Nightfall Forest was a place where poison crawled like spilled ink—vipers coiled like ropes, venom-spiders skittered like shadows, centipedes flowed like slick chains. Even most plants breathed toxin like cold mist. People went in like candles into wind, and never saw dawn again. Hence the name: Nightfall—night that fell like a curtain, with no morning.
At the border where Nightfall Forest brushed against Dragon Gorge, Ouyang walked as if strolling through a garden, light as drifting leaves. Behind him, only the orc Valiant shouldered the war banner like a red spear in twilight. Xi had long been shaken off like dew from grass. With Kooson and Amelie nearby, Ouyang felt calm as a still lake. And if Xi truly ran into danger, Lian would not stand by like a stone idol.
For now, Ouyang felt free as a kite cut loose. His right hand held the Divine Sword slung on his shoulder like a strip of moonlight. His left held a roasted spider leg, glossy as lacquer. Crunch, crunch—he chewed with eyes half closed, as if savoring snow-sugar on a winter night.
Valiant copied his lord like a shadow echoes a flame. War banner on his right shoulder like a mast in dark surf, a raw spider leg in his left like a thorned club. Black barbs bristled like hedgehog quills. He chomped with wet squelches, like boots in a marsh.
In this land where venom lay like frost, Ouyang felt no prickle of danger. True, he had angered the World’s Will not long ago, and Valiant—once god-tier—had been hammered down like a star fallen through clouds. His strength had dropped like leaves in late autumn. But drop or not, even a declawed tiger is still a tiger, and what forest vermin would dare nip thunder?
Answer: none. They weren’t hunting the locals already; that mercy was a sunbeam in a storm. Any creature without wits that blocked their path ended up like Ouyang’s spider leg—charred proof on a skewer.
By his pace, he should’ve entered Dragon Gorge like a hawk slipping into a canyon wind. Yet he still drifted through Nightfall Forest, and beasts scattered before him like minnows before a boat. Poor, ill-starred Nightfall—his castle had blasted a crater here not long ago like a fallen meteor. Now two baleful stars wandered its dark boughs. What small creature could find a patch of daylight?
Valiant bore the banner in silence like a hill bears snow. Curiosity pricked him like thorns, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. Don’t let the honest face fool you; he wasn’t dull. Kooson was the same—anyone who reached god-tier had lived long as old mountains. The truly foolish don’t reach such peaks.
They walked on. Black deadwood stood like burnt spears, black grass lay like soot, black bogs pooled like tar. The turf was pocked with tight black holes like a honeycomb of night. No tender green, no glass-clear water, no lush canopies—only a hush like ash.
In Ouyang’s eyes, the land was one word: barren—like a dry well under a noon sun.
He glanced around, shook his head like a willow swaying, and let it go. Then, from a black hole in the grass, a pair of black rabbit ears rose like twin leaves at dusk. A head followed, slow as a sprout breaking soil—then stuck. The skull was a bit big; before its eyes could peek, the hole caught it like a ring on a fat finger.
Squeak-squeak came from the many little mouths of earth, a choir of reeds. The trapped rabbit seemed pushed from below like dough through a mold, its head nudging higher, stubborn as a seed under stone.
At last, the squeaks faded like ripples. A half-meter rabbit stood upright on two feet like a little monk, a carrot cupped in its paws like an offering bowl. Black fur on black ground looked ill-omened, like ink on a night sky.
“Sir, please accept the gift of our Black Rabbits,” it said, eyes a dark red glow like coals under ash. It held the carrot up with both hands, posture respectful as a supplicant at a shrine.
Ouyang blinked, then decisively took the carrot like a judge taking evidence. It was covered in bite marks like hail dents on a tin roof. His face cooled like water dousing embers—what kind of hospitality offered a chewed offering? What manners gnawed like mice?
The rabbit saw his face fall like a shutter. It followed his gaze and finally noticed the tooth marks, like footprints across snow.
“Bastard—who did this?” the rabbit exploded, voice cracking like a snapped twig. “That’s our Black Rabbits’ most precious gift, the only intact carrot, and those little brats gnawed it to rags!”
“Squeak-squeak-squeak! (Out! All of you! Who did it?)” It stomped the ground like a drum and chattered into the holes in full rabbit tongue, sounds skittering like pebbles.
The burrows answered with squeaks like raindrops on leaves, but not a single rabbit showed its whiskers. The earth kept its secrets like a shut book.
Ouyang watched the rabbit hop in fury like popcorn in hot oil, and he couldn’t help but be curious. “Your only intact carrot, your most precious gift? Rabbit, are you living that hard?” He tossed the carrot back like a twig to a stream and eyed the rabbit clan with interest bright as a flint spark.
“Sir, though the gift is gone, our Black Rabbits’ loyalty burns on,” the rabbit said, springing before Ouyang and kneeling like a person before an altar. “My lord, you’re the brightest star in the night, and even the sun pales like a lantern at dawn. You are—”
“Hold it,” Ouyang cut in, hand raised like a fan. The patter felt familiar, like a tune heard in a past life. “Rabbit, what’s your name?” Doubt crept in like mist.
