“You want me to what?!”

“I need you to stay on the outside for a while.”

“How long is ‘a while’?”

Little Sister rubbed her hands together nervously.

“Well… truthfully… it might be longer than a while.”

“And how long is ‘longer than a while’?”

“…don’t know… exactly.”

Mister Light’s body stiffened.

He’d only been gone a day this time. While there was a time difference between the outside and her world… he’d thought she’d be excited to see him based off their last interaction. He’d even mentally prepared himself to deal with her “yang nibbling” so he could hold a coherent conversation with her. But who would have thought he’d have immediately been told to leave after arriving!?

“So, you want me to leave for an indefinite amount of time?”

“En!”

“…”

“..?”

“Did you really think I’d scram just because you asked?!”

“But it’s so I can get stronger!”

“You can get plenty strong with me here, guiding you!”

“No I can’t!” She stomped her feet, tears starting to form in her eyes. “Your methods are too slow! I want that poison out, and Shuya will help me do it faster!”

“That damn twig again!”

“Yes, the twig again! She will get me stronger, so strong not even the poison will be able to beat me! Then I can be with you forever and ever!”

“Is that what the twig’s telling you? And you believed it?! How can you trust a twig you just met, over me who’s been with you from the beginning?!”

She reached out and touched his face, causing him to reflexively flinch for fear of hurting her. But there was no pain in her expression and, in fact, her fingers felt pleasantly cool on his ever-hot skin.

“Because she taught me to touch you and not feel any pain. Could you have done that?”

He hesitated, unwilling to admit to the truth of her statement.

“That’s right, you didn’t even know that was possible.” Her expression softened as she lowered her hand. “But it is. She knows things you don’t know. Those things will make me strong. Once I’m strong, we can spend all the time we want together.”

“No.”

She looked away from his face, frustrated that he didn’t understand. It’s not that she wanted him to leave, but if it meant being together longer later… she could endure the separation. Why couldn’t he?

“I won’t leave. This Shuya… how can I trust her? I don’t know her, I’ve never met her. And you say she doesn’t even like me. How do I know her intentions are good? Maybe she’s using you to get to me and—”

Reaching up she used a finger to silence him, eyes narrowed and frowning slightly.

“Shuya isn’t like that, just like you aren’t like that. I had no reason to trust you at the beginning, but I did, and I’m glad I did. It’s the same with Shuya. If you can’t trust her, trust me.”

Seeing him shake his head in denial, she pleaded even more earnestly with him:

“Please? It won’t be forever. Just for a little longer than ‘a while’. Give me some time to do this.”

Anxiety welled up within Mister Light as he felt her world’s will pressing against him, demanding him to obey.

“Don’t do this. Don’t push me away.”

Biting her lip and feeling awful for the pain she was causing him, she tried one more time to convince him.

“It’ll be alright. I promise, it’ll be alright. Trust me. We’ll be together forever and ever when we’re done. But for now… you need to go home.”

He reached out and tightly grabbed her hand, not caring if he burned her, eyes wide and fearful. The world around him began to darken, a rainstorm forming overhead and a fog swirling around their legs.

“Don’t.” He whispered desperately.

She reached up with her free hand, stroking his face gently. How could a stoic face express such sadness? It made her heart ache.

“It won’t be forever, I promise.”

He grabbed the hand stroking his face and continued shaking his head. Biting her lip and feeling horrible, she steeled her will and said earnestly:

“I’m sorry, but you need to go now.”

Before Mister Light could say anything, an immense power pushed against his body and suddenly he was thrown out.

Little Sister stood by herself, the world around her filled with thick fog; dark as night once again. A chilly wind blew past her as a heavy rain began to fall. Even as she shivered, she didn’t move an inch.

Not even she could tell whether the water on her face was from tears or rain.

——

Jin sat up from the bed and coughed, his nose bleeding slightly. Panicked, he reached out to his wife who was next to him. Just like always, she was completely still. Taking her by a shoulder, he shook her.

“Mei, let me back in!”

When he got no response, he roughly wiped away the blood dribbling from his nose and stared blankly for several minutes. Letting his head drop to her chest, he could hear Mei’s weak heartbeat and sense her even weaker pulse.

Gripping her body tightly to himself, his lips trembled and tears began to flow down his face. He choked out miserably, “How could you do this to me? How could you?!”

From then on, Mei Hua would not let him back into the strange little world he’d helped create to heal her. Even the “yang” (as she’d called it) he had left in that place had been cut off from the rest of him. Though her body was breathing, he couldn’t sense even a tiny bit of her spirit. It was as though she was an empty vessel.

In theory, he could force his way back in. But to do such a thing meant breaking some part of Mei’s world, and that would allow the poison to seep back into her body. So he didn’t dare. Unable to get back to his wife’s soul world, the one part of her that was still truly alive, he hovered possessively over her comatose body for several days instead.

There were things he ought to be doing, responsibilities he should take care of, but he just didn’t have the heart to care for them. The only thing getting him through all these years had been watching her grow and learn inside her little world, innocent and free and unaware. It’d been the one colorful spot in a life that had now gone terribly monotone.

He tried distracting himself with the research on that damn twig and the “talking tree”, but he kept running into dead ends. Supposedly there was a large tree located in his own territory that could talk. He even vaguely recalled that he’d seen it when he was younger ,and had still been on good terms with his Sister. But it had been a perfectly ordinary tree then. It had never talked.

His own precious deer claimed it was intelligent though, so he had no choice but to believe them, and had immediately gone looking for it. What he found was a rotting stump and pieces of a long dried out trunk. It was dead, and obviously had been for quite some time. The buck who’d led him there had been shocked speechless at the sight and actually cried while kneeling at the stump.

