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Being near Goddess Xi Yun had been a pain that eclipsed even the Fuju Cave. To have kept trying to stare into her eyes as he looked for his Xiao Lanhua and have had her turn her gaze sideways every time as if he were nothing to her, had left deep, savage cuts in the bark of his heart tree.
And yet it was also all that had kept him above drowning.
The hope that she was still in there, slumbering under the surface of the goddess that had risen in her stead. Now there was nothing that could protect his heart from shattering into glass shards.
“I’ve stayed long enough. I should go back to Cangyan Sea,” Dongfang Qingcang said and then, trying not to sound like it was shredding him apart to speak it, “I wish you a very happy wedding, Goddess. Goodbye.”
She would marry Changheng in the morning.
"If you save me, I will marry someone else. Will you watch me marry someone else?" whispered the ghost of the dream Dongfang Qingcang had abandoned when he'd woken to save her. When he’d held her sobbing form in his arms as she begged him to stay and the only thing that had kept him from wavering was the hope of bringing her back in truth.
So that she could live.
And she was, and he was glad. Because even without memory, with no longer being Xiao Lanhua, her spirit was still the same one which he loved with all that was in him.
"No," his own voice answered her in his memory.
But then again he wouldn't have to watch. Shuiyuntian’s great devil was not invited to the long-awaited and destined wedding, he would not have to see her take another man's hand in her own as she tied her heart and spirit to his for eternity.
He'd only have to know that it was happening. And be tortured by the remembrance of the glimpse he'd seen in Tianji Mirror all the way in the beginning, when he'd only just begun feeling the pain from that destiny which he'd been shown.
He tried imagining the next thirty thousand years. Ruling in the Cangyan Sea alone as his Moon Queen remained in Shuiyuntian as the wife of the God of War.
This would break him. He could already feel the cracks forming, knew that as millennia passed they would only deepen, wear him down like an old stone battered by millions of sandstorms until there was nothing left of Dongfang Qingcang himself. Only loss.
“Wait,” spoke the goddess as he turned to leave.
He stopped, feeling his chest tighten in something painful, something he refused to allow to become hope. It had been hard enough to abandon when he’d buried it at the bridge, he couldn’t survive it even once more.
But she was speaking to him, and even seconds more in her presence would be a gift.
“Is there anything else?”
She was so beautiful, her deep brown eyes and impossibly red lips. And yet it hurt to look at her - it hurt to be looked at - when he loved her so deeply and she seemed only to be able to summon pity. No, that was unkind, the goddess was not so cruel as to make it pity. And yet her compassion was no less of a scorching touch.
She stepped closer to him, and he had to fight off the urge to deepen his breaths so as to catch her scent and imprint it within him, orchid and holy grass both.
He stayed in place, momentarily fascinated by the strange look on her face. Like she was half inside a sad dream suddenly.
Then he felt the soft touch of her fingers against the corners of his lips and the seconds around them sharpened into clarity as she lightly pushed to angle them into a smile. His eyes widened as all his breath rushed from his chest.
Fear flashed in her eyes and her hand retracted as if burned.
He stared at the goddess and saw Xiao Lanhua staring back. Dongfang Qingcang knew that look, he’d been wishing to see that look in her eyes since she’d returned; when instead she’d thrown him back, kept him apart from her with her power, and looked at him with eyes that were blank of any feeling at all.
But here, a glimpse of love. And pain. And longing.
She turned, beginning to flee and he caught her hand in his grip. He wouldn’t have been able to release her at this moment even if all the evil spirits of the three realms had tried pulling them apart.
“It’s you,” he whispered.
“Who are you?” Uncertainty rose and was washed away.
“Why?” His heart and voice broke.