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With red lipstick smeared on his lips and a bridal veil hiding his features, Xie Lian really could not hide the indifference his heart had sunk into, and yet, the sung out tunes of asking brides not to smile… He could not help but let out a hearty laugh. He really was getting ever so intrigued by this case.
"Why are you laughing at a time like this?" Fu Yao frowned, probably wondering if he was insane.
"Well, the little ghost child just sang some words to me. It would be ever so rude to not encourage its beautiful singing."
"So even you clearly agree with me that the words are a taunt and you are meant to smile."
He laughed heartily at his response. "Perhaps, but am I not meant to be bait?"
And then the binu attacked.
Cursing, Nan Feng and Fu Yao joined the fight, asking him to stay safe in the sedan and not join in. With a small smile, Xie Lian settled with his face in the palm of his hand. With the number of binu, this was going to be a long fight.
And yet, the all-encompassing silence, and the ever-so-beautiful flare of energy… Curious and curiouser.
A hand emerged, palm up, urging him to take it and descend from the bridal sedan. Curious indeed. Such beautiful hands for one as dead as he was. Xie Lian could not control his smile then as he giggled while taking the hand of the ghost that had come to get him. Ah, what matter could Crimson Rain Sought Flower possibly have with the Twice-Banished Scrap Immortal? What matter could he have had with Xie Lian?
Making his hands warm with the illusion of flowing blood, he held onto the icy white hand, feeling the cold intent killing aura almost certainly driving the binu away.
He couldn't possibly suspect, he thought, his fingers tracing the lines of the ghost's exquisitely formed palm. Otherwise, a meeting with him would not go half as well as this one.
It would not be half as peaceful as walking through the middle of nowhere, surrounded by bodies of binu, shielded from the blood rain with a red umbrella, shallowly inclined to cover him.
Ah, but he didn't feel like breaking the peace between them, even as the urge to find the truth overwhelmed him.
"Your Highness, get away from him!" shouted familiar voices from behind him, and he suppressed the urge to sigh at the theatrics of his former friends.
In any case, it was best not to be rude. Tracing the familiar silver butterflies etched on the surface of the extraordinarily crafted vambraces with the pads of his fingers, he turned toward the ghost.
"Your butterflies are as exquisite as your persona. I pray we meet under better circumstances next time, Crimson Rain."
He said it just as Fu Yao tugged him behind, and a swarm of butterflies erupted from the ghost's body and swallowed them whole.
Later, a perpetually disgruntled Nan Feng asked, "How did you even know who he was?"
"His Highness is very intelligent," countered Fu Yao, doggedly as if they were still friends from centuries past.
Xie Lian merely laughed it off. After all, he had once challenged that ghost to a duel—surely that would not go over well with the already scared heavenly officials.
The fight with Xuan Ji was markedly harder than with the binu, and yet he couldn't help but wonder, Was the want of love truly so powerful that it could sustain a ghost after death?
Even twisted with it, Xuan Ji still battled with her everything to earn Ming Guang's attention at the very least.
If he could also survive, he thought, watching her pour out centuries of desperate longing into every strike. Not for his god, but atleast for his beloved. If he would also be so twisted by the end of it.
And yet, twisted and murderous, he would take it, accept it and welcome it with open arms. Because it would still be better than him being dead and gone.
Body in abyss, heart in paradise.
He had once declared those words, and yet he could do nothing but hold onto that one hope, that one string that tethered him here—that he really was alive—even as both his body and his heart were in abyss.
He did not think the name. He had trained himself not to. But the shape of it was there, always there, lurking beneath every thought.
Two syllables. No name. No face. No voice.
Just the shape of a ghost he could no longer remember.
He swallowed the ache and raised his sword.
The rain was falling in sheets when Xie Lian pulled the young boy from the pit.
The boy's face was wrapped in bandages, his clothes torn, his body trembling with cold and fear. He could not have been more than sixteen.
Xie Lian helped him to his feet, ignoring the blood soaking through his own robes, and placed his bamboo hat on the boy's head.
"Don't be scared," he said. "Everything will be all right."
The boy stared at him with one wide, dark eye—the only part of his face visible through the bandages—and said nothing.
