Not long after returning from the Demon Capital to Cloud Cliff City, Mo Qing received shocking news—
Jiang Chen had resigned as City Lord of Drunk Moon City!
Oh no, oh no.
He was instantly filled with regret. It was all his fault that the City Lord had gotten dragged down.
Thus, when Jiang Chen appeared in Cloud Cliff City a few days later, Mo Qing wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
The man had stood up for him and ruined his bright future. With no family or ties, who else could he turn to? Naturally, Mo Qing had to take responsibility to the end.
But after a few more days, Mo Qing realized that Jiang Chen wasn’t there for him at all!
Ever since the Cloud Cliff Gate had closed, the icy Three Realms Gate towering outside the city had become a silent, solitary stele. Day after day, lost and despondent Demon Immortals wandered beneath it in twos and threes. Most were those who hadn’t made it out in time when the realm was sealed, while others were late realizations hoping to turn back to the Mortal Realm.
They held no hope, yet refused to give up.
Day in and day out, they lingered before the gate, staring into the distance, praying for a miracle. They just… waited like that.
Jiang Chen was one of them.
Beside the Cloud Cliff Gate stood an ancient tree, its gnarled form twisted and strange, its dragon-claw branches stretching toward the heavens, directly facing the sealed gate.
No matter dawn or dusk, whenever Mo Qing passed by, he would see Jiang Chen beneath that tree.
Morning dew soaked his hem without notice; the midday sun scorched his skin without evasion. Sometimes in fine, misty rain, droplets slid from the leaves onto his shoulders, soaking his dark robes through, yet he never wiped the water from his face.
He seemed fixed in place there. In just a few days, he grew haggard and pale, like a ghost.
Even the other despondent Demon Immortals wandering nearby shook their heads at his state.
Mo Qing hurriedly arranged a quiet little courtyard for him a hundred paces away—with green-tiled roofs and white walls, and he even planted a pear tree that Jiang Chen favored.
Yet the next day before dawn, Jiang Chen was back under the ancient tree.
…
Soon, half a year slipped by. Autumn leaves fell, winter snow sealed the branches.
Mo Qing often brought fresh tea to find Jiang Chen.
In that half-year, he’d tried every method to talk sense into him—persuasion, stern words, goading, even dragging him away by force. Nothing worked.
Sometimes, Mo Qing wondered if the man had gone mad. But then he’d look into those pitch-black eyes, heavy with something that wasn’t madness or delusion, but a stubborn clarity.
Helpless, Mo Qing could only keep him company with tea each day.
Often, they sat in silence across from each other. Occasionally, Jiang Chen would catch a falling leaf and gently crush it between his fingertips.
…
One afternoon that harsh winter, Duan Shuheng braved the flying snow to arrive from the Demon Capital.
“To be honest,” he said, rubbing his frozen hands, “though this is a reunion with an old friend, I’m also here on behalf of the princess to gauge your thoughts.”
“It’s a bit awkward to bring up…”
“But if I told you that your sworn sister from the Mortal Realm is actually…”
Jiang Chen: “I know.”
Duan Shuheng froze in place: “Huh?”
“Jiang Fu is the princess’s paper effigy substitute. I… knew it long ago.”
“Ah, ah—what?!”
Now it was Duan Shuheng who was at a loss.
Even he had only just learned this earth-shattering secret! And if it weren’t for his father being the Demon Sovereign’s most trusted Grand Tutor, with the princess only daring to entrust him to probe, he never would have known such a classified matter.
But why… did Jiang Chen already know what the princess thought was flawlessly concealed??
Duan Shuheng couldn’t help whispering, “City Lord Jiang, what’s the real story behind this…?”
Why had the princess created a paper effigy named “Jiang Fu” to impersonate her? How had that effigy become Jiang Chen’s sworn sister?
Unfortunately, Jiang Chen wasn’t willing to say more.
The only certainty was this: their attitudes toward the matter couldn’t have been more different.
The princess harbored deep guilt, unable to let it go.
While Jiang Chen’s face remained expressionless most days, Duan Shuheng keenly sensed that he wanted nothing to do with anything involving the princess—repulsed, even. Though he never interrupted aloud, the restless tapping of his fingertips on the teacup betrayed his irritation.
Duan Shuheng raised his hands in surrender: “Alright, alright, I won’t say it.”
“My bad. I thought even if you loved the paper effigy’s body, her soul inside was still the princess’s. Didn’t expect you’d… have no feelings left for her at all.”
“…”
“But you still can’t let go of that sworn sister from the lower realm? Even if the princess deceived you first, but—”
“It’s not… to find her in the lower realm,” Jiang Chen interrupted hoarsely.
He closed his eyes, his knuckles whitening from the grip.
After a long pause, he forced out from his throat: “The one I want to find… is someone else.”
“Huh?”
