Heart Demon

Time blurred until moonlight began to crawl over the window lattice. Only then did the sound of footsteps echo outside the door once more.

This time there were three people, though they all maintained a tacit distance from one another. Li Nanzhu heard Duan Xianxing pacing back and forth, the crisp sound of Zhu Yinxi occasionally tapping his jade flute, and... the rustling of Feng Yi's sleeves brushing against leaves.

"Master..." Duan Xianxing suddenly broke the silence. "Junior Sister, she..."

"She needs time." Feng Yi's voice was colder than usual.

"But..."

"Shut up." The tip of Zhu Yinxi's flute pressed against the small of Duan Xianxing's back. "Let's go."

After a brief scuffle, the footsteps gradually faded into the distance.

Li Nanzhu still gripped the green jade fan tightly. The words "The sky won't fall" inscribed on the surface glowed faintly in the moonlight.

She suddenly discovered a withered bamboo leaf stuck in the gaps of the fan's ribs—it was something Xiao Yan always loved to tuck in there whenever he used the fan to hide his face.

This discovery caused her tears to break through the dam once again.

She curled up in the corner of the bed, clutching the bamboo bird, the spirit stones, and the fan in her arms, her entire body shaking as she sobbed.

Suisui patted her back helplessly, its joints making soft, crisp clicking sounds.

Outside the window, Duan Xianxing's footsteps suddenly stopped. "Maybe I should..."

"Go back," Feng Yi interrupted him. "Come again tomorrow."

The footsteps finally retreated, leaving only the rustling of wind blowing through the bamboo leaves.

Li Nanzhu's sobs were exceptionally clear in the empty room. She knew she shouldn't be like this—a war correspondent's greatest skill was hiding vulnerability—but the tears simply wouldn't stop.

Suisui suddenly pulled something from its chest: a ring woven from the stems of spirit grass, with several unripe vermilion fruits hanging between the leaves.

It carefully slid the ring onto Li Nanzhu's pinky finger, its soul fire gently brushing against her wrist.

Li Nanzhu looked at the crude ring and remembered that this was a unique spirit grass from Xiao Yan's medicinal garden. That day, while complaining about her poor fire control, he had woven a heat-resistant finger sleeve for her from those very stems.

"Click, click!" Suisui produced a small cloth bundle containing a few dried tea leaves—the specific white tea with a scent of pine resin that Xiao Yan loved most. The little skeleton clumsily brewed a cup of tea and handed it to her. In the rising steam, the fragrance of the tea was exactly as she remembered.

She finally cried until she was exhausted and fell into a heavy sleep while clutching the fan.

Hazily, she felt Suisui move lightly to cover her with a blanket and arrange the bamboo bird and spirit stones in their proper places by her pillow.

The sensation of the skeletal claws brushing against her forehead was cold yet gentle, reminding her of a young nurse in a field hospital who used to secretly give her an extra half-bar of chocolate.

...

In Li Nanzhu's dream, Xiao Yan's figure kept dissipating.

Each time, she reached out desperately, trying to grab the hem of those green robes, but her fingertips only ever passed through void and dust. She heard Xiao Yan's laughter and saw him unfolding the fan to cover half his face, but whenever she tried to get close, his silhouette crumbled like grains of sand.

"Master!" she cried out in the dream, but her voice felt swallowed by something, leaving not even an echo.

The only thing she could hear was that airy sentence—

"The sky won't fall."

"Don't go..." She stumbled forward, only to see Xiao Yan's figure begin to shatter. First the hem of his robe, then the hand holding the fan, and finally those smiling eyes—all turned into fine sand that slipped through her fingers.

She snapped awake, her back slamming against the bedboard. Cold sweat had soaked her inner garments, making them stick clammily to her body.

It was still deep night outside, with moonlight spilling coldly before the bed. Suisui was curled up by her pillow; sensing her movement, the soul fire in its eye sockets flickered rapidly, emitting a weak blue light.

Li Nanzhu slowly sat up, her fingertips unconsciously rubbing the ribs of the green jade fan.

"Heart demon."

The term rolled off her tongue with a trace of bitterness.

She wasn't unaware of what this meant.

On the battlefields of the modern world, she had seen too many people consumed by obsession—in Gaza, a mother held the remains of her daughter until the body began to fester with maggots; in Syria, a soldier who watched his comrade get blown to bits finally ended his own life with a tourniquet.

Not to mention in the cultivation world, the heart demon was the most widely known obstacle.

At best, it caused cultivation to stagnate; at worst, it led to qi deviation. But she wouldn't say a word, nor would she let anyone know.

Suisui's skeletal claw lightly touched her wrist. The cold sensation made her shiver slightly. The little skeleton tilted its head, the soul fire reflecting her pale face.

"I'm fine," she whispered, her voice so raspy it didn't sound like her own.

—She didn't need pity.

This thought was branded into her very bones.

Since her earliest memories, when she was bullied by other children in the orphanage, when she was isolated at school, when her reporting was stolen and she resolutely headed to the front lines to become a war correspondent... she had always survived this way.

The moonlight shifted, shining on the bamboo bird at the head of the bed. Li Nanzhu reached out to touch it, and the bamboo strips made a faint creaking sound.

She suddenly remembered what Xiao Yan had said: "Disciple, don't always worry about those trivial things. Even if the sky falls, your master is here to hold it up for you."

But now, the person who said he would hold up the sky for her was gone.

Suisui suddenly burrowed into her arms, its joints making soft clicking sounds.

Li Nanzhu instinctively hugged it, feeling the faint warmth from the soul fire. Outside, the first light of dawn was quietly peeking through the window.

She abruptly pulled the curtains shut, cutting off the light. The room fell back into gloom. She leaned against the wall and slowly slid to the floor, the green jade fan pressed against her brow, its ribs digging painfully into her skin.

Two days.

Twenty-four double-hours.

She did not step out of the room once.

The food sent to her piled up like a small mountain by the door, only to be taken away untouched.

Suisui had scratched the pattern of the Big Dipper into the floorboards. Finally, Feng Yi personally delivered fasting pills. While she was in a daze, the little skeleton used its ribs to pry open her jaw and shove the pills into her mouth.

Li Nanzhu was unaware of most of this. She only occasionally heard the sound of Duan Xianxing pacing outside or the tentative tapping of Zhu Yinxi's jade flute against the doorframe, but she never responded.

Only in the dead of night would she allow herself to make any sound. The pain of nails digging deep into her palms, the teeth marks left on the back of her hand, and the tears soaking her sleeves were the only witnesses to those two days.

She paced the room like a trapped beast, sometimes weeping, sometimes trembling in a corner.

On the third morning, she suddenly went quiet.

Li Nanzhu stepped onto the cold floor with bare feet. The chill traveled up from her soles, clearing her chaotic thoughts a little.

The bronze mirror reflected a terrifyingly haggard figure. Her hair was messy and stuck to her sweat-dampened forehead, and her lips were cracked from dehydration.

She stared at herself in the mirror for a long time. The person in the reflection was so pale she was almost transparent, and the two dark circles under her eyes were particularly striking.

She reached out to touch her cheek, feeling cold skin and slightly sunken eye sockets.

"Ha..." A self-deprecating laugh echoed in the empty room. A war correspondent? A cultivator? Just a piece of trash who couldn't even control her own tears.

Suisui ran over in a panic, its skeletal claws clumsily patting her back, just like... mimicking the movements of a certain person in its memory.