But his hand, when it clutched Xie Lian's sleeve, was warm.
Warm.
Xie Lian's chest ached—that hollow place where his heart should have been, where nothing had beat for eight hundred years.
Someone else's hand had been warm once.
He could not remember when. Could only remember that it mattered, that it had meant something, that he had held onto that warmth like a drowning man holds onto driftwood.
"Come," he said, pulling the boy toward the shelter of the ruined temple. "Let's get you out of the rain."
Three thousand lanterns floated in front of him, placing him as the undisputed winner of the competition between gods on the Mid-Autumn Festival.
An unparalleled act of devotion, all from one temple.
Xie Lian watched the lights ascend, his face expressionless.
Devotion.
He had known devotion once. Or perhaps he had imagined it. Perhaps he had wanted it so badly that he had invented it—a phantom believer, a nameless ghost, a love that existed only in his own desperate heart.
You cannot have been real, he thought, not for the first time. If you were real, I would remember your face. I would remember your name. I would remember something—anything—other than the shape of my own longing.
But he remembered nothing. Only the ache. Only the hope. Only the terrible, endless searching.
He touched the ring beneath his robes—cold, always cold, a gift from a ghost he had met only once—and tried to feel grateful.
At least there is this, he thought. At least someone saw me. At least someone thought I was worth keeping.
Around him, the heavenly officials cheered and jeered and plotted their petty competitions. They did not know that he was as good as dead. They did not know that he was empty. They did not know that he would trade all three thousand lanterns for a single touch of a hand he could no longer remember.
The lanterns continued to rise. None of them answered.
The silk was soft against his skin—too soft, almost tender—and Xie Lian found himself laughing despite the danger.
"What's so funny?" Fu Yao demanded from somewhere to his left.
"The silk," Xie Lian managed between giggles. "It's tickling me."
"You're being attacked by a demonic artifact and you're laughing because it tickles you?!"
Xie Lian could not explain it. Could not explain why this strange, clinging silk reminded him of something he had lost.
Cold hands with an even colder embrace and a warm declaration. It hadn’t mattered then. Nothing else would matter more now.
He could not remember when. Could not remember who. But he remembered the feeling—of being wrapped in warmth, of being held, of being safe.
He had not felt safe in eight hundred years.
The silk tightened around his wrists, and he closed his eyes, and for a moment—just a moment—he let himself pretend.
If you are out there, he thought, if you are real, if you ever existed at all—
He could not finish the thought. The hope was too sharp, too painful, too much like bleeding.
He opened his eyes and returned to the present, where nothing waited and nothing held him and nothing was warm.
The statues stretched into the darkness, hundreds of them, thousands of them, each one wearing his face.
Xie Lian walked among them in silence.
His face. Not the face of the Scrap Immortal. Not the face of the Laughingstock. The face of a god—young and kind and full of light. The face he had forgotten he ever had.
"Who carved these?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Beside him, Hua Cheng was silent for a long moment. Then, softly, "A believer."
Xie Lian turned to look at him—at the ghost who had given him a ring, who had held an umbrella over his head, who had been watching him for months with an intensity that made his hollow chest ache.
"I have no believers," he said.
Hua Cheng's eye was bright in the darkness. "You have one."
Xie Lian's breath caught—that old, familiar ache surging up his throat.
One.
There had been one. Once. A long time ago. A ghost with no name. A soldier who had believed when no one else would. A love so desperate that it had consumed itself entirely, leaving nothing behind but ash and longing and the terrible shape of a face he could no longer see.
Xie Lian's hand trembled as he reached out and touched the closest statue's cheek.
Cold stone. Not warm flesh. Not the hand he had once held. Not the voice he had once heard.
Who were you? he thought, staring at his own frozen face. Who were you, and why did you love me, and why can I not remember?
The ache in his chest was almost unbearable.
He dropped his hand and turned away.
The ring was cold against his chest—cold, always cold, no matter how long he wore it.
Xie Lian had never asked Hua Cheng why he had given it to him. Had never asked what it meant, or where it came from, or why a Supreme Ghost King would bother with a scrap-collecting failure like him.
He had simply taken it, and worn it, and tried not to hope.
