A Boat Full of Clear Dreams Weighs Down the Starry River, Part 1

At this moment, Yun Yao walked through a darkness where the heavens had inverted.

A sea of stars lay beneath her feet, their twinkling grains like tiny pearls buried in the endless flow of black sand. They seemed to have slumbered for ages, only to be roused by the ripples her steps stirred, rising as glowing orbs from the riverbed, dotting her path with flickering light.

It took her a long while to recall where she was.

Surrounded by the relentless Nightmare Beasts in Canglong Mountain, she had gravely wounded Faceless. But the sword in her hand wasn’t the true Naihe, and she was no longer the Yun Yao of old. The forced Naihe Sword strike failed to kill the Blood Demon on the spot.

Faceless escaped, shielded by the beasts, leaving Yun Yao’s spiritual energy spiraling out of control, nearly succumbing to deviation again.
In her desperate attempt to suppress the chaos, the Nightmare Threads, lurking in her meridians, seized the chance to strike back—
And she fell into her own “Sea of Seven Emotions.”

The Sea of Seven Emotions was the Nightmare Threads’ domain, where “entering the dream” occurred.

Buddhism speaks of seven emotions: joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hatred, and desire.

Yun Yao was no saint like Mu Hanyuan, devoid of such emotions. In this sea, each floating orb held a memory tied to at least one of her seven emotions.
The larger the orb, the heavier the emotion.
Fear, above all, dominated most.

Nightmare Beasts used their threads to lure victims into this sea, seeking the largest orb to trap them in endless dreams until death.

Hence, four hundred years ago, the saying: “Nightmare Beast threads—those who dream, die.”

—But with Qianmen’s disciples gone, only Yun Yao remained in Canglong Mountain, and she wasn’t worried for herself.

As a minor immortal in the Heavenly Palace, she recalled no past lives, sought no future ones. Her memories were mostly tales from countless books and the unchanging three thousand small worlds.

If these were the original Yun Yao’s emotions, she cared even less.
They weren’t her joys or fears—she was a mere observer. What was there to fear sinking into?
This was one reason she stayed behind without concern.

Thinking so calmly, Yun Yao walked, watching the scenes in the orbs drifting past like a lantern show of another’s life.

After an unknown time, among countless fingernail-sized orbs, she found one the size of her palm.

“Finally here?”
She exhaled, half-expecting to walk a full day and night.

As her fingers reached for it, another orb rose in the darkness ahead.

Far larger—about the size of a wooden basin—and far brighter, it hurtled toward her.

Yun Yao startled.
In that instant, an inexplicable sorrow and fear gripped her heart. Instinctively, she grasped the nearer orb.

It engulfed her instantly.

Her vision flashed white.

When her eyes opened, the mist cleared, and peach blossoms danced in the mountain air. A sky woven with green branches and pink petals filled her view, sunlight dazzling through the gaps, white clouds drifting above.

Yun Yao felt an odd sense of soul detachment, slowly sitting up.
Looking down, she was on a bluestone.

“Eldest Brother, three’s short one! We’re waiting!” A bright female voice, accompanied by the jingle of golden bells, dashed past her.

Yun Yao focused.
A face both strange and familiar—Su Mengyu, second of Qianmen’s Seven Heroes, five hundred years ago.

She ran toward a bamboo grove where a dignified, immortal-like man stood with hands clasped, coldly refusing. “Master said mahjong is a trivial pursuit, indulging in it harms our cultivation. Not today.”

“Huh? Since when do you listen to Master? Unless…”
Su Mengyu darted behind him, yanking out his hidden hand, revealing a divination turtle shell.
“Got you, Eldest Brother! Sneaking a fortune for today’s tiles!”

Caught, Si Xuan coughed, dodging her bell-jangling “claws” and turning elsewhere. “Third Sister, you play with them today.”

Yun Yao followed his gaze.
Behind a bamboo desk by the stream, a woman in plain green, unadorned save for a crude square wooden hairpin, looked up from her book, silently staring at Si Xuan.

Su Mengyu laughed. “Eldest Brother, don’t dream—Xiu Xin would never touch mahjong!”

“Third Sister!” Jun Qian, popping from nowhere, hopped beside Xiu Xin, distressed, a pink flower tucked in his black hair’s ribbon. “Why’d you carve my hairpin square again? I spent three months studying double-blooming butterfly flowers to make it!”

Xiu Xin, as if deaf, lowered her head, turning a page.

“Little Sixth, stop fussing, come back. Little Sister’s waiting,” Su Mengyu dragged Jun Qian to the tree where Yun Yao sat.

