It Should Be Forty-Five

By the time they reached the third steeping of tea, Di Tian set down his cup and looked at Tang Wulin. Most of the scrutiny had faded from his golden eyes, replaced by a deeper gaze, as though he were trying to identify something.

"Tang Wulin." Di Tian suddenly spoke, his voice low but far gentler than before. "Come with me."

Tang Wulin instinctively glanced at Gu Yue. She gave a slight nod—it meant, "It's fine, go." He rose and followed Di Tian toward the northern shore of Lake of Life. They passed several towering ancient trees and stopped atop a flat slab of bluestone by the water. The lake narrowed here, and across from them stood the stone hall where Gu Yue had slept for tens of thousands of years. Its half-open doors were covered in moss.

Di Tian stood with his hands behind his back, gazing at the stone hall across the lake. "Do you know that during all the years the Silver Dragon King slept, I stood on this stone for an hour every day? Not to guard her—guarding her was my instinct. I stood here in hopes of sensing even the slightest fluctuation of her aura from within that hall. For tens of thousands of years, there was no sound from inside. No breathing, no heartbeat, no circulation of soul power. Only the tides of the lake and the wind through the forest."

Tang Wulin said nothing, simply standing quietly at Di Tian's side. His gaze also fell upon the moss-covered stone hall across the lake—Gu Yue had once slept there alone for tens of thousands of years. She had known nothing in that darkness, while outside, someone—or rather, a black dragon—had kept watch over her through tens of thousands of sunrises where she could not see him.

"The day my lord awakened, the lake sensed her aura before I did." There was the faintest tremor in Di Tian's voice, one suppressed for tens of thousands of years. "The silver light on the lake suddenly brightened, and every soul beast in the forest stopped moving at once. I knelt by the lake and watched her emerge from the water—at that moment, all those tens of thousands of years of waiting meant nothing."

He turned to Tang Wulin. The scrutiny was gone from his golden eyes, replaced by a solemn, almost entrusting gaze. "When she awakened, I was not by her side. During her first days in the human world, you and Ninth Sister were the ones who walked with her. When she first entered Eastsea Academy, she would not eat human food, speak to anyone, or even step through the school gates—I knew all of that. But later, she changed. She learned to eat sugar pancakes and drink soy milk, to order grilled fish from street stalls, to lean against Ninth Sister's shoulder beneath the ginkgo trees and act spoiled. She used Water Mirror to block attacks for you in combat class, and she sat in the forging room watching you work metal for an entire day at a time. Those changes were not because of me—they were because of you and Ninth Sister."

He paused, then placed a hand on Tang Wulin's shoulder. That hand was heavy with the weight of eight hundred thousand years of cultivation, yet its touch was controlled with exceptional gentleness—the exact same restraint Gu Yue had shown when she pushed the tip of the Ice Spear toward him years ago. "You are the bearer of the Golden Dragon King Martial Soul, but you do not need to become the Golden Dragon King. You are yourself—Tang Wulin, a human who would spend an entire day forging Ice Spear components for her in the forging room. That is enough. I can leave the Silver Dragon King to you without worry."

Tang Wulin stood straight, meeting Di Tian's golden gaze. He did not say, "I'll protect her"—Di Tian did not need to hear such empty words. He merely placed a hand over his chest, feeling the Golden Dragon King's silent gaze within his sea of consciousness, then answered with utmost sincerity, "Okay."

Di Tian withdrew his hand from Tang Wulin's shoulder and turned toward the ancient trees. After taking a few steps, he stopped again without looking back. "Oh, right. Ninth Sister said you also made her a hairpin?"

"...Yes. I carved it from a bamboo stick. I broke several before I managed to make one."

"Use beast bone next time. The third section of the Millennial Iron Bamboo in the bamboo grove is the hardest, suitable for making a hairpin blank. Temper it with fire before polishing it—the Golden Dragon King's bloodline fire-tempering will make it three times brighter than ordinary cold-water tempering. She likes shiny things."

Tang Wulin froze for a moment, then understood—Di Tian was teaching him how to make Gu Yue her next hairpin. A smile rose to his lips, and he nodded solemnly.

Beneath the ancient tree, Gu Yue sat on a root beside Lu Menge, holding a teacup in her hands. Lu Menge sat with one leg crossed over the other, watching the two blurry figures across the lake. She tapped Gu Yue's teacup with her thermos. "Di Tian called Tang Wulin over to the lakeshore—what do you think they're talking about?"

Gu Yue lifted her cup and took a sip. "No need to guess. Di Tian is making funeral arrangements."

Lu Menge choked on her tea. "Funeral arrangements? He's perfectly healthy! At over eight hundred thousand years old, he can still live for hundreds of thousands more. If he heard you say that, he'd kneel down and argue with you for three days and three nights."

"Not those funeral arrangements." Gu Yue set the teacup on her knee and looked at the silhouettes of Tang Wulin and Di Tian standing side by side across the lake. "He is placing what he has guarded for tens of thousands of years into Tang Wulin's hands."

Lu Menge tilted her head to look at Gu Yue. Fragments of sunset light slipped through the leaves and fell upon Gu Yue's black hair, giving its tips the faintest silver sheen. Her tone remained calm as she spoke, but when her gaze settled on Tang Wulin's back, the tiniest curve appeared at the corner of her lips—one she could not hide at all.

"You're very happy," Lu Menge said.

"No." Gu Yue shifted her gaze back to her teacup, raised the tea that had already gone cold, and drank it in one gulp. Then she stood and brushed the grass clippings from her skirt. "I'm going to check on Lake of Life. Do you want to come?"

Lu Menge did not move. She merely waved her thermos at Gu Yue, her gaze passing over Gu Yue's shoulder toward Tang Wulin, who was walking back from the lakeshore. The two children exchanged a look through the tree shadows strewn with fragments of golden sunset—Tang Wulin gave Gu Yue a slight nod, and her steps toward the lake slowed by half a beat. Only after he and Di Tian returned beneath the ancient tree did she begin walking again. This was how the Silver Dragon King trusted someone: not through words, but through her pace. Through her willingness to slow down and wait for him on the far shore of Lake of Life, so they could walk together.