Hope. He had stopped hoping centuries ago. Hope was what had destroyed him. Hope was the reason he had ascended, and fallen, and ascended again, and fallen again, and died.
And yet.
And yet he wore the ring.
He touched it now, pressing the cold metal against his still chest, and closed his eyes.
If you are out there—
The thought came unbidden, as it always did, in the quiet moments when he could not distract himself with work or travel or the endless solving of other people's problems.
If you are out there, somewhere, searching for me the way I am searching for you—
He could not finish it. He never could.
The hope was too heavy. The longing was too sharp. The want was a wound that had never healed, that would never heal, that he had stopped trying to heal centuries ago.
He opened his eyes and returned to the present.
The ring was still cold. The ache was still there. Nothing had changed.
Nothing ever changed.
The red umbrella opened above him, and Xie Lian did not flinch.
He had grown used to Hua Cheng's presence by now—the way he appeared without warning, the way he stood too close, the way he looked at Xie Lian as if he were something precious.
Precious.
No one had looked at him like that since—
He cut the thought off before it could finish.
Since whom? He could not remember. He had trained himself not to remember. The memories were too painful, too sharp, too much like the wound that would not heal.
But the shape of them was still there. The absence of them. The terrible, hollow space where a face should have been.
"You're thinking about something sad," Hua Cheng observed.
Xie Lian startled. "What?"
"Your face. You get a certain look when you're thinking about something sad. What’s gege thinking about?"
Him, Xie Lian thought. My most bitter regret, my greatest love, my reason. Him. Always and Forever.
"I was not thinking about anything," he said.
Hua Cheng's eye narrowed, but he did not press. He simply shifted the umbrella so that it covered Xie Lian completely, and stood a little closer.
Xie Lian did not move away.
If you were here, he thought, not knowing who he was thinking of, not remembering, not bearing to remember, would you stand this close? Would you hold an umbrella over my head? Would you look at me like I matter?
He did not know. He would never know.
But he stood in the shelter of Hua Cheng's umbrella and let himself pretend.
"You challenged me once," Hua Cheng said. "A long time ago. I did not accept."
Xie Lian remembered. He had been wearing a different skin then—the Reverend's mask, the Reverend's robes, the Reverend's terrible knowledge of truths that others wished buried.
He had faced Crimson Rain Sought Flower in a forest of hanging corpses, and he had known—something. Something important. Something that had made him withdraw his challenge and walk away.
You looked familiar, he had thought at the time. You felt familiar. I do not know why.
He had not known then. He did not know now.
But something about this ghost made his hollow chest ache in a way that felt almost like recognition.
"I accept," he said.
Hua Cheng's eye widened—just a fraction, just enough. "Now?"
"Now."
They drew their swords.
The duel was fast and brutal and utterly silent. Blade met blade, power met power, two immortals dancing on the edge of annihilation.
And in the space between heartbeats, Xie Lian felt it.
Recognition.
Not of a face. Not of a name. But of something deeper. Something older. Something that had been waiting for him for a very, very long time.
Do I know you? he wanted to ask. Have I known you all along?
But he did not ask. He simply fought, and let the feeling wash over him, and tried not to hope.
When it was over, they stood on opposite sides of the clearing, both breathing hard.
"Another time," Hua Cheng said.
Xie Lian offered a smile, "Another time."
He sheathed his sword and walked away, his hand pressed to the ring beneath his robes.
Another time.
He did not know if there would be another time. He did not know if he wanted there to be.
But something told him there would be.
Something told him this was not over.
He did not think the name.
He had trained himself not to, centuries ago, when the ache of it had become too much to bear. When remembering had hurt more than forgetting. When he had looked in the mirror and seen a stranger's face and realized that he could no longer picture the one person who had mattered most.
Two syllables.
He did not think them. He did not speak them. He did not let them form in his mind, because if they formed, he would have to admit that he had forgotten.
He had forgotten the face. He had forgotten the voice. He had forgotten everything except the want—the terrible, endless, hungry want that had driven him across eight centuries of searching.
What are you searching for? he asked himself, sometimes, in the dark.
He never had an answer.
Only the ache. Only the hope. Only the terrible, desperate certainty that he would know it when he found it.
