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The Western Qiuzhen Mountains were, under ordinary circumstances, a haven designed specifically for men who wished to be forgotten.
Following the chaotic collapse of the Heavenly Capital and the restructuring of the Ghost City’s administrative departments, Yin Yu had requested a very specific form of compensation from Hua Cheng. He did not want spiritual devices, he did not want a seat of honor, and he certainly did not want a title. He wanted a piece of land where the soil was decent, the air was thin, and the nearest neighbor was at least three mountain peaks away.
For the first few months, the plan had worked flawlessly. Yin Yu had built a modest, three-room wooden house. He planted a small plot of winter melons. He spent his mornings boiling tea, his afternoons translating ancient, rotting spiritual scrolls for Ghost City merchants, and his evenings watching the fog roll over the ridges. It was a life scraped clean of ambition, stripped of the agonizing weight of comparison.
He was, for all intents and purposes, a content ghost.
Until the universe reminded him that Quan Yizhen possessed the tracking instincts of a bloodhound and the spatial awareness of a stray boulder.
On this particular autumn afternoon, Yin Yu was engaged in the deeply domestic task of hanging laundry. The sun was an amber drop in a pale blue sky, casting long, sharp shadows across the dirt courtyard. He had just pinned the sleeve of a grey inner robe to the bamboo line when a sudden, terrifying shift in the atmospheric pressure made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
There was no warning knock. There was no polite call from the mountain path.
There was only a sound resembling a small mountain being cracked in half by a lightning bolt.
The wooden gate—which Yin Yu had spent three days meticulously carving and reinforcing with defensive spiritual seals—did not simply swing open. It suffered a catastrophic structural failure, exploding inward in a shower of splinters and iron nails.
Yin Yu didn't even have time to drop his wooden washbasin. He barely managed to blink before a massive, solid wall of heat and muscle collided squarely with his sternum.
The sheer kinetic force of the impact lifted Yin Yu completely off his feet. The washbasin went flying, scattering wet socks across the dirt, as Yin Yu hit the grass on his back with a breathless, rib-cracking oof. The impact rattled his teeth and knocked the oxygen entirely out of his lungs.
"Shixiong!"
The voice was loud, vibrating right against Yin Yu’s collarbone.
Before the dust from the destroyed gate could even settle, Yin Yu found himself pinned flat to the earth under the immense weight of the Western Martial God. Quan Yizhen was sprawling over him like a giant, unruly golden retriever that had never been taught the concept of personal boundaries. His wild, curly hair was an absolute disaster area—tangled with yellow birch leaves, smelling heavily of high-altitude pine needles, and radiating an absurd amount of spiritual heat. His bright, dark eyes were locked onto Yin Yu’s face with a terrifyingly singular focus.
"Yizhen," Yin Yu wheezed, his hands instantly coming up to press against Yizhen's broad shoulders. He pushed with a respectable amount of cultivation strength, but it was like trying to shove a solid marble monument. "Get... off. You weigh as much as an imperial palace."
"No," Yizhen declared instantly. He didn't sound angry or defiant; he sounded like a man stating an unalterable law of the universe. "I missed you."
"We saw each other three days ago," Yin Yu managed to gasp, his voice strained as Yizhen shifted his hips, effectively trapping Yin Yu’s legs beneath his own. "I went to Ghost City. You followed me through three gambling dens. We spoke."
"That was three days ago," Yizhen muttered, his brow furrowing as if Yin Yu was failing a very basic math test. "Today is today. I haven't seen you all day."
"That is how time works—mmph!"
Yin Yu’s dry, logical retort was violently cut short. Yizhen dropped his head with the speed of a striking hawk and planted a massive, clumsy, uncoordinated kiss right on Yin Yu’s left cheek. It wasn't a gentle, poetic brush of lips. It was a full-force slam of a mouth, leaving a distinctly damp patch on Yin Yu's pale skin.
Yin Yu froze entirely. His ears, normally a pale, transparent color, instantly turned a violent, agonizing shade of crimson. "Yizhen, stop—"
Smack. Another one, delivered with terrifying enthusiasm to his right cheek.
"Yizhen! Let me up!"
Smack. Right on the bridge of Yin Yu’s nose, so hard that Yin Yu briefly saw stars.
"The banquet was stupid," Yizhen grumbled against Yin Yu's skin, his lips moving directly against Yin Yu's forehead as he delivered another heavy, warm kiss near his hairline. "Pei Ming kept trying to hand me a cup of wine and asking me about some goddess from the south. I told him her technique was sloppy and she drops her left shoulder when she swings a saber. He got offended."
Smack. The corner of Yin Yu’s mouth.
"Then Ling Wen tried to make me sign three scrolls about rebuilding a temple in Qiushui," Yizhen continued, entirely unbothered by the fact that Yin Yu was currently suffocating under a mountain of divine flesh. "I didn't want to read them. Lang Qianqiu was sitting next to me, so I threw the scrolls at his head. He tried to draw his sword. The Emperor—no, the scrap guy, Xie Lian—told us to stop fighting. So I just jumped out the window and ran here."
