◎A chance given, and squandered.◎
Fu Yuqiu was a bird of action. He trotted straight back and waited, bright and early, for the Immortal Venerable to summon him for his tune.
But when day broke, the Nine Heavens’ main hall was silent as the grave.
—The Immortal Venerable never called for him.
Fu Yuqiu: “…”
Fu Yuqiu itched to storm the main hall and batter the doors down with his wings—but remembering that capricious streak of madness in the Living Yama, he thought better of it.
A bird’s life came first.
He lay listlessly at the jade platform in the side hall, sipping water. Perhaps from wrestling that Snow Silkworm half the night, he simply couldn’t muster any energy in his limbs.
A White Sparrow’s hatching was an omen of auspice. Like the Crimson Spirit Secluded Grass, it was a being bestowed by heaven, needing no food so long as it drew in the Spiritual Power of heaven and earth.
Yet Fu Yuqiu lay there feeling wretched all over, as if he’d swallowed a lump of burning charcoal, every organ bruised and grinding.
He drooped through an entire day, only dragging himself up when night fell and the stars thinned around the moon, resolving to go find the Phoenix.
Looking out through the carved lattice window, he saw the moon not yet quite full, its light pouring down pure as snow.
Fu Yuqiu was just dragging himself toward the door when Yun Shou arrived and scooped him straight up.
“The Venerable One summons you to ‘attend his bed.'”
Fu Yuqiu: “…”
Fu Yuqiu nearly rolled his eyes all the way to the back of his skull at that word “attend”—but then a thought struck him: Attending his bed is perfect. While the Living Yama sleeps, I can hunt for the Phoenix Inheritance!
And so Fu Yuqiu bobbed along agreeably as Yun Shou carried him to the Immortal Venerable’s bedchamber.
From the inner chamber drifted the lingering notes of a Konghou—the Immortal Venerable was playing again.
That supremely sovereign figure sat there with gentle bearing, a snow-white robe patterned in hidden Phoenix feathers draped over his shoulders, layered cloud-patterned hems pooling at his feet. As he looked up slightly, a strand of black hair slid down over his shoulder.
The Immortal Venerable noticed that the White Sparrow clearly had no appreciation for the Konghou—eyes rolling like loose marbles—and far from taking offense, he actually laughed.
He set aside the Konghou, took the fluffy White Sparrow into his hands, and measured him with his fingers. “How have you gotten thinner?”
Fu Yuqiu: “…”
Yun Shou: “???”
Yun Shou nearly rolled his own eyes. “Venerable One, this White Sparrow…”
The sparrow was practically spherical. Thinner?
The Immortal Venerable glanced at him.
Yun Shou corrected course instantly. “Quite right, the Little Highness has thinned. These past few days he’s taken nothing but water—not a bite of anything else.”
Fu Yuqiu: “…”
The Immortal Venerable said mildly, “Find him something to eat.”
Yun Shou grumbled internally, but bowed and withdrew with all due diligence.
“No bugs!” Fu Yuqiu hollered after him.
Yun Shou understood not a syllable of the chirping and left without a backward glance.
The Immortal Venerable regarded the sparrow, thinking briefly. “Bring a Spring Return Fruit.”
Yun Shou nearly stumbled over his own feet. “A Spring Return Fruit?!”
That was life-saving spirit medicine of the same rank as Golden Radiance Grass—the very thing that stabilized the Immortal Venerable’s own injuries!
The Immortal Venerable paid him no mind. He lifted the layered cloud-woven bed curtains and carried the sparrow up onto the couch.
Yun Shou stamped a foot in silent heartache, but had no standing to question the Immortal Venerable’s judgment, and left grudgingly.
Fu Yuqiu had no idea what wonder-drug a “Spring Return Fruit” was. He stood on a pillow that seemed spun from cloud and mist, peering this way and that, plotting out where the Phoenix Inheritance might be hidden.
“Something that precious…” He glanced around, muttering curses at his own stupidity under his breath. “The Living Yama would never keep it in plain sight. It’ll be sealed away safe inside a Mustard Seed.”
The thought had barely landed when Fu Yuqiu’s gaze caught on the candle stand atop the little bedside table.
—The candle stand, wrought with Phoenix motifs, held no candle at all. Instead, a single Golden-Red Plume floated in the empty air above it, glowing faintly, for all the world like a candle flame.
Fu Yuqiu: “???”
That was… the Phoenix Inheritance?
And the Living Yama was using it as a LAMP?!
Fu Yuqiu nearly choked on his own breath, casting a feeble glance at the Immortal Venerable, who was just shrugging off his outer robe.
What a spendthrift, he thought.
By now, Yun Shou had returned, presented the Spring Return Fruit with both hands and every courtesy.
The Immortal Venerable couldn’t have cared less how precious the fruit was. He tossed it casually to the sparrow. “Eat.”
