She had decided to leave the Effervescent Moon-Time Palace for a change of pace. Her apprentice had wanted to come with her, but sh refused to let anyone accompany her right now. It wouldn’t be a change of pace if she was with someone to whom she was familiar.

Several people had tried to stop her. As one who could see all of time, she was often called upon by important figures who wanted her to read their futures. Many people wanted to know what the future had in store for them. None more so than the powerful cultivators whose only purpose in life seemed to be hoarding power and wealth unto themselves.

She refused them all and left in the dead of night.

No one could stop her when she wanted to leave.

She traversed the Nine Heavens for a time, traveling incognito and watching the various people come and go. Most of them would live simple lives. A few would die from unexpected deaths, while others would have a long, prosperous life. It might seem unfair that some should die young and others not, but life was rarely fair.

Seeing the future of all these people made her sigh. None of them were interesting. So few of them had more than four or five futures. The most she had ever seen someone possess was a mere sixteen. Even she only had a handful of possible futures.

Her apprentice tried to find her several times. She felt him searching the timelines for her presence, but she had already shut herself off from time. Hers was now standing still. Searching that various timelines would be useless.

Her apprentice was talented, but he was a long way off from being able to detect her when she didn’t want to be found.

Her travels eventually took her to a small world. The Nine Heavens had many such worlds.

This particular world was composed mostly of forest and ocean. It was a lush land filled with natural beauty, but the purity of its chi was quite low. There wasn’t much in the way of cultivation resources, which explained why no one had bothered to claim this land for themselves.

It also wasn’t very big, which meant this small world was likely newly formed. It had probably been created within the last one million years or so. New worlds were always small because they lacked the proper ley lines, or spirit veins, of larger worlds like Yuèliàng—the world she ruled over.

There were already people present on this world, but they were primitive and lacked the power necessary to cultivate beyond the Perfection Realm. Most probably couldn’t even reach that realm.

She avoided civilian settlements and walked through the forest without a destination in mind, enjoying the atmosphere. It was mercilessly quiet. Without any people around, she was not constantly inundated with visions of their futures. It was nice. Peaceful. Serene. She briefly had the thought that she wouldn’t mind settling down in this place, but it didn’t last long. She was still an important figure in the cultivation world. People would come looking for her if she disappeared entirely.

During her wanderings, she heard a sound of something hard striking wood. Curious, she wandered past several trees and found herself in a clearing.

A young boy stood in the clearing, chopping firewood with a simple axe.

He could not have been very old. Maybe seventeen or eighteen at most. He had dark hair like midnight and eyes like black holes. His lean body was well-defined for someone who had never cultivated a day in his life. He didn’t wear a shirt, which meant his chest and stomach were on full display.

Her eyes widened.

She was enraptured.

Millions of visions past through her head in that instant. In one of them, the young boy was discovered by a passive cultivator who realized his potential. He went on to become the leader of a sect that gained great fame in the Nine Heavens. In another, he died from a poisonous snake bite. Several visions had him dying of old age. In a few of those, he was surrounded by loved ones, and in some of them, he was alone. There was another vision where he broke through to the Sovereign Realm without any cultivation resources and left this small world to become a powerful rogue cultivator. His destiny split off from their into hundreds of thousands or even millions of different possible endings.

“A-amazing…”

“Hmm?”

She had not realized that she had spoken out loud until the young man turned to look at her. He blinked several times with those clear eyes.

“Who are you, pretty miss? What are you doing out here? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”

“Oh… um… I was just wandering around.”

For the first time in her life, she felt a little flustered. The number of possible futures this young man had boggled her mind and left her unable to breath. She had never seen someone more beautiful in her entire life.

And there was something else that baffled her.

How had she not seen this boy in her future until now? It was true that she could not read her future as easily as she could others. This was because she held time in her hands. Her time had stopped, which meant observing her future was nigh impossible, but she could still do it if she really tried. And she had. In none of her futures did this boy appear.

An anomaly.

This boy was an anomaly.

Her heart raced.

“You’re just wandering around? All the way out here? Forgive me, miss, but do you think I’m naive? No one comes out here besides me.”

The young man’s words snapped her out of her thoughts. She focused more on him once more and smiled. Her lips naturally curved upward in what was probably the first genuine smile she’d had in several million years.

Oh, my. The boy was blushing.

“It’s true. I am just wandering around. But you see, I am not from this planet.”

“Huh?”

“I come from beyond the stars.” She pointed up at the sky. “You cannot see the place of my birth from here, but it would be about two million light years that way.”

“Are you yanking my leg, lady? There’s no way you could come from the heavens. No one lives up there except the gods,” the young man said.

Her smile widened. “What if I told you I was one of those gods?”

The young man opened his mouth, then closed it. He studied her more closely, looking her over from head to toe. His gaze was no lecherous like most peoples when looking at her, and yet she somehow felt far more embarrassed being under his observation than she ever had someone else.

“Well… you’re certainly pretty enough to be a goddess, but I need proof before I’ll believe you,” he said at last.

“I understand.”

It was perfectly logical not to believe someone who claimed to be a goddess when you lived on a primitive planet like this one. She could not fault him for his skepticism.

Just this once, she decided to be impulsive.

She reached out her hand.

“Then… would you like me to show you?”

“Show me what?” asked the boy, though he reached out and placed his hand in hers.

“Why, the world beyond the stars, of course!” She smiled cheerfully at him. “My name is Tiāntáng Meiying. What is yours?”

