Qingping woke up.

She found herself lying inside an enormous clam. The shell was so vast that even the interior space large enough to hold a person extended at least twenty meters across, its inner walls a brilliant white edged with purple and gold. The waters around White River City held at least a thousand species of shellfish, but Qingping had never seen anything this massive, or this beautiful.

As her mind cleared, confusion hit her hard.

Hadn’t she already dissolved? How was she still alive?

And how had she ended up inside this magnificent clam she’d never seen before?

Stay calm. She forced herself to retrace what had happened. She’d met that scoundrel and his companions. In the Wave-Mist Sea, the Marshal had meant to turn them all into blood sacrifice, and she — unable to stop herself from trying to save people — had been caught, triggering the most feared ancient curse buried in every defector’s blood. Through Water Spider’s vicious scheme, she’d barely slipped free, turned the trap back on itself by taking a boat out into the Wave-Mist Sea, and used the blood-lotus technique to send Sea Fatty and the others away to safety, keeping only the scoundrel beside her.

She remembered him saying something about masochism, about running an experiment, his hand moving against her with that particular brand of mischief.

And then?

Ah — right. There hadn’t been time left. As the end approached, she’d wanted one more thing with him, to leave nothing unfinished. But the curse had taken over before they got there, and everything had simply… ended.

She remembered the regret most clearly — wishing there’d been more time.

So what was happening now?

She was alive?

Qingping tried to sit up and couldn’t. To her astonishment, she discovered her body had fused directly into the clam itself. A vast reservoir of energy and some kind of cool, pearl-like fluid surrounded her completely, working through her, slowly repairing what had been shattered. The ancient curse was still there, but its force had migrated to the outer shell — it was no longer active inside her body.

Who had managed something like this? Saving a life through a method this extraordinary?

Could it have been the scoundrel?

Did he actually have that kind of ability? It seemed unlikely. An ancient curse like that should have been unstoppable by anything short of a god. Her body had genuinely come apart. Reversing that should have been impossible — the kind of thing only a divine miracle could accomplish.

“You’re awake. Recovering nicely, I see.” A regal sea empress appeared, crowned, robed, a sacred staff in hand, looking down at her.

“You’re—?” Qingping startled badly at the sight of her.

Several things hit her at once. First, she had no idea who this woman was. Second, the tone suggested this empress had been the one who’d saved her. Third — and this was what truly frightened her — as the empress drew closer, Qingping realized her own life was bound to this stranger’s in some intimate way, as though she’d become part of the woman’s body. Their minds weren’t connected, but something deeper than that clearly was. Was this some form of enslavement? But slavery didn’t work this way — this resembled something closer to the bond between a life-guardian war beast and its master, something legendary in its rarity.

The realization landed with a jolt.

Had she become this sea empress’s life-guardian war beast?

Had dying somehow triggered a kind of rebirth, the way old legends described?

But she wasn’t an infant. Her original body still existed — shattered by the curse, yes, but being slowly repaired by that pearl-like essence even now.

“I am Hailan, Empress of all the sea peoples within the Sky Stairway. Wherever there is water, that territory answers to me. You appeared inside my Clam Empress’s body without warning and fused with it completely — who exactly are you?” The empress’s question carried authority. And the words sent Qingping’s mind reeling — the Sky Stairway. I’m actually inside the Sky Stairway. Somehow she had traveled from White River City in the Tianhua Domain, all the way to the Sky Tower itself. Had the ancient curse’s power carried her home?

“Your Majesty, I’m called Qingping. I genuinely don’t know how I came to be in your palace, or how I fused with your Clam Empress — this can only be some kind of miracle.” Before she’d even finished speaking, tears were already spilling freely.

She was thinking of him. The one she would have happily let do his worst to her for the rest of her life.

Having mysteriously returned to the Sky Tower, fused now into this sea empress’s war beast — she would likely never see him again. The passage between the Sky Tower and the Sky Realm had been sealed for thousands of years; no one had ever managed it. Neither the defectors nor the loyal remnant could ever go home.

The scoundrel was still out there, somewhere beyond White River City, in the Wave-Mist Sea.

And she was back at the Sky Tower.

What was she supposed to do with that?

Once, returning home would have been the greatest blessing imaginable — the Marshal had said more than once that if White River City’s strength ever made it back to the Sky Tower, they could claim dominion over the whole place, perhaps even unlock the legendary ruins of the gods.

