The Years I Was Coerced by the Ruthless Dao

I knew from the very beginning that Jiang Yungui cultivated the Heartless Dao.

He didn’t look much like other Heartless Dao cultivators. What he carried wasn’t a sword, but an intricately carved five-string pipa. His features were strikingly beautiful, and his clothes were gorgeous. Only his eyes gave nothing away: whoever he looked at, they were always as clear and cold as snow, as still as an ancient well.

People who fell in love with Heartless Dao cultivators were doomed to be unhappy. Of course, I wasn’t about to become the 1,093rd person in the cultivation world to fall for Jiang Yungui at first sight.

But he was blackmailing me.

He was sitting at the deepest point of an ice cavern, claiming he was meditating on his cultivation method. If I didn’t carry him out, he’d turn into yet another ice sculpture in the frozen north, one that would never melt, within an hour.

If I carried him out, I’d have to wake him up. If I woke him up, I’d have to talk to him. If I talked to him, I