The days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, and the months into years. All the other leads had turned up pretty much the same: incomplete or unverifiable.

Without even that to give him something to do, his despair deepened and he began spending more and more time just resting next to his wife. Since he didn’t know when Mei would let him back in, he decided to simply... not leave. He would stay by her side, waiting.

His hair, which had already been graying from stress, turned completely white within the first year of being kicked out of Mei’s world.

If he could have slept away the time, he would have. But without Mei, he could not sleep. His spirit burned within him, like a choking fire that wanted to consume all living things. Sometimes its power was so overwhelming, he felt he might go mad.

Before the poison, he’d cuddle close to Mei’s strong but tiny spirit and bask in her coolness. It had been just enough for him to rest. After the poison, he’d slip into her world and, for a while, he could at least relax even if he could not touch her. But now he could neither rest nor relax and the harsh edge of his own existence gnawed at his mind.

It was strange. He’d been alone for hundreds of years and somehow dealt with the raging heat his nature produced and managed to keep moderately sane. Yet only a comparatively few precious years with his little human wife and having to survive without her now seemed impossible.

So he stayed very close to her, even if he could not feel her in the way he needed. Since sleeping wasn’t an option, he chose to ignore the world around him. He closed his eyes and ears, he closed his heart, shutting everything around him out. All that was left was his inner fire, which he could never escape.

No one could bring him out of himself. Not his children, not his fairies, not even Ye throwing every insult he could think at him. It was as if time had stopped in that room and no one could start it again. It had become a tomb for the living rather than the dead.

In the end, only his youngest son, Lu Shao, was willing to keep entering that place, week after week, no matter how much time passed. He would play whatever song he was learning, from whatever instrument he’d gotten his hands on recently.

It wasn’t as though he thought his Father was listening, but he believed it helped his Mother somehow. And even if she couldn’t hear him, he would still play for her. She’d almost died so he could learn this music, the least he could do now was play for her.

——

Seasons changed and the years passed by in a steady flow.

After Xuiying (the Sister of Jin) had left, the trees that the mountains were named after had ,one by one, stopped blooming properly. After hundreds of years of her absence, they no longer glowed that bright blue that could be seen for miles around. They became no better than regular trees, to the extent that humans who’d settled nearby viewed the stories of their light as nothing more than quaint fables from the past.

The reason the trees no longer glowed was not because they were unable to, but because they were heartbroken. It had been for their Master that they’d bloomed. They’d looked beautiful for her, and their pride had been her smile and praise of them. Without her, they’d fallen into a deep depression, with many choosing to sleep rather than deal with the sorrow.

One year, quietly and without any fanfare, the trees began to bloom properly again. It started with the oldest, and supposedly dead and rotting tree in the forest. But it spread from there, with more and more trees opening their delicate flower petals and shining into the darkness. Rumors spread along the mountain chain among the beasties that the trees were waking.

Those in Blue Flower Palace took note. It was rather hard not to, when a previously ordinary tree would suddenly burst into full bloom and light up like a lantern in the night. But since their Emperor, the very Spirit of the Mountain, had closed himself off, they had no way to investigate properly what was going on. Even the most ancient beasties didn’t know, and they claimed to have a deep connection to the trees. So all anyone could do was watch and wonder.

Then a spring night came that every fairy, beastie and even human could feel: It was as though the mountain right under their feet throbbed. It wasn’t the feeling of an earthquake, but of a heartbeat. Very low at first, but as the hours passed it grew steadily stronger.

With each beat, a new tree burst into flowery glory. Its glow so bright, it was as if it were trying to rival the very moon in the sky. Tree upon tree bloomed. From the high towering mountains of the north, to the low rounded mountains of the south, the trees began to light up.

Villages, towns, and cities from miles away watched in awe as the mountains glowed a sudden and fierce blue. It was as though the gods themselves had come down with thousands of lanterns and set the horizon aglow.

Those to the East of the mountains shrank in fear. They wondered which nation had angered the Fairy Emperor this time. They fervently hoped none of their leaders were that stupid. The stories of the nations who’d fallen to his wrath only a few years prior were enough to give even beggars a serious fright.

Everyone to the West however, watched in childlike wonder. The old stories of a mountain’s guiding light, mischievous fairies that only children could see, and a beautiful, gentle Empress were discussed fervently once again. It was said that with the absence of the Empress, the trees lost their glow. Had the Empress returned?

But the most confused of all were those actually living on the mountain.

To the fairies, it was obvious Xuiying had not returned. They would have felt that instantly. Her existence was not something that could sneak up on them. She was as her Brother: the living embodiment of the mountain’s power and soul. When she’d been among them, that power had moved through the earth as though alive.

When she’d left… it had been as if half the soul of the mountain had left. What had been under her domain became like a corpse: unfeeling, unthinking, and unknowing. What had been a person became an “it”. Now all that remained was an ocean of energy, untouchable and unmovable.

If Xuiying had come back, that energy would have moved like a tsunami, not a throbbing heartbeat. Knowing the difference did not help them though. Xuiying was still gone; that didn’t explain how her corpse had acquired a pulse!

The Beasties were not nearly so perceptive as the fairies, they just knew their very bones were crying out to move. It was as though they’d been given a huge shot of adrenaline and if they didn’t do something, anything, they’d lose their minds. Restless, they traveled to the only place they knew that would give them answers.

As to the humans… being spiritually insensitive by nature, it was somewhat a miracle they felt anything at all. The Lotus Valley Sect felt the shift most strongly. Even their Master, Guanyu, came out of his closed door training because the change had broken his concentration completely. He went down from the mountain peak to personally inquire what was going on.

Fairies, beasties, and humans all converged upon the Blue Flower Palace at once, demanding answers from the only people they thought had them.