The Nine Gates' Daughter Comes of Age

When Zhang Changle was three, her mother hid her in a coffin and traded her own life for her daughter’s. When the coffin lid opened, the person waiting outside was her only relative: her maternal uncle, Zhang Qishan, who had been cast out by the Zhang family.

Zhang the Buddha Lord took her back to Changsha, and from then on, the Nine Gates had a little girl among them. Er Yuehong taught her opera, Wu Laogou taught her how to read the soil, Half-Li brought her sweet oil rice cakes, and Chen Pi A Si held her in the sun. The Nine Gates cherished her like a treasured pearl, but she still remembered the blood seeping through the cracks in the coffin. She knew better than anyone how dangerous this world was.

She had pure-blood Qilin blood, the rules her uncle had taught her, and a head full of useful odds and ends. None of that mattered as much as the thought etched into her bones: she would hold on to anyone who was supposed to die.

So A Ning didn’t die in the Snake Marsh, Pan Zi didn’t fall in the Zhang family’s ancient tower, and Chen Pi A Si died peacefully in her arms. She watched Wu Xie grow up, and he was never crushed by the Sand Sea into an isolated island. She stayed by Zhang Qiling through his amnesia and recovery. Every time he forgot her, she waited.

Black Glasses called her the Nine Gates’ Bodhisattva. Xiao Hua called her a fool. When Li Cu called her big sister, his eyes lit up.

“I’m nobody special,” she said. “Just a girl who doesn’t want anyone to leave.”

A long, long life, full of happiness. For her mother’s sake, she kept so many people alive.