Chapter 15: Shao Siyou

Even before Li Hanguang said anything, Xi Jiuge had known something was wrong.

She hadn't expected him to dare — which was why he'd managed to drag her back against the wall at all. Her first instinct was to burn him to ash, and she reached for her divine fire and found nothing. Not diminished. Simply absent.

She couldn't sense her divine power at all.

As long as the sun rose as it should, her power was inexhaustible. The only circumstance under which it wouldn't be: this wasn't the real world.

The understanding settled her immediately. An illusion. Her power was suppressed by the illusion itself, which meant she had lost nothing permanent. She shifted her weight, placed one hand behind her back, and let the knife slide from her sleeve into her palm.

A gift from the White Emperor — a magical artifact, now stripped of most of its supernatural properties without spiritual energy to charge it. Still a knife. Still sufficient.

He pushed me, she thought, with cold clarity. This ungrateful junior needs to learn something about respect.

Li Hanguang appeared to have no awareness that he was about to be stabbed. He was looking at her face with the specific attention of someone who has discovered something remarkable and intends to examine it properly. This close, in the shadow of the staircase, the light low and dusty — her eyes were extraordinary. Bright, expressive, the pupils carrying a pale gold shimmer, like a siren's light below still water. And yet the gaze itself was clear, almost innocent. He found himself thinking that if someone died for her, she would tilt her head and wonder why.

"The goddess's eyes are genuinely beautiful," he said, conversationally. "But I wouldn't recommend acting right now. You haven't trained in martial arts — without your divine power, you're not much different from an ordinary woman. If you kill me, you'll have to handle the Illusion Demon alone afterward."

Xi Jiuge had been momentarily alarmed and angry. Neither state had lasted. She let her weight settle against the wall, entirely composed, and looked directly into his eyes. "How do you know I can't handle it?"

Li Hanguang reflected that only she would manage to sound condescending while pinned against a wall by a man. He smiled pleasantly. "I truly don't know. I only know that I'm not willing to die. If the goddess insists on fighting, I might do something irrational — and then we'd both be injured, which would benefit whatever is outside that door."

"You think you can fight me to a draw."

He felt, not for the first time, that her priorities were genuinely unusual. Not afraid of losing her divine power. Not embarrassed by the current physical arrangement. Completely engaged the moment the question became one of winning or losing.

He felt her wrist shift. His gaze stayed on her face. His hand found the specific fold of her sleeve where the knife was.

She resisted — without divine power, her strength was unremarkable — and slowly, carefully, he pressed her wrist to the wall. He'd been careful; his palm was between her wrist and the stone.

He noted the slight narrowing of her eyes. She was genuinely unconcerned about being teased — or genuinely unaware that she was being teased, which amounted to the same result. But the winning-or-losing question had her full attention.

He spoke while she was still calculating. "Goddess, I have no intention of giving offense. But I think you may be walking into exactly what the demon wants. It lured us into this illusion without our knowledge — its strength is not negligible. These hallucinogenic demons specialize in turning people against each other. If you attack me, you may be doing its work for it."

"Heh." She let the sound out slowly, with precision. "So by your account — you pulled me back. Or perhaps you saved me."

"I wouldn't dare claim either." He was very humble about it. "I was only concerned you might be bewitched. I would never take credit."

He would absolutely take credit. Her fingers twitched. But they were still inside whatever the demon had woven, the enemy invisible and listening, and it would be wasteful to kill him here when she had so many better options available once they were out. Reason prevailed, barely.

"Enough time has passed without movement outside," she said. "Ji Shaoyu and the others are likely in trouble. This place isn't safe to linger." A pause. "For the sake of the greater situation, I will let this offense pass."

She ground her back teeth.

"Let go."

Li Hanguang heard the answer he'd been working toward, and felt nothing like satisfaction. She'd changed her position that quickly — and only to help Ji Shaoyu.

He gave her a long look, released her wrist, and asked with a gentle smile: "Is the Goddess so concerned about Crown Prince Xuan?"

Xi Jiuge was already flexing her wrist, head down, not looking at him. Her tone was flat. "You coerced me into cooperating with you. Wasn't that also to save Chang Ju?"