“My name is…”

***

Wu Meiying sighed as a disruption in the present’s time caused the vision she was enjoying to vanish like a daydream. She had just been getting to the good part, so she was quite cross with this interruption, but there was very little she could do about that. It wasn’t like she could ignore the person doing the disrupting.

I should shove his head in a pile of manure…

She didn’t let such indecent thoughts show on her face as she turned around and presented a smile toward the person who was just now within visual distance. It was a handsome young man with dark hair tied into a ponytail and ice blue eyes. His features were very feminine, which many ladies of the Heavenly Sword Sect liked. Wu Meiying thought he looked too girly.

Wu Jian is way more handsome.

The man landed several meters from the barrier that separated them. The barrier looked something like a semi-transparent bubble. Several swirling medicine rivers fed into a lake upon which she and her bubble sat.

This was one of the cultivation zones located within the Heavenly Sword Mountain. It was very different from the other cultivation zones. Not only was she the only one allowed inside, but no other cultivation zone had a pagoda situated in the very center. This was not just where she cultivated. It was where she lived for most of the time.

“Meiying! I should have guessed you would be here,” the young man said with a smile. She almost curled her lips in distaste when she saw the way her eyed her figure.

“Zhe Fēnglì, does your father need me for something?” asked Wu Meiying, keeping her tone cordial and distant. She had for a time considered using her feminine wiles to wrap this man around her finger. It would have made her life much easier, but she had decided not to. She didn’t even want to pretend to like someone who’s name wasn’t Wu Jian.

Her words brought Zhe Fēnglì up short. He paused for a moment to furrow his brow. She knew he disliked it when she cut right to the chase. She had learned from experience that he would always try to make small talk with her before getting to the point, but Wu Meiying had no desire to play that game, so she cut him off before he could start.

“He does… He said he wanted to talk to you about the Thirteen Kingdom’s Tournament.”

“Very well. Please, inform your father that I will be there shortly. I just need to freshen up and dress in something less inappropriate for a meeting with the sect master.”

“Why don’t I wait here? I can escort you to him.”

“Thank you, but no. It would be best if you let him know I’m coming. I don’t want you to stand there for such a long time. Women take a while to get ready, you understand.”

Wu Meiying smiled at him, but Zhe Fēnglì pursed his lips as displeasure crossed his face. She wondered if maybe her smile had slipped. She must not have been giving him a pleasant smile for him to make that face. Well, it was his own fault. She had made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t interested in him, and yet he kept coming back like a wounded stray looking for affection.

Some men just can’t take a hint.

“I understand,” Zhe Fēnglì said at last. He bowed, though it was haphazard. “I’ll let him know you will be along shortly.”

“You have my thanks.” Wu Meiying also bowed, but hers was far more feminine. She placed her hands together before her, one palm over the other, and delicately knelt in the semblance of a curtsy.

Zhe Fēnglì blushed, but he soon coughed into his hand and took off. Wu Meiying watched him go. She waited until he was no longer in sight before curling her lips in distaste.

“Cretin. Can’t you tell I’m not interested in you? When will you take the hint?”

Chances were good that he already knew she lacked interest in him, but that just made him want her more. Some men liked the chase. They liked it when the woman had no interest in them because it made conquering them taste that much sweeter. It was just too bad for him that she was one conquest he would never achieve.

Wu Meiying turned around and wandered inside her pagoda. It was a thing of beauty, a structure made from Silver Spirit Crystal.

Silver Spirit Crystal was a higher quality spirit crystal than the kind normally found on the market. Acquiring even a single jīn’s worth of this was nearly impossible. The fact that the sect master had gone out of his way to make her this palace spoke of how much value the sect placed on her.

That was another reason she didn’t bother trying to woo Zhe Fēnglì. Aside from her general distaste of the young man and her desire to never betray Wu Jian under any circumstances, there was no real need. She was already irreplaceable to the sect.

She wandered into the pagoda and shed her loose-fitting robe, walking over to a small dresser, where she selected her outfit for the day. It was a black and gray hanfu with simple flower patterns adorning the skirt. This outfit was much simpler than what she used to wear, but ever since the Wu Clan’s destruction, Wu Meiying had refused to wear bright colors or beautiful dresses. There was only one person she would wear such clothes for, and he was currently beyond her sight.

She sighed. “Wu Jian… I want to see you. I want to touch you.”

The necklace she had given Wu Jian hid his time away from prying eyes. No one who used time to track people would be able to locate him. Not even Wu Meiying could see where and what Wu Jian was doing or would be doing in the future.

Of course, it did have its limits. If someone who had known him before recognized him, the necklace would become damaged. If enough people recognized him, it would shatter, and then anyone could find him. He would be like a blazing sun to those who were searching for her. She hoped he wouldn’t reveal himself to too many people—at least, until they could meet again and she could give him a better necklace.

On impulse, she opened one of her drawers and pulled out a necklace. It was a beautiful object made from Silver Spirit Crystals. A single pendant shaped like a hexagon hung from it. Inside were glowing characters that refracted light. She stared at the object for a moment, then set it back in her drawer and left the pagoda.

According to what I have seen, Wu Jian should have met up with Hou Jingshu by now. I cannot see his time, but I can see hers. Oh, Jian. That mask really isn’t very attractive, but it was a good idea. She’d definitely recognize you without it.

She wondered if he would reveal himself to Hou Jingshu. It would damage the necklace she had given him, but she didn’t think he had it in him to remain quiet for too long.

Hopefully, the necklace will hold together if he does. It’s not my best work.

After getting dressed, combing her hair, and putting on a necklace of her own, Wu Meiying left the pagoda. It was time to see what the sect master wanted.