms there were, how many years it took, how many lives one would have to live. As long as it was with him, time did not exist.
"They take twenty years to temper their meridians," he said at some point, as we ran side by side. "Twenty years to reach where we reached in weeks."
"They don't have what we have."
He looked at me. His eyes shone with that light I knew well, the light he kept for moments when the world shrank to just the two of us.
"They don't have you."
My hand tightened on his so hard he laughed, and I laughed with him, and the sound of our laughter was lost in the wind that carried us.
---
On the second day, the bamboo began to thin.
It was subtle at first. The stalks, which had stood so dense we could barely see the sky, began to spread apart. The sunlight, which had been mere threads of gold, became broad beams illuminating the ground of dry leaves. The air grew drier, the smell of damp earth giving way to something rougher, more mineral.
On the third day, the bamboo disappeared entirely.
The ground before us was not green. It was yellow, dry, cracked like the skin of an old animal. And beyond the yellow, a red that looked like an open wound, a color that did not belong to the earth I knew, that did not belong to the world where I had grown up.
Zhì Yuǎn slowed. Not because he was tired—he was never tired—but because he wanted to look. To see with those eyes that saw beyond what others could see.
"Do you feel it?" he asked.
I did what he had taught me. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and felt.
The Qi in the air was different. Not the sparse Qi of the bamboo grove, which entered the pores like a thread of water. It was dense, heavy, hot. As if the earth itself were breathing fire, exhaling an energy that burned before it touched.
"It's Yang," he said. "Pure. Purer than anything we have felt before."
"The herbs?"
"They grow where Yang is densest. On the slopes of the volcano, where the heat rises from the ground."
I opened my eyes. The horizon before us was a red line that seemed to bleed into the sky.
"Let's go," he said, and his fingers found mine, and we went.
---
The village appeared when the sun was already slanting toward the west.
It was small, smaller than Qīngshān, with houses of dark stone that looked as if they had been carved from the mountain itself. The streets were narrow, the ground covered with a red dust that rose with every step, and the air smelled of sulfur, of something burned, of something that never rested.
The villagers looked at us when we entered.
There was a woman sweeping the stone sidewalk, a man carrying a basket of dried herbs, two children who stopped playing to watch us. Their eyes were weary, their clothes stained with red dust, and there was something in them I did not like.
It was not curiosity. It was fear. A submissive, ancient fear, of those who had learned to cower before what they did not understand.
And then they saw Zhì Yuǎn.
I saw the exact moment their eyes found him. Saw the way the woman stopped sweeping, the way the man let his basket hang limp, the way the children forgot to breathe. Their eyes traveled over his face, his shoulders, his posture, and in them there was no longer fear. There was something worse.
Admiration. Desire. The same hunger I had seen in other eyes before he broke them.
I hate it when they look at him—I thought, and the thought was a blade. I hate it when they breathe the same air as him. I hate it when they exist in the same world as him.
I squeezed his hand tighter. He felt it. He always felt it.
His fingers squeezed back, and his thumb brushed my skin in a slow movement, a silent promise only I could hear. I am here. I am yours.
All the annoyance dissolved. Like snow in the sun, like ice in fire. He was there, beside me, and where he was, I was. Always.
"Let's find a place to stay," he said, and his voice was calm, as if he had not noticed the stares, or as if he already knew I would deal with them if necessary.
We walked through the narrow streets, past more stares, more fear, more of that hunger I wanted to tear from their faces. But I did not care. He was with me. His hand was in mine. His Qi mingled with mine, as it always mingled, as it always would.
At the end of the street, we found a stone house that served as an inn. The door was low, the frame worn by time, and the smell of sulfur was stronger here, mixed with the smell of bread and roasted meat.
The owner, a broad‑shouldered man with a sun‑marked face, looked at us when we entered. His eyes traveled over Zhì Yuǎn, then me, and something in them changed. It was not fear. It was recognition. As if he had seen something like this before, and knew not to meddle.
"Room?" he asked, his voice rough.
"For two," Zhì Yuǎn answered.
The man nodded, handed over an iron key, and said nothing more.
---
In the room, when the door closed behind us, Zhì Yuǎn pulled me to him. His arms circled my waist, and he buried his face in my neck, breathing deeply.
"You're tense," he said, his voice muffled against my skin.
"I don't like the way they look at you."
He laughed. It was a low laugh, only for me.
"They're not looking at me. They're looking at you."
"No. They're looking at you."
"Then let's go back soon. Get the herbs, go home, and no one will look anymore."
I tightened my arms around him.
"Promise?"
"Promise."
We stayed like that for a long moment, embraced in the middle of the small room, with the smell of sulfur coming through the window and the distant sound of a city that was not ours.
I want to go back—I thought. Back to the house, to the bamboo grove, to the place where the only world that exists is ours. Where there is no one to look at him but me.
But he was there. His arms were around me. His heart beat in the same rhythm as mine. And where he was, I was.
Always.
---