After Taotao’s resurrection, Jiang Yan’s life changed a little.
At first, the change wasn’t obvious. The tomb chamber remained quiet; Taotao never suddenly spoke up, never rambled on about himself, and certainly never tried to rope Jiang Yan into any strange story gatherings. He was quiet, sometimes floating up and down the main chamber, sometimes drifting left and right in his own chamber.
When he got tired of floating, he’d lie on the coffin, lying side by side with Jiang Yan.
If Jiang Yan sat up, he’d sit up too.
But he never gave Jiang Yan the feeling he was imitating her. After sitting up, he’d busy himself with his own things—scratching his head, or practicing free fall at the edge of the coffin.
Jiang Yan could tell he was idle and bored, but he never forced her to keep him company.
So they got along in this odd way.
Gradually, as time passed, Jiang Yan noticed something else.
This flower seemed to have gotten dumber.
In her hazy memories, she vaguely recalled that he used to be a yao who could solve problems with her—maybe reading comprehension, maybe math. He wasn’t as fast as she was, but not much slower either.
Yet in the month since Taotao’s resurrection, Jiang Yan clearly sensed his sluggishness. He couldn’t remember the directions in the tomb, slept too much, and whenever he flipped through a few pages of a book, it was as if he was reading a foreign language—he’d clutch his head and float away at top speed.
So, one day when she was in a good mood, Jiang Yan took the initiative to start a conversation:
“Did we ever solve problems together?”
Taotao stared blankly.
After a long time, he finally remembered, and nodded earnestly. “We did.”
“Chen Xihe gave us lots of problems, and we solved them together with the Red Creek Empress… But I’ve forgotten what the problems were. I lost back then, but I was really happy.”
As he spoke, several small flowers fluttered around him.
As if recalling the feeling from back then.
Jiang Yan nodded. “Chen Xihe—I remember him. He was a crane immortal. But the rest, I can’t recall. Do you remember his face?”
Taotao racked his brains.
Finally, he floated up, lay on the coffin, and used the tip of a petal dipped in dust to sketch a rough outline on the coffin.
“White robes, silver hair, two red streaks in his hair, very handsome—looked like a celestial being.”
“That’s probably it.”
Jiang Yan looked down at the drawing, her voice full of disdain: “That’s ugly.”
“That’s supposed to be a celestial being?”
Taotao wasn’t offended. Embarrassed, he quickly wiped the drawing away. “I drew it badly. He was actually very good-looking.”
Jiang Yan made no comment.
Their first conversation after letting the old man go ended there.
A week later, as Jiang Yan sat idly on the coffin, she saw Taotao drag out a scroll from among the burial goods.
The scroll, when unrolled, was a portrait of Jiang Chixi.
Back then, a painter famous across the kingdoms had come to Jiang Kingdom. Jiang Chixi invited her to the palace and paid a heavy price for a portrait.
Later, the painting was buried in the imperial tomb as a grave good.
The scroll had faded. Taotao lay on it, petals propped up, gazing at it for a long time. Jiang Yan thought he’d look for a few hours at most, but he stared for over a dozen hours. Jiang Yan’s sense of time was precise—so precise it had once driven her mad.
“What are you looking at?”
In the silent tomb, Jiang Yan heard her own question.
Taotao: “Looking at you.”
“You used to look a lot like the Red Creek Empress. I think I’m starting to remember more.”
Jiang Yan: “What do you remember?”
“I remember you don’t like cilantro.”
Jiang Yan thought for a moment, finally recalling what that was—the food she hated but had forgotten the name of.
“Cilantro,” she repeated.
Taotao floated up and sat beside her. “You said it was both bitter and fragrant, tasted strange. You liked bitter melon because it was just pure bitterness—very bitter, but without any weird taste!”
Jiang Yan pondered for a long while and nodded lightly.
“Seems about right.”
Taotao yawned and looked at Jiang Yan. “I’m sleepy. I’m going to put the scroll away now. Can I look at this painting again tomorrow?”
Jiang Yan frowned. “Do whatever you want. No need to ask me.”
Taotao explained seriously, “Because I’m looking at you through the portrait.”
“You’re the protagonist. I have to ask you.”