If he ever found it.
If it still existed.
If it had ever existed at all.
The scorpion-snake's tail struck his hand, and Xie Lian did not flinch.
The venom spread—hot and fast and utterly meaningless. It did not affect him. Nothing affected him. He was already dead.
"Your Highness!" Nan Feng's voice was sharp with alarm. "You've been poisoned!"
"I know."
"It's not healing!"
Xie Lian looked down at his palm. The wound was there—black and ugly and wrong—but it did not fester. Did not spread. Did not do anything except exist.
Like me, he thought. Existing without purpose. Existing without end.
"I'm fine," he said.
But Nan Feng was staring at his face. Fu Yao was staring at his face. The others were staring at his face.
Xie Lian touched his cheek. His skin was cold. Colder than it should have been. Colder than a living person's skin had any right to be.
"Your Highness," Nan Feng said slowly, "are you...?"
Xie Lian did not answer. Could not answer.
He simply stood there, in the middle of the desert, and let them see.
Let them see what he really was.
The silence stretched between them, heavy and terrible.
Finally, Fu Yao spoke. "You're dead."
It was not a question.
Xie Lian closed his eyes. "Yes."
"You've been dead this entire time?"
"Yes."
No one spoke. No one moved. The wind whipped sand across the dunes, and the silence grew heavier and heavier.
Then Nan Feng said, "Oh."
That was all. Just "oh."
Xie Lian opened his eyes. Nan Feng was looking at him—not with fear, not with disgust, but with something that might have been concern.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
Xie Lian shook his head. "Not anymore."
"Good," Nan Feng said. "That's good."
And that was the end of it.
They did not ask how he had died, not then atleast. They did not ask why he had hidden it. Xie Lian was so grateful he could have wept.
But he did not weep. He had forgotten how.
The white figure appeared in the shadows of the ruined temple, only ever in his mind, and Xie Lian's hand went to his sword.
"You again," he said.
The Reverend of Miserable Truths tilted his head—that same slow, deliberate gesture that Xie Lian had come to recognise in himself.
"Me again."
"Why are you here?"
The Reverend stepped closer, his white robes seeming to glow in the darkness. "I heard you were wounded."
"I am fine."
"You are dead."
The words hung in the air between them, cold and sharp.
"You have been dead for hundreds of years," the Reverend continued. "You were poisoned by a scorpion-snake. It did nothing. Nothing ever does anything to you. Because you are already gone."
Xie Lian's hand tightened on his sword. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you need to hear it." The Reverend stepped closer, close enough to touch. "You are not alive, Xie Lian. You have not been alive for eight hundred years. You are a ghost. A reverend. A calamity. And the sooner you accept the miserable truth, the sooner you can stop pretending."
"I am not pretending."
"You are. Every day. Every moment. You pretend to eat. You pretend to sleep. You pretend to be human when you have not been human for centuries."
Xie Lian's breath caught—that old, familiar ache surging up his throat.
"What do you want from me?" he demanded.
The Reverend was silent for a long moment. Then, softly, "I want you to stop suffering alone."
Xie Lian stared at him—at the mask, the robes, the flower tucked behind one ear.
The same flower, he realised. The same white shiuli that grows in the ruins of my palace.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
The Reverend did not answer. He simply touched his own flower—white, always white, always shiuli—and vanished into the darkness.
Xie Lian stood in the empty temple, his hand pressed to the ring beneath his robes, and tried to remember how to breathe.
He could not.
He had not breathed in eight hundred years.
Two syllables.
He did not think them. He did not speak them. He did not let them form in his mind.
But the shape of them was there, always there, lurking beneath every thought.
No name. No face. No voice.
Just the ache. Just the want. Just the terrible, desperate certainty that he had once been loved.
You loved me, he thought, pressing his hand to his chest. You loved me, and I let you die, and now I cannot even remember your face.
The shame was a weight he had carried for eight hundred years. The grief was a wound that had never healed. The longing was a fire that consumed everything it touched.
Where are you? he thought. Are you out there somewhere? Are you searching for me too? Do you even remember who I am?
He did not know. He would never know.
But he searched anyway. Had been searching for eight hundred years. Would search for eight hundred more if he had to.
