Yun Ruoyan drifted through a long patch of darkness, but she remained conscious all the while. In the darkness, she was initially numb and unable to move. Then came the pain: pain that pricked her body, as though she were being burned alive. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t even open her mouth.

The piercing pain seemed to go on for days and weeks, months and years—until one day, the fire that was burning her alive was snuffed out. The pain slowly diminished, and Yun Ruoyan felt herself enveloped by a warmth that seemed to come from nowhere.

In that comfortable warmth, Yun Ruoyan’s consciousness finally found rest. She dreamt of returning to her past life, when she had defied her family, both her families’ wishes, to marry Pei Ziao. Then, Pei Ziao and Yi Qianying had locked her in a small, dirty log storehouse, and Pei Ziao had force-fed her poison himself.

With poison thrumming through her veins, she was tossed out of the Pei manor. Amidst the torrential downpour, she lay in silence as she waited to die.

Dream and consciousness melded, and Yun Ruoyan found that she could no longer distinguish truth from reality. Was she in a dream? Or had she been in a dream all along, and was it only now that she had woken up?

Someone held an umbrella above her head. Yun Ruoyan struggled to open her eyes to find a man in a rich, gold brocade standing over her. A cold male voice spoke, “Scion of the Yun family, I had thought you wiser than this.”

The voice was so familiar that Yun Ruoyan would recognize it in her sleep.

“Li Mo, is that you?” Yun Ruoyan called out. She tried to raise her head to see his face clearly, but her damp hair blinded her eyes. She could only see the indistinct figure of the man slowly stoop down and part her hair, allowing Yun Ruoyan to see his black hair, draped over his shoulders, his dark hair and thin lips, his clear, bright eyes looking back at her.

“Li Mo, it really is you,” Yun Ruoyan murmured, but Li Mo didn’t seem to hear her voice.

“The weak don’t have the right to live,” the man finally said. He stood up and turned to leave.

The downpour resumed, covering up Yun Ruoyan’s body. She no longer had the strength to shout; all she could do was stretch out a weak hand toward him, as though trying to grasp at something she didn’t know she had lost.

“Li Mo, don’t leave! Li Mo, you can’t leave me behind!”

On the second floor of the southern tower of Kongming Academy, on a futon in Li Mo’s room, lay Yun Ruoyan, over two months unconscious—until now. She mumbled in her sleep, her hands dancing in mid-air, as though she was trying to catch something but always failing, helpless and in despair.

Li Mo was talking to the first elder when he suddenly heard her indistinct mumbling. He rushed into his room and caught Yun Ruoyan’s hand.

“Yan’er, Yan’er, you’re awake, you’re finally awake!” Li Mo shouted.

Yun Ruoyan slowly opened her eyes to see Li Mo’s face. “Li Mo, don’t leave, don’t…”

“I won’t leave. I’ve always been here, accompanying you.” Li Mo cupped Yun Ruoyan’s palms, then placed them on his face. His normally cold voice was trembling with excitement.

“Don’t go, stay…” Yun Ruoyan’s lips curled up into a weak smile before the darkness overwhelmed her again.

“Yan’er, Yan’er!” Li Mo called out, trying to wake her again.

“She’ll be fine as long as she’s awoken,” the first elder consoled. “The only reason she’s asleep again is because she doesn’t have sufficient mental energy. If you give her another tonic, she should awaken shortly.”

“Master, it’ll be time to head to the otherworld in a few days. I’ll stay here and accompany Yan’er, but you should start the preparations for the process,” Li Mo advised.

The first elder nodded. “It may have taken two whole months, but you brought her back. You need to rest as well—you’ve never had a good night’s sleep these last two months, and even an immortal’s body wouldn’t be able to handle the strain, let alone your mortal self.”

Saying this, the first elder left and began to prepare for the expedition to the alternate dimension.

“Yan’er, you’re finally awake!” Li Mo caressed Yun Ruoyan’s face, as though he couldn’t believe it himself. His heart, which had been so tense for two whole months, could finally relax. He didn’t dare think back to that day two months ago, when he saw Yun Ruoyan, her body pitted with wounds, slumping before him. It felt as though his heart had been smashed to pieces, and whenever he dredged up the memory, his heart would throb in phantom pain.

