I hate that you are not like the moon over the river tower

Yun Yao tried her best to convince herself to ignore the hand on her lower back, along with that phrase “without leaving day or night.”

“Why one month?”

She feigned a serious expression, even as her cheeks betrayed her by flushing deep red.

“You aren’t planning to do something wicked in the Immortal Court during this month, are you?”

“No matter how mediocre Calamity may be, he is still one of the Three Saints.”

“With him and the other immortals looking after things, for a mere month, the uncontrolled power of the End cannot swallow the entire Immortal Court.”

Mu Hanyuan spoke softly, his knuckles brushing aside a lock of dark hair falling by Yun Yao’s forehead to tuck it behind her ear.

Those eyes, veiled as if by a green mist, were filled with a swirling, tender emotion that seemed ready to spill into Yun Yao’s own gaze.

“Or… is Master afraid of something else?”

To have such a face, cold as chilling jade, right in front of her was already a monumental ordeal for Yun Yao.

Mu Hanyuan’s words were inherently tender, and his voice was intentionally or unintentionally lowered due to their proximity, carrying a bewitchingly husky edge.

His fingers lingered by her ear, carrying the faint, lingering scent of cool medicinal herbs.

It should have been a wake-up call to the soul, yet combined with the clean, snow-like scent of the man himself, it created an atmosphere so intoxicating it turned one’s head.

Yun Yao thought she could almost hear the sound of her own holy heart swaying.

“As the head of the Three Saints, what… what have I not seen? Why would I be afraid?”

Yun Yao bluffed, holding her ground.

“The immortal sects are tranquil, the Immortal Court is sacred, but within the mortal world, there are many ‘sullied’ matters.”

Mu Hanyuan’s voice held a perfectly balanced hint of a smile, sounding like a tease or a provocation.

“By that logic, there are likely many things Master hasn’t seen.”

Despite Yun Yao’s best efforts not to be led astray by his seductive words, the more she tried not to think of something, the more she couldn’t help it—even immortals were not exempt from such human tendencies.

She was being toyed with by a few of his light words.

Even without a water mirror, Yun Yao could guess how red her face was at this moment.

“Is that so? Then do you intend to teach me?”

Fortunately, through her tens of thousands of years of divine life, if Yun Yao had learned nothing else, she at least knew how to maintain appearances.

“But I remember that when you were Lord Hanyuan in the Qianyuan Realm, you were the image of a saint known to all.”

“You showed no emotions and had no desires; every cultivator under heaven said you were like the clear brilliance of the moon, untouched by the mortal dust—how much more can you possibly know than I?”

As Yun Yao spoke, she hooked her finger through the ink-black hair falling beside Mu Hanyuan’s neck, then brushed past his Adam’s apple, sliding lower.

Mu Hanyuan let out a low laugh.

Yun Yao was slightly annoyed by his laughter. “What are you laughing at…?”

“I am laughing at Master.”

Mu Hanyuan said, taking her hand in his and using his knuckles to straighten her curled fingers.

“If Master could control herself a bit more and keep her fingertips from trembling, the act would be far more convincing.”

Exposed, the flush on Yun Yao’s face deepened, and she tried to pull her hand back. “You… aren’t you just acting as well?”

Mu Hanyuan tightened his grip, refusing to let her hand go.

He lowered his eyes with a smile. “Master has forgotten; during the three hundred years you were in seclusion, I traveled for Qianmen and experienced the mortal world.”

“Some things, though I was unwilling to see or know them, were inevitable.”

“…?”

Yun Yao instantly became alert.

Her hand stopped trembling, and her eyelids stopped twitching.

Instead, she pressed against Mu Hanyuan’s waist and leaned forward, pinning him against the wooden window without a gap.

Her voice turned stiff and chilly.

“Oh? It sounds like Lord Hanyuan has quite a lot of ‘conversational material’ in this regard?”

Mu Hanyuan seemed momentarily stunned, then lowered his eyes and laughed. “So Master minds?”

“What do I have to mind? I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

Yun Yao pulled back a few inches, still unsatisfied. She looked Mu Hanyuan up and down.

“In the past, everyone inside and outside Qianmen said Lord Hanyuan was a profound saint, untainted by the world and the red dust.”