Su Mengyu plopped beside Yun Yao’s right, gleefully arranging bamboo tiles. “With Master away these days… Little Yun Yao, if you win with a Yaojiu tile again, I’ll just call you Yun Yaojiu…”

“Master’s gone, so you think I’m dead?”

A cold, heavy voice descended, landing on the mahjong table, freezing Su Mengyu’s bell-jangling hand. She turned shakily. “F-Fourth Brother… Weren’t you preaching in Jiusi Valley? When did you return?”

An iron ruler, glinting coldly, pressed down like a mountain on her shoulder, halting her attempt to rise.

Behind Yun Yao, a young man in stark, monochrome robes stepped forward, stern. “Master left only a day ago.”

“Help—” Su Mengyu, pinned, scrambled. “Eldest Brother, save me—”

The bamboo grove was empty.

By the stream, Si Xuan, brow furrowed, held his turtle shell, earnestly consulting Xiu Xin, who turned away, blocking his words.

Su Mengyu: “Aah, Eldest Brother—”

“Second Sister, Sixth Brother,” Du Jin’s icy voice loomed, his shadow falling over the trembling trio on the bluestone. “This is how you guide Little Sister?”

“—”

Amid the laughter and banter in this peach grove, among these once-vivid figures, Yun Yao’s soul trembled.
Her heart clenched, a bone-deep pain pumping through her limbs.
Back then… they were all alive.

She’d known nothing.

Later, the immortal-demon war erupted. Eldest Brother divined the demon seed’s rise, sacrificing himself in an array. Second Sister, clutching his blood-soaked turtle shell, wept her life’s bitterest tears, dying in Master’s arms.
Third Sister, fastidious and pure, perished in the Demon Realm’s filthiest blood river.
Fourth Brother, strictest with Yun Yao, his ever-present iron ruler striking her most, died defending her in the Golden Gang Array, battling three nights until his blood ran dry.
Sixth Brother, flower-loving and pain-fearing, mocked as Qianmen’s daintiest “little sister,” fell in the war’s final battle by the Wugui River, pierced by countless arrows, his body torn.
Only an apricot grove buried him.

…If only this scene were the end.

If they hadn’t died, if they were still here, if time had frozen at the start—

[Yun Yao, come back.]

In the endless darkness, a voice called from a distant riverbank, rippling through the Sea of Seven Emotions, piercing her heart.

Yun Yao shuddered.

A blood-red streak tore the dark sky. In her trembling, voiceless moment, the peach grove froze, faded, cracks spiderwebbing across her companions’ figures. They gazed at her with endless nostalgia and sorrow, shattering into countless specks, sinking into the black river.

[Yun Yao, come back.]

As she opened her eyes, countless orbs fell like a collapsing starry rain.
The star-sea beneath erupted into towering waves, swallowing her instantly—

Who was it?

Struggling in the surging river, suffocating under the crush of memory orbs, Yun Yao froze.

She remembered someone, also surnamed Mu.

…But the last time she saw him was three hundred years ago.

That day, snow fell heavily, blanketing the Two Realms Mountain’s long night, covering congealed blood and bones, and the cold, thin armor on the ground. Snowflakes clung to his serene, drooping lashes, like wilted petals.

He was buried there, with that blizzard, eternally unmelting.

…He must still be waiting, waiting for her to take him home.

—

Before the mountain god temple, amid a field of Nightmare Beast corpses, Yun Yao’s eyes snapped open.

“Mu Jiu…”

Her whispered words were drowned by the tidal roar of spiritual energy surging through the mountain.

Stunned, she turned, missing the faded prayer rope swaying under the temple’s eaves, brushed by a figure who turned, vanishing into the dark night.

Boom!

The spiritual tide surged closer.
Yun Yao saw where the absent Nightmare Beasts had gone—a beast, torn as if by a razor-thin blade, barely recognizable, crashed before her.
Leaves and threads fluttered, shredded by invisible spiritual force before reaching her.

Cutting through dust and mist, between moonlight and fog, Yun Yao saw a figure playing a zither midair.

A silver lotus crown gleamed coldly under the moon.
White silk draped over his eyes.

—Mu Hanyuan.

But she hardly dared believe it.

His white robes were stained with blood, speckled like plum petals bursting through the night, vivid as fire.

His divine, elegant features were frozen in chilling ferocity, blood trailing from his eye corners like falling stars. How could the saintly Lord Hanyuan wear such an expression?

As if… ready to perish with his foe.