He retrieved a small jade bottle, poured out a jade-colored pill, then tossed it into his own mouth. When the spiritual pill dissolved and released its contents, he leaned down and kissed Yun Ruoyan, slowly transferring the contents of the pill into her body.

Yun Ruoyan’s pale face slowly colored with red. During her two months’ convalescence, Li Mo had fed her like this daily.

When Yun Ruoyan woke up once more, Li Mo was lying by her side, embracing her entire body. She glanced at his face for an inordinate period of time before she finally confirmed that what she was seeing was indeed reality, that her dreams were of a past long gone.

When Li Mo felt the warmth of Yun Ruoyan’s fingers, his eyes suddenly shot open and met hers, he looking at her, and she looking at him, as though their souls had spent millennia together.

“Yan’er!” Li Mo tightly embraced Yun Ruoyan as though she were a long-lost treasure, one that he didn’t know if he would ever be able to find again. “Yan’er, you’re finally awake! You scared me half to death…”

Li Mo’s voice was almost quavering with excitement.

Instead of speaking, Yun Ruoyan hugged Li Mo tightly, tears involuntarily leaking out of her eyes.

When Li Mo told her that she had been comatose for almost two months, Yun Ruoyan reared back in shock. “Almost two months?!” Yun Ruoyan exclaimed. Then, as though she had suddenly thought of something, she pressed, “Did I miss the expedition to the otherworld?”

“No. We’ll be heading there next morning, and I hadn’t thought that you would be able to make it, but here you are. However, given the state of your body, I’m afraid that you’ll be too weak to handle the trip. I’ve told the first elder that you won’t be able to participate in the expedition this time.”

“How about you?”

“I have to return to save Qin Feng. If I don’t, he won’t let him go.”

“Then I have to come with you,” Yun Ruoyan replied, sitting upright. “I’m alright! I just haven’t eaten in two months, or I wouldn’t be so weak.”

“Yan’er, don’t be anxious. Listen to me. Do you know why an eighth-rank blademaster’s cultivation is needed to enter the alternate dimension?”

“Is it because only such blademasters are capable of swordflight?” Yun Ruoyan responded. She had been very curious as to this restriction, one so strict that the academy was even willing to give students a pill that would stunt their future growth to meet it.

“It’s not that.” Li Mo shook his head. “Rather, only eighth-rank blademasters can generate a spiritual membrane and protect themselves.”

Li Mo told Yun Ruoyan that the passageway to the alternate dimension was fraught with eddies and whorls of broken space and warped time, one that regular cultivators’ bodies wouldn’t be able to withstand.

“We still have one day before the expedition. I’ll help you get better, and if you can generate a spiritual membrane by then, you can go. Otherwise, Yan’er, listen to me and stay here and recuperate.”

Yun Ruoyan looked at Li Mo, her eyes conflicted, before she finally squeezed her eyes shut and nodded unwillingly.

“I’m hungry,” she murmured, rubbing her empty stomach. Yun Ruoyan hadn’t eaten for two months, and it had only been Li Mo’s nourishing her with spiritual pills that her body was still functioning. Now that she was conscious again, she felt as though she was little more than a walking skeleton.

Yun Ruoyan hadn’t expected much of the request: it was night, so she could only bear with her hunger and wait till the morning. However, Li Mo stood up without a second thought. “Yan’er, wait here. I’ll get you something good to eat.”

Li Mo flew out through the window of the second-floor room. When Yun Ruoyan saw him heading toward the cafeteria, she was rather apologetic: it seemed as though one of the outer disciples in charge of the cafeteria would be rudely awoken in the middle of the night and forced to make her something.

After about fifteen minutes, Li Mo returned with a tray of food. Yun Ruoyan was just about to get up when Li Mo motioned for her to stay where she was. He placed the tray of food on the futon right beside her.

“Ah, it’s so fragrant! What is it?” The aroma seemed to tug at Yun Ruoyan’s soul.

“Your favorite.” Li Mo smiled, revealing a plate of braised pork belly and roasted chicken. The scent seemed to fill the entire room.

Li Mo handed Yun Ruoyan a pair of chopsticks, and she immediately dug in. The braised pork belly melted on her mouth, and it felt as though her whole body was screaming for her to swallow.

“This is too tasty,” Yun Ruoyan praised. “Who made this? And in so short a period of time too!”

“He’s right by your side.” Li Mo smiled.