“So, Your Excellency came to crusade against the human realm?”

After a round of hushed deliberation, the air settled like dust after rain.

Only Shrine Water, third-stage Condensed Body, held her teacup like a shield, forcing her breath to smooth like a pond at dusk.

A chill pricked her spine first; then she looked up. The man called Demon King sat there like a mountain wrapped in mist, his Spirit Energy a depthless sea she couldn’t sound.

Killing her would be as easy to him as blowing out a candle.

Where did my foolish disciple even pick up a thing like this?

From his few words, it sounded like he’d come to seize the mortal world, like a storm rolling over plains.

“Crusade against the human realm?”

Jiang Chen raised his cup, cut Shrine Water a sidelong glance like a knife, a curl of disdain in his eyes. “I planned on it. Then I thought it through and dropped it.”

The human realm’s resources glittered like ore under a waterfall, tempting as ripe fruit.

But there was also a dangerous woman, like a hidden blade in tall grass.

Jiang Chen wouldn’t throw his demon realm’s people into a whirlpool for a handful of bright pebbles.

“Eh? You finally show up in the human realm, and you’re not conquering it? How’s that fair to me?”

Nana Toki watched Jiang Chen sigh, her shock popping like a firecracker. She had zero sense of why he’d lost interest, like a gull chasing a wave that suddenly breaks.

If Jiang Chen didn’t conquer the world, how was she supposed to crank up the Lady Protagonist’s survival difficulty, like adding wind to a climbing trail?

Nana Toki sank into silence, exasperation rising like steam. She finally found a chance to put a pebble in the heroine’s shoe, and the Demon King lost his nerve!

Annoying.

Jiang Chen: “...” You’re human realm born. Can you not be so brazen?

Shrine Water: “...” Exactly that.

“If Your Excellency no longer intends to occupy the mortal world, why arrive in such fanfare, like drums echoing down a valley?”

Relief softened Shrine Water’s shoulders like sun on frost. She sipped, then set the cup down. “I heard you allied with the South Sea’s Chiliao. You must have other designs, like currents under calm waters.”

She had severed ties with the outside, yet her heart still hung over it like a lantern. If the world fell into fire and flood, she’d step out of the mountain like spring breaking ice.

“These matters no longer concern you.”

Jiang Chen set his cup back on the table, porcelain chiming like a bell. His face shadowed; her words stirred a jar of old ash.

“I’ll fetch you the phoenix-bird in a few days.” He looked over at Nana Toki, seated in a broad, clear spot like a crane on a rock. He paused, then added, “But I’ll need you to send us back to the demon realm again.”

“Fine.”

Nana Toki didn’t fear a Demon King’s broken promise. Her years were a slow river; her cultivation was a mountain that didn’t care about passing clouds.

Worst case, she’d storm the demon realm like thunder and drag the phoenix back, leaving him belly-up.

Two hundred years were a blink. She didn’t mind a sunrise or sunset. Just bull through it. Done.

“...”

Jiang Chen didn’t bother to judge her. Power lets you lean on the world like a staff; that was iron truth.

He was the same.

With the bargain sealed, he didn’t linger like dew on grass. He turned and pointed at Shuiqin Lin standing nearby. His tone slipped in like winter wind, brooking no refusal. “Hey, you. Lead us out.”

“Eh? Me?!”

Yes.

She hadn’t expected the finger. For a breath, Shuiqin Lin froze, teacup wobbling like a leaf in a stream.

“Y‑you’re sure you mean me?”

She stared at Jiang Chen, dazed as a deer in snow. “Can I… not go?”

“No.”

Jiang Chen’s handsome face clouded over like a sky before rain at her timid look.

Are human realm women all so eager to prod my bottom line like children poking a tiger?

Women are trouble. Always.

“Senior Sister, save me! QAQ There’s a creep here!”

Nana Toki: “...” I refuse. Like a door closing without a squeak.

In the end, Jiang Chen’s group dragged Shuiqin Lin along, the choice swept away like leaves in a gust.

Under the shade pavilion, Shrine Water and Nana Toki watched Shuiqin Lin look back every three steps, reluctant as a kitten being carried from a warm hearth. It was just leading the way; she acted like a farewell at a cliff’s edge.

What, did she think they’d tie her up as a bandit-bride in some mountain village?

Nana Toki felt a dry laugh rise like old wine. After all these years, her junior hadn’t grown an inch where it counted.

With Shuiqin Lin gone, the little house in the purple bamboo grove held only Nana Toki and Shrine Water. Their long-delayed reunion wasn’t cloying; it landed soft, like snow on pine needles.

Quiet spread, clean as petrichor after rain, a scent rare in the noisy world like a spring hidden under moss.

At last Shrine Water set her cup down, breaking the stillness like a pebble touching a pond.

“Luo’er, these years… have you been well?”

She drew a jade token from her storage ring, split clean in two like a moon cracked by frost, and pressed it into Nana Toki’s palm. A sigh drifted out like fog.

She had a thousand questions, a forest of them, yet when they reached her lips they shrank to this one, simple as a path through bamboo.

“Mm. I’m fine.”

Nana Toki lowered her cup. She saw the redness edging her master’s eyes, a thin mist like dawn over fields, and she understood. Her own death back then had carved deeper into her master’s heart than any scar on her own.

Call it hardship, but she’d had it easiest, like a traveler carried by a river while others pushed through thorns.

“I’m back. I won’t leave again.”

Her gaze slid to the scene beyond the pavilion, green as a scroll painting. She spoke like a vow pressed into wet clay.

