When Duan Mingyu finally woke up, several days had already passed.
He subconsciously reached out to cover his abdomen, where a faint, lingering pain still throbbed. As he propped himself up, Rong Lü heard the movement inside and rushed into the room. "You're finally awake..."
"Where is this?"
Duan Mingyu looked around his surroundings. As he spoke, he reflexively touched his throat. His voice no longer sounded so crisp and clear; had he not consciously asked the question himself, he would hardly have believed the sound had come from his own mouth.
"My body feels so heavy..."
Rong Lü quickly stopped Duan Mingyu from getting out of bed, explaining, "The commotion before was too great. I took you away from that village overnight."
Thinking back to the previous events, Duan Mingyu shuddered once more. Seeing his terrified expression, Rong Lü hurriedly assured him that the man had already been killed and there was no need to worry anymore.
"How did you let him catch you off guard? What exactly happened?" Rong Lü pressed. When he had returned, his eyes had been red with fury, and he had killed the man with a single strike. By the time he regained his composure, there was no one left to question.
Duan Mingyu felt a pang of guilt when asked, but unable to come up with an excuse on the spot, he had no choice but to recount everything.
"Why on earth didn't you listen to me? Didn't I tell you not to speak to outsiders!" Rong Lü was predictably furious after hearing the story.
Duan Mingyu knew he had been careless, but how could he have known the visitor harbored such ill intent? Being criticized by Rong Lü while still nursing his injuries made him feel instantly aggrieved.
"I know, alright? But you can't blame it all on me! Who knew it would be such a coincidence? Besides, isn't everything fine now..."
He watched as Rong Lü’s movements suddenly froze while looking at his face. Realizing something, Duan Mingyu reached out to touch his own cheeks. "W-what’s wrong with me...?"
Rong Lü hesitated, the words catching in his throat. Duan Mingyu, however, sensed that something was wrong. His voice, which should have remained that of a clear-toned youth, now sounded as if it had broken, and his body no longer felt slender. Ignoring Rong Lü’s attempts to stop him, he pulled a bronze mirror from his storage bag. The moment he saw his reflection, he froze.
Seeing him touch his face in disbelief, Rong Lü decided that a sharp pain was better than a long, drawn-out one. He could only comfort him in a low voice: "I'm sorry, I didn't come back in time... I tried everything I could, but the medicinal pills I have on hand can only keep you alive. There is no way to restore a shattered spiritual root..."
If a cultivator’s spiritual root was completely destroyed and not repaired in time, they would revert to the physical appearance dictated by their actual bone age. Those cultivators whose ages far exceeded that of a mortal would turn into a pile of white bones in an instant. Duan Mingyu was not yet forty this year, still far from the age of the grave.
"It’s not all bad news, Mingyu. This way, now that you have no cultivation, it will be difficult for the Reflecting Moon Sect to track you down. Why don't we... just live a peaceful life in the mortal realm?"
"What are you saying! You're saying this is a good thing? No, I don't want this... There must be a way, there has to be a way..." Duan Mingyu’s fingers trembled as they traced his face, which was no longer youthful. There were even slight fine lines at the corners of his eyes. He refused to accept the reality.
"You are still beautiful as you are now, I—"
"No! I don't want it! Why didn't you come back sooner... ugh..." Duan Mingyu interrupted Rong Lü and began to sob. Unable to accept the truth for the moment, he covered his face, refusing to continue the conversation.
After several failed attempts to talk to him, Rong Lü finally sighed and left Duan Mingyu to calm down. His words hadn't been baseless flattery; Duan Mingyu was naturally a beauty. Even now, in his mid-thirties, though his body was no longer slender, his features still possessed a certain charm. It was only because he was so used to acting like a delicate youth that his current expressions and tone seemed somewhat bizarre.
For a long time afterward, Rong Lü was unable to communicate normally with Duan Mingyu. Duan Mingyu claimed that seeing Rong Lü’s face—which now looked younger than his own—made him feel miserable. Hearing this, Rong Lü also felt a bitter pang in his heart. Hardening his resolve, he declared that he might as well cripple his own cultivation and become a mortal to stay with Duan Mingyu.