Because he was not dead. He was not. He could not be. He would feel it if he were. For if he wasn’t here on this Earth, what was the point of his existence?
Because what else was there?
What else was there but the hope—the terrible, desperate, foolish hope—that one day he would find what he had lost?
He touched the ring beneath his robes and closed his eyes.
If you are out there—
He could not finish the thought. He never could.
But he held onto it anyway. Held onto it like a drowning man holds onto driftwood. Held onto it like the only thing keeping him tethered to this world.
Wu Ming.
The name surfaced despite his efforts, and he did not push it away.
Wu Ming. My Wu Ming.
Where are you?
The Kiln was closing, and Xie Lian stood at its edge, staring into the darkness.
Beside him, Hua Cheng was silent—waiting, as he had always waited, as he always did.
"Do you trust me?" Xie Lian asked.
"With everything."
"Even though I am dead?"
Hua Cheng turned to face him. "Your Highness. I am dead too."
Xie Lian looked at him—at the ghost who had given him his gentleness, who had given him his ashes, who had given his trust, givengivengiven.
"Who are you?" he asked. "Why do you care what happens to me?"
Hua Cheng was silent for a long moment. Then, softly, "Because I have been searching for you for a very long time."
Xie Lian's breath caught.
"I have been searching for you," Hua Cheng repeated, "since the day you told me to live."
Told me to live.
The words struck something deep in Xie Lian's chest—something he had thought was dead, something he had thought was gone, something he had thought he would never feel again.
"If you do not know how to live on anymore, then live for me."
He had said those words once. A long time ago. To a nameless child who had asked him what the meaning of life was.
You, he had said. Make me the meaning of your life.
He had not thought of that moment in centuries. Arrogant words of an arrogant and spoilt prince. Live for me, as if living was that easy, as if faith ever was.
But now—
"You," he whispered. "It was you."
Hua Cheng's eye glistened. "Yes."
"Wu Ming—"
"Yes."
"You followed me. You believed in me. You—"
"Yes."
Xie Lian reached out and touched Hua Cheng's face—the face he had forgotten, the face he had dreamed of, the face he had searched for across eight hundred years.
"I could not remember you," he said. "I tried. I tried so hard. But your face would not come. Your name would not come. Only the unrecognisable mask and the cruelty I had bestowed on you. Not your face, or your beautiful voice, never, only you and your unwavering faith."
Hua Cheng leaned into his touch. "That was enough."
"It was not enough. It was never enough. I wanted to remember. I needed to remember. But I could not."
"You remembered the important part."
"What part?"
Hua Cheng took his hand and pressed it to his chest—where his heart should have been, where there was nothing but stillness and longing.
"You remembered that I loved you," he said. "That was all that mattered."
“My beloved.”
Xie Lian's eyes burned.
Tears, he thought. I had forgotten what they felt like.
"I found you," he said.
Hua Cheng smiled—that crooked, devastating smile that Xie Lian had forgotten and remembered and forgotten again.
"Yes," he said. "You found me."
The shiuli bloomed all year round now.
Xie Lian sat among them, Hua Cheng's head in his lap, and watched the stars wheel overhead.
He did not speak. He did not need to. The silence between them was comfortable, familiar, warm.
Warm.
He had not felt warm in eight hundred years.
"Thank you," he said.
Hua Cheng's eye opened. "For what?"
"For waiting." Xie Lian looked down at him. "For searching. For not giving up on me."
Hua Cheng reached up and touched the flower behind Xie Lian's ear—white, always white, always shiuli.
"I could never give up on you," he said. "You are the reason I am still here."
Xie Lian smiled—a real smile, small and fragile and real.
"And you are the reason I am still here," he said. "We are even."
Hua Cheng laughed—a soft, warm sound that made Xie Lian's hollow chest ache in the best way.
"Yes," he said. "I suppose we are."
They lay in the garden of night-blooming jasmine, and the stars wheeled overhead, and for the first time in eight hundred years, Xie Lian was not alone.
Body in abyss, heart in paradise.
He had said those words once, when he was young and foolish and believed he could save the world.
He had been wrong about many things.
But not about this.
Not about him.