She’d made it home. And she felt nothing but grief.

What good was being alive, with the person she loved gone?

Separated from him forever, even having survived the curse against every possible odds — it was still a tragedy in every way that mattered. Why, if I was meant to live, did it have to be here?

Anywhere else in the Sky Realm would have been bearable. At least then there’d be a chance of finding her way back to him, a chance of seeing him again.

“Why are you crying?” The sea empress seemed genuinely puzzled by Qingping’s tears, her fine brow creasing.

“I… I lost something.” The more Qingping thought about it, the worse the grief became.

“Lost what?”

“Lost someone.” Qingping broke down completely.

“Ha! Tell me how you managed to lose a person.” The empress seemed to find this amusing.

The question cracked something open, and Qingping’s grief poured out in a flood she couldn’t hold back. She cried for what felt like a long time before she registered that the empress was simply waiting, patient, for an answer. Perhaps it was the strange bond between them. Perhaps the weight of it all had simply grown too heavy to carry alone. Perhaps some small part of her hoped this stranger might know of some other passage connecting the Sky Tower to the Sky Realm. Whatever the reason, Qingping found herself telling this near-stranger everything.

Between broken sobs, she laid out everything that had happened to her in fragments — the cruise, the curse, the boat, all of it — to the sea empress, Hailan.

Hailan considered this for a long while, starting to speak several times and stopping herself each time.

Holding onto one last thread of hope, Qingping asked: “Your Majesty — is there truly no passage left in the Sky Tower that connects to the Sky Realm? I only just found someone I love. I can’t simply lose him. Please — tell me there’s a way.”

Hailan shook her head firmly. “The Sky Realm’s gate has been sealed, and beyond that, the spatial passage itself has shattered into broken void — there’s nothing left to cross even if the seal weren’t there. And even if there were a way, I wouldn’t let you leave. Do you understand what you are now? You’ve fused with my Clam Empress. You are my life-guardian war beast. Do you imagine I’d simply let that walk away?”

Qingping went still.

She’d suspected as much already, but hearing it confirmed outright still hit her like a physical blow.

So her survival hadn’t come without a price after all.

The ancient curse hadn’t killed her — instead it had carried her home to the Sky Tower, and bound her to someone else’s life-guardian beast in the process. From this point on, freedom simply wasn’t part of her existence anymore.

Worse still — bound as a life-guardian war beast, even ending her own life wasn’t something within her power anymore.

Why had it turned out this way?

The thought spiraled, and Qingping’s tears came harder, finally breaking into something closer to a wail of pure despair. Perhaps this was the true cruelty of the ancient curse — not a quick death, but a sentence to suffer indefinitely, every day of what remained of her life spent in longing and grief. Without him, she couldn’t imagine living even a single day. What was she supposed to do now?

After a while, she lifted her head, the crying finally subsiding, and looked at the sea empress — her new master — with sudden resolve.

“Your Majesty. Please grant me my freedom. You’re a woman too — you must understand what love means to a woman. I cannot live without him. Please, I’m begging you. Let me return to the Sky Realm. I swear to you, the moment I find him, I will bring him back to the Sky Tower with me, and after that, I’ll serve you without a single word of complaint, for as long as you wish. Please. Let me go. Without him, I won’t last even a single day.”

Hailan shook her head slowly. “Even if I granted you freedom, could you actually go anywhere? Your body as it stands couldn’t survive the journey. I’d estimate it will take at least a year before you’re fully fused with the Clam Empress and your body has finished repairing itself in the starfall pearl fluid…”

“A year, ten years — it doesn’t matter, as long as I can eventually move, I will go find him.” Qingping couldn’t act now, but she wanted the promise of freedom secured regardless.

“You understand the passage to the Sky Realm has collapsed into broken void. Anyone who steps into it gets ground to dust by the spatial turbulence.” Hailan shook her head again.

“Even if it costs me my body and bones, I will go.” Qingping’s resolve was absolute.

“Ha! You really are stubborn.” Hailan laughed. “Fine, fine. Once your body has fully recovered, I’ll consider whether to grant you that freedom.”