"You absolutely must not!" Duan Mingyu cried out in terror. "If the people from the Reflecting Moon Sect really find us, what will I do if you've become a mortal too? Besides, if you lose your cultivation, how will we live our lives in the future...?"
"That's true..." Rong Lü pursed his lips, swallowing the words "we could save money and live as an ordinary couple."
The two of them fled to another village to settle down, spending more of their silver. Although they still had a fair amount of savings, they had to keep some medicinal pills and spirit herbs for emergencies; they certainly didn't dare to be extravagant.
Duan Mingyu hadn't thought being a cultivator was anything special before, but having gained it and then lost it, the disparity was more than he could bear. He would occasionally catch a cold and take several days to recover. Holding a brush to write caused calluses to form on his once-delicate hands, and they no longer vanished on their own.
Though a man in his thirties could still be handsome, his frame had shed the androgynous quality of a youth. Even if Duan Mingyu didn't wear a headscarf when going out, most of the young farmhands would only greet him politely, no longer obsessively falling over themselves to serve him.
One night, he quietly approached Rong Lü and asked how much savings he had left.
"What is it? Do you want to move somewhere better?" Duan Mingyu had been depressed for a long time, so his sudden initiative made Rong Lü immediately concerned.
Duan Mingyu hesitated before suggesting he wanted to return to the cultivation world.
Rong Lü was shocked and hurriedly said that anything else was fine, but this was absolutely out of the question. They had just escaped from the cultivation world; how could they spend money to run back and walk right into the Reflecting Moon Sect’s hands?
"There's absolutely no way to find a method to restore a spiritual root in the mortal realm... You just don't want me to change back, do you!" Hearing Rong Lü’s refusal, Duan Mingyu instantly broke down into tears.
"Even if we really went back, you and I have betrayed our sect and are surrounded by enemies. How would we find a way?" Rong Lü didn't say it outright, but he had never heard of a way to become a cultivator again once the spiritual root was shattered. Perhaps such a thing existed somewhere in the world, but it was certainly not something two people who were helpless and penniless could achieve.
Duan Mingyu sobbed, "I don't know... If I find Senior Brother, maybe he would help me!"
Hearing Duan Mingyu mention Zhai Bairong after all this time, Rong Lü’s heart felt incredibly complicated.
"He might indeed have no intention of harming you, but he certainly wouldn't be like me, willing to betray his sect and take such great risks for your sake."
Duan Mingyu also knew that Zhai Bairong no longer liked him. But thinking about how Zhai Bairong had let him and Rong Lü go before, a glimmer of hope still remained in his heart.
"Then... then Nie Shiyun will definitely listen to him! Would he let Yunqing Pavilion help me? If I beg Senior Brother..."
Rong Lü let out a long sigh and stopped trying to reason with him. He only said, "Even if we save for a long time, our money might not even buy a single ticket for a spirit ship to the cultivation world. Don't think about it for now; we'll talk about it later after we've slowly saved up."
Duan Mingyu’s pillowcase was soaked with his tears; this was how he had fallen asleep every night recently. Being coldly rejected by Rong Lü, he was instantly plunged into despair. Grievance and bitterness flooded his heart as he wailed that Rong Lü had grown tired of his no-longer-youthful face and wanted him to die first.
Seeing him so pitiful, Rong Lü couldn't bear it either. "But without enough money, we can't move an inch. I have no other way."
Duan Mingyu whispered, "Don't spirit ships also cross the Spirit Sea to travel back and forth? Brother Rong Lü’s natal spirit sword is still here..."
Rong Lü was stunned and cried out in alarm, "That's too dangerous. The journey takes years. If we can't find an island to rest on even once when my spiritual power is depleted, both of us will perish in the ocean."
"I believe in Brother Rong Lü," Duan Mingyu said firmly.