Duan Shuheng exchanged a glance with Mo Qing nearby: “So, the love of your life is someone else?”
“…An old friend.”
“Aw, come on, drop the tough act.”
“Yeah, we get it.”
“It’s true love, just say it—what’s so hard?”
…
Though Duan Shuheng failed to persuade him, he still lingered in Cloud Cliff City for half a month.
“I’ve got to show the Demon Capital I tried my best, or they’ll blame me.”
“After all, the princess may be mild-tempered, but the Demon Sovereign might not be so forgiving. If he gets angry, I’m afraid City Lord Jiang will catch another wave of trouble.”
Mo Qing: “But now that City Lord Jiang Chen has quit, he’s a free man. What can the Demon Sovereign do to him?”
“…Fair point.”
In the end, Duan Shuheng stayed another fifteen days in Cloud Cliff City, pestering Jiang Chen and Mo Qing daily—not with banquets and snow-viewing, or wine-brewing under the stars.
Once they’d exhausted every topic in Cloud Cliff City, he started badgering Jiang Chen: “So, Jiang brother, what’s that true love of yours from the Mortal Realm like?”
“How’d you two meet?”
“What’s his personality?”
Endlessly nagging.
At first, when he asked relentlessly eight or nine times out of ten, Jiang Chen would stone-facedly retort a sentence or two. Over time, he grew too lazy even for that.
Sometimes, pressed hard, a rare crack would appear on that frozen face—almost boyish: eyes lowering slightly, thin lips pressing together, then quickly withdrawn.
Duan Shuheng racked his brains but couldn’t imagine such an expression on the deathly somber City Lord Jiang.
…
Day after day, Demon Immortal commoners who refused to leave would come to the city lord’s residence to vent their woes.
This one said his elderly mother was still in the Mortal Realm with no one to care for her; that one said his wife and kids waited in the Mortal Realm for him to provide.
They knew the city lord was powerless to help, yet they came to weep anyway.
One day, a rare Demon Immortal half-breed arrived, wanting to return not to the Unstained Immortal Realm but to the Pure Immortal Realm.
“My fiancée is a Human Immortal, waiting for me to wed her in Clear Dew City of the Pure Immortal Realm. She’s always been hot-tempered—if she thinks I’ve broken my promise, she might marry someone else in a fit of anger…”
After the man left, Duan Shuheng sighed: “Good thing news doesn’t pass. He still knows nothing.”
“I hate to tell him the truth. Clear Dew City in the Pure Immortal Realm fell to the Demon Clan last month—lots of deaths. Who knows about his fiancée… Sigh.”
Clang! A wine pot crashed to the ground from someone’s hand.
Duan Shuheng lowered his voice: “I always say my dad and them sealing the borders was insane, but this time it was a lucky fluke, foresight even…”
“The Unstained Immortal Realm nearly fell entirely not long ago. If we hadn’t cut ties early and shut the paths, the Demon Clan wouldn’t have spared us.”
He looked up to see City Lord Jiang across from him breathing raggedly.
Mo Qing frowned: “Something this big, and as city lord, I heard nothing?”
“They’re suppressing the news. Not even many in the Demon Court know—if my dad weren’t the Grand Tutor… Sigh, anyway, the Pure Immortal Realm took a brutal hit recently. You know Fu Xi Palace? The top righteous sect of the Immortal Realm, guardians of the Pure Immortal Realm’s northern border for generations.”
“Rumor has it even Palace Lord Zhao Lanze died in battle.”
Mo Qing sucked in a sharp breath: “Dead? How? When I was young, I followed my uncle on business to the Pure Immortal Realm once and met that Lan Ze Immortal Lord.”
“I even played at Fu Xi Palace with his younger brother and a young Lord Xia.”
Duan Shuheng: “You mean Xia Yunjie? Fu Xi Palace is holding on now thanks to him.”
“I know that brother too. A few years back at a Mortal Realm auction house, we fought over a famed artisan’s rare White Jade Flute, raising absolute hell. In the end, he drove the price sky-high at seven and a half million taels of silver without blinking—backed by real wealth, what extravagance.”
“But now his brother is dead. Sigh, he’ll be on his own from here.”
“Poor guy.”
“Speaking of which, what was that little Lord Zhao’s name? Something like Zhao Li… Li what…”
“Oh, Zhao Lixuan!”
The winter sky, clear for half a month, suddenly unleashed snow without warning.
Jiang Chen abruptly sliced his hand open. Blood dripped from between his fingers onto the snow, blooming like red plums.
…
A few days later, Mo Qing bid farewell to his two friends at the city gate.
Duan Shuheng returned to the Demon Capital, but Jiang Chen was heading elsewhere.
Mo Qing: “Where exactly?”
Jiang Chen gazed at the distant mountain mists, silent.
The silence tightened Mo Qing’s chest.