“Who would have thought that beneath the clear brilliance and white snow, there was such concealed… filth…”

Looking at this face like cold jade—the image of a transcendent immortal whose messy hair did not diminish his elegant air—Yun Yao found she couldn’t utter the last few words.

Mu Hanyuan laughed even harder.

The low, suppressed vibrations in his chest made the blush that had just faded from Yun Yao’s cheeks surge back up.

“Stop laughing.”

She was so annoyed she wanted to “silence” him, but just as she was about to cover his mouth, her wrist was caught and supported by him.

Mu Hanyuan shifted his body slightly, forcing Yun Yao closer until their breaths intertwined.

Only then did he stop laughing and whisper:

“Master misunderstands.”

“Hmm?”

“In the past, I only heard of such things; I never experienced them personally.”

Mu Hanyuan pulled the wrist he was holding downward, pressing her palm against his heart.

“If Master does not believe me, you may verify my purity.”

Yun Yao held her breath, unable to move forward or back.

Mu Hanyuan’s upright back left the window frame as he leaned in, leaving her no room to create distance.

“However, there is one thing Master said that was correct.”

“Wh-what?”

Mu Hanyuan pressed against her wrist, guiding her palm over his thin robes, moving bit by bit downward.

A cold yet seductive smile trailed across the corner of his narrow eyes.

“The world says I am untouched by the red dust because they do not know me well—what is buried beneath the white snow was always meant to be dirty mud.”

“Master need not have any scruples, nor any pity.”

With him guiding Yun Yao’s fingers, the jade belt was loosened.

The man’s silhouette blocked out the candlelight in the hall, causing the clear light before Yun Yao’s eyes to darken inch by inch.

He leaned by her ear, his whisper like a bewitching spell.

“Why doesn’t Master help me clear away this white snow today and see for yourself?”

Night fell over the river.

The willow branches hanging before the window intertwined and overlapped in the river breeze.

The shadows they cast fluctuated and rose with the moonlight dancing on the water.

The river water surged in waves, high and low, like a clear song that was sometimes joyful and sometimes a low, winding moan.

The strings, plucked with varying pressure by the musician’s fingers, vibrated with a tremor that shook the soul.

As the song neared its end and the river began to calm, the sound of the strings rose again.

The long night and the flickering candles among the green mountains flowed through the Fate Palace as they had for thousands of years.

Having cultivated for tens of thousands of years, this was truly the first time Yun Yao experienced the feeling of souls merging.

It was very… wondrous.

What she found even more wondrous was likely Mu Hanyuan himself.

In their previous life’s romance in Qianyuan, he had been restrained at every turn, unwilling to show even a shred of passion.

Even at his most moved, his features remained clear and his eyes cold, like snow beneath the moon, chilling any trace of desire.

Back then, Yun Yao remembered being in a daze and always covering his eyes, not allowing him to look, only coaxing him into passion; he had never taken the initiative.

Today was different.

Mu Hanyuan seemed determined to make her see every inch of his emotion and desire clearly, refusing to let her hide.

He wanted her to hear the low gasps and muffled groans of his passion with absolute clarity; it had to be vivid and etched into her heart.

Thus, Yun Yao was like someone drowning in a fountain of fine wine, allowing the waves, cold as moonlight, to wash over her mouth and nose again and again.

They gave her a suffocating pressure, then granted her the air of heaven, cycle after cycle—waking to drunkenness, and drinking until she woke.

Initially, Yun Yao had been stubborn.

Thinking that she held the title of Master and was tens of thousands of years older, she couldn’t possibly lose the upper hand in such a small matter.

Reality proved her wrong.

Someone was a specialist at curing her stubbornness.

Yun Yao turned soft, becoming like a handful of river water outside the Fate Palace, wishing she could slip through his long fingers, only begging for him to let her go.

The night was tender and deceptive.

Yun Yao used up all the pleas and soft words of this lifetime and pre-spent those of the next, yet she still couldn’t escape the ordeal.

Some people were soft of mouth but hard of heart in bed.

The word “Master” was called out with increasing gentleness and respect, but his actions forced her with increasing intensity until she wished she could claw a gap in the bed to hide herself.

Sure enough.

