Moonset, No One Waits (Zhang Leyuan Arc [Part 1])

There had once been two moons on Douluo Continent.

One was the bright, shining moon in the sky, while the other was Zhang Leyuan.

The inner court's senior disciple, blessed with the top-tier Moon martial soul and extraordinary talent.

Yet even someone like her had a past too painful to revisit.

That year, the girl was twelve.

Heaven Dou Empire.

An old enemy had struck, suddenly unleashing disaster and slaughtering her entire clan. Not one of her family survived; all had perished, their blood staining the courtyard steps.

When her entire clan was wiped out, she alone remained, barely clinging to life. Fortunately, Mu En rescued her, allowing her to escape death and preserve her wretched life.

From then on, she cast aside all pride, bowed her head, and begged for help, asking only to borrow a powerful person's strength to slaughter her sworn enemies, avenge the blood-soaked hatred of her clan's extermination, and comfort the souls of her deceased kin below.

In the end, Mu En had indeed helped her destroy her enemies, but the price was that Zhang Leyuan's life no longer belonged to her. Half belonged to Shrek, and the other half to that child-bride agreement.

Did she regret it?

No. For the blood feud of her family, any price was worth paying.

Her life should have been shackled by gratitude and a marriage contract, headed toward a fate destined for tragedy. But when she was thirteen, she met the boy who changed her life.

"Hello, Sister Leyuan. My name is Lin Xun. I'm an exchange student from the Soul Planning Hall."

It was Zhang Leyuan's first autumn at Shrek.

The ginkgo trees of Shrek City had turned golden, and with a gust of wind, their leaves carpeted the ground in brilliant yellow.

The girl stood on the stone steps outside the inner court gates, holding a stack of cultivation theory notes she had just borrowed from the library. The autumn wind poured into her sleeves, making her shiver faintly.

She wore a Shrek uniform, her hair simply tied behind her head with an old ribbon.

She had been at Shrek for nearly a year, yet she still wasn't used to anything here.

Mu En had saved her and helped her destroy her enemies. The price had been her marriage. Everyone in Shrek's inner court knew about it, but no one mentioned it to her face.

They merely spoke behind her back in cautious tones: "Zhang Leyuan is the one chosen by the Sea God Pavilion Master," before falling abruptly silent whenever she passed by.

She did not hate Mu En, nor did she resent anyone.

It was only that sometimes, when she woke in the middle of the night and stared at the flickering soul tool lamp on the ceiling, she felt like a bird locked in an exquisite cage.

The cage was made of gold, but it was still a cage.

She never took the initiative to speak to others, and no one took the initiative to speak to her. She had been in the inner court for almost a year and still could not remember all the names of the senior students in the neighboring dormitory.

Every day was classroom, library, training ground, dormitory—a four-point routine. She lived like an old blade worn smooth of every edge.

But that afternoon, someone tapped her shoulder from behind.

"Sister Leyuan, hello. My name is Lin Xun, and I'm an exchange student from the Soul Planning Hall."

Beneath the ginkgo tree stood a boy with golden hair and violet eyes. When he smiled, his brows and eyes curved warmly, as though all the autumn sunlight had been crushed and scattered across his face.

He wore a white uniform she had never seen before. His stance was loose and relaxed, and his entire body gave off a lazy air.

That was their first meeting.

Perhaps because of the boy's particularly special background, he had not been placed in the outer court and instead studied in the inner court as well.

After Lin Xun settled into the inner court, Zhang Leyuan discovered that this junior brother was unlike anyone she had met before.

He was a year younger than her, but whenever she spoke with him, she often forgot that fact. He knew far too much. It was not the knowledge of someone who merely talked theory from books; rather, it was the clarity one could only accumulate after living for many years.

In that respect, he resembled Mu En.

Yet he was clearly so young.

Others respected and feared her, keeping their distance. Only Lin Xun was different.

Everyone in Shrek's inner court looked at Zhang Leyuan with courtesy and admiration, along with a trace of deeply concealed regret.