Qingping lit up with overwhelming joy and thanked her at once. “Your Majesty, you are the kindest, most beautiful empress in the world. I hope you find your own true love someday, and live happily with him forever. Thank you — truly. I don’t know if I’ll succeed, but your generosity is something I’ll be grateful for as long as I live.”

Hailan waved this off, mentioning with easy confidence that she’d already found her own love and had no need to go looking. “Though he’s perpetually busy, always running off somewhere, barely home more than a few days at a time — he does make an effort to keep me happy when he’s around, so I suppose that’s something. My only real worry is whether some pretty enough demon-woman might lure him away while he’s out there. Good men really are hard to find, and that one’s reasonably decent-looking, which means plenty of people notice him — and he happens to be a natural-born lecher with absolutely no self-control, so the moment anyone makes a real effort, he tends to fall right in… I love that scoundrel and resent him in equal measure. It’s complicated.”

Hearing even this seemingly fortunate empress voice the same frustration gave Qingping an odd flicker of sympathy.

That’s exactly how it is.

Good men were always contested. Everyone wanted one — someone who’d cherish them for a lifetime — but nobody was blind, either. A genuinely good man was as rare and as visible as a shooting star against a black sky.

Once one appeared, there was no chance of him going unnoticed.

Even her own scoundrel — masked, sunglasses, doing everything he could to hide his face — still had Liuye in the running for his attention. If Qingping hadn’t gathered her courage to confess at what she’d thought was the literal end of her life, he might never have accepted her at all.

By any strict accounting, she herself was exactly the kind of woman who’d swooped in at the last moment to steal someone else’s man. Especially from Liuye — who, if she ever learned the truth, might have every right to be furious. If I ever make it back to the Sky Realm, I owe her a proper apology. Best case scenario, I suppose the lecher gets to keep the benefit of the doubt, and Liuye gets to decide whether she wants to share him with one more person serving him alongside her.

The thought brought a flush of embarrassment.

It also gave her an idea, and she offered it to Hailan as a small suggestion: “Your Majesty, if you want him home more often, why not give him a son? Once a man becomes a father, even the most restless ones tend to settle down.”

“Good idea!” Hailan seemed to genuinely like the suggestion. “Next time he’s back, I’ll see about putting that into motion. Though…”

“What’s the concern, Your Majesty?” Qingping found this puzzling — what was there to hesitate over, with wanting a child?

“Well, here’s the thing. I’m not the only one who loves that scoundrel. I am a wife, technically, but fairly far down the order of things. Having children is generally something the principal wife handles first, or at least the senior sisters ranked ahead of me. I could have a child, certainly, but it would feel unfair to the sisters above me in standing. If they treated me poorly, I wouldn’t think twice about it — but they’ve all been wonderful to me, and I don’t feel right overstepping.” Hailan offered this explanation lightly.

“…” Qingping understood now why the empress’s love kept disappearing — apparently she wasn’t the only one who loved him at all.

What a thoroughly unrepentant flirt of a man.

She couldn’t begin to imagine how someone like that had managed to win over an empress of this caliber.

Qingping fell silent for a long moment. She was, after all, hardly different herself — fully aware that Liuye and this man were already a pair, and she’d thrown herself into the situation anyway, willing to betray her own people and risk death just to be near him.

Women, sometimes, really were fools about this sort of thing.

With that thought settling in, Qingping found herself offering Hailan a piece of advice in turn: “In that case, why not discuss it among the sisters? Whichever of you is willing, have the child together.”

Hailan smiled and shook her head, waving the idea away. “No rush on that front. He’s unusual — the stronger his cultivation grows, the more powerful and high-potential any child of his would be. Once he advances to Sacred Sovereign, I think I’ll have his child then, and give him a proper divine heir.”

Qingping’s eyes went wide with shock. “Your husband is close to reaching Sacred Sovereign? I thought the Sky Tower had no powerhouses left at all?”

A low, displeased grunt sounded from somewhere nearby — clearly unhappy with that last remark.

Hailan waved a hasty goodbye to Qingping. “That’s him, back already. Get some rest, and please, watch what you say around him — his temper’s not the best, and if it flares up, he’s been known to take it out on people.”

Hearing this, Qingping found, unbidden, that her mind had drifted back to the memory of his hand sliding into her bodice, that particular mischief of his.

The sensation of it lingered strangely.

If only he were here.

If he were beside her right now, she’d let him torment her for the rest of her life and call it more than fair.