Gu Yuena's residence in Mingdu was a small courtyard tucked away in a secluded, peaceful neighborhood.
The courtyard walls were high and the gate was thick. From outside, it looked like an island cut off from the world.
Ever since Qi Ji had returned last time, this ten-thousand-year-old shut-in had fallen back on her signature pastime: staying home and never going out.
The curtains were drawn tight. The thin strip of sunlight leaking through a gap was already the brightest light in the room.
She sat on the bed, her long silver hair scattered over the bedding like a length of abandoned silk. Her purple eyes stared at the ceiling, her thoughts a mystery.
The room was quiet. Only the clock in the corner ticked away, mingling with the sound of her breathing.
"My lord... His Highness said he'd like to see you."
At that moment, Di Tian came to Gu Yuena's bedroom door and knocked, looking every bit like an old father.
His voice came through the door, cautious and tentative, as though he was afraid of startling the person inside.
After everything they had been through, Di Tian's mindset had gradually changed.
With Qi Ji and the Dragon God around, he certainly could no longer place his dream of reviving the Dragon Clan on Gu Yuena's shoulders.
And so, once reason regained the upper hand, Di Tian suddenly realized that the lord he had depended on for hundreds of thousands of years was, at heart, merely a little girl with hardly any experience of society.
She had spent hundreds of thousands of years asleep. When she woke, she still carried fragments of the Dragon God's memories, yet she had hardly spent any years truly living.
Her worldview was incomplete, and her emotional experience was a blank slate. Whenever