The South Heavenly Gate looked exactly as she remembered, except lazier. The white tiger that once stood rigid with duty was snoring against the corridor wall, and the guard beside it barely cracked an eye open before letting it fall shut again. Yan Dan passed through without breaking stride.
A thousand years ago, with the evil god still walking the realms, four soldiers would have been at every post, backs straight, eyes sharp. Now even immortals had gone soft in peacetime. Born in hardship, she thought. Dying in comfort.
She turned west. Her master lived west.
She still hadn't decided how to arrive. Announce herself at the gate like a proper disciple? Drop from the clouds unannounced? A thousand years had passed, but her face hadn't aged a day. He would know her. She kept walking, and the glazed roof tiles of his immortal residence caught the light in the distance.
She picked up her pace.
A pale blue figure came around the corner fast and nearly walked straight into her. Both stopped. Yan Dan looked at the face and blinked. "Aren't you Ao Guang, the Dragon King of the East Sea?"
"Ao Xuan." He steadied himself, studying her with a thoughtful expression. "Didn't you jump the reincarnation cycle? What brings you back?"
She was quietly impressed. After all this time, he had recognized her on sight — not Fairy Zhi Xi, who shared her face, but her. No hesitation, no confusion.
"With your current cultivation, the gate guards outside might mistake you for Zhi Xi," he said. "But back then you jumped through seven lives. You were quite the subject of conversation in the Heavenly Court." He was taller than she remembered. His tongue was exactly the same.
Yan Dan didn't rise to it. She smiled. "I've come to see my master. Young Master Ao, take care." She turned to go.
"Wait."
She stopped, lips pressed together. Ao Xuan didn't waste words on people without reason. They had no history, no debts between them. The fact that he was still talking meant something.
"What is it?"
He smiled, just slightly. "I heard that when the Di Zhi was removed, Yelan Mountain was destroyed. A place like that, with no divine artifact to anchor it — dry, cold, no rain. You know what keeps the East Sea full? Water-Stabilizing Pearls. I happen to have one."
"That's generous," Yan Dan said carefully. "What's the condition?"
He pulled a thin folded paper from his sleeve and held it out.
She unfolded it and read. Then read it again. "Drunken Joy? This is... this is an aphrodisiac. Why does a Celestial Lord need a recipe for an aphrodisiac?"
"Read it more carefully." His expression didn't shift at all. "That is the recipe. The ingredients are listed. Follow it exactly."
Yan Dan stared at the page. "It calls for petals from a four-leaf lotus." She looked up slowly. "Which grow in Yelan Mountain. So I'm gathering my own ingredients."
He said nothing, which was answer enough.
She kept reading. "Fire qilin blood." She looked up again. "The Bodhi Patriarch raised that animal like a son. You want me to bleed it?"
"If you make Drunken Joy, bring it to me at the Antarctic Immortal's residence," Ao Xuan said. "A Water-Stabilizing Pearl is nothing compared to that."
He left her standing there, paper in hand.
She found her master exactly where she expected — in his study, ruler in hand, pacing slowly behind a row of kneeling disciples. The sound of brushwork and quiet misery filled the room. She had barely appeared in the doorway when he looked up and their eyes met.
Her stomach dropped the way it always had.
"Master!" It came out before she could think of anything more dignified. "Master!"
He stopped pacing. For a moment he simply stared. Then: "You little rascal. You finally decided to come back? Get in here."
She stepped inside, grinning despite herself. "Master, I'm not a rascal — I'm a lotus rascal. And you look younger, has anyone told you that?"
Without turning his head, he brought the ruler down lightly on the nearest disciple's topknot. "Write today's lesson fifty times."
"You see," Yan Dan said, "that's why my handwriting is so beautiful."
"You write two characters beautifully. Out of every disciple I've ever taught, you are the most useless." He set the ruler down and walked out. "Come sit in the courtyard."
There was already tea on the stone table. Yan Dan poured a cup before he even sat down, knelt, and held it above her head with both hands.
He took it with a heavy snort. "I invested everything in you. Taught you everything I knew. I thought you had real potential." He set the cup down. "And then you threw yourself into the Seven Reincarnations Path. Do you understand what that place is? It's where serious criminals are condemned. And you jumped in voluntarily, like an idiot."
"I know I was wrong."
"I am strict with my disciples, but I protect them. What do I care if you served under Yingyuan? Do you think I'm afraid of Lord Yingyuan?"
Yan Dan kept her expression carefully neutral. If he ever learned the real reason she had jumped, the tea would not be the only thing spilled.
"I said you had the aptitude for immortality, and I meant it. You are genuinely driving me to an early death."
"Master," she said slowly, "there is something I should probably confess. Those difficult questions you asked — I never actually grasped the principles. I found your private books and memorized the answers. I don't have any real aptitude at all."
He looked at her flatly. "Do you think I've gone senile? I knew. If you'd truly grasped the myriad principles, you'd have surpassed me entirely. You'd be the master. I knew exactly what you were doing."
She considered this. "There's also the ivory crystal cup. The one you loved. Senior Brother didn't break it. I did. I tried to repair it with magic and couldn't. I let him take the blame."
"I suspected Tan Zhuo at the time, but I knew it wasn't him. I let it go."
