“…Zhaozhao!”
Qin Shu shot upright. His heart pounded like a drum and his entire body burned, yet cold sweat poured from him, soaking through his pajamas.
Pajamas?
Qin Shu could not see clearly. He wanted to figure out where he was, but his vision simply would not cooperate, so he could only judge from the difference in the texture of the fabric.
Blurred double images floated before his eyes. Perhaps the pressure and impact of escaping the ghost domain had been too severe, because it felt as though he had somehow developed an advanced case of extreme eye floaters overnight.
Dense little black specks danced and churned through his vision, further disturbing his already chaotic mind.
Just as Qin Shu sat there bewildered and helpless, familiar footsteps gradually approached from not far away and stopped beside him.
A cool hand pressed against Qin Shu’s forehead. After several seconds, it lightly brushed across his face.
“Your fever is almost gone.” Pei Zhao sat beside him, making the soft mattress dip slightly. “Qin Shu, I’m here.”
Hearing that familiar voice beside his ear, Qin Shu could not stop his eyes from burning. He lifted his arms to hug Pei Zhao, but halfway through the movement, he slowly drew them back.
“…Zhaozhao, I’m covered in sweat.”
“Mm. Forty-three degrees. It was rather serious.” Pei Zhao moved a little closer. His soft fingertips carried the same familiar coolness as they rested lightly on Qin Shu’s wrist. “You’re fine now. It would be best not to shower yet.”
Qin Shu caught his arm with his other hand. “Can the current me still get sick?”
“…”
Pei Zhao fell silent for a moment, then shook his head. Ordinary illnesses would no longer happen to him. Pei Zhao had wanted to preserve the atmosphere of an ordinary everyday life, but if Qin Shu did not want it, that illusion could no longer continue.
“Zhaozhao, did you already know… No, I should ask whether you had already seen the current me?”
Qin Shu’s vision had still not fully recovered, but that did not prevent him from clearly sensing Pei Zhao’s emotions. Those tiny fluctuations seemed to dissolve quietly into the air.
So he tested the question. Even though he already had an answer in his heart, he wanted a clearer confirmation.
“Yes. Qin Shu, I saw the current you long ago,” Pei Zhao said softly. “I was his anchor when he looked toward the future, and he was my anchor when I looked back into the past… Everything you did inside the ghost domain, I already knew. I could see it all.”
Hearing this, Qin Shu’s heart began pounding again. The stone that had already settled inside him sank even deeper.
He drew a deep breath and suddenly shouted at an absurd volume, “Pei Zhao, I knew you were the kindest person in the entire world! I genuinely don’t understand why nobody believes me. Are they all blind?”
“…Mm?” Pei Zhao froze and slowly blinked, having no idea how he was supposed to answer.
It was honestly rather funny. So much time had passed. He and Qin Shu had muddled along together for so long, and Pei Zhao had spent enough time in the modern world to adapt to it… Yet for some reason, there were still moments when Qin Shu said things Pei Zhao simply could not understand.
“Zhaozhao, you really are kind.” Qin Shu gently squeezed his hand. After that brief emotional explosion, his voice lowered again, carrying the distinct hoarseness left by a high fever. “You treat me so well. I treated you badly.”
Badly did not even begin to cover it.
As Qin Shu left the ghost domain, while he and his former self stared at each other, Qin Shu had fixed his gaze on those cold scarlet eyes. He could see nothing but pure malice, blatant bloodthirsty animal instinct, and even a trace of… excitement that made him profoundly uneasy.
“That wasn’t your fault.” Pei Zhao naturally understood what he meant, but his tone did not change in the slightest. It remained almost cold in its calmness.
“But that was me. I know he was me. That version of me really wasn’t a good person. He was a supervillain-level bastard,” Qin Shu said gloomily.
“Mm. But I don’t dislike him.”
“…Huh?”
“Qin Shu, you know I like it when you’re fierce with me.”
Now it was Qin Shu’s turn to freeze. For a moment he was completely at a loss, his mouth opening as though to argue, but after thinking carefully, he discovered he genuinely had no rebuttal. Qin Shu rarely became truly angry, which made those occasions stand out all the more.
Pei Zhao had never shown disgust toward it. There had been no obvious resistance or trauma response, but… but. Pei Zhao became exceptionally obedient. Looking back now, he had been obedient to an almost abnormal degree.
Pei Zhao also fell quiet for a while, allowing the realization to settle slowly between them. He seemed to need a moment to process it himself before speaking again. “Whenever I think about how you always seem a little silly, but actually aren’t stupid at all, and how an entirely different nature is hidden in your bones… If that vivid, bright outer skin were peeled away and a monster underneath was revealed, it would give me a strange feeling.”
