If I didn't know what happened later, I would definitely curse him for his shamelessness, but I understood that, at the moment, where I was imprisoned and whether Zimiao's abilities could reach there were not the key issues.
Closing my eyes, I stopped speaking, leaning against his shoulder, letting him take me to see the man I so longed to see but now so feared seeing…
When it was twilight, he held me and landed firmly in a dense thicket.
"That's where they live." He pushed aside a few blades of grass obstructing the view and pointed to a place ahead.
After steadying my nerves and mustering up courage, I finally looked in the direction he indicated.
A small wooden house, surrounded by green fences, simple yet beautiful and secluded, so in line with his style.
Coincidentally, the door of the wooden house was opened by someone.
My heart stopped when the person who opened the door came out.
His long black hair and white clothes gently fluttered in the morning breeze, just as in the past.
Zimiao… Zimiao…
I silently called his name, with nothing in my eyes except his figure.
My mind went blank, with only one thought, run! Don't think about anything, just run back to him!
But another person's appearance severed my reckless impulse like a sharp blade.
A woman in white, her gait light and graceful, walked out of the house and leaned against him with a smile, lightly tugged at his sleeve, and stood on tiptoes to whisper sweetly into his ear.
He smiled and caressed the woman's face tenderly.
A wave of dizziness hit me. If there hadn't been an arm by my side to support me in time, I might have collapsed right then and there, never to wake up again.
"Hey, are you alright?" He clumsily slapped my face, as if afraid I might keel over.
The pain on my face temporarily dispelled the annoying dizziness. I opened my eyes and said to him, "From now on, don't interfere with me and let me do what I want!"
He was silent for a while, then raised a thick eyebrow and nodded, "Up to you."
I took a deep breath and stepped out of the woods.
I learned today that even walking requires courage.
From the grass to the wooden house, such a short distance, felt like a hundred years of walking.
When I reached the fence, the man and the woman were about to return inside.
I had to stop him before that door closed, or I feared I'd never have another chance to call out his name.
"Zimiao!" I thought my voice would be loud when I gathered all my strength, only to realize how weak it was when it came out.
But. He heard it.
He turned around and I saw with my own eyes that all-too-familiar handsome face turned from tranquility to pleasant surprise.
In an instant, my icy hands were tightly held by him as he hurried out to meet me.
The temperature that I had been away from for so long brought warmth and happiness, but it felt somewhat unfamiliar.
"Shaluo, you're back?" He was genuinely ecstatic, not a hint of pretense, "I've been looking for you for so long, but couldn't find any trace of you. How are you? Are you hurt? Are you okay?"
"Did you... really look for me?"
In the smile he showed to that woman, I couldn't see any trace of the anxiety of searching for someone missing. With how the two of them were gazing lovingly into each other's eyes, did he have me in his heart at all?
I'd never distrusted him like this before.
"Of course. Not just me, but Jiu Jue has also been looking for you!" He habitually stroked my head, smiling with relief, "Why do you ask?"
I turned my head slightly, deliberately avoiding his hand.
He froze.
"Zimiao. This young lady is..."
A melodious female voice, as clear as a mountain spring, sounded behind us, and my hands suddenly clenched into fists.
"Oh... it's Shaluo, I told you about her..." He looked back and introduced me to his woman with a smile.
Now, she was the host and I was the guest. In spite of everything, the change of position was so reasonable and fair that it didn't allow me to have the slightest objection.
"So, you're Miss Shaluo." She looked up and down my disheveled self good-naturedly, then turned to him with a reproachful tone, "The morning dew is heavy. Hurry and take Miss Shaluo inside to sit. What are you standing outside for?"
"I'm not going in." I flatly refused her kindness, looking directly at her beautiful face, and said unceremoniously, "I don't want to talk to you, and I don't want to see you."
Perhaps neither of them expected me to be so blunt, and the sudden awkwardness was palpable.
What I said were not angry words, but the truth.
"You go inside first," he smiled and said to her.
She nodded, her sweet-tempered demeanor unchanged, and then turned to enter the wooden house, closing the door behind her.
"Shaluo." He toyed with my disheveled hair, "I know you have grievances in your heart, blaming me for letting that evil dragon snatch you away, blaming me for not rescuing you in time, blaming..."
"Stop talking." For the first time in my life, I interrupted him.
If that woman hadn't appeared, I would have earnestly told him that from beginning to end I only had trust for him, not resentment, only anticipation, not disappointment. But now I didn't have the position to say such things.
"She has your child?" I didn't shy away from the topic, even adopting a questioning tone.
He looked surprised, eyebrows raised, "How did you know?"
"You're an immortal and she's a mortal. Do you know what consequences you'll face?" I didn't believe he didn't know. I just didn't understand why, knowing perfectly well the severity of the situation, he insisted on walking down a path to ruin.
"Shaluo..." He held my hand, "You know I never lie to you. Since things have come to this point, I might as well tell you the truth."
"In the heavenly realm, there's a divine tree called Shaluo, which is guarded by the female immortal Xuechang who is the incarnation of an orchid. According to the rules of the heavens, the female immortal who guards the tree must remain chaste for life. However, Xuechang eventually fell in love. This matter was discovered by the Empress of Heaven, who ordered her to reveal the identity of her beloved, but she vowed to die rather than obey. Enraged, the Empress of Heaven stripped her of her immortal status and cast her down to the mortal realm, never to return to the heavens." He narrated slowly, as if telling someone else's story, "On the day of Xuechang's tragedy, her beloved was not in the heavens. When he learned of what had happened, the heavenly and mortal realms already stood between them. So, heartbroken, he began his years-long search, amidst the myriad faces of the vast mortal world, seeking the human reincarnation of Xuechang."
I was stunned. I, who never knew how to conceal my emotions, couldn't hide my shock.