Shrine Water’s fingers trembled, cup rattling like wind at the eaves. Surprise flashed, then melted into a lovely smile, slow as sunlight. She nodded.

“Mm.”

“...”

Where was the iron woman of centuries? Under the lacquer, she was like Nana Toki—strength grown like a callus over a tender heart.

“Where’s Nesting Phoenix?”

Shrine Water lifted her cup again, then noticed a familiar red-dressed figure missing from Nana Toki’s side. The question slipped out like a dropped bead.

Nana Toki’s face cooled, a cloud drawing over the sun. Shrine Water realized she’d stepped on a thorn.

She rushed to speak, but Nana Toki was faster.

“She’ll be back in a few days.”

Nana Toki’s eyes looked far, like a hawk riding a distant current. “She’s just a little sleepy. She’ll wake.”

Shrine Water didn’t understand, but the words soothed like balm. The stone in her chest settled.

“Good. As long as it’s fine… good.”

…

The next time Nana Toki saw Jiang Chen, a month had turned like a page.

She was sipping tea under the shade pavilion, steam curling like mist over a lake, when figures hurried toward her like shadows crossing snow. She thought a few knights had lost their way.

If she hadn’t recognized demon clan armor, black and sharp as crow feathers, she might’ve burned them on sight like old brush.

What are you doing here?

They were helping Jiang Chen toward her, his weight sagging like a storm-felled branch. Confusion flickered in her eyes like firelight.

Only when she saw him half-dead, breath thin as thread, did her mind snap tight.

Tss—

One glance at the wound made her skin crawl like ants under bark.

“What happened to this idiot?”

She sat on the pavilion step, drank a cool mouthful like putting a stone on hot iron, and asked.

“...”

The demon soldiers, armor shattered like pottery shards, traded looks. At last one stepped forward, cupped his fists like a bow, and sketched the past days in quick strokes.

“You went to the Cloudpeak Sect?”

Nana Toki froze when she heard it, surprise bursting like a spark. “What for?”

“To settle a private grudge.”

Nana Toki: “...”

As expected of a Demon King. He moved like lightning over dry hills—and face-planted just as fast.

Their tale ran back to the line of Demon Kings like a river tracing its source.

In ancient times, the divine beast Suzaku, guarding the balance of three realms, raised two birds in the demon realm. It named them Feng and Huang.

Suzaku and the Demon King were old friends, so he left Feng and Huang there, to be raised like flame in a brazier.

That should’ve been nothing—just an old tale drifting like smoke.

But mischance walked in. After taking human form, the Feng-bird fell in love with a mortal man in the demon realm. She died in childbirth, candle blown out by a gust.

The Demon Kings raged like thunderheads. They hunted the mortal to the corners of the world. The man was a fox, slippery and sly; he fled back to the human realm, and no one caught him.

With Feng dead and the child gone to the mortal world, only Huang remained in the demon realm. Spirit Energy between human and demon realms tilted like a seesaw, and the realms drifted apart like two rafts on different currents. Demon Kings held a grudge like a blade kept oiled.

To keep Huang from repeating Feng’s fate, the Demon King pressed the human-shaped Huang-bird under the Nine Nether’s Biluohuangquan, a seal like iron, and left it there to this very day.

Wait.

Why did that sound familiar, like hearing a tune you almost remember?

Nana Toki sifted memory like sand. Shrine Water had once told her Nesting Phoenix’s origin: the Eldest Elder brought her back from a journey centuries ago.

So… was Nesting Phoenix’s father the Eldest Elder?

Thinking it through, it fit like a key.

And if that were true, the broken barrier at Cloudpeak’s rear mountain made sense too. The keeper had stolen his own vault.

But something snagged. When he first saw Nesting Phoenix, he’d tried to reseal her, like hammering a lid back on a boiling pot…

And the Eldest Elder was ancient as a cypress. Would the Feng-bird fancy him?

Beasts had… unique taste. That was that, like rain falling where it would.

She didn’t forget to ask what came after.

Jiang Chen had left the purple bamboo grove to chase the thread. He heard of old anomalies at Cloudpeak, and he fixed the Fire Feng’s trail like a hunter spotting tracks. He rushed straight there, arrow true.

But Cloudpeak was hosting a Demon-Purging Assembly, masters from dozens of sects gathered like cranes on a sandbar, all discussing Chiliao. Jiang Chen walked in and got dogpiled, simple as that.

A Demon King beaten sparks like flint. He drew on life’s whole furnace, and with near a hundred demon soldiers, he crashed into the gathered sect masters. They fought three days and three nights, waves pounding a cliff without rest. Cloudpeak’s inner disciples fell like leaves; elders and disciples from other sects bled and broke, bodies like tinder after a burn.

It ended only when Jiang Chen flipped Cloudpeak upside down like a table.

And then the part that made Nana Toki spit her tea like rain from a gutter—he killed the Eldest Elder.

She had planned to revive Nesting Phoenix and question the elder about the old truth. He went and sliced the knot with a sword. Who was supposed to deal with that fallout?

“So. Did your king resolve his private grudge?”

Nana Toki slid her handkerchief to Shuiqin Lin without a twitch, her face still as a pond.

Shuiqin Lin blinked, not getting it, her eyes wide as moonflowers.

Nana Toki: “...”

“What are you staring at me for? Wipe his face.”

She pointed at Jiang Chen, unconscious and now sprayed with her tea, like a statue splashed by a wave.

She’d bet with Nesting Phoenix not to touch anyone else. She wouldn’t break it, even for a laugh.

Shuiqin Lin: “...”

The demon soldiers: “...”