Everyone respected her as a once-in-ten-thousand-years genius with a Moon martial soul, and as the inner court's most dazzling senior disciple. They also knew that she was bound by the shackles imposed by the Sea God Pavilion. No one dared approach her lightly, nor did anyone dare grow close to her without restraint.

Only Lin Xun had shown not the slightest reserve from the moment they met.

He would openly call her Sister Leyuan.

Autumn afternoons were especially peaceful. The evening breeze at the training ground carried the fragrance of grass and trees. None of the other students dared casually approach Zhang Leyuan while she cultivated alone, but Lin Xun would stroll over at an unhurried pace, lean against the trunk of an ancient ginkgo tree nearby, and quietly watch her cultivate her Moon martial soul.

Silvery moonlight flowed around the girl, clear and radiant, cold and holy, yet carrying a bone-deep loneliness.

In the past, whenever others saw her martial soul emerge, they would only marvel at her exceptional talent. Lin Xun alone would speak softly, his tone languid. "Sister Leyuan, your moonlight is too heavy. It always carries a chill buried deep in your heart. You're pushing yourself too hard in cultivation—it could easily damage your soul veins."

In a single sentence, he struck upon something no one else had ever seen through.

Zhang Leyuan's movements paused slightly. Her cool eyes shifted faintly as she lowered her gaze and drew in the moonlight flowing around her. "I'm used to it," she said quietly.

After her clan's bloody extermination at twelve, several years of living under another's roof, and days spent bound in shackles, she had long forgotten what it meant to relax or live freely. To survive, grow stronger, repay kindness, and keep her promise—those were the only meanings left in her life.

Her life had never known tenderness or favoritism. There was only endless restraint and helplessness.

Lin Xun did not press her further. He merely took a smooth, warming Heart-Calming Fruit from the storage pouch of his soul tool and held it out to her. Its peel was clean, carrying a faint, sweet fragrance.

"Take a break. Cultivation isn't about wearing yourself to death."

The young man's fingers were clean and slender. His violet eyes rested on her, open and gentle, without the complicated scrutiny others showed when looking upon her fate.

He simply hoped she would rest for a while.

Zhang Leyuan stared blankly at the fruit. The stagnant waters in her heart, still for many years, rippled ever so faintly for the first time.

In the years since coming to Shrek, no one had asked whether she was tired. No one had urged her to slow down.

Everyone had assumed that Zhang Leyuan was meant to be resilient, cold, invincible; that she was meant to bear the weight of gratitude and an engagement, and steadily walk through the life laid out for her.

Yet this young man, a year younger than her, had seen through the hard shell she wore with such ease.

After hesitating for a moment, she finally reached out and accepted it. Yet that brief contact inexplicably threw her heartbeat off by a beat.

She quickly withdrew her hand, letting it hang at her side as she quietly clenched it tight, forcibly suppressing that sudden flutter in her heart.

She couldn't.

Zhang Leyuan warned herself over and over in her heart.

She was someone burdened by a blood feud, someone forced to offer herself as repayment for a debt, someone tightly bound by Shrek's kindness. Her life had long since been assigned a price. It no longer belonged to her, and she was even less worthy of being moved by love—unworthy of the ordinary love, hatred, and tenderness others possessed.

She was like a lone moon hanging high in the night sky, cold and solitary, her fate already decided. She had never had the right to be cherished in someone's palm.

Yet after that, the intersections between their lives gradually increased.

Her days remained a dull routine between four fixed places, but she did not know when the path she once walked alone had gained a leisurely figure following behind her.

When she went to the library to pore over obscure tomes, Lin Xun would sit at the desk beside hers. He neither disturbed her nor made a sound, quietly reading. Occasionally, he would take down ancient books from high shelves that she could not reach, or silently slide a cup of warmed flower tea to her hand when she grew weary from reading.

When she stayed in the training grounds until deep into the night, honing her soul skills beneath the moonlight, her lone shadow stretching across the ground, Lin Xun would remain with her until the moon stood high overhead. He did not interrupt her cultivation; he simply waited quietly.