Ever since the Pure Immortal Realm split in two, the laws of heaven and earth had grown chaotic, awakening many ancient sealed forbidden lands. The Remnant Dream Pool that devoured memories, the Rebirth Ferry that imprisoned nightmares, the Netherworld Abyss forged from demon god resentments…
These places brimmed with peril—twisted rifts, soul-devouring miasma everywhere. Even mighty cultivators faced nine deaths to one life.
Yet over these years, Demon Immortal experts kept venturing in.
For rumors said many ancient forbidden lands held divine and demonic treasures, some following the rule of ‘exchange item for item, treasure for wish.’ Pay the price, and you could seize opportunities—or even fulfill impossible desires.
Of course, most went in and never came out.
The rare survivors often returned mad, their Dao hearts shattered, babbling nonsense that chilled the blood.
Mo Qing worried for Jiang Chen, naturally.
With that look on his face, was he about to brave those forbidden lands too?
Jiang Chen left—and was gone for half a year.
Rumors trickled in during that time: someone spotted his figure beyond the miasma-choked Fallen Moon Forest; others said he sought secret arts from reclusive fiends. They said he pursued every possible and impossible path, all to return to the Mortal Realm.
But it wasn’t so easy to find.
Half a year later, a letter from Duan Shuheng: on official business in Azure Dome City, he’d run into the gravely wounded Jiang Chen. It took days of care to save his life.
But that very day—
Demon Capital’s forbidden troops flew into Cloud Cliff City again, as abruptly as ever. The leading general brandished a golden edict, his voice booming: “By the Demon Sovereign’s decree, welcome the triumphant return of Azure Flame Commander Yan Su!”
Yan Su’s name thundered across the Demon Bright.
This Azure Flame Commander was said to have leaped selflessly into the ancient forbidden land of the Netherworld Abyss, annihilating his fleshly body to exchange for supreme battle power. Now, he was not only the Demon Sovereign’s most relied-upon arm but the greatest contributor to severing spirit veins and repelling the Demon Clan.
The hero returned with his army in glory, and the Three Realms Gate, sealed for two and a half years, roared open.
Mo Qing nearly went mad. He desperately stalled the gate’s opening while urgently notifying Duan Shuheng: send word if Jiang Chen lived or died, hurry!
But when the two arrived, they were half a step too late. The massive stone gate had already sealed shut amid a sky of radiant rosy clouds.
That night, Mo Qing found Jiang Chen under the ancient tree again.
The man huddled at the roots, haggard and feverish, eyes bloodshot. Just hours earlier, they’d forcibly tucked him into bed to rest, yet here he was, struggling back—delirious with fever, still muttering stubbornly.
Mo Qing leaned close and heard the hoarse, faint whisper: “What if…”
What if.
It was his stupidity, chasing other paths, that made him miss the only gate opening in nearly three years.
He wouldn’t leave again.
Because what if tomorrow, or the day after… the Three Realms Gate opened once more?
After that, Jiang Chen simply slept beneath the tree, letting wind and snow scourge him without budging. Half a year passed in that inhuman, ghostly state.
Then one morning, he vanished again.
The next spring, a year later, he returned—handsome and composed once more, his dark robes pristine, like the first time Mo Qing had seen him.
“Take care, Mo Qing. I’m returning to the Mortal Realm,” he said.
“…”
He looked dashing and poised, everything as it should be.
Yet the more he appeared this way, the more a faint unease stirred in Mo Qing’s heart.
Where exactly had he gone this past year? Whom had he met? What had he traded away? Mo Qing knew none of it. He could only watch, helpless, as Jiang Chen strode straight through the boundary gate—
The barrier that halted countless Demon Immortals allowed him to cross in a single step.
His dark silhouette faded away amid the flowing lights.
…
Later, as Mo Qing sat drinking with Duan Shuheng on several occasions, the two of them still couldn’t puzzle out the mystery.
“I’ve recently heard someone mention a Reincarnation Evil Technique,” Duan Shuheng said with a frown. “After casting it, it’s as good as dying once over—but you can reincarnate in the Mortal Realm with all your original memories intact… The price is a massive hit to your lifespan. At most, you’d have twenty years left.”
Mo Qing’s hand trembled around his cup.
“City Lord Jiang wouldn’t resort to something like that, would he?”
“I certainly hope not… But if he did, all we can do is look on the bright side. At least he’d get twenty years of happiness with the one he loves. That’d be fulfilling his heart’s deepest wish, wouldn’t it?”
The two fell silent for a moment.
“…Four or five years apart in the Mortal Realm—that’s already a long time.”
“What if that true love of his has long stopped waiting? Or found someone new? Or they’re lost in the vast sea of people and can’t reunite—by the time they do, those twenty years might already be up… Talk about a raw deal.”
“Listen to you—with City Lord Jiang’s skills, there’s no way he couldn’t track down one person in twenty years, right?”
“Hahaha, true enough.”