Jiang Yan: “I don’t think you can see me through a painting.”
Taotao hopped onto her shoulder, two petals forming a megaphone: “I can do it!”
Jiang Yan flicked him aside.
“Truly dumb.”
With that, she lay down on the coffin.
She fell asleep quickly. Over the years, Jiang Yan had trained herself to fall asleep at any time. No matter how awake she was, as long as she lay down and closed her eyes, she could drift off in an instant.
In the middle of the night, she vaguely felt her sleeve being tugged.
Jiang Yan used her divine sense to look.
It turned out the little peach blossom had rolled onto the sleeve of her true body, curled up in a ball, as if sleeping in her palm—if she had a hand.
Jiang Yan found the scene strangely familiar.
Since she thought of it, she wanted to confirm, so she immediately woke the little peach blossom.
“Why are you sleeping on me?”
Taotao, half-asleep, instinctively clung to her sleeve. “I dreamed I used to sleep like this.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Jiang Yan thought for a moment, picked him up by the back of the neck, and tossed him to the foot of the coffin. “You can’t sleep like that anymore.”
Taotao accepted this easily.
He rolled over to the corner of the coffin, patted Jiang Yan’s hem. “Sorry.”
“Sleep, sleep.”
With that, his head lolled and he fell asleep again.
Jiang Yan floated up, lowered her head, and studied the flower for several minutes, finally concluding—
This flower was rather obedient.
Dumb, but obedient.
Clumsy, but obedient.
Life in the tomb had finally become a bit more interesting.
From that day on, Jiang Yan and Taotao talked more. Though only a few sentences a day, compared to barely half a sentence a week, it was a huge leap.
Taotao was bored most days. Besides circling Jiang Yan, he’d patrol the burial goods.
Patting the bronze mirror here, kicking the bronze bell there. Once, he kicked too hard, and the ding-dong sound echoed through the tomb.
“!!”
He glanced at Jiang Yan, then covered his ears as if that would hide the sound.
Jiang Yan hadn’t planned to say anything, but his look was so funny that she spoke up: “It’s fine.”
As soon as she finished, several small flowers bloomed out of nowhere in the tomb.
Jiang Yan: “…”
She didn’t know much about peach wood yao, but her instincts told her this habit of blooming everywhere was unusual. It looked so silly, so easy to bully. Any yao, by instinct, would protect and disguise themselves.
This flower seemed to lack that instinct entirely.
After thinking for a while, Jiang Yan took out a book and beckoned Taotao over with her sleeve.
“Come here.”
Taotao floated over at once.
“I’ll teach you how to be a yao.”
Taotao was confused, but nodded hard.
Jiang Yan opened the book. “First, you have to be smart—at least make humans think you’re smart. That way, you’re harder to catch.”
Taotao was puzzled. “I am smart.”
Jiang Yan didn’t argue, but pointed to the first line on the page.
“Read.”
Taotao took two steps back.
After half a minute, Jiang Yan chuckled.
Taotao visibly blushed.
Jiang Yan: “Illiterate.”
Taotao said nothing, just kept his head down.
Jiang Yan understood. “You don’t know this either.”
But she didn’t mean to mock him. She remembered what the peach branch had been like all these years—a dead, withered black stick. Since he was a yao who had died, it was normal to forget things, to forget what he’d learned.
She had forgotten many things too.
No one was complete.
Jiang Yan stroked the pages for a while, then said calmly, “It’s fine. I’ll teach you.”
“From now on, you have to listen to me.”
Taotao looked up in surprise, but this time he didn’t foolishly ask again and again. Instead, he grabbed Jiang Yan’s sleeve and rubbed it against his face.
After this was settled, for the next few months, Jiang Yan taught him some characters every day.
Taotao was slow to learn, but there was plenty of time in the tomb. Jiang Yan had all the time in the world.
And his slowness was only relative.
The comparison was to his former self—he had always been slower than Jiang Yan, so the two were never on the same level.
So Taotao actually learned decently well, never to the point of trying Jiang Yan’s patience. They spent decades like this in the tomb. Taotao worked hard, and after several times the usual effort, finally finished reading the books Jiang Yan had read.
