They say gods do not weep. But he did.

In the heart of the Celestial Realm, beneath silver skies and crimson moonlight, he held her broken body in his arms—her white robes stained with blood, her nine golden tails dimming with every breath.

“Who did this?” he had whispered, voice shaking for the first time in centuries.

But her lips trembled with more than pain. Her gaze—those eyes that once held mischief and moonlight—now shimmered only with betrayal.

“I trusted you,” she murmured.
And then... she was gone.

That night, thunder cracked across the heavens. But no justice followed.

The Moon Goddess watched from her palace, veil unshaken.
The Celestial Court declared it fate.

The Fox Clan mourned their Lady in silence, retreating deep into the realm of spirits. They never found her body.

And the War God—once proud heir to the Celestial Throne—locked his heart behind walls no one could breach.

He never stopped searching for the soul who once called him beloved.

A thousand years passed.
The realms forgot. But he never did.

Now, a servant girl enters his palace—eyes like wildfire, voice like a memory.

Something stirs.

And fate, it seems, is not finished with them yet.

That night, Jin Mei found his friend seated atop the North Tower, staring at the horizon as if trying to read the stars.


"You're brooding again," Jin Mei announced, casually tossing an apple in the air. "That usually means something's terribly wrong… or someone's making you feel things."


Jin Mei sat beside him anyway. "It's about that servant girl, isn't it?"


Xuan Yue's eyes flickered. "She's not who she says she is."


"Well, clearly," Jin Mei said, biting into the apple. "No ordinary maid stares down generals, vanishes in hallways, and moves like she's gliding on air."


"She even knew how to disarm a wind trap," Xuan Yue murmured, more to himself.


Jin Mei choked. "A wind trap? From the Hall of Ancient Techniques?"


"She disabled it like she'd set it herself."


Jin Mei swallowed the rest of his apple whole. "Okay. You need to tell me if you're harboring a hidden assassin, a runaway princess, or your dead ex in disguise. Because that's a lot of dramatic tension for one palace."


A ghost of a smile tugged at Xuan Yue's lips.


"Everything about her reminds me," Xuan Yue said lowly. "But her eyes — they carry pain. Not just grief… betrayal."


Jin Mei leaned back. "So what will you do?"


Jin Mei's voice softened. "Don't push her away too fast. Truth finds a way to come out. But if you crush it before it does… you might lose it again."


Meanwhile, deep beneath the palace — in the archives no one dared to enter — Li Hua knelt before an ancient scroll.


unless love can seal what death could not."


She remembered the moment she died. Or rather… was supposed to die.


But she also remembered his arms catching her as she fell — the way he'd cried out her name.


The name no one had uttered in a thousand years.


If he truly was the one who saved her… then everything she believed… might be a lie.


Chapter 34 - Chapter 33 – The Mask and the Memory