“Sir, you once granted me a name. You called me Jade Rabbit.”
Its face performed flattery like a stage actor, expression blooming and folding like paper fans—a startling look on a rabbit.
“Jade Rabbit.” Memory struck Ouyang like a bell. Bored out of his mind back then, he’d done a few bio experiments in this world. He’d been bragging with a circle of Demon Kings, and the boasting drifted like smoke to a myth from his homeland—Chang’e Flying to the Moon. Egged on by those devils, he’d decided to recreate the moonlit scene in this world.
What did Chang’e’s flight need? Chang’e, Jade Rabbit, the Guanghan Palace—moon’s cold hall like frost on jade.
Right—he suddenly slapped the thought like a mosquito. “Damn, I just remembered there’s a palace on the moon, built and polished like snow—and nobody ever lived in it!”
Back then, he’d snatched an ordinary rabbit for the experiment. If it was to be Jade Rabbit, lifespan had to be dealt with like a cracked vessel mended. In the lab’s glow, he tinkered like a smith, and turned a white rabbit into an immortal black one.
After that, a pack of Demon Kings caravanned to the moon and raised the Guanghan Palace like a crystal city. They even brawled with the locals like thunder among craters—no suspense about the outcome. As for choosing a human to play Chang’e, they argued like crows at dawn. Their aesthetics were never the same—never had been.
Picture it: a Titan tens of meters tall, and a tiny dark elf delicate as a glass figurine—how could their tastes align? A Lich with a jutting black skeleton like an iron scaffold, and a blob of a human like a dumpling of fat—how could they agree?
To find the “most beautiful” human in their hearts, those Demon Kings roamed the world for centuries like storms chasing horizons. Then that incident struck like a cracked bell, and the Chang’e project froze mid-breath.
This rabbit before him was undying—Jade Rabbit, unaging as a winter moon. In a sense, the Black Rabbits were Ouyang’s own vassals, a household bound like silk threads. Yet so poor they couldn’t offer one whole carrot—what could he even say? To fall this low, Jade Rabbit, you had a kind of talent—like an art of failure.
“Sir, have you abandoned Jade Rabbit?” it asked, eyes brimming like wells. It clutched his pant leg like a drowning man holds driftwood, sobbing soft as rain.
Confusion churned in him like leaves in a cup. He truly didn’t get it.
“Rabbit, you’ve lived so long—how are you still this weak?” he asked. On paper, a creature of ten thousand years should be steel, yet this one couldn’t beat a grown wolf, a shadow under a streetlamp.
“Lord Ouyang, wisdom—wisdom is Jade Rabbit’s blade,” the rabbit said, protesting like a sparrow puffing up. Ouyang’s look said he wasn’t buying a pebble. “Wisdom, huh? Then explain this—how does a wise rabbit end up with a chewed carrot as its treasure?”
The rabbit’s eyes went wide like moons, words stuck like gum. After a breath, it locked onto Ouyang’s leg like ivy and wailed. “Ooo—my lord, you must take charge for me…”
“What happened?” Ouyang’s own modifications were a map etched in his mind like carvings. Jade Rabbit shouldn’t be this weak. Something was missing, a key bone from the body—an instrument without strings.
“My lord, after the era of demonic chaos ended, I hid like a mouse and lived carefully as dust,” the rabbit said, voice trembling like a plucked wire. “I never dared wander where humans swarmed like ants. When I was about to become the rabbit god—on that cusp like dawn—some guy called the Kitchen God snatched me like a thief in smoke. That old undying cut me open again and again like a butcher gone mad. Later, the Goddess of Light descended like sunrise, and those gods retreated to the Divine Realm.”
“But my nightmare didn’t end,” it went on, words falling like stones. “That old turtle, the Kitchen God, stripped something from me—peeled a core like a seed—and injected that power into a human’s body like pouring fire into clay. When he left for a while, I teamed up with that human like fox and tiger, and we escaped the lab together. Since then, I’ve had no power—empty as a drum. That human was the same—immortal like a petrified tree, but powerless as a candle in rain.”
“That human believes if he eats me, he’ll become a god,” the rabbit said, bitterness sharp as wormwood. “All these years, the bastard’s hunted me like a hound on a scent. He leans on age and wealth like a fortress and hires humans by the pack. I’m Jade Rabbit, famed for cunning like a river for bends, so I bribed mighty beasts with food like offerings. In the end, he couldn’t take me, and I couldn’t bring him down. Stalemate—stone against stone.”
“So, to feed those beasts, I ended up this poor,” it finished, voice thin as smoke.
When the tale ended, Ouyang wasn’t the only one stunned like a struck bell; even Valiant gaped like a door ajar. A rabbit and a human, two immortals entangled like cats and dogs—a legend tangled with teeth and moonlight.
Ouyang looked deep into the rabbit’s tear-bright eyes like twin garnets. For a moment, words failed him like a pen out of ink. Then heat rose in him like a tide. The Kitchen God? What piece of trash dared lay hands on his rabbit?