His expression shifted, though the smile remained — became, if anything, more genuine. "It seems we can reach an agreement. I was hasty just now. Forgive any offense, Goddess."

Since meeting her, the word he'd said most often was forgive me. He showed no sign of learning from this pattern. Xi Jiuge smiled as well, easy and tolerant: "It's all right."

They looked at each other. The smiles were extremely amicable and meant completely different things.

Li Hanguang turned to the moonlight beyond the window and moved on. "When we were on the lake, the sky was clear. Once the Moon-Tracing Lotus bloomed, fog started rising from the water. I thought it was ordinary night fog, but I think now the demon was already weaving this illusion at that point. After we came ashore, we stepped into a false world it had prepared for us." He considered. "Its power is connected to the Moon-Tracing Lotus — moonlight and fragrance are what carry it. Both are weakest at the bottom of the cabin. It probably can't hear us here."

That was why he'd dragged her back into the shadows. Resisting the illusion. Of course.

Xi Jiuge gave a measured hum. "It lured us ashore intentionally, then separated us. That means it's not particularly strong. We'll understand what we're dealing with once we look."

Li Hanguang sighed. "Goddess. We're still in its illusion."

"So?"

"Be careful with your words and actions. Don't act rashly. The two of us should probably—" He didn't finish. She had already glanced at him once and turned to leave.

"So long-winded."

"..." He raised an eyebrow at her back. He had been about to suggest they stay together, which was both tactically reasonable and personally convenient. What a pity.

He followed her out.

---

The night fog outside was thicker than before. The fragrance of epiphyllum moved through it — faint, continuous, the kind that didn't announce itself but was always there. Li Hanguang scanned the mist, called out: "Goddess?"

From the flower bushes ahead, a woman's voice, weak and strained: "I'm here — come quickly."

He moved immediately. She had no divine power and only a short knife. Had they all underestimated this demon? Had it already injured her?

He found her in the white dress, lying on the ground, fingers pressed against her abdomen. Blood running down her pale hands onto the dirt. "A monster attacked me — it ran that way, hurry."

He didn't move toward where the monster had supposedly gone. He knelt beside her, frowning. "Where are you hurt? How serious?"

"I'm fine." She shook her head. The voice was frail. "Catch it first. Ji Shaoyu is still in the illusion — we can't let it hurt Shaoyu—"

"Ji Shaoyu." His voice cooled by a precise degree. "Even now." But his tone softened despite itself as he looked at her. "You're injured — it's too dangerous to leave you alone. Can you walk?"

"I can manage." She pushed herself upright, fingers going into the dirt, the red of her blood mixing with the black earth, white skin marked with both. She was asking for help she didn't know she was asking for.

Li Hanguang reached down and lifted her to her feet without ceremony. Standing, she was unsteady — she who was never anything but exactly herself, now leaning against him by necessity. She shifted slightly. "I can stand on my own. Let go. I'm engaged — this proximity isn't appropriate."

His grip tightened. "The demon hasn't been found. Don't be reckless." A beat. "Does it hurt to walk?"

She shook her head.

"Good." His voice had remained gentle throughout — and then his hand moved toward the wound at her abdomen. She startled, tried to pull back — at this range there was no room — and his fingers were already there, tearing directly into the wound.

The woman in white screamed and dissolved. A wisp of mist shot upward, dispersing into the sky.

Li Hanguang flicked the blood from his fingers. The solicitousness in his expression was completely gone. He shook his head, a small regretful sound. "You certainly read my habits accurately. The pity is that you don't understand her. When Xi Jiuge is injured, she doesn't lean on anyone. She only wants to kill me."

He looked back toward where he'd come from. The mist in that direction was thickening. The impostor had been real enough — the blood on his fingers was genuine demon blood — which meant he'd wounded the demon's true form. It would be furious. It might go for the real Xi Jiuge in revenge.

He needed to find her quickly.

---

Xi Jiuge had walked out of the cabin and not heard Li Hanguang following. She exhaled slowly. The demon had separated them, which meant he was somewhere in his own false version of this place.

She walked.

The fog pressed in around her. The Suyu Tan stone at her side emitted its faint fragmented light — the only clear thing visible. She walked for a long time. The path didn't change. Looking back: white fog. Looking forward: white fog extending into the far distance.

