In this era, death was like a lamp snuffed out, and funeral rites were a grave matter, with proper burial in the earth being the key to eternal rest.
Shen Xinian was dead, and his body was to be consigned to the flames. To people of this time, that was tantamount to a second death—denied even a grave.
That was why Xie Jingtang had originally planned a full funeral procession for him, only for Shen Jiujiu to talk her out of it with every ounce of his persuasive power.
The last thing Shen Jiujiu wanted was a noisy parade of mourners, wailing as they buried his ashes. It felt all wrong, awkward in the extreme.
Little Bird had cajoled and pleaded to sway Xie Jingtang, but when he turned to try the same on Pei Du, he met with utter defeat.
Pei Du was practicing his calligraphy. He glanced at the crooked scratches Shen Jiujiu had clawed into the edge of the paper with his talons and said just two words: “No chance.”
Shen Jiujiu bristled. “Chirp chirp chirp chirp!!”
A funeral procession and burial were meant to console the departed spirit. But the body in question was right here, eating well, living well, hopping about every day. Why make such a huge, public fuss over it?
Shen Jiujiu simply couldn’t stomach the idea of that spectacle.
Yet Pei Du was utterly serious on the matter, brooking no argument. “Honoring the dead with the rites due the living is no small thing. Procession, offerings, coffin, grave goods—if there truly is an underworld and a next life, these may yet serve you one day.”
Shen Jiujiu opened his beak and unleashed a long string of chirps, flapping his wings and thumping his little bird chest to emphasize that he was standing right there, hale and whole. He had no need of any such nonsense.
Pei Du used the end of his brush to nudge the little bird off the rice paper. “Moreover, that was once your body. The feng shui of its burial concerns your very fortune. Who knows if it might affect your soul?”
Shen Jiujiu gouged a heavy black flame symbol into the paper with his talon.
It was all going to burn anyway!
Once the corpse was ash, what did any of that matter?
Pei Du’s gaze darkened, his brows knitting. “Don’t bring this up again. You bear no sins, nor are you a wandering ghost. It’s already a regret that we can’t bury you whole. A plain coffin, shallow grave, no marker, no rites—what reason could justify that?!”
Scholars were stubborn like this, and a scholar with real power was even harder to sway.
Shen Jiujiu paced back and forth across the desk in a rapid tattoo of taloned steps, but he couldn’t come up with any argument to change Pei Du’s mind. In frustration, he plunged a claw into the inkstone and stamped a string of bird footprints across the rice paper Pei Du had filled with writing.
It was meant to convey his utter exasperation.
But after scampering in circles to leave his prints, Shen Jiujiu glanced back—
Well, damn. That was Pei Du’s elegy for Shen Xinian!
The one to be read at the funeral procession!
Shen Jiujiu puffed up into a fluffy ball of feathers and glowered at his benefactor, who hadn’t yet reached thirty but was already showing every sign of turning into a proper patriarchal lord.
Pei Du shifted the bird ball aside and spread a fresh sheet of rice paper, calmly continuing his transcription.
Shen Jiujiu was out of tricks. He decided to table the matter for now. Preparations were still underway, after all. The body couldn’t be left any longer, but the cremation wouldn’t happen until tomorrow.
In the words of his mother and Zhong Bo, they needed plenty of pine and cypress wood, plus oils to help the flames along.
These were all items with purifying, transcendent significance. None could be omitted.
Little Bird tugged at the feathers around his legs like trousers, peered down at his ink-black talons, then shuffled over to Pei Du’s side and lifted a foot to show them off.
Seeing that Shen Jiujiu had dropped the subject of canceling the funeral, Pei Du’s displeasure faded. He dampened a cloth and gently wiped the little bird’s feet clean.
Man and bird let the earlier spat slide, slipping back into their easy intimacy.
As Shen Jiujiu watched Pei Du tend to his talons, a far more important matter suddenly sprang to mind—orders of magnitude more pressing than any funeral.
What was the story with Pei Du’s poisoning?!
So that’s how it was. Little Bird had been strung along by his benefactor several times these past few days!
Shen Jiujiu had remembered it at first, but every time he tried to bring it up, Pei Du would smoothly steer the conversation elsewhere, and before he knew it, the question slipped his mind again.