The ginkgo leaves of the inner courtyard fell again and again, carpeting the ground in gold, unchanged year after year.

Everyone noticed that there was something different between them.

No one had expected that Zhang Leyuan, cold and taciturn, someone who kept strangers at a distance, would allow a young man to enter her life so closely.

Zhang Leyuan's heart also gradually softened amid their day-after-day gentle companionship.

Lin Xun was clear-minded, gentle, and free. He lived boldly and unrestrainedly, doing as he pleased—a way of life she could never attain in this lifetime. He was like a beam of scorching, brilliant sunlight, forcibly shining into the cold, barren golden cage she had kept sealed for years.

He told her strange tales from the Soul Planning Hall, amusing habits of soul beasts from different lands, and stories of faraway places that were free and unrestrained.

He remembered that she disliked sweets but favored the fresh fragrance of fruit. He remembered that she preferred solitude while cultivating, so he never deliberately disturbed her and merely stayed by her side. While everyone else only looked up at the brilliance of her Moon martial soul, he felt sorrow for the loneliness and hardship of the road she had traveled.

In the stillness of the deep night, Zhang Leyuan would occasionally look at the young man sitting peacefully at her side, and an extravagant, illusory longing would rise within her heart.

She could not help but wonder.

If her family had not been destroyed back then, if she had never borne a blood feud, if she had not incurred a debt of gratitude and an engagement heavy enough to mortgage her entire life.

Could she, too, be like an ordinary young girl—openly fall in love, boldly pursue it, and peacefully accept this pure, spotless tenderness?

But the instant the thought arose, she ruthlessly extinguished it.

A bone-deep clarity instantly swept through her body.

No.

Absolutely not.

Mu En had saved her life, and her future was the price paid in exchange for the destruction of her family's enemies. From the moment she had knelt at the age of twelve, surrendering her dignity to beg for help, she had buried every possibility for herself with her own hands.

Her life had long since been promised to gratitude and destiny. It could never be promised to herself, much less to the young man before her.

He was bright and free, with an open road ahead of him. He should have pursued the mountains and seas that belonged to him, not been dragged down by a waning moon trapped in a cage like her, nor tainted by the shadows of destiny and debt that covered her whole being.

So she began desperately suppressing herself, desperately retreating, desperately freezing the love quietly growing in her heart.

She began deliberately distancing herself from Lin Xun.

The once gentle atmosphere between them was severed layer by layer by her own hand.

The smile in the young man's eyes gradually faded somewhat. He remained gentle, but a faint trace of confusion appeared within his gaze.

He could not understand why the person who had still interacted with him warmly just days ago had suddenly returned to that distant, cold, solitary demeanor.

Zhang Leyuan looked at the confusion and loneliness in his eyes, and it felt as though needles were repeatedly piercing her heart, filling it with dense, aching pain.

But she could only harden her heart and pretend not to see.

At night, she lay alone in bed, watching the faint flickering glow of the soul-guided lamp. Her nose stung slightly.

No one knew that every time she distanced herself from him, it was like being cut by a thousand blades.

How she wanted to approach him openly, to keep hold of the one light that illuminated her dark life, cast aside all her shackles, and properly return this pure tenderness.

But she could not.

Other people's love was the fulfillment of mutual affection, the tenderness of staying together year after year.

But her love had been a sin from the very beginning, a doomed yearning with no ending.

She was a moon trapped within the cage of destiny, destined to give half her life to Shrek and the other half to an old agreement.

In this life, she could repay kindness, cultivate, and become accomplished—but she could never love another.

The wind swept past the window lattice again, carrying in a few scattered, withered ginkgo leaves.

Zhang Leyuan slowly closed her eyes, sealing away the surging emotions in her heart.

The bright moon had winds to follow, but for the rest of her life, she no longer had the right to run toward tenderness.

The wind of eighteen was colder than in years past.

The night on Sea God Island was utterly still—so still that she could hear the waves striking the reefs again and again, rustling like old dreams sobbing softly.

