Chapter 6: First Meeting

                                 

Xi Jiuge smiled with gentle ease. She had no intention of leaving; after straightening her robe she rose and asked, “Where are they?”

Ji Shaoyu had been speaking lightly to keep her from growing bored—never imagining Xi Jiuge would take notice of the two demons. By nature she was distant; few ever drew her attention, not even Bai Di Shaohao, who only received a word or two because he pestered her. Ji Shaoyu watched quietly as she stood to go. She had never yielded to anyone’s urging to attend places she refused; yet hearing the two demons were coming to class changed her plans for the moment.

“I was only joking,” Ji Shaoyu said with a smile, careful and soft. “If you still feel unwell, don’t force yourself.”

Xi Jiuge merely shook her head and asked again, “Where are they?”

—
Yongtian Palace, Qingxin Hall corridor.

Chang Ju had no fear when chosen as a hostage or when leaving the demon world. Now, seeing the uneasy faces around her, panic prickled at her throat. “Brother Hanguang, what’s wrong?”

Li Hanguang pressed his brows as if collecting himself against time’s dislocation. He tried to sound steady. “I’m fine.”

“Are you really?” Chang Ju’s worry showed plainly. “You collapsed just now; when you woke you spoke nonsense. Brother Hanguang, are you unwell?”

Li Hanguang—Emperor Hanguang in a thousand years’ time—felt the law of causality tug at him. Returning to the past with full memory flouted heaven; the cracks in time punished such defiance. He had expected to awaken empty—no memory, no mana—but that had not been the only consequence. He allowed the smallest smile, then slipped away like a wisp. She lied to him about what would happen; he lied back in return. He had other precautions prepared; aside from restored mana, there would be no lingering afflictions—yet in her mind she should have lost all memory. If Li Hanguang guessed correctly, she might seize the chance to kill him.

He found the irony almost pleasant: that someone who thought of killing him every day still cared enough to test him. Chang Ju felt something different in him now—an unfamiliar chill that made her hesitate. Though they were cousins by blood and he had cared for her since childhood, there was always a coldness at Li Hanguang’s core that unnerved her. On the road to class he had swayed briefly, clinging to a tree while Chang Ju fretted at his side; she could not say whether that was normal.

Word had already spread through Yongtian Palace: envoys from the demon world would come to class. As Li Hanguang and Chang Ju entered Qingxin Hall, every eye turned. Li Hanguang kept his greetings faint and chose a remote corner to sit; his mana was not yet whole and ostentation was ill-timed. The highborn youth, used to privilege and ease, whispered and laughed elsewhere, while many women glanced at Li Hanguang with curiosity and surprise. He moved like a shadow that did not belong.

Chang Ju, accustomed to indulgence, found the change jarring; Li Hanguang, steady and quiet, laid paper and ink before her and guided her hand in familiar movements—servant’s care, not a prince’s grandeur. Observers who had expected a monstrous demon were disappointed; beauty could still wear a lowly station. For them, an obedient attendant remained an attendant.

When Chang Ju pricked her finger on the pages, the wound healed quickly on its own. Li Hanguang used a faint spiritual touch to help—small gestures that hid an old, multiplied suffering. He brushed the blood from his fingertips in secret and felt, for the first time in ages, the sting that once defined him. The truth behind his loyalty was cruelty: Chang Yin had used a Gu—an “Heart Erosion” parasite—that transferred any damage from Chang Ju to Li Hanguang a hundredfold. This was love twisted into a chain, not kindness but a tool of control. Li Hanguang had borne that pain for centuries; it had shaped him into a man who learned to endure in silence.

He had freed himself of that Gu only after five hundred years and carried the memory of that control like a weight. Now, with the demon envoys newly arrived at Yongtian Palace, he felt the odd relief of the familiar ache return—proof he still remembered who he was.

The hall’s hush snapped when Xi Jiuge arrived late. The palace was crowded, yet she moved with a quiet gravity that silenced the room; even those who might have given up seats rose politely at Ji Shaoyu’s small motion. Ji Shaoyu—gentle, unshowy, beloved by the palace—explained that Xi Jiuge had not been well and he had accompanied her. The Master softened and welcomed them; students made way.

Strangely, when Xi Jiuge declined the offered seat and chose the back, everyone was taken aback. She walked to a corner where Li Hanguang already sat; when she asked if a place was free, he needed no look to know it was hers. Ji Shaoyu and Li Hanguang exchanged polite gestures—an outward model of friendship that hid currents below. The Master spread his scrolls and began to speak on the Nine Flower Sutra, but the hall’s restless youths whispered and dozed. In the far corner, beneath the Master’s words, a small pocket of silence formed: Xi Jiuge listened upright, Li Hanguang took notes, Ji Shaoyu kept a respectful stillness, and even Chang Ju struggled to copy the lecture.

Yet beneath Xi Jiuge’s composed attention lay something sharper. Her fingers fidgeted beneath her sleeve, and her quiet concentration masked a deadly calculation; she had thoughts of killing that had not yet faded from earlier trespasses. Li Hanguang, meanwhile, controlled a different vigilance—his arm steady as he wrote, the motion of his wrist a subtle discipline, guarding both the lecture and the woman at his side.

At one moment when a stray lock of hair fell across his hand and sunlight caught his profile, Li Hanguang felt an inner twinge: after so much effort to slip from view, the crowd’s attention had finally moved on. His irritation eased into something like a private smile. He told himself—almost aloud—that he was glad, absurdly, that she seemed to want him dead; the trouble was welcome because it kept him true to himself and reminded him who he had been.

Next