Though finishing didn’t mean remembering—Taotao would forget most of it right away—but he finally had the cognitive ability Jiang Yan accepted.
On the last day of lessons, Jiang Yan put down the book:
“You know all the characters now.”
“Give yourself a name.”
Taotao nodded.
He fiddled with the book using his petals. “I’m a peach wood yao, so I want to use ‘Mu’…”
“That’s too literal. How about the surname Mu?”
Jiang Yan: “Mm.”
The given name was harder to come up with. Taotao flipped through the book, glancing up at Jiang Yan from time to time.
He stared at her for a long while, then finally murmured softly:
“—Wang.”
“I want to be called that.”
Jiang Yan didn’t understand. “Why?”
Mu Wang straightened up and stammered, “I’m looking at you, sister. I want to keep doing that.”
Over the decades, Jiang Yan had thought of having Mu Wang call her ‘Master,’ but he always dodged the issue. She thought about it and realized it would be awkward, so she had him call her ‘Sister’ instead.
Once the form of address was settled, Mu Wang had called her ‘sister’ for many years.
Jiang Yan lowered her gaze.
Mu Wang looked at her. “Sister?”
“It’s nothing,” Jiang Yan looked up again. “If you want to use that name, use it.”
With that, Jiang Yan deftly picked up the sword at her side.
As she expected, as soon as she finished speaking, peach blossoms bloomed in batches throughout the tomb. Jiang Yan stepped forward and cut them all down, then, expressionless, tossed them into the other tomb chambers.
After cleaning up, she returned with the sword.
“Alright, sleep.”
*
Years passed.
Days with company were always better. In her time with Mu Wang, Jiang Yan recalled more memories.
Some she remembered herself, some Mu Wang brought up.
Once, Mu Wang mentioned a story from long ago, about wildflowers in a cave and an umbrella made from red thread.
“It rained a lot that day. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to repay your kindness, so I cried for a long time and disturbed you while you were sleeping in the cave. You were annoyed by my noise and kept thinking of ways to shut me up. In the end, you made me an umbrella.”
Jiang Yan had also dreamed of that story recently.
Though not as detailed, she remembered a corner of her own thoughts from back then.
Casually, she said, “It wasn’t that noisy, really.”
“I gave you the umbrella because I thought your singing was alright.”
Hearing this, Mu Wang sat quietly on the coffin, side by side with Jiang Yan.
After a long time, he whispered, “So that’s how it was.”
Jiang Yan picked up the sword at her side again.
Three minutes later, she dumped an armful of peach blossoms into the next chamber.
The little peach blossom flew around behind her. Jiang Yan’s voice was cold: “Next time, do it yourself.”
“Okay, okay!”
After tidying up, Jiang Yan sat back on the coffin, picked up a book and started reading. Taotao peeked over, then clutched his forehead and sat aside, keeping himself far from the sea of knowledge.
Jiang Yan read all day.
Taotao sat beside her all day.
That’s how they always were—when tired, they’d fall asleep. Only now, Jiang Yan no longer tossed Taotao to the foot of the coffin. Even if he tugged on her sleeve and draped it over himself, she could just barely pretend not to notice.
It wasn’t a big deal.
Not a big deal.
At some point, time began to speed up instead of crawl.
Centuries passed just like that.
When she next encountered tomb robbers, Jiang Yan had almost forgotten such things existed. It had been so long since she’d killed anyone that when she sensed human presence, she froze for a few seconds before floating out of the tomb.
A man in strange clothes was squatting at the tomb entrance, studying the mechanism.
His companion was talking animatedly.
“It’s too tightly controlled now. Hard to fence this stuff domestically. Let’s sell it overseas—I know some foreigners who pay big money.”
The man asked, “They collect privately?”
“Some do. They love our stuff. I know a foreigner who, before he died, donated all his treasures to their museum—several of those were things I sold him, ha!”
“Impressive—”
Jiang Yan floated behind them, her sleeve gently tapping their shoulders.
One of them shuddered and quickly turned around.
He slowly scanned the tomb, found nothing, and let out a deep sigh of relief. He turned back—only to come face to face with the bridal gown hanging upside down from the tomb ceiling.
A piercing scream rang out.