A bird brain could only handle one thing at a time. Usually, Shen Jiujiu could focus on just a single task or thought, with maybe a sliver of attention left for gossip or admiring his benefactor’s good looks.
Shen Jiujiu yanked his freshly cleaned talon free from Pei Du’s palm and with a squelch, plunged it back into the inkstone, rolling it around.
【Poisoned poisoned poisoned poisoned】
Little Bird scrawled the word four times over, each one larger than the last, brimming with resentment.
His inky black talons planted squarely on the rice paper, Shen Jiujiu fixed Pei Du with a round-eyed stare.
Today, Little Bird wouldn’t be distracted or deceived.
Pei Du had mentioned before that it happened when he was young. Telling Shen Jiujiu now probably wouldn’t change anything.
Given Pei Du’s style of never letting a slight go unavenged, even if he couldn’t retaliate as a child, he surely wouldn’t have let the culprits off once he held power.
By now, the matter was likely settled, leaving only the lingering headaches from the poison as a souvenir.
But Shen Jiujiu wanted to know anyway.
He wanted to know everything about his benefactor.
Besides, Little Bird was a miraculous talon-wielding divine healer bird. Of course he had the right to know his patient’s medical history!
Shen Jiujiu puffed out his little chest, brushing Pei Du’s fingers with his fuzzy warmth.
Come on, let’s chat.
Tell me.
Forget that elegy—it was giving Little Bird a headache.
Pei Du’s brush-holding hand was headbutted by the little bird, who then wrapped his wings around it and shook and rubbed for all he was worth. Finally overwhelmed, Pei Du set down his brush and rose to his feet, letting Shen Jiujiu claim his fingers.
It was clear the little bird truly hated that elegy, so Pei Du had no desire to let him see it. Instead, he headed for the study door.
He meant to enlist Shen Jiujiu’s help with the sparrow infestation overwhelming the rear garden.
Shen Jiujiu, of course, knew that the flock of little sparrows had migrated from the Sui Mansion to the Pei Mansion’s rear garden. “Chirp chirp chirp chirp?”
Did they really have to be driven off?
Pei Du shook his head. “Not drive them away. Just tell them not to make so much noise at night.”
“And…” Pei Du paused thoughtfully. “Hm. Could you get them to recognize people?”
Little Bird chirped loudly, trembling with laughter in Pei Du’s palm, his wings quivering.
Shen Jiujiu knew all about this.
No one knew what the Sui Mansion’s bird trainers had instilled in the Sparrow Balls, but those chattering, seemingly harmless little birds had eaten the Pei Mansion’s food, settled into its grounds, and spontaneously taken up guarding the place.
It was fine during the day, with people coming and going—the Sparrow Balls looked utterly innocuous.
But at night, those pairs of glowing eyes peering from walls and treetops would give anyone who spotted them a proper fright.
Especially for martial artists, whose senses were sharp as a tack—the chill creeping up the back of their necks was impossible to ignore whenever they passed by.
To stay on good terms with those omnipresent sparrow balls and avoid being chased and loudly scolded by sparrows while flipping over the walls, everyone made a habit of carrying a pouch of treats wherever they went.
Aside from the occasional person who secretly fed snacks to the lone little white bird Shen Jiujiu behind his master’s back, most of the bribes went to the sparrows.
A few days ago, the leader of the Dark Guards, whom Pei Du had sent out on a mission, returned to the mansion. Dressed in night-walking clothes to conceal his tracks, he flipped right over the wall into the Rear Garden.
He took the exact path that Sui Ziming and the other Dark Guards often used.
…Only to be pursued by a flock of sparrows squawking and pecking at him nonstop, while they dive-bombed him with unidentified liquids. By the time the household servants heard the commotion and rushed over with lanterns, the bedraggled Jia Yi had nowhere to hide and could only leap into the lake, holding his breath all the way until Zhong Bo arrived to dismiss the servants.
Shen Jiujiu had overheard Sui Ziming and the other Dark Guards gossiping about this Jia Yi from his perch on the wall. Apparently, he was a very rigid fellow, the perfect picture of a stereotypical stiff Dark Guard captain.
Shen Jiujiu rolled once in Pei Du’s palm. “Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp?”
Jia Yi actually complained to you about it?
Pei Du chuckled lowly. “He grew up alongside me.”
