The moment Chitian River went down for good, Yueyang’s focus released and he collapsed.

Xiao Wenli moved immediately, collecting Chitian River’s remains into a storage ring before anything could complicate the aftermath. Xiao Nu gathered Yueyang up and carried him back into the Grimoire World to be treated. Qianqian laughed and cried at the same time — still shaking, still half-convinced that something this dangerous couldn’t actually be finished, watching the surroundings until she was certain there was nothing left to react to. Then her legs gave out and she sat down in the snow.

Storm Valkyrie caught her arm before she went all the way down.

Xiao Wenli sealed the crimson blood pool with purifying light and extreme cold energy, then summoned the Grimoire World and called out the Petrifying Medusa, Storm Mermaid, Thunder Naga, and Frost Serpent-Demon to take over. That done, she drifted over and guided Qianqian and Storm Valkyrie back inside.

The Grimoire World was in a state.

Mountains of ice — the pieces Yueyang had been collecting throughout the battle — were piled in enormous heaps across the landscape. Several areas were still burning with Chitian River’s divine fire that hadn’t been purified yet. Unnamed divine energies moved against Yueyang’s will in various corners, generating energy vortices of assorted sizes. Outside the residential building, Wuxia floated suspended in the air, still quietly integrating the mysterious divine nature — and the Book of Truth blazed with light, its own nature shifting in a change so gradual it was nearly invisible, its quality moving from sub-divine artifact toward something that would require a different name.

Yueyang lay on his bed. The contest with the Prison Emperor Divine Seal was over, but the process of it had consumed him so completely that his mind had simply stopped and let his body do the same. He was asleep before anyone finished arranging him.

“Insufferable man.”

“Always carrying everything alone.”

“At least when he’s asleep he’s slightly less aggravating.”

“Always making people worry. When is it going to end? When are you going to let my heart rest for five minutes?”

Qianqian sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him for a while. Then she lay down beside him. Her fingers — blood-dried, finally — moved across his face with a gentleness that she would not have permitted herself if he were awake to see it. She bent and kissed him softly.

Xiao Wenli and Storm Valkyrie exchanged a look.

They both knew this princess — the tiger-ferocity, the endless competitiveness, the raised fists and the bickering. This version, the one that only came out when he was unconscious and couldn’t tease her for it, was the version that might actually be closer to the truth. There were people who would never have believed Qianqian and the gentle Yue Yu shared any fundamental nature. Watching her now, they might have revised that.

Yueyang would never know. Probably.

“Fourth Mother said to take care of me,” Qianqian murmured to the sleeping figure. “And look how that turned out. You and Wuxia end up taking care of me instead, you terrible man…”

She wrapped both arms around him.

Quiet words, trailing into silence.

And then, after a while, a tear — quiet, warm, dropping onto his sleeping face. She didn’t wipe it. She just held him and let herself feel everything that had been happening for the last however many hours, without performing anything for anyone.

The man had gotten into her heart in the most unreasonable way, and then simply refused to leave, and she had long since stopped pretending she wanted him to.

She fell asleep without noticing it was happening. Her face against his shoulder, arms still wrapped around him.

Even asleep, her lashes were slightly damp.

Her lips curved in something that was probably a smile.

Her hand rested in his larger one, fingers curled into a small fist — the instinctive sleeping posture of a woman who spends a lot of time in dreams arguing with someone.

Xiao Wenli and Storm Valkyrie shared another look. Equally fond, equally tired.

They settled on either side of Yueyang and sat quietly together, letting the memories of the battle arrange themselves in their minds. After a while, without particular reason, they both smiled.

Today’s fight — in terms of raw threat, technique, killing intent — Chitian River hadn’t compared to the Night Empress. The battle against the Night Empress had required the Supreme’s full involvement, Yueyang’s absolute limit, even the Qilin Girl Bingyin summoned to help. Yueyang had needed to unleash the uncontrollable Golden Giant law-force for the decisive blow. And even after winning, if not for the Phoenix Sisters and the Sword Spirit providing absolute protection, both he and the Supreme would have been killed by the Night Empress’s final comet strike.

Today, Yueyang had won alone.

With the caveat that Chitian River had emerged weakened from the seal, had severed his own leg escaping, and had spent forbidden techniques earlier than was wise. And with the caveat that Yueyang was not the same person who had fought the Night Empress — he had broken through repeatedly since then, passed five of the trial valleys, cultivated at the World Tree alongside everyone, touched the divine realm through those shared resonances, and now carried both the primordial rune formation and a contracted Prison Emperor Divine Seal.

Even granting all of that.

The Night Empress had been the stronger fighter. She had cultivated every bit of her power through her own effort, and the depth and sophistication of how she used it had no equivalent. Chitian River, with all his divine body and divine blood and divine fire, had fought like someone who had been given extraordinary gifts and never had to develop the instincts that came from earning them. A wealthy inheritor of things he hadn’t built.

That was Yueyang’s assessment, and it wasn’t wrong.

A day later.

