Wen Miao is the most doted-on junior disciple in the Immortal Realm. With her bright eyes and a tendency to burst into tears, she is always being patted on the head and coaxed by her senior brothers and sisters. They always forget that three hundred years ago, she dragged herself, covered in blood, out of the Demon Abyss with her life-bound sword in hand.
Now the Netherworld has a new master, and Shen Suwei, who has fallen to demonic ways, sits high upon the Nether Hall's throne. The immortal sects are terrified.
The elders, their beards turning white with worry, say, “Be a good girl, Miaomiao. Go bring that demon a cup of tea and see what he's up to...”
She nods, fingers clutching her hem, then turns around and slips the deadliest dagger in the forbidden grounds into her pocket.
The bloody waves of the River of Forgetfulness surge, and the flowers on its banks blaze bright enough to sting the eyes. She sees Shen Suwei standing at the water's edge, carving a crooked peach-blossom hairpin.
“Tell those old fools,” he says without turning around, crushing the humming message jade slip in her sleeve, “that I was never waiting for an assassination attempt.”
That night, Wen Miao walks barefoot into his bedchamber, clutching a soft pillow.
Amid the ominous demonic aura, she tugs at his sleeve. “I heard you've been waiting for me for three hundred years?”
Shen Suwei's hand trembles where it grips her waist. In his eyes churn the madness and crimson fury he has suppressed for three hundred years.
“...What took you so long?”
Later, all three realms know that the Netherworld's lord has fallen under the spell of a little fairy from the Immortal Realm.
When she frowns, he brings her tea. When she coughs, he drapes a robe over her shoulders. When she points at a demon general and says, “He glared at me,” the general is sent to the River of Forgetfulness to fish for souls the very next day.
The demons kneel and protest: “My lord! She's a spy from the immortal sects!”
Shen Suwei rubs the peach-blossom knot she tied around his wrist on a whim and lazily raises his eyes. “I do as I please.”
He waited three hundred years to see this little fox bare her sharp teeth at him again.