"Xuechang is her, and Xuechang's beloved... is you?!" I easily deducted the characters in his "story" and who they corresponded to.
He nodded.
"She and I once promised under the Shaluo Tree that no matter what trials we face in the future, no matter where or what we become, we will find our way back to each other and retrieve our millennia-long past with just a glance." As he reminisced, something familiar to me finally appeared in his eyes, "But for thousands of years, I couldn't find her who had fallen to the mortal world. That night, while passing by Mount Fulong, I came across you when I was exhausted. Recalling Xuechang's appearance, I granted you human form, just hoping..."
"Wait!" I suddenly shouted and shook off his hand as if I'd been bitten by the most venomous snake in the world.
He looked bewildered by my reaction.
"My appearance..." I took a big step back, pressing hard on my own face as if it weren't a part of my body, just a mask that could not feel pain, "My appearance was born out of that woman... your female immortal Xuechang?"
My features resembled hers. So it wasn't a coincidence at all, just a…selfish intention.
Even my name, those strange two characters - 裟椤[1] - were nothing but a mark imposed on me by him, a memory shared solely between him and another woman. And I, I had actually been immeasurably self-satisfied for so long, thinking that everything he gave me was good.
Yes, I once believed so firmly that he was good to me...
It was at this moment I finally realized—
The woman who faced him day and night on Mount Fulong was never me!
"Shaluo..." He approached me, forcefully pulling down my hands that were frantically ravaging my own face, taking me into his arms and gently patting my back as if comforting a stupid and stubborn child, "I can't even remember the faces of other women, only hers... So when I helped you take a human form..."
The warmth of his hands, from this moment on, would forever be isolated from my body.
"Don't say anything more!" I interrupted him.
With each word he uttered, my heart felt like it was being stabbed invisibly, the pain too terrible for me to bear.
I lifted my head, silently gazing into those clear eyes and smiling, hiding all traces of the hysteria that had just consumed me.
"The evil dragon imprisoned me in the Sea of Despair. He said it's a place you can't enter," I straightened up, forcing myself to leave the embrace I was once so attached to, forcing myself to maintain a calm smile like that of an bystander, "It's only natural that you couldn't find me. However, I just realized something... Even if I wasn't trapped in the Sea of Despair, you still wouldn't find me. Because you never knew me. Shaluo is just a shadow living by your side, a substitute who doesn't deserve even having her own face!"
He opened his mouth slightly, but didn't say a word for a while. I suppose my expression and words at this moment were something he had never experienced in the past thirty years.
Time froze between us, I looked at him, and he looked at me.
For the first time, I felt I was on an equal footing with him. From this moment on, the awe of a demon for an immortal, the respect of a maid for her master, and the dependence of a woman on a man, all obliterated completely and forever.
He owes me. I stubbornly thought.
"It's almost July..."
After a long while, his soft voice broke the deadlock. But the topic shifted to something wholly different.
"Colorless will soon bloom. You should go back to Mount Fulong," he brushed aside the messy hair covering my eyes, completely ignoring what I had said to him earlier, casually issuing the order for me to leave.
So he won't even give me an explanation? Or does he think there's simply no need to waste any more time on a substitute like me who had lost her usefulness?
"Is that all?" My smile was about to crack.
"Perhaps it's foreordained by Providence that our fate ends here," his smile was always natural, "Go back. Someone has been waiting for you for a long time."
He doesn't want me anymore!
I couldn't hear anything else except that.
Thirty years was merely a snap of the fingers for an immortal, but it was a lifetime for a demon.
He could sever cleanly, but I couldn't walk away free and easy as if nothing happened.
When parting is imminent, the one who invests in the relationship is always the loser, losing not only their heart but also their future.
I had no strength left to say more to him, only one sentence—
"Everything about Shaluo was given by you, and I don't care for it."
So what if Colorless blooms. I won't return to Mount Fulong, and I certainly won't return to my real body. The body he bestowed upon me, along with my scarred soul, should wither and perish like the petals of the Colorless flower. Turning away, I laboriously moved my steps towards the depths of the forest.
He could see my retreating figure, but he couldn't see my bleeding heart.
I walked slowly, and around me, the trees, one after another, changed from lush green to withered yellow.
The tears in the heart of the tree demon brought midsummer into the cold winter. Each lifeless fallen leaf was a memory going far away from me.
Perhaps he was still standing there, looking at yellow leaves filling the sky with a deep gaze. But he would never catch up again. The distance between us, once a mere step, had gradually become a forever insurmountable chasm under his stopping and my walking forward.
In fact, I should have understood from the beginning. A step away seems so very close, but the reality was... he couldn't walk over, and I couldn't step across.
Unfortunately, it wasn't until many years later that I understood this truth.
A few dead leaves fell on my head, but their tiny strength shattered all my pretense of strength.
My body felt like a rootless willow catkin, flying lightly to the ground.
[1] I don't remember if I explained the possible meaning of this name. Shaluo is pretty much a fantastical name, even the characters 裟 and 椤 are not commonly used in modern Mandarin. 裟 is only used in 袈裟 which means kasaya, the robes of fully ordained Buddhist monks and nuns. The word comes from Sanskrit काषाय (kāṣāya, “brownish red; brown-red cloth or garment.”) The character 椤 is from 桫椤: spinulose tree fern; Cyathea spinulosa (botany). 桫椤 is borrowed from Sanskrit शाल (śāla, “being in a house; enclosure; sal tree”). According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha was lying between a pair of sal trees when he passed away. The tree is thus a sacred tree in Buddhism and is planted at Buddhist religious sites. In Buddhist temples of China, it is often supplanted by the Chinese horse chestnut tree (Aesculus chinensis(botany)). Both characters have something to do with Buddha, but don't make sense when combined.
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