It was the first time Shen Jiujiu had heard Pei Du mention his childhood, and his eyes immediately widened as he perked up with interest.
Pei Du’s fingers cupped the little bird while his gaze drifted over the branches of the big pear tree in the National Duke Mansion’s Rear Garden, his expression distant.
“That year, when I was ten, someone bribed a maid in the household to lace the rim of my favorite snack bowl with poison.”
The poison had been placed on the edge of the bowl, not on the snacks themselves.
The poisoner knew the young Pei Du’s habits all too well.
“Back then, the Pei Mansion had no Dark Guards, and Jia Yi wasn’t Jia Yi yet.”
“By ancestral rule, every child of the Pei Family is assigned a guard from childhood who shares their meals, lodgings, and watches their back.”
“After I was poisoned and fell into a coma, even the imperial physicians were at a loss. My father called in a favor from an old friend in the martial world, who traveled a thousand li to fetch a renowned elder.”
“The poison I was hit with was called Qianji. It drains the victim of all strength, pulling every bit of their life force away in their sleep until it’s all exhausted and they wither away.”
Shen Jiujiu tilted his head up, listening intently to Pei Du recount the past. When he heard the name Qianji Poison, something inexplicably stirred in his heart.
Qianji…?
Why did that name sound so familiar?
No, this wasn’t right.
This feeling…
Shen Jiujiu went on high alert at once.
The last time he’d felt this way was during Sui Ziming’s deadly ordeal!
Pei Du noticed the little bird’s odd reaction. “Hm?”
Shen Jiujiu lifted a wing to cover Pei Du’s wrist, his little bird face grave.
He absolutely had to have a good dream tonight.
The little bird had a premonition that something big was coming in his dreams tonight!
The tip of Pei Du’s finger teased the little bird’s tuft of dazed feathers that had stood up unconsciously. But as his fingertip rubbed over the back feathers, he suddenly paused, his brows furrowing slightly.
Hidden among the little bird’s normally sleek, velvet-soft feathers were some hard, prickly objects that had appeared out of nowhere.
Shen Jiujiu twisted his head to lightly peck Pei Du’s finger, signaling him not to get distracted playing with the bird and to keep going.
“Qianji was a secret drug from the rear palace of the previous dynasty—fiercely potent, a death sentence with no antidote.”
As Pei Du spoke lightly and concisely about his past, he carefully parted the fluffy feathers with his thumb.
He clearly cared more about the anomaly on Shen Jiujiu than his own history.
“That elder hailed from the Gu Physicians. Seeing that the poison hadn’t gone too deep, she devised a method of fighting poison with poison.”
Gu poison… fighting poison with poison…
Shen Jiujiu sucked in a sharp breath.
“Though the process was perilous, it worked. I awoke from the Qianji-induced slumber. The clash of the two poisons left me with lingering night terrors and insomnia.”
Pei Du was hardly a storyteller.
His tone stayed even from start to finish, but only a little bird like Shen Jiujiu could be so emotionally swayed, reacting differently to every word.
“Jia Yi left the Pei Mansion temporarily after that incident. When he returned, he volunteered to train a team of Dark Guards for me.”
“I had just entered court service then and needed manpower and intelligence, so I agreed.”
“Jiujiu, do you remember that leaf packet you scraped off the poison arrow during Ziming’s ambush?”
Pei Du changed tack.
Shen Jiujiu blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected the poison—unresolved even by the story’s end in the original text—to have a follow-up.
Could it be…?
“Though my household’s Doctor Jin had never seen Qianji before, after years of taking my pulse, he studied the medical records left by that Gu Physician elder and suspected the arrows used to ambush Ziming were coated in Qianji Poison too.”
“So I had Jia Yi take some samples to the Miao Frontier.”
It was a long and arduous journey, and Jia Yi had left early—even Shen Jiujiu had never laid eyes on him—so when he returned, he became the first wall-flipper caught by the sparrow balls guarding the home.
This time, without waiting for Shen Jiujiu to chirp, Pei Du knew what the little bird wanted to ask and continued on his own.
“Too many years had passed; that Gu Physician elder had already died of illness. Her direct disciple examined the leaf packet and said there simply wasn’t enough poison to confirm.”
