[My own headcanons abound; the protagonist belongs to Sanshu, any OOC is on me]
[Immortality + white moonlight + female lead! + changing the plot to save characters from their doomed fates + original tomb-raiding plot]
[No BL, just brotherhood. For detailed content warnings, see the beginning of Chapter 1.]
To Qi Youning, the years were no more than sand slipping through her fingers. Whenever someone called her name, a thousand years of time came tumbling down.
The rain came pouring down. Qi Youning crouched beneath the eaves, lighting a charcoal fire. When Wu Xie came closer, he found that her wrist was colder than the bluestone.
"Where's Xiaoge?"
"Wiping his knife." Qi Youning nudged the charcoal. "I can't get the blood rust off."
Wang Pangzi poked his head out and shouted, "Who took my clay jar?"
She raised the pot she was using to boil water. "This one? I found it under your bed this morning."
"That's a burial artifact from a Han tomb!"
Xie Yuchen arrived through the rain. The towel Qi Youning handed him had the exact same pattern as one in the old Xie family home.
Black Glasses smoked in a corner of the veranda, then suddenly asked, "What's the hardest thing about living forever?"
She counted the drops of rain falling from the eaves. "Watching every one of you become a character in a story."
"What's the scariest thing about living so long?" Qi Youning gazed at the new begonias planted in the corner of the courtyard. "Realizing all of a sudden that even the most ordinary fallen flower was planted by someone I once knew."
The iron kettle began to whistle. Steam blurred everyone's expressions, and the copper bell under the eaves rang softly, drowning out her sigh as she realized she couldn't taste the tea.
