They said time healed all wounds.
But some wounds were never meant to heal.
Some simply learned to live as scars.
The Crown Prince of the Eastern Realm stood on the edge of the infinite cliff—his robe billowing like a prayer lost in wind, his eyes fixed upon the chasm that swallowed heaven and earth.
It had been twenty years.
Twenty winters of silence.
Twenty summers of standing here, alone.
He had long since become a husband. A ruler. A man admired by the court and whispered of by the world.
And yet—every year on this day, beneath the pre-dawn mist, he returned to this place.
To where Lin Xuanji or Mo Tianzun—his beloved—had fallen.
Where Mo Tianzun had vanished.
Where a part of himself still knelt in blood, screaming that single name.
"Xuan…"
He never wept.
Not after that day.
But some grief was too deep for tears.
Instead, he stood. And waited. As if the cliff would open and return what it had taken.
He never told anyone.
Not his empress Mu Shuirou, whose smile never reached her eyes.
Not the ministers, who feared his silences more than his commands.
Not even the Liu Twins, who occasionally returned from Yunxiao Sect, placing white lilies before the simple stone tablet marked with Xuanji's name.
They never asked why the Crown Prince himself had carved the name.
Why he refused to let the imperial tombs take the body.
Why the Crown Prince still wore an obsidian hairpin in the shape of a crescent moon—Xuanji's last gift.
He only smiled quietly.
Because they believed Lin Xuanji had died.
But Longxuan knew.
That man—who had smiled at him under falling peach blossoms, whose hands had once held him like the world could be soft again—was not mortal.
He was the storm before nightfall.
He was the Lord of the Demon Realm.
He was Mo Tianzun.
And he was not dead.
Not yet.
Not to Longxuan.
———
Deep beneath the cliff—
There was no sunlight.
No time.
Only the howling of ghost wind and the gnashing of monsters who could never die.
The cliff was a realm sealed from all heavens. A pit of oblivion. A burial ground for sins too dark to be remembered.
And within it, something stirred.
He opened his eyes.
The last time he had stood, it was with a blade pressed to his chest.
Betrayal still echoing in his ears.
Liu Shengjie's smile still bleeding in his mind.
"You shouldn't love my Prince! He isn't Lin Xuanji! He's the reincarnated Mo Tianzun—he'll destroy the world!"
What a fool.
He had never been reincarnated.
He had been resurrected.
Lin Xuanji's soulhad given way. Had shattered. Had sacrificed everything—so that he, Mo Tianzun, might live again.
He stood now on shattered stone, body aching, robes long turned to tatters.
But his eyes were steady.
Clear.
His power—silent and bone-deep—no longer roared like it once did.
It hummed beneath his skin like the slow breath of a slumbering beast.
He had not moved in twenty years.
He had not needed to.
Time had passed above like a flicker of candlelight.
But now—he moved.
With one step, the ghost-fire parted.
With another, the abyss screamed.
On the third, the ward cracked.
The cursed boundary—meant to trap him forever—finally shattered.
Not from violence.
But from patience.
Even ghosts feared a man who could wait two decades without blinking.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Somewhere, far away—
A small fishing village nestled near the sea, forgotten by mapmakers and ignored by war.
Children ran through narrow alleys with kites made from shell paper. Fishermen tied red charms to their boats, praying to deities they no longer believed in.
And on the edge of the coast, a strange old man sat on a crumbling wall.
His hair was white. His beard tangled. His face wrinkled like wind-chafed bark.
And yet… no one dared approach.
Because though he laughed loudly and drank from his gourd of wine like a madman, his eyes—when they flickered open—were black as void, old as thunder.
They called him Crazy Grandpa Mo.
They said he'd wandered out of the sea one morning and claimed to be a ghost-hunter, though he spent most of his days sleeping beneath the peach trees or scaring off crows with drunken songs.
No one knew where he came from.
And he never said.
But sometimes… just sometimes…
He would pause, eyes fixed on the horizon.
As if remembering something far older than the ocean.
A name, perhaps.
A voice.
A boy who once smiled and said, "If you ever come back... live free."
Mo Tianzun touched the wine at his lips and laughed, soft and bitter.
"Lin Xuanji… you fool, sacrificing your soul for a demon like me"
The sea wind blew across his face.
He did not look back.