Eternal Love: A Thousand Tribulations of Peach Blossom Fate

Zheyan, an ancient god and the first phoenix born when heaven and earth were created, lives in seclusion among the Peach Blossoms ten li across and is renowned for his brewing. Everyone says he is the most carefree immortal in all the realms, but no one knows he keeps a jade pendant hidden in his sleeve, carrying it close for hundreds of thousands of years. It is the last thing left behind by the person who died for him in an ancient calamity. Before that person faded away, they smiled and said, “Don’t cry. I’ll come back.” So Zheyan waited for hundreds of thousands of years: until heaven and earth took on a new face, until all his old friends met their destined calamities, until he could barely remember that person’s face.

Then came the first-birthday banquet for the fourth son of Emperor Bai Zhi of Qingqiu. The first time Zheyan saw the baby, he blurted out, “How can this child be so ugly?” The baby wailed, and Zheyan’s heart gave a sudden lurch. The jade pendant, silent in his sleeve for hundreds of thousands of years, had suddenly grown hot.

From then on, he visited Qingqiu every year, watching the child grow from a wrinkled baby into a delicate, beautiful boy. Before long, the child simply moved into his peach grove. They brewed wine together in spring, napped beneath the trees in summer, and the boy became a little tail that followed him everywhere and could never be shaken off. Zheyan nicknamed him “Sweet Little Fox” and buried the sweet wine he’d failed to brew beneath a tree, saying, “We’ll save it.” He was saving something else, too: a secret he didn’t dare speak aloud. The child clinging to him was that person’s reincarnation.

But he was afraid to tell him. He feared that once the truth was out, the child would think all the kindness he’d shown over the years had been meant for someone else. So he could only wait, hoping the child would remember on his own, or never remember at all.

Then, on the day the Winged Realm attacked, an ancient, ferocious weapon struck straight for Zheyan’s heart. Without a moment’s hesitation, the child threw himself in front of him…