When he spoke, his voice rang like bells and drums striking a bronze cauldron, shaking crumbs loose from the distant ice cliffs. "The old folk always said water and fire cannot coexist, but who has ever seen the fire in a stove do without water vapor? Who has ever seen a great river surge without borrowing the blazing sun's heat to rise? Old Fire and I fought all our lives, from the birth of Primordial Chaos until the Heavenly River changed course. Outsiders saw us as arch-rivals, but when he burned through the Three Realms' fire prison, wasn't it to drag me out of the soul-searing venom flames? And when he collapsed in my arms, his chest charred black, wasn't he still clutching half a piece of unmelted Xuan Ming Cold Jade? I haven't forgotten those things. Not for a single day."
"Drip."
A droplet of water fell from high above, striking the frozen earth and splashing up a faint white mist.
The strange part was that, among the four present, only Candle Dragon had come in his true body. The other three were condensed divine thoughts, transformed from will; they should have had neither tears nor form. Yet this drop had truly fallen.
It had not come from an eye socket, but from a sudden warmth in the heart, a slight trembling of the soul that drew heaven and earth into shared grief, while the netherworld answered in kind... That tear had been born from the resonance of soul and law, from old feelings long buried in the heart crashing open a crack in the Heavenly Dao. It could not be explained, just as there must be a muffled sound before spring thunder, and silence before the tide rises. Should outsiders ask, "How can a spirit shed tears?" heaven