Today was her birthday, and also the sixth anniversary of the day the Zhang family had been wiped out.

Six years—neither long nor short.

Long enough for the twelve-year-old girl who had once knelt on the ground begging for help, covered in blood, to become one of Shrek's most respected elite students.

And long enough for her blood-deep vengeance to be completely settled, leaving only shackles she could not cast off, tightly binding her for six whole years.

Zhang Leyuan sat on a bluestone by Sea God Lake.

The evening breeze tousled her hair against her cool cheeks, stripping away the detached sharpness she wore while cultivating and leaving behind only sorrow she could not hide.

Before her sat a jar of fruit wine that had been sealed away for years. She had gone to great lengths to find it; its flavor was exactly the same as her father's favorite.

With no wine cup, she simply lifted the jar itself.

She raised her eyes toward the full moon hanging in the night sky above the deep sea.

The moonlight was bright and pure, spilling over the world and gently embracing the mountains, seas, and all living things.

Yet all that moonlight had never shown her even the slightest gentleness.

"Father, Mother."

"I'm eighteen now."

"All our enemies have been executed. I avenged you."

Six years of day-and-night cultivation, gritting her teeth through every step, casting aside all pride and self—she had traded it all for vengeance.

Yet she did not feel relieved in the slightest.

Her heart felt empty, as though a huge piece had been gouged out of it, leaving cold winds to pass through it year-round.

She raised her hand and poured out more than half the wine.

The clear liquor slowly flowed along the grooves of the bluestone and seeped into the soil, carrying a faint fruity fragrance as an offering to the family members who had died so tragically six years ago.

"On my birthday today, I borrow the moon of this world to offer you a drink."

"May there be no disaster, no hatred, no debts beneath the springs. May you find peace year after year."

When her voice fell, she lifted a hand and wiped away the fleeting dampness at the corner of her eyes.

All her life, she had been too clear-headed, too restrained.

Joy, anger, sorrow, delight, love, hatred, and desire—she had buried them all in the deepest part of her heart, never revealing even a trace.

Before others, she was the exceptionally gifted, calm, and reserved senior disciple of the inner courtyard; a genius blessed by the Moon Martial Soul; Zhang Leyuan, invincible and without weakness.

Behind them, she was only an orphan with nowhere to go, burdened by debts and promises, never to be free for the rest of her life.

She no longer poured out the remaining half-jar of wine. Instead, she tilted her head back and slowly drank beneath the moonlight.

The sharp, sweet wine slid down her throat, scorching her chest, driving away the chill of the night and temporarily breaking through the layers of hard disguise she had wrapped around herself.

No matter when or where she was, she would always circulate her soul power to protect her heart meridians and steady her mind, never daring to relax in the slightest.

But today, she did not want to keep holding on.

She did not summon even a trace of soul power, allowing the alcohol to invade every part of her body and numb the nerves that had been tense for six years.

It was fine to be drunk.

Her sober days were too bitter, her bound life too exhausting. With this rare indulgence, she wanted to be lazy just once.

Cup after cup went down her throat, and the surging bitterness and ache finally overwhelmed the coldness that had lived within her for years.

The moonlight remained bright and pure, illuminating the girl's thin, lonely figure by the lake, standing alone like a waning moon abandoned by the world.

As the intoxication deepened, her mind gradually grew heavy, and the thoughts she normally suppressed so fiercely surged into her heart like a raging tide.

She thought of Mu En's life-saving grace, of the engagement that had bound her for life, of her gilded-cage existence—and even more, of that gentle-eyed young man beneath the autumn ginkgo tree.

She thought of the Clearheart Fruit Lin Xun had offered her, of his gentle reminders, of his silent companionship day after day.

But her life had already been completely priced and sold when she was twelve. None of it had ever been up to her.

The lake breeze carried the scent of wine, making her slightly dizzy as her eyes quietly reddened.

Then, amid the silent moonlight, a set of soft footsteps sounded behind her.