It would have been nice if there really were someone like that.
Not herself, but someone else.
Someone who, like the girl in that story, would stay where she was even after everyone else had turned and walked away.
A fool who would set herself alight to illuminate others, without a thought for the consequences and without asking for anything in return.
She didn't think anyone like that existed in this world.
Because she had searched for hundreds of years and hadn't found a single one... had she?
Her consciousness slowly sank.
Who knew how much time passed? Fu Xiaoxiao's consciousness bobbed in the flood of memories. Then she heard that voice.
It seemed both far away and close.
But it reached her ears, clear as day.
—But I don't agree!
Then came more voices.
They weren't spoken in words, but conveyed through Mortal World Qi.
The shadow that had blurred in the darkness for hundreds of years, the nameless figure she had read about in a tattered storybook when she was young—
At that moment, it took shape.
It slowly merged with the silhouette of a person: the young man she had pulled aside in the Imperial Academy's corridor to test his Mortal World Art, the silly boy who had looked utterly bewildered and asked, "What does that mean?" after she hit him with her Mortal World Art, the idiot who had thanked her like a fool after she stuffed his arms full of things before leaving.
The liar who had said, "I understand," but hadn't left at all.
—Gu Chengming.
Fu Xiaoxiao slowly opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was a face right in front of her.
She stared at it for a long, long time...
So long that Gu Chengming thought she hadn't fully