Rong Lü felt that Duan Mingyu had truly been pushed too far, to the point where he had become obsessive. He didn't dare to keep refusing, so he comforted him by saying that if they were to go, he would have to take the risk alone, and he couldn't guarantee he would find a solution within a few years.
Hearing that there was hope, Duan Mingyu’s eyes immediately lit up. "I can stay in the mortal realm and wait for you! Even if you can't find a way, you can quietly look for Senior Brother. I'm living so miserably now; for the sake of our past feelings, he won't just ignore me..."
Rong Lü listened to Duan Mingyu’s excited murmuring but didn't respond. He wasn't foolish enough to risk his life in his current state to search for something with such slim hopes, nor did he feel comfortable leaving Duan Mingyu alone. He decided to lie to Duan Mingyu for the first time in his life. He would leave him enough silver to live for several years and pretend to depart, while actually guarding him in secret. When he "returned" after a few years and said he had done everything he could, perhaps Duan Mingyu would accept the truth and stop blaming him.
*Let's do that.* Rong Lü smiled and took Duan Mingyu’s hand, making his decision.
A few days later, Rong Lü left behind most of the silver on his person, telling Duan Mingyu to keep it safe and maintain a low profile while he prepared to set off. Duan Mingyu didn't think too deeply about why Rong Lü was uncharacteristically unconcerned about leaving him; he simply assumed the other man was as worried about his condition as he was. He went out to see Rong Lü off.
"I'll miss you," Duan Mingyu said, reluctant but determined.
Rong Lü nodded. He thought that although they wouldn't be able to sleep together every night for the next few years, he would still be able to see the cute side of his lover missing him from the shadows. A wave of warmth rose in his heart.
At this moment, Rong Lü did not yet know how ridiculous such a thought was.
As for the Senior Brother whom Duan Mingyu was still pining for, he had long since put the matter entirely out of his mind.
"This spirit ship is really quite slow as it wobbles along. Fortunately, we'll be there in a few days. It's a good thing Pinyin Pavilion was built in such a desolate, remote place; no matter how anxious that fellow Qi Miaohan is, she'll still be slower than us."
Hearing the familiar voice behind him, Zhai Bairong didn't even need to turn around. Amidst a familiar sense of security, he slowly opened his eyes and said casually, "When you see her, try to tease her a bit less. Didn't they say that when she heard the news of your junior sister’s wedding after coming out of seclusion, she was so anxious she nearly blew the roof off her cave dwelling?"
Nie Shiyun had stayed at the Reflecting Moon Sect for a while. As luck would have it, it really didn't take long for Qi Miaohan to successfully advance to the Nascent Soul stage and emerge from seclusion. Upon her emergence, she naturally received congratulations from her younger sister, followed immediately by a wedding invitation. Just as everyone thought she would be dissatisfied with the marriage, she had already slipped out of Pinyin Pavilion like the wind and was on her way to Yunqing Pavilion.
Speaking of the younger generation, Nie Shiyun and Zhai Bairong were the most outstanding. Unexpectedly, Qi Miaohan followed closely behind and advanced to the Nascent Soul stage. Suddenly, everyone's attention was drawn to this female Nascent Soul cultivator—a rarity that might not appear even once in a hundred years. A narrow-minded cultivator might have felt their thunder had been stolen, but Zhai Bairong was happy to have no one paying attention to him. He immediately left with Nie Shiyun, as they had agreed, to attend the wedding.
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 骨龄 | Bone age | Refers to the actual chronological age of a cultivator's body. |
| 品音阁 | Pinyin Pavilion | A sect name; "Pinyin" here likely refers to "Appreciating/Refining Sounds/Melody." |
| 元婴 | Nascent Soul | A high level of cultivation stage. |
| 本命灵剑 | Natal spirit sword | A sword bound to a cultivator's soul/life force. |
| 灵海 | Spirit Sea | The body of water separating different regions in this world. |
| 仙船 | Spirit ship | A magical vessel used for long-distance travel. |