Fu Yuqiu still ached all over, but at the sight of that vivid, dew-bright fruit he hesitated only a moment before venturing a careful peck.
The fruit melted on his tongue into a stream of sweet Spiritual Power that spread through every limb and bone, and that wretched, gnawing discomfort finally eased a little.
Fu Yuqiu wasn’t about to stand on ceremony with the Living Yama—he’d sung the man a whole stack of tunes already. Fine, no Phoenix Inheritance; but surely one little fruit wasn’t asking too much.
Bolstered by that logic, Fu Yuqiu ate with a happy heart.
The Immortal Venerable had half-reclined onto the couch, head propped on one hand, watching with a smile as the sparrow ate fruit atop his immaculately clean bedding.
Fu Yuqiu soon gnawed the fruit down to a bare pit.
Clouds drifted in at once, clearing away the sticky juice stains from the pillow.
Fu Yuqiu’s feathers were smeared pink with juice. Instinctively he tried to preen himself clean, but one flap of a wing revealed that even his snow-white plumes were filthy all over.
The Immortal Venerable watched with great interest.
Then, when one timid little cloud drifted over meaning to wipe the sparrow’s face, his eyes narrowed slightly—and the cloud dispersed on the spot.
Fu Yuqiu was still flapping away at himself when the Immortal Venerable finally reached out and cleaned the juice from his feathers bit by careful bit, with a tenderness beyond all describing.
One Spring Return Fruit down, Fu Yuqiu finally felt human again.
He paid no attention whatsoever to the look the Living Yama was giving him—just sprawled bonelessly across the cloud pillow, eyes squeezed shut, letting out a contented, purring rumble.
The Immortal Venerable arched a brow and gave the red plume at his brow a gentle poke. “Asleep already?”
The Spring Return Fruit’s potency was simply too strong; Fu Yuqiu felt bathed in warm sunlight from head to toe, his limbs melted soft as water, wanting nothing but to never move again.
He gave a muzzy little grumble and pushed the Immortal Venerable’s finger away with a claw, chirping sleepily.
“Sleepy.”
The White Sparrow’s voice was soft as down and sweet as song, like a wisp of fluff brushing past one’s ear.
Fu Yuqiu lay sprawled in all four directions, little claws twitching and kicking now and then—and before long he really had sunk into deep sleep.
The Immortal Venerable: “…”
The Immortal Venerable looked at the Phoenix Inheritance on the bedside stand. A long, long silence passed before he let out a soundless sigh.
Resonant Stream Hall.
The Yuanchu Presiding Venerable Ming Nan sat in his luxurious bedchamber, seven Water Mirrors hanging before him.
Ming Nan raised a hand toward one mirror, fingers weaving a seal.
Just then, a paper crane in the shape of a Vermilion Crane fluttered down onto the table.
In a blink the paper crane unfolded into a single sheet, bearing a few short lines.
“Kill the White Sparrow. Seize the Linked Azure Water.”
—A letter from Feng Beihe.
Ming Nan glanced at it and resumed working his art upon the Water Mirror.
The Yuanchu Clan possessed two secret arts. The first was “Withering and Flourishing,” binding two lives as one.
The second was the ability to foresee the future—to a greater or lesser degree.
In his day, the Yuanchu Young Clan Master had been a heaven-sent genius hailed by all: where others’ Art of Precognition glimpsed only months or years ahead, he could see decades, even a century.
But those heaven-granted eyes had perished an unnatural death—all for the sake of saving the Immortal Venerable.
And Ming Nan, the Yuanchu Young Clan Master’s own younger brother, was the opposite extreme: even pouring out his full Spiritual Power, he could see no more than a few days ahead. Utterly useless.
—For this reason, and dwarfed by his brother’s legend, Ming Nan had been mockingly dubbed the “Useless Beauty” by all.
Ming Nan’s casting hand shook harder and harder, sweat beading at his temples.
Soon the Water Mirror rippled like a stone dropped into a deep, dark pool—ring after ring spreading wider and wider, the mirror itself trembling violently, as though it would shatter the next instant.
The Spiritual Power in Ming Nan’s body was nearly spent. He clenched his teeth and hurled one final burst of power into the mirror.
A muffled boom—the power detonated.
Ming Nan collapsed boneless over the table, then struggled to lift his head toward the Water Mirror.
The mirror, until now nothing but spreading rings, finally showed an image.
“On the night of the full moon.
Outside the Nine Heavens’ main hall, a White Sparrow tumbles from a window.
He rolls several times on impact, eyes bleary and unfocused, taking a long while to see straight.
The sparrow looks sickly and listless, yet forces himself upright. Glancing left and right and finding no guards, he clamps a single plume in his beak and scurries away in a panic.”
Ming Nan’s brow knotted hard.
That plume… could it be the Phoenix Inheritance?
