Wang Duoyu Outside the Imperial City

The senior brothers and sisters at the Academy talked of fish every year and looked forward to breaking through their realms one day.

The princes in the imperial city planned to visit their brothers at South Mountain on New Year's Day, then return home to celebrate.

With their deputy marshal and great general leading them, the barbarian army split into two routes and swept toward the Jinling Dynasty like autumn winds stripping leaves.

At that moment, Wang Xian had put his mask on again and was pressing forward against the wind.

The bitter wind howled past, whipping his white robes until they snapped like a battle flag fluttering in the gale.

He had good luck today. Heaven seemed unusually merciful—the snow had stopped.

Tomorrow was New Year's Eve. Even if wind and snow blocked the roads, they could not stop a young man from returning home.

This New Year's Eve, Wang Xian wanted to sit with Uncle Fu by Misty Rain Lake and watch the world's fortunes unfold with a smile.

If they could call the Academy's teacher over and reminisce together about their departed master, Bai Youyue, it would surely make for a different kind of scenery.

And the little phoenix in the imperial palace—had she married Wang Yuan'an?

Or had she swallowed the elixir he gave her, transformed into a phoenix, and left this world behind?

At that thought, he realized that this imperial city, which seemed to have nothing to do with him, still held things he could not let go of and people he could not forget.

Looking down at the mortal world from the heavens, this was all there was to it.

When he had faced tribulation on Hundred Flowers Ridge, he had even wanted to tell his master, Yang Jinwan, that she need never