“What kind of strange feeling…?”
“I am a dragon, Qin Shu. No matter how calm and restrained I am, I still have physical needs,” Pei Zhao said, becoming increasingly direct. “Things are different now, and my needs have decreased by eighty or ninety percent compared with before… but compared with a human, they are still greater, not lesser.”
“Wait. Wait, wait! Pei Zhao, you can’t think like that. No, no, you… I…”
Qin Shu’s entire body heated up, as though he had been dragged straight back into that dizzying, burning fever. He instinctively pulled Pei Zhao’s hand against his cheek to cool himself down, which had precisely the opposite effect.
He was almost incapable of rational thought. After stammering for ages, he still managed to ask the single thing he cared about most. “First make this clear. Which version of me do you like more?”
“The current you.” The corner of Pei Zhao’s mouth lifted. He answered without hesitation.
“…That’s more like it. But why do you like him at all?” Qin Shu could not get past it. “You can hate him. You should hate him.”
“He was an underworld official. That was his job, and he did it very well, didn’t he? Even if personal feelings were involved, that still does not make it evil.”
Qin Shu tightened his grip on Pei Zhao’s wrist. “Zhaozhao, stop defending him.”
“All right. But you need to understand this. Having physical needs does not mean he tortured me into madness. I can face pleasure directly, accept it, and embrace it, because that is how my race has always lived. Pain and trauma are what are truly difficult to speak about.”
Pei Zhao lowered his eyes slightly and explained in a quiet voice, his tone more serious than usual. “So, Qin Shu, from beginning to end, I have always preferred the current you.”
“…Mm. Me too.” Qin Shu had barely finished before shaking his head forcefully and correcting himself with a serious expression. “No! I like every version. No matter what you’re like, I especially like you. Whatever you do to me, I’ll be happy. Pei Zhao, you could turn into a mountain right now and crush me into a pancake.”
Pei Zhao: “…”
Pei Zhao fell silent for a moment, temporarily ignoring this inexplicably earthshaking declaration, and answered seriously, “The same is true for me. That is why I do not hate him.”
“You mean the version of you who was Lord Zhaoyuan felt the same way?”
“Mm.”
Qin Shu hesitated. “Inside the ghost domain, I only spent a little over a month with you… But before that, a very, very long time ago, in the real Zhoujue Yin Prison, I never appeared. You met Warden Qin first.”
So in the original reality at the very beginning… there had been no warm, relaxed conversations, no tense and exciting Go matches, no Qin Shu sleeping so soundly he forgot heaven and earth, and no entertainment of any kind.
At Lord Zhaoyuan’s side there had been only fine iron chains tearing open his reverse scales and tangling through his flesh, together with that gloomy, vicious Warden Qin whom humans and ghosts alike feared.
“Mm.”
Pei Zhao raised a hand and gently brushed his palm across Qin Shu’s still aching, heavy eyes. “Long ago, on one completely ordinary day, I saw a Red Thread on Warden Qin’s wrist that was connected to me.”
The familiar gentle magic seeped into Qin Shu’s brow. Coolness wrapped around and nourished his Purple Palace, and his muddled vision abruptly cleared until the world was no longer blurred.
At last, Qin Shu could see Pei Zhao’s face clearly. He looked no different from before Qin Shu had fallen into the ghost domain, cool and gentle, like a handful of cold snow.
Qin Shu stared at Pei Zhao. He did not even have time to thank him before immediately asking, “Zhaozhao, the first time you discovered there was a… a Red Thread between us, you only knew the me from my previous life, right? How did you feel at the time?”
Pei Zhao smiled. “Exactly the way you feel now. I thought I was insane.”
“Cough. I would never think that about you! At most, it was a little like…” Qin Shu stopped and reorganized his words before saying softly, “developing feelings for someone who had hurt you when you shouldn’t have.”
Pei Zhao looked thoughtful after hearing this, but after a long while he suddenly asked a completely unrelated question. “Qin Shu, do you know that you’re very good-looking?”
“…Huh?”
“Even earlier, after I heard that Xuanming had fallen, I once let my soul roam at night and secretly went to investigate what sort of creature you were.” Reminiscence entered Pei Zhao’s eyes. Seeing Qin Shu become increasingly bewildered, he laughed softly.
“So you actually saw me long before that? Zhoujue Yin Prison wasn’t really our first meeting?” Qin Shu suddenly understood, and seemed to grasp Pei Zhao’s feelings a little better.
