Netherworld Flowers, Tears Beneath the Red Veil

Beside the Netherworld Lake, pale yellow and white seven-petaled Netherworld Flowers have swayed for millennia. This is the heart of the barrier protecting the underworld. At the bottom of the lake sleeps an ancient passage connecting the immortal realm and the demon realm, which opens for a brief moment at midnight once every three thousand years. The Nether King’s younger sister, Ye Buyu, lives alone in the Netherworld Palace by the lake, anchoring the barrier with her own body for eighteen thousand years. She loves the only living things capable of blooming in the land of the dead, and has spread a sea of flowers from the lakeshore to the palace walls. She watches the white petals cradle golden stamens, blossoming with a desolate vitality beneath the eternal night. People say that a fated person can make a wish by picking a Netherworld Flower, but they do not know that when the flowers wither, their picker fades away too, their soul turning into starlight that falls upon the lake.

That night, the soul of a mortal child named Simu strayed into the Netherworld Lake. The lamplight of the human world reflected in his eyes shattered Ye Buyu’s ten thousand years of solitude. She taught him to play the qin and read scripture, and kept him company as they planted every flowerbed along the lake. Thirty thousand years flowed like honey through their fingers. When the boy grew into a young man, the tenderness in the corners of his eyes and the curve of his brows was so familiar to her that she finally broke a thousand-year-old prohibition. She stole the elixir of Rebirth from beneath the Nether King’s seat, trading half her cultivation for a sliver of immortal bone for him. As the barrier opened, Simu picked a Netherworld Flower. Its golden stamen warmed gently in his palm. "When I become a true immortal, I will welcome you out of the underworld with a bridal procession stretching ten miles, all made of flowers."

But she never lived to see that day. For tampering with the barrier, Ye Buyu was imprisoned in the Ninefold Abyss for ten thousand years. When her sentence was over, she saw her elder brother, Ye Xiu, hand her a wedding invitation from the immortal realm. Simu and the Immortal Maiden Nishang’s wedding banquet had already been set in the Thirty-Third Heaven. She staggered toward the Netherworld Lake, only to see the flower he had picked all those years ago turning into starlight as it sank to the lakebed. Each speck reflected his smiling face in the immortal realm.

"So a mortal's wish can change after all." She lightly touched the frost that had newly appeared in her hair, her fingertips passing over the unopened bridal trousseau on the table...