Under celestial dreams, Xianxia and Wuxia worlds unfold
Chapter 42 Bai Qian~ Evening shadows pooled like ink against the ancient stone walls of the Kunlun bedchamber, while candlelight danced across a folding screen of carved sandalwood and Silk of Cloudborne Ascension (云升绸, Yún Shēng Chóu), where silver-winged cranes soared between wisps of painted clouds, ascending toward immortal realms hidden in swirling mountain mist. […]
Chapter 41 Changying My engagement to Ruilin came with a ledger of practical calculations. The marriage would forge an unbreakable alliance between Celestial and Phoenix blood, stabilizing the delicate balance that keeps the Eight Realms and Four Seas from tipping into chaos. Only Qingqiu stands apart from this equilibrium, their coffers deep enough to buy […]
Chapter 40 Rulin I know it’s you. When I rushed back from Nine Heavens, you were gone, but I found a single drop of your blood — Yi Nuo’s blood — had settled on the dark lacquered bedframe when you birthed our child alone. It glistened there like a ruby tear against the midnight wood, […]
Chapter 39 I hadn’t wanted to come. Princess Changying’s summons arrived at dawn — inscribed on iridescent parchment that shimmered between jade and sapphire, each draconian rune pulsing faintly, as though alive. When I unfolded it, the characters slithered like silver-scaled serpents, rearranging themselves before my eyes until the message burned clear: Meet me in […]
Chapter 38 I woke not in silence, but in the breath between heartbeats — where the world feels paused, and the soul has yet to decide if it will return. There was warmth, and the scent of peach blossoms soaked in grief. My body remembered agony, though my mind did not yet know its name. […]
Chapter 37 Bai Qian~ It wasn’t a light I followed out of the darkness. It was my daughter, Ying’er. When I opened my eyes in Qingqiu, I did not rise from my bed. I was not needed there. No — an unseen tether, a soundless voice pulled me elsewhere, to a place where the past […]
Chapter 36 Yi Nuo~ Two months. Sixty-one days. One thousand, four hundred and sixty-four hours. Eighty-seven thousand, eight hundred and forty minutes. It isn’t a clock that keeps the time for me. It’s my hair—strands I coil around my finger until they snap from the root. Each break is a quiet thunder in my fingertips. […]
Chapter 35 Yi Nuo~ The days after Ruilin left stretched into an eternity, each one a frayed silk thread, thin enough to snap with a sigh. Idleness, a silent enemy, threatened to suffocate me. I tried my best to ignore the slow passage of time, keeping myself occupied to avoid the emptiness left in the […]
Chapter 34 Feng Ming~ The air reeked of plums and lotuses in bloom, but all I could taste was the acrid bite of jealousy. They danced like lovers lost in a world of their own creation, careless and bright and maddeningly near. I had stood in the shadows of that east corridor, my palm feeling […]
Chapter 33 Ruilin ~ The guards. What are they doing? Why is he within my walls? Feng Ming stood exactly where he should not be—too close, too familiar to Yi Nuo, like a serpent sunning itself on sacred stone. I landed soundlessly behind the eastern colonnade. The courtyard breathed the perfume of late-spring peach blossoms, […]
Chapter 32 Ruilin~ The moon hangs high above, its pale light seeping through the vast night. I read your letter by candlelight. I won’t ask when you’ll return. Only that you are well. Everything is fine, and we are all healthy. Please don’t neglect yourself. Another letter—another poem, brief as it may be. Yi Nuo […]
Chapter 31 Yi Nuo~ When Ruilin returns, the interval is ten days—a mere ten days, not ten weeks, not ten months or ten years. However, seeing him run through the courtyard, his hair flying behind him, a crooked smile on his face, sends a shiver down my spine, blurring time into a continuous ache. Our […]
Chapter 30 Since getting married, Ruilin and I haven’t spent a day apart. We had eaten every meal together, shared the same bath water, slept with our wrists knotted beneath the same pillow. Now, after a glorious year and a half, the honeymoon was ending in a manner neither of us could have prepared for. […]
Chapter 28 Yi Nuo~ The cloying sweetness of cinnamon and lilies, a heavy, recently sickening perfume in the still air of Liang Yu Palace, made each breath a labored gasp, bringing on another wave of nausea. The cool ivory of my vanity felt smooth beneath my fingertips as I sat, feigning composure, but the dark […]
Chapter 27 Ruilin~ If I’d thought the passion would abate, I was mistaken. Our intimacy is a ritual, where we rediscover each other with fervor. Each morning, still heavy-lidded and wrapped in the remnants of dreams, we would slide into the embrace of the deep soaking tub, its dimensions just right for two if we […]