The mortal world’s storybooks were right.

Suppressing things for too long causes problems—the kind where you can’t stop no matter what is the most lethal.

Forget one month; she couldn’t stay a single day anywhere with a roof in this Immortal Court.

Except—

Clang.

Yun Yao had just stealthily stepped off the bed and hadn’t even had time to gather her outer robe when she heard a familiar, crisp sound by her ear.

Yun Yao froze.

What was that sound?

She instinctively looked back.

On the bed, the robes were strewn about and the bedding was a mess.

The man’s dark hair and robe ribbons were in disarray, and the pale, long texture of his thin muscles covered his chest, rising and falling slightly with his breath.

It wasn’t until after that sound of chains—which Yun Yao couldn’t locate—rang out again that Mu Hanyuan’s long lashes moved.

In that brief, dim moment of dawn, Yun Yao saw his pitch-black eyes look into the hall with a void-like gaze, as if they were soaked in a thick fog.

“Master?”

He whispered, propping himself up.

His silhouette looked lonely and weary, his expression momentarily as lost as a child wandering in a great fog.

Yun Yao’s heart felt an inexplicable surge of panic, and she instinctively took a step back toward the bed. “I’m here.”

Mu Hanyuan’s fingers, which had been searching in the opposite direction, suddenly pressed down.

After a few breaths, he turned toward her and slowly curved his lips into a smile.

“So Master is still here. I had a nightmare.”

“…I was just… getting up to look around.”

The man turned fully toward her, and Yun Yao saw the ambiguous, mottled red marks she had left on his chest, which was as cold as jade porcelain.

She instinctively moved her eyes away, her confidence instantly failing. “Did you… hear a sound just now?”

“I did.”

As Mu Hanyuan spoke, his bamboo-like fingers made a grasping motion in the air beneath his sleeve.

Clatter. A crisp sound rang out.

Yun Yao looked down in shock at her own wrist, which felt as if it had been tugged by something.

However, she saw nothing.

If it weren’t for the fact that the sound was still ringing in her ears and Mu Hanyuan was still holding that pose, Yun Yao would have surely thought there was a glitch in her soul-merging and that she was hallucinating.

“What is… this?”

Yun Yao didn’t bother trying to verify it herself and simply asked Mu Hanyuan, the obvious “culprit.”

“A Soul Pact, my own original technique.”

Mu Hanyuan spoke while sitting with his robes open amidst the mountain of shadows.

The light and shadow outlined his silhouette, making him look both cold and elegant.

Looking at his demeanor, Yun Yao had no doubt that even the name “Soul Pact” was something he had come up with on the spot.

However, the more casually he spoke, the more uneasy Yun Yao felt. “Then what does this Soul Pact do?”

Mu Hanyuan paused for a moment, then lowered his eyes with a smile. “It was formed during the soul-merging; it merely communicates our thoughts.”

Yun Yao choked.

No wonder he had been so… wanton when their souls merged last night.

Yun Yao guessed he had already explored every hidden corner of her soul, so planting some kind of Soul Pact wasn’t surprising.

“…”

Mu Hanyuan suddenly gave a low laugh in the shadows of the silent room. “Is Master wondering if I had ill intentions in planting the Soul Pact for you?”

“Hmm? How could I—”

Yun Yao suddenly became alert.

She knelt on the bed and reached out to grasp the chain she couldn’t see in Mu Hanyuan’s hand, only able to hear the crisp sound it made.

“When you said ‘communicating thoughts,’ you didn’t mean… it can spy on what I’m thinking, did you?”

“The Soul Pact was something I prepared to help Master return to her position.”

“It pervades the soul and transmits the five senses and six consciousnesses, hence the communication of thoughts,” Mu Hanyuan said.

“Five senses and six consciousnesses?”

Yun Yao closed her eyes. After a few breaths, she frowned and opened them. “Then why can’t I perceive yours?”

“Likely because Master has not yet explored my soul to its depths.”

Mu Hanyuan continued: “If Master wishes, then today we can—”

“Stop!”

Seeing the topic sliding toward a cliff she couldn’t control, Yun Yao hurried to change the subject.

“No, no, no. As for the five senses thing, I’m not in that much of a hurry. Let’s… let’s talk about serious business first.”