In a flash, Jiang Yan’s sleeve shot through the man’s chest, then used red threads to hang the others in the air. Seconds passed, the threads tightened, and the men’s struggles grew weaker and weaker.
At this moment, Taotao flew out of the tomb.
He looked around, then flew straight to the first man. Passing through his neck, then, covered in blood, through the second. Half a minute later, he was sitting on Jiang Yan’s shoulder.
Both of them were now covered in the scent of blood.
“Let’s wash up.”
He used yao power to clean both himself and Jiang Yan, muttering, “Sure enough, my true body can ward off evil. None of them dared look straight at me—they were all really bad people.”
“Sister is the best.”
With that, he leaned over, pressing against Jiang Yan’s cheek.
“What’s so good?”
Mu Wang: “Everything.”
Jiang Yan smiled, floating back to the tomb. What had just happened was just a footnote in the corner of her life. Time went on as always. No one here feared her, no one wanted to hurt her. She lived more and more at ease.
Sometimes she liked the quiet, sometimes she wanted to hear voices.
Whenever Jiang Yan wanted to be alone, Mu Wang never made a sound.
But whenever she looked at him, he always gave her the perfect emotional response.
Sometimes, in fact, he was so enthusiastic it was noisy.
But in the silent darkness underground, it took a lot of noise to keep loneliness at bay.
Just as Jiang Yan had gotten used to this life, her yao age, with the blessing of the dragon vein, reached six thousand years. Her perception of the world grew sharper, and one day she suddenly sensed a drastic change in the rules of heaven and earth.
Soon, yao would no longer be able to take human form.
She vaguely sensed many of her kind frantically trying to transform, using every method they could, even if they hadn’t reached the age for it.
Before the rules of heaven and earth completely changed, Jiang Yan found Mu Wang.
She explained everything to him, told him she didn’t plan to transform, would wait until the Empress’s tomb was excavated, and hoped he would take human form.
Mu Wang couldn’t accept this.
He kept saying he didn’t want to transform at all. His true body was a tree—one of the living things most destroyed by humans. He didn’t want to live in the human world, and didn’t want to try those strange things.
But Jiang Yan knew he didn’t really hate humans that much.
“You used to love the people of Jiang Kingdom, and felt fulfilled bringing them blessings.”
Mu Wang shook his head. “But I’m scared.”
Jiang Yan: “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Mu Wang felt Jiang Yan didn’t understand him. He hurried to explain, but Jiang Yan stopped him.
“I think I said it many years ago.”
“Besides companionship, nothing else can move me.”
“You’ve been here long enough. I do need company, but I don’t need someone to give up everything for it.”
Jiang Yan said bluntly, “I can see desire.”
“There’s no sunlight here. Your true body is a flower, you’ve longed to leave—I know.”
Mu Wang corrected, “But in that vision, you were there.”
Jiang Yan smiled. “I’ll be there.”
“Go on, Mu Wang.”
*
After Mu Wang left, Jiang Yan spent fifty years alone.
The peach branches she’d cut in the tomb never withered. From time to time, dewdrops would appear on the petals. Jiang Yan knew there was no way for dew to form in this environment, so she knew exactly what it meant.
But she never needed anyone to sacrifice for her.
Fifty years later, the Empress’s tomb finally saw the light of day. The many burial goods inside shocked the nation, especially the thousands of unique books, all their writing still legible, filling countless gaps in the historical record.
Jiang Yan had no teleportation ability, and when she tried to leave, found the tomb surrounded by people.
So she gave up on escaping and naturally entered the national museum.
She spent ten years in the museum.
During those ten years, peach blossom petals would occasionally appear under her display case, keeping her company day after day.
One day, an old man brought nine talismans and visited the museum at night, walking straight to her display.
After helping her take human form, the old man asked if she could agree to a few conditions.
“Join the Supernatural Administration Bureau, and participate in a program.”
“You can’t withdraw midway. I’ll mail you the details.”
Jiang Yan felt the aura of those talismans was familiar, but couldn’t recall where she’d sensed it before, so she put it out of her mind.
She asked the old man, “Is this your way of asking me to repay a favor?”
The old man nodded.
Jiang Yan sighed softly.
“Alright.”