The palace was quieter now. Too quiet.
It was said that the new Crown Princess Mu Shuirou brought harmony to the royal court. She was elegant, composed, and always wore a smile. Ministers praised her gentleness. The maids whispered that she had tamed the Crown Prince.
They were wrong.
Because no matter how warm the halls seemed, Longxuan never once stepped into her chambers after the wedding.
Instead, every few nights, he disappeared from the palace without a word, flying deep into the mists above the infamous cliff—where Lin Xuanji had fallen.
It had been a year.
And yet, Longxuan always stood there.
Sometimes, he brought incense.
Sometimes, he stood in silence, gazing into the infinite abyss as if he could hear a heartbeat in the wind.
No one knew this place better than him now. Not even the ghosts.
But tonight… it felt different.
As Longxuan stood at the cliff's edge, clutching the red ribbon Xuanji once wore in his hair, a chill sliced through his robes.
It wasn't wind. It was a pressure—vast and dark.
He stilled.
His cultivation had reached the threshold between Heaven and God, yet this sensation made even his breathing falter.
Something was stirring in the world.
Something vile.
Not Mo Tianzun. Not his Xuanji.
This was… older. Heavier.
It wasn't just a Devil Qi—it was Devil Order, a primordial force wrapped in shadows so deep, the heavens themselves had failed to cleanse it.
Longxuan gritted his teeth, summoning his sword from the void.
The blade vibrated with a strange hum. Not resistance… but fear.
"…This doesn't belong to this realm," he murmured. "And it isn't from the Demon Realm either."
He looked up, and for the briefest moment, the stars seemed warped. As if some dark thread had been sewn into the fabric of the sky itself.
Suddenly, a golden ripple of Qi moved across the heavens—visible only to cultivators at his level.
Longxuan turned pale.
"That's… not fate. It's being rewritten."
—————
Back at the palace, Mu Shuirou was arranging her hair.
A servant girl whispered, "Your Highness, His Highness hasn't come back again tonight…"
Mu Shuirou smiled gently, lips like petals, eyes cold as glass.
"It doesn't matter," she said, placing a comb aside. "He'll return when he remembers what he owes this empire."
In her hand was a scroll, hidden beneath silks and perfume.
It was old, written in divine ink.
A secret correspondence between her and Liu Shengjie.
The man who had promised her not just a crown, but a place beside a new god.
She traced her fingers along the final line he had written: "The world cannot afford to let him return. Mo Tianzun was merely a beginning. What sleeps beneath heaven is something far worse."
Mu Shuirou's smile widened.
She didn't care about Mo Tianzun.
She cared about the world to come. A world she would rule beside Liu Shengjie when everything else burned and Longxuan submitting to her.
—————
Far away, as Crown Prince Longxuan knelt at the edge of the cliff, the silver ribbon in his hand tightened as if tugged by unseen fingers.
He looked down into the endless abyss.
A whisper danced past his ear.
A voice he had not heard in a year.
"Longxuan…"
He rose in an instant. "Xuanji?!"
But there was nothing.
Only mist.
Only wind.
Onlya broken world, holding its breath.