Shen Jiujiu picked up on the implication. “Chirp chirp chirp chirp?”
You still haven’t found who poisoned you, Benefactor?
There was a note of disbelief in the little bird’s chirps.
Pei Du closed his eyes briefly, dark turmoil churning deep in their depths.
“By the time we traced it, the poisoner was already dead.”
Shen Jiujiu sensed an overwhelming wave of grief and sorrow from Pei Du.
Yet Pei Du said not a word about his own pain.
Because of Pei Du’s tale, Shen Jiujiu became exceptionally well-behaved and clingy afterward, sticking to Pei Du’s neck without budging no matter who called for him. His sticky, affectionate demeanor made Xie Jingtang green with envy.
Lord Pei didn’t say a word, but he was quietly pleased.
It showed that evening when the little bird got an extra small dish of boiled greens.
This time, they were even garnished with a touch of red date, making them at least a little less bland.
And when Shen Jiujiu had to struggle to drag the little dish over to Pei Du’s side with his beak just to eat while pressing his fluffy body against Pei Du’s hand, the curve of Pei Du’s lips was utterly undisguised.
Sui Ziming bit down on his chopsticks and sneaked a glance at his cousin.
Tch.
This secretly delighted look was really something…
Pei Du’s gaze swept over Sui Ziming.
Sui Ziming immediately lowered his head and began counting out each grain of rice with surprising seriousness as he ate.
~~~
Shen Jiujiu stuck to Pei Du just like that until night fell.
After Pei Du finished washing up, changed into fresh clothes, and lay down, he saw the long-tailed little bird dumpling plop right onto his chest once more. It raised its wings and devoutly bowed to him three times.
Pei Du: “…”
He pinched the tip of the little bird’s folded wings. “What is this about?”
Shen Jiujiu poked his head out from beneath his wings. “Chirp chirp chirp chirp.”
A devout wish.
Pei Du could tell the little bird was making a wish, but the question was—what exactly was Shen Jiujiu wishing for while facing him?
The little bird blinked its eyes.
Back in the private room at the restaurant, though a screen had separated them, Shen Jiujiu had overheard the conversation between the High Priestess and Pei Du.
He wasn’t surprised at all to learn that his benefactor was a Great Fortune Bearer.
That was just how novel tropes worked, after all.
Before the Long Aotian male lead gradually gained his golden fingers, the major villain was always at the height of their luck. That way, the growth arc could deliver the satisfying thrill of the protagonist toppling them later on.
So Shen Jiujiu figured that making a wish to his benefactor might actually work.
Even now, he was still being suppressed by the world’s consciousness, unable to tell Pei Du directly about the plot. After all, regaining memories through dreams was far too abstract—impossible to convey through gestures alone.
Once Shen Xinian’s body was completely incinerated, the little bird would recover all his memories. He could sort everything out then and explain it to his benefactor.
And honestly, Shen Jiujiu suspected that even after recovering his memories normally, it wouldn’t feel anywhere near as vivid and clear as these dream revisits.
Which was why, right now—
Shen Jiujiu tugged his wings free from Pei Du’s grasp and finished his three persistent bows.
In his heart, he silently repeated Qianji Poison three times.
Please, benefactor!!
Pei Du stared at Shen Jiujiu, who was sprawled prostrate across his chest. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes in utter helplessness.
Shen Jiujiu wriggled his way upward across Pei Du’s chest until he successfully nestled into the crook of Pei Du’s neck. He splayed his claws and shut his eyes in comfort.
…
The facts proved that Pei Du really was an incredibly reliable wishing well.
Shen Jiujiu hadn’t even opened his eyes yet when a familiar sound reached his ears. He knew at once that he was dreaming.
The little bird excitedly fluttered his eyes open. He’d expected to relive memories from his past life reading the novel, but instead, he found himself staring at the Pei Mansion’s backyard, draped in plain white funeral banners.
Shen Jiujiu took an instinctive step forward.
The unfamiliar sensation jolted him. In shock, he slowly raised a hand and looked down.
It was the hand of a child.
Ten fingers, soft and pale, dimples pressing into the back of the hand. Untouched by sunlight for days, the skin was almost translucent.
This was the hand of the five-year-old who had never set foot beyond Jinling—absolutely never in the Capital…
Shen Xinian’s hand.
???