Mu Hanyuan’s features were gentle and smiling; he looked nothing like he did last night.

“If Master wishes to talk about the matter of returning the soul to its position, today will not do.”

“Although that’s not what I wanted to say,” Yun Yao said suspiciously, “why will today not do?”

Mu Hanyuan slowly raised his eyes and looked at her silently.

After a pause, he finally spoke with some helplessness:

“Master exhausted her spirit and body last night; today is not suitable.”

“…”

The last shred of Yun Yao’s forced composure collapsed.

She turned her bright red face away. After a few breaths, she buried herself into the bed curtains.

From within the thin gauze came her embarrassed voice as she gritted her teeth:

“Shut up. Don’t mention it again.”

Mu Hanyuan whispered with a smile: “Alright, I won’t mention it.”

Since he couldn’t speak of it, he chose to act instead.

Yun Yao felt her waist tighten as she was pulled back by a gentle force.

The man rose and pinned her against the bedpost, pressing a long, lingering kiss onto her lips.

Their hurried breaths intertwined with the sound of the kiss.

Yun Yao couldn’t dodge in time and was left trembling, tormented by a kiss that swayed between self-restraint and loss of control.

“Wait… wait.”

Yun Yao finally found an opening and covered Mu Hanyuan’s lips. “I really had a serious matter to ask.”

“Master can speak; I am listening.”

Mu Hanyuan pressed burning, light kisses against her wrist.

Yun Yao steeled herself. “Regarding what Calamity said… the only way to break the deadlock in the prophecy of the End—”

Suddenly.

The man before her stopped.

He raised his long, trembling eyelashes—still soaked in passion—and gazed deeply at Yun Yao in the silence of the hall.

Yun Yao slowed her breathing.

“Mu Hanyuan, I don’t want to avoid this question.”

“Even if the only way to break the deadlock is an ending where we perish together, and that opponent is you… I think I am willing to accept this ending arranged for me by the Heavenly Dao.”

“…But I am not.”

Yun Yao felt as if she had misheard. She looked up dazed, trying to find Mu Hanyuan’s eyes in the darkness.

However, she could not see them.

A deeper darkness descended, and her lips were kissed forcefully, as if carrying a bone-eroding sorrow.

“…”

“That ending is the only one I cannot accept.”

Three days ago.

At the peak of the Ninth Heaven, beneath the Heaven-Peering Stone.

Having seen the calamity of the Heavenly Dao on the stone’s surface—the ending where they perished together—Mu Hanyuan still stood indifferently amidst that sea of lightning.

“Since you created me out of destruction and despair, do you still hope to scare me away with death?”

He looked up with a cold, mocking smile.

“Truly, the Heavenly Dao is blind.”

The power of the Heavenly Punishment rising from the sea of lightning was nearly enough to tear apart that solitary, thin figure beneath the heavens.

However, no matter how many punishments he endured, the man did not yield.

The thunder and lightning finally subsided.

Vanishing along with those purple-blue arcs of electricity were the thick clouds of mist on the Heaven-Peering Stone that had obscured everything after the power of the End had dissipated.

Mu Hanyuan, who had been looking up lazily, suddenly froze.

He stared fixedly at the Heaven-Peering Stone.

There, before the seats of the Three Saints, the original female figure vanished like fading light.

In her place was a solitary silhouette that felt like looking into a mirror.

The corner of Mu Hanyuan’s eye twitched slightly. “…What does this mean?”

On the Heaven-Peering Stone.

Two small lines of golden characters slowly appeared.

[Immortal Court Year 76,372, Era of Records: The Saint Origin, to protect the sentient beings of the three realms, perishes together with the power of the End.]

[The Demon crosses over to become a Saint.]

Mu Hanyuan raised his hand and touched the jade-like Heaven-Peering Stone.

His knuckles were like blades, wedging themselves into the stone where the last four characters were carved.

The demon markings at the corner of his eyes began to stain his skin; his eyes were nearly splitting with rage.

“I asked you—what does this mean?!”

On the Heaven-Peering Stone, a final line of golden characters emerged.

[The End is the new Origin.]

[The way of Heaven is a cycle, endless and ever-renewing.]