“Mm. I saw you long before. The divine beast Xiezhi, wings upon its back, its entire body dark as the ghostfire of Fengdu, a cold single horn capable of tearing Heaven and Earth apart. When its blood-red eyes swept across the world, every evil was exposed. You were truly imposing… I hid among the clouds and watched you. You sensed me and looked up from afar.”
Pei Zhao’s voice grew softer and softer. Dim light gathered in his golden eyes as though he intended to pull Qin Shu into that unknown, mysterious ancient age.
Then he paused, and a faint smile appeared at his lips. “After looking at me once, you turned around and left. You were not interested in me at all.”
“…I wasn’t interested in you? Was I sick?”
Qin Shu was deeply shaken. A moment later, understanding dawned on him again. “Wait, Zhaozhao, I know! It must have been because you hadn’t done anything wrong. You were just a curious little dragon who embodied truth, goodness, and beauty. Looking at someone isn’t illegal, so of course a Xiezhi wouldn’t attack you.”
Pei Zhao did not argue.
“I really was young then, simple-minded and inexperienced. I had never seen anything more beautiful than you. Glittering jewels, jade, mountains of gold, seas of emerald, no matter how dazzling they were, they were still dead objects. But Qin Shu… you were not a dead object.”
Qin Shu listened quietly without speaking. Pei Zhao rarely praised him so directly. Qin Shu still did not know what to do with himself, and meeting Pei Zhao’s eyes for too long gave him the sensation of developing another fever.
In the end, he forcibly kept his gaze fixed on Pei Zhao and only then noticed that Pei Zhao’s wrist was bare. The glittering cat’s-eye bracelet had disappeared at some point.
Something might have happened outside while Qin Shu was trapped in the ghost domain. A sudden premonition stirred inside him.
But he did not ask. Only an idiot would interrupt Pei Zhao at a moment like this and miss the truly important part.
“When you see something overwhelmingly beautiful while you are still young, then even if the rest of your life lasts tens of thousands of years, fewer and fewer things will ever be capable of moving you. You cannot let go easily, nor can you compromise casually. It is simply the nature carved into the bones.”
Qin Shu heard Pei Zhao continue softly, “Qin Shu, in a certain sense, perhaps we are the same kind. Your goodness and your evil, however extreme either may be, I want them both. I want the most unique, most complete version of you, the only one in Heaven and Earth.”
At the words same kind, Qin Shu finally understood Pei Zhao completely. If their positions were reversed, if Qin Shu had been the one imprisoned…
It was rather perverse, but he would want the same thing.
Qin Shu laughed and could not resist teasing him. “Lord Zhaoyuan, so your desire for control isn’t the only thing that’s strong. You’re incredibly possessive too, aren’t you?”
Pei Zhao nodded frankly. “It is simply my nature. That is normal. Qin Shu, whatever entanglements and grudges existed between us in the past are ultimately only past events. Mount Luofeng has collapsed, the Six Heavenly Palaces no longer exist, and the ghost domain can only cycle endlessly inside a crack in time precisely because nothing can be done again. Looking forward is enough.”
“Looking forward.”
Qin Shu repeated the words softly. After a brief silence, he suddenly drew a very deep breath. “Then I need to shower first. Wait for me. Five minutes!”
Pei Zhao froze, then watched Qin Shu spring up, grab a towel and a huge pile of clean clothes at top speed, and rush into the bathroom.
The sound of water came almost immediately. Scalding steam curled together and rapidly spilled from beneath the door.
Ever since being tormented by the divine phoenix’s true fire and Granny A-Shu’s red pill, Qin Shu had completely stopped fearing high temperatures. He turned the water to its hottest setting, and the bathroom quickly became a foggy steamer where he could barely see his own hand. A thin veil of mist covered the mirror above the sink.
Qin Shu raised a hand, wiped away the condensation, lifted that veil, and looked at his still slightly blurred reflection.
His head was covered in bubbles. His body was covered in bubbles. His skin held a faint flush from the high fever and the hot water, while his eyes looked unusually bright.
He genuinely could not see what was so special about his appearance. He had looked up all kinds of Xiezhi statues in museums before and still could not understand what was supposed to be beautiful about the divine beast.
During that brief interval of observation and thought, mist covered the mirror again and Qin Shu’s expression blurred.
But even if Qin Shu could not appreciate an aesthetic related to himself, it did not actually matter.
Pei Zhao wanted it. Pei Zhao got it.