Senior Brother Tan Zhuo hadn't lied to protect her. He simply hadn't been given the chance to speak. Yan Dan filed that away quietly. "One more thing."
He looked up.
"The flower contest. Your window box had many more buds before I accidentally knocked some off. That's why you lost to the Antarctic Immortal."
A long silence.
"Yan Dan." His voice was very measured. "Would you like to tell me about the paste on the soles of my shoes? The hole dug in the garden and covered with leaves, the one that sent the Antarctic Immortal tumbling? Were those yours as well?"
"No," she said immediately. "That was clearly Second Senior Brother."
Better to die than to die alone, Second Senior Brother. My deepest apologies.
She left her master's residence with the weight of a thousand-year-old conscience slightly lighter and made her way toward Diya Palace. She had barely cleared the gate when she looked up and froze.
She turned to run.
"Yan Dan."
She stopped. Turned back slowly, painfully, and said, "Tang—" The word died in her throat. Tang Zhou was wrong. Ying Yuan felt worse. She settled stiffly on "Emperor's Throne."
He had regained his immortal status, but his face was still the mortal one she knew. Her mouth kept wanting to call him Tang Zhou on its own.
"Just call me Tang Zhou," he said. "It's easier."
She pushed past the awkwardness. "Could I borrow the Earth Stop for a while?"
He paused. "You can use it, but — I've only recently recovered my powers through it. The Earth Stop alone may not be enough to restore Yelan Mountain."
She had known it wouldn't be simple. That meant Ao Xuan's path was the only one. The lotus petals were manageable. The qilin blood was not. The Bodhi Patriarch was not someone Ao Xuan would risk offending himself, which was precisely why this task had landed in her hands. Two birds, one stone, zero gratitude.
"Yan Dan."
She blinked. Tang Zhou was watching her with the expression of someone who had been talking to a wall.
"I called you several times."
"Sorry. What?"
"If there's anything I can help with," he said, "I will."
She looked away, out into the mist that rolled across the Nine Heavens in long, pale waves. The palaces were the same. The fog was the same. She was not the same, and neither, she supposed, was he. But what had happened between them was still there, solid and unchanged, regardless of how much time had softened everything around it.
She had no interest in his sympathy. No interest in repayment.
But this was for Yelan Mountain.
"I need fire qilin blood," she said. "Can you help with that?"
The celestial child at the Bodhi Patriarch's residence informed them with a long face that the Patriarch had gone on a journey and would not return for at least ten days, probably longer.
Yan Dan thought about how a single hour in the Heavenly Court meant upheaval below. Ten days, and the mortal realm could have changed dynasties entirely.
"We came to see the qilin," Tang Zhou said to the celestial child, without any particular emphasis. "There's no need to wait."
The child's expression cleared so fast it was almost comic. "Your Majesty! Perfect timing! That beast — that spirit beast — has been refusing to eat and throwing tantrums for days. If the Ancestor comes back and sees it like this, we'll all suffer."
"I used to play with it when I was small," Tang Zhou said, already walking through the gate. He glanced ahead. "It seems to have grown considerably."
Yan Dan's eyes went wide. The qilin tied in the courtyard was enormous.
The celestial child bowed twice, placed a basket of celestial fruits nearby, and took three large steps backward. "Please remember to feed it, Your Majesty—"
The qilin heard them. Its massive head swung around, copper-bell eyes finding the strangers immediately. It gathered itself and unleashed a jet of flame.
Yan Dan threw herself sideways. The celestial child sprinted for the gate, wailing, "It burned Emperor Qingli! It burned the Emperor! This beast is a monster!"
Tang Zhou walked forward calmly and placed a hand on the qilin's back. The animal raised its head, fire still flickering at its nostrils, eyes narrowed. He moved his hand to its neck, stroked slowly. The qilin's enormous body loosened. It lay down, closed its eyes, and breathed out one last small flame as if to register its protest.
"Come pet it," Tang Zhou said. "So it doesn't react when you make the cut."
Yan Dan approached with the careful energy of someone walking toward something that could end them. She extended one hand. Her hand shook noticeably.
The qilin opened one eye and fixed it on her with profound irritation.
Her hand shook more.
Tang Zhou exhaled, reached over, took her wrist, and pressed her palm flat against the qilin's back.
It was warm. More than warm — there was something deeply, strangely comforting about it. She stroked slowly, twice, three times. The qilin settled completely.
Tang Zhou drew his sword halfway with a clean ring of metal. "How much blood?"
"A dozen drops." She pushed the blade back into the scabbard with one hand. "Why are you drawing your sword?"
As she said it, the qilin turned its head, stretched its neck toward her, and dragged a long, slow lick across her cheek. Small sparks drifted from its nostrils.
Yan Dan went still.
Then she shot to her feet. "It licked me!"
Tang Zhou plucked a broad leaf from a nearby Monstera, made a small precise cut on the qilin's leg, and held the leaf steady as dark blood dripped onto it. "She's female," he said.
"It's all saliva! It's everywhere!" Yan Dan scrubbed at her face with her sleeve.
He tore a strip from his own sleeve and wrapped it around the qilin's leg. Then he straightened, stepped close, and lowered his head. Warm breath reached her face. Before she understood what he was doing, she had already swung.
Tang Zhou caught her wrist — saw her expression — and let go.
The slap landed clean and hard against his cheek.