Smack. Another kiss, right on the sensitive skin just below Yin Yu’s ear.
Yin Yu closed his eyes and let out a long, slow, defeated groan. He was trapped in a fate far worse than any torture the ghost kings could devise: absolute, inescapable, suffocating affection from a literal sunshine deity.
For centuries, Yin Yu had lived in a world defined by cold calculations. He understood resentment. He understood jealousy. He understood the bitter, biting pain of being the mediocre shadow standing next to a blindingly bright genius. He had prepared his heart for a lifetime of isolation, or at least a quiet, dignified obscurity. He knew how to handle hatred; he knew how to handle indifference.
He had absolutely no defense against a giant, super-powered idiot who looked at him like he was the center of the cosmos.
"Please," Yin Yu muttered, his hands shifting from a futile pushing motion to helplessly gripping the thick, luxurious fabric of Yizhen's bright red ceremonial robes. "Have some shame. You are a senior martial god. If the heavenly officials saw you rolling in the dirt like a feral dog..."
"Don't care about them," Yizhen muttered. He shifted again, burying his face entirely into the crook of Yin Yu’s neck. He exhaled a hot, heavy breath that sent an immediate, involuntary shiver straight down Yin Yu’s spine. Yizhen’s arms wound around Yin Yu’s waist, locking them together in a bone-crushing, rib-snapping embrace. "They're annoying. Shixiong's house is quiet. Shixiong is here."
The sheer sincerity in Yizhen's voice was a physical weight. It was the same terrifyingly honest devotion that had caused Yizhen to offer his own spiritual energy, his own temples, and his own skin during their youth—completely unaware of how much his casual generosity crushed Yin Yu’s fragile pride. But now, without the cursed shackle, without the platform of the Heavenly Kingdom forcing them into competition, the sharpness of that old wound had dulled into something else.
It was impossible to feel inadequate when the person everyone worshiped was currently using you as a personal mattress, snoring softly against your collarbone.
"You're dusty," Yin Yu whispered, his voice losing its sharp edge, softening into a tone that was dangerously close to fond. "You have leaves in your hair."
"Clean it for me," Yizhen mumbled into his skin.
Then, as if realizing he hadn't fully driven his Shixiong to the brink of total emotional collapse, Yizhen tilted his head back up. His dark, intense eyes bored into Yin Yu’s for a fraction of a second before he leaned down and pressed his lips squarely against Yin Yu’s mouth.
It was entirely clumsy. Quan Yizhen did not possess a subtle bone in his magnificent body. He kissed the exact same way he fought a ghost parade: with everything he had, completely open, utterly devastating, and entirely devoid of technique. It was warm, breathless, and tasted faintly of the sweet, osmanthus-stuffed pastries he had undoubtedly stolen from the heavenly banquet before leaping out of the palace window.
Yin Yu’s breath hitched in his throat. For a moment, his old instincts screamed at him to pull away, to rebuild the walls, to remind himself of the distance between a fallen official and a sitting god.
But Yizhen’s hands were remarkably warm where they gripped his waist. The sun above them was hot. The grass beneath them was soft.
Slowly, giving up a battle he had lost centuries ago, Yin Yu let his eyes drift shut. He brought his hands up, sliding them past Yizhen’s broad shoulders, and buried his fingers deep into the thick, wild mess of Yizhen’s curls. He tilted his head slightly, opening his mouth, and kissed him back—soft, steady, and entirely yielding.
Yizhen let out a low, deep rumble in his chest. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated contentment, a vibration that Yin Yu could feel directly against his own ribs. The god tightened his grip, pulling Yin Yu so close there was no air left between them, before breaking the kiss just enough to pepper tiny, rapid-fire, nuzzling bites all along Yin Yu’s jawline and throat.
The tickling sensation made Yin Yu let out a breathless, reluctant laugh—a rare, genuine sound that he usually kept hidden behind his mask.
"Alright, alright, you menace," Yin Yu whispered, his fingers gently tugging at a particularly stubborn birch leaf caught in Yizhen's hair. "Look what you did. You broke my gate again."
Yizhen didn't lift his head from Yin Yu’s neck, his lips still brushing against the skin every time he spoke. "I’ll fix it."
"You said that last month. I had to spend two days resetting the posts because you tried to hammer them in with your bare fists and shattered the wood into kindling."
"This time I'll be gentle," Yizhen promised solemnly, though his definition of 'gentle' usually involved a structural radius of fifty feet. He gave Yin Yu one last, lingering, fiercely possessive kiss on the center of his throat before finally relaxing his muscles, turning his head to the side, and letting his heavy eyelids close. Within seconds, his breathing evened out into the deep, unshakable sleep of a god who had finally found his altar.
Yin Yu lay there in the dirt, the ruined gate to his left, his clean laundry scattered across the grass, and a hundred-and-eighty-pound martial god pinning him to the earth.
He let out a soft, defeated sigh, his fingers continuing to methodically comb through the wild, golden-brown curls, accepting his beautiful, chaotic, and entirely uninvited fate.