He opened his eyes to find Qianqian asleep across him — specifically: both arms locked around his neck in a grip that suggested she was, in her dreams, preventing his escape; lips faintly pursed as though mid-proclamation; one elegant leg thrown across his midsection and threaded between his knees, apparently having decided during sleep that the risk of falling off the bed was real and required anchoring; and the other leg propped on Xiao Nu’s shoulder, who was asleep at the bedside and serving as an unwitting footrest.

The mysterious sensation he’d been half-dreaming about — something warm and soft moving against him — was now explained. It had been Qianqian’s foot. He was choosing not to think about this.

“Don’t go,” she murmured, without waking, and tightened her arms.

“You’re heavy,” Yueyang said, addressing the leg. “Shift it.”

He carefully extracted himself from the armlock enough to reach Qianqian’s leg and move it off Xiao Nu’s shoulder.

Xiao Nu’s eyes opened instantly. She found Yueyang awake and produced a sound of pure joy, then immediately covered her mouth with both hands so as not to wake Qianqian. She pressed Yueyang firmly back into the bed, tucked him in with focused attention, and sprinted toward the kitchen — already listing, in a whisper, the things she was going to cook, and the hot water she was going to prepare, and how fast she was going to do it.

Xiao Wenli put her head through the doorway, came in, hugged him and kissed him once, and left.

Storm Valkyrie looked in. She nodded — a considered, genuine nod — and didn’t approach more than that. She hadn’t spent enough time with him yet to know how to be close, and she knew it.

Once the room was clear, Yueyang’s hands did what they were going to do, because apparently some instincts persisted through divine combat and near-death and twenty-four hours of unconsciousness. Qianqian didn’t wake. He gained a thorough appreciation of the subject without any corresponding satisfaction in terms of conquest, kissed the two most prominent points of the winter landscape before him, and covered her back up with the blanket.

This tiger-princess was permanently his. There was no rush. The complete victory — heart and body both, properly — was the only version worth having. Let her rest. She had run across a frozen battlefield to protect him and then held him while taking a blow meant to end them both. She had earned sleep.

Xiao Nu returned as promised, moving at the speed of someone who has assigned themselves an urgent mission. She served him an enormous meal, then prepared the bath with a faint blush that hadn’t fully faded since the previous interaction: “Master, please allow me to assist. I was studying very carefully at Heavenly Punishment Sister’s establishment…” She stopped. “Oh — the rune formations are still visible?”

Yueyang looked down at the primordial rune patterns still slowly integrating into his skin. “Probably another month at minimum.”

Xiao Nu settled behind him in the water. She applied a technique that Tianzhu had apparently demonstrated at some point — one that Xiao Nu was now deploying with earnest and slightly nervous precision — and leaned forward to ask, close to his ear: “Am I doing this correctly? Is it more like how Heavenly Punishment Sister does it, or Ocean Blue Sister?”

“Honestly,” Yueyang said, “standardization is beside the point. The intention is what counts.”

His hands began returning the gesture.

They moved.

And that, as it always did, led somewhere, and what was meant to be a simple bath became rather more involved before anyone had made a formal decision to that effect. Xiao Nu, for her part, made a valiant and genuine attempt at the full sequence she’d been practicing, got partway through before her knees forgot their purpose, and ended up gripping the edge of the pool and doing her best from a position she’d improvised herself with a combination of determination and instinct, apologizing throughout for her lack of technical perfection.

“Next time I won’t be so useless, I promise, Master, I’ll make sure you get the very best— oh, you can’t do that there, I’m going to— Master—”

The rain of battle, as it were, was prolonged.

When it finally ended and Xiao Nu had fallen asleep in the water, Yueyang sealed Chitian River’s remains in the demon-suppressing tower, went outside, collected a large quantity of ice into the Grimoire World for the next transfer to the Black Void Space, and then came back and lay down next to Qianqian again with the innocent expression of a person who has simply been doing responsible administrative work.

He managed to look entirely virtuous.

For approximately thirty seconds.

Then Qianqian’s fist connected with the side of his head.

He blinked.

“I haven’t done anything yet—”

“Don’t yet me.” She was looking at her own chest, which had been in a somewhat different configuration when she’d fallen asleep. “You took my clothes apart while I was sleeping. I want a full confession. What did you do? Don’t try to deny it.”

Yueyang had, in fact, forgotten about this specific crime. He’d cleaned up the evidence of his activities with Xiao Nu but had neglected to re-fasten what he’d loosened earlier, with the result that Qianqian’s state of dress was now doing most of the prosecutorial work for her.

He had nothing.

“Anything to say before sentencing?” She was looking at him with the focused attention of a tiger who has located its prey and is deciding whether to play with it first.

“Yes, actually.”

He moved.

His hands went directly to the scene of the alleged crime. “I only kissed it a few times. I didn’t get to finish. I should at least complete the task before any punishment is administered — it would be wrong to leave things half-done—”

“You— stop that— if you bite me I’ll bite you—”

“I bit you very gently—”

“Then I’ll bite you the same amount I bit you, which is this much—”

“That’s not gentle at all, you have teeth—”

“You can bite harder if you want! Go ahead! It’s not like it’s as impressive as your Wuxia’s anyway, you might as well just—”

“I can’t bring myself to,” Yueyang said, with complete sincerity.

A pause.

“…You’re insufferable,” Qianqian said, at a volume that was somewhat lower than her previous volume.