…And whatever Pei Zhao wanted, Qin Shu wanted to give him too.
Qin Shu scrubbed himself thoroughly from front to back twice at top speed, used an extra pump of conditioner and an absurd amount of facial cleanser, and washed away the last traces of weakness left by his abnormal fever.
He turned off the water, wrapped a towel around his head, rubbed his hair viciously until it was half dry, then changed into an ordinary soft sweatshirt suitable for early spring. After pausing for another deep breath, he opened the door and went out.
“Zhaozhao, I’m here!”
Pei Zhao was still sitting beside the bed. He held a newly purchased guide analyzing exemplary essays for the gaokao and had only turned a few pages.
“Um, Zhaozhao… can we skip practice questions today? Just take one day off. My mind isn’t on studying.”
Pei Zhao looked up at him. Seeing Qin Shu acting strangely, he closed the book and set it aside, speechless. “I do not believe I have ever been strict to that extent. I would not force you to study while you were ill.”
“Good.” Qin Shu secretly exhaled in relief, sat down, took Pei Zhao’s hand, and straightened his back a little. “Pei Zhao, then I’m going to say something.”
“Mm.”
“You told me to look forward, but I know I’m still going to overthink and look all over the place. When something involves you, I just have a ridiculous number of little thoughts. I can’t change that.”
Pei Zhao blinked, apparently seeing no difficulty whatsoever. “All right. Then don’t change.”
Qin Shu secretly monitored his heartbeat, worked to keep his breathing steady, and smiled. “So I looked forward and backward, left and right, and looked at everything I wanted to see… and in the end, I can still reach one very clear answer.”
The pressure around Pei Zhao’s wrist quietly increased, like a net slowly tightening.
Pei Zhao lowered his eyes to the faint redness Qin Shu’s fingers had left around his wrist, then looked up into Qin Shu’s bright black eyes and suddenly became a little nervous. It was a very strange feeling, and he could not explain why.
“…What answer?” Pei Zhao asked.
Qin Shu’s expression was serious. With extraordinary solemnity, he slowly said, “Pei Zhao, I like you.”
Pei Zhao froze and tilted his head slightly. “I know. I like you too.”
“Do you really know what I mean?” Qin Shu’s gaze grew hotter, but his speech became slower, clearer, and more direct.
“Dating, kissing, marriage, sex, spending our lives together. Everything friends can do, I want to do. Everything friends can’t do, I want to do that too. Pei Zhao, do you understand?”
“I understand. The moment I saw the Red Thread connecting us, I knew, and I accepted long ago that one day we would become Dao companions. Something destined to happen is only a question of sooner or later.”
Pei Zhao seemed slightly flushed, though it was difficult to see. After thinking for a moment, he added quietly, “I simply never expected that the karmic bond represented by the Red Thread would not truly come to pass until your third life.”
“But Pei Zhao, I don’t care whether that Red Thread exists at all. Even if there were no Red Thread, even if we were reproductively incompatible, even if the Jade Emperor himself said we could absolutely never become Dao companions or he’d cut off my head, I still wouldn’t accept the situation just because of that.
“No matter how fate intends to arrange our future, I will first do what I want to do and pursue what I sincerely want to have. I’ll act on my own initiative instead of waiting for fate to fall onto my head. So now I’m asking you again. Think seriously. Consider it carefully.”
Qin Shu extended his other hand and interlaced their fingers, looking deeply into Pei Zhao’s eyes before asking again with absolute seriousness, “I like you, Pei Zhao. Will you be with me?”
Pei Zhao’s breathing caught. He was almost drawn completely into those abyss-like eyes. Everywhere Qin Shu touched him felt hot. Even his breath was hot.
He abruptly discovered that he could neither think nor avoid Qin Shu’s gaze. But he still obediently tried his hardest to think about it before answering softly, “I will.”
“Then I’m going to kiss you.”
Qin Shu’s voice seemed slightly hoarse, but Pei Zhao could no longer pay attention to details like that.
He stared blankly at Qin Shu’s brows and eyes, the bridge of his nose, his lips, all so close. He wanted to open his mouth and answer, yet not a single word came out. He could only allow himself to be gathered into those firm, powerful arms and pulled closer, like a small piece of ice quietly melting into magma.
The sweatshirt smelled of laundry detergent and sunlight, while fresh citrus fragrance rose from Qin Shu’s neck. Qin Shu’s embrace was a seedbed where desire could grow wildly.
Dry, soft lips covered his with extraordinary care, barely touching.
Pei Zhao could no longer think of anything.