Before today, this would have been nothing. Her divine power was inexhaustible; she could have burned the illusion apart or simply waited it out from a position of perfect comfort.

Now her body was purely mortal. Her breathing was rapid. Her legs were heavy and going numb. Each step required an active decision not to fall.

She had always understood, abstractly, that her power was a function of what she was — the daughter of Xihe, the disciple of the Queen Mother of the West, born into a body made for divinity. She had never before understood what it meant to have none of it. Whether she had earned any of it. Whether, stripped of it, she was anyone at all.

A bead of sweat traced down her temple and wet her eyelashes. She wiped it away without slowing.

She was Xi Jiuge. She was the daughter of Xihe because that was simply true, because she had been born into it and had never once failed to be worth the name. The rest of the question was purely hypothetical, and she had no use for hypotheticals. She cleared it from her mind and kept walking.

The view opened without warning.

Moonlight on still water. Wildflowers across an open field. The Northern Sea of Chaos spread before her — but different, the Moon-Tracing Lotus entirely absent, only unnamed wild grasses growing in their place. The spiritual energy here was richer than Kunlun, rushing into her meridians the moment she stopped resisting. The exhaustion dissolved. She felt so clear she might have risen from the ground.

From somewhere deep in the mountains, a voice: "Why don't you turn around?"

She looked at the landscape. Northern Sea of Chaos topography, but the details were wrong — older, somehow, as if she were seeing the place as it had been before she had any memory of it.

"Who are you?"

"You haven't answered my question."

"You're an unknown person. Why would I be obligated to answer?"

A pause. Then, with what sounded like genuine surprise: "It has been many years since anyone dared speak to me this way. Considerable courage, junior."

"In the Heavenly Realm, very few beings can call me junior. Do you know who I am?"

The voice laughed — a sound that moved through the mountains and the lake simultaneously, as though the landscape itself was producing it. "Interesting. Xihe was gentle and kind. I did not expect her daughter to be so entirely different."

Xi Jiuge's chest tightened. "You know my mother?"

"They were born within my body. Of course I know her." A long, melancholy sound. "I slept too long. Many memories are blurred. I remember them as newborns — and then I woke to find they had perished, and their daughter has become the highest rank in the Heavenly Realm."

She had asked about her identity as a test. The beings in all the realms who were older than her, who had known Xihe, who had witnessed Xihe's birth and might have held jurisdiction over this place — that was an extremely short list.

The guess felt ridiculous even as it formed.

"Could it be — that you are Pangu?"

Silence.

Then, with evident interest: "Your divine body was made for power, but without your magic you are no different from a mortal. You walked in white fog for longer than most beings could endure without seeing an end to it. Why didn't you turn back?"

"I was going the right way. Why would I turn back?"

"Didn't it occur to you that you might be going wrong?"

"Mistakes come from hesitation and wavering. Once I have decided, I don't revisit it."

A slow exhale, almost fond. "Such persistence. Truly her daughter. You are the only person in hundreds of thousands of years to reach this place — perhaps that is itself a form of fate. For the sake of what we once were, I will grant you one request."

Xi Jiuge said: "What kind of request is possible?"

"I am the ancestral god who created heaven and earth. All gods call me Father. Even having perished, granting a wish to a small girl is well within my power."

"Then I've decided."

The voice sounded surprised. "Already? You should consider carefully. When you leave here, I will fall back into sleep — and the next time I wake may be a hundred thousand years from now."

"You are Pangu." She said it simply. "What would there be to hesitate about?" She paused for exactly as long as it took to be certain. "I wish for a world without suffering. For all living beings to live in peace."

The mountains were quiet for a moment.

"You have come before the most ancient being in all creation. The chance to ask for anything. And this is what you choose?"

"I have met the ancestral god who made heaven and earth," Xi Jiuge said. "Of course I must use it for the people of the Three Realms. How could I waste it on personal desires?"

The echo moved slowly through the mountains and across the still water: "Where is the world? Where are the common people? What is meant by being without suffering? What does peace mean?" A long reverberation. "This wish is too vast. I will give you another chance."

Xi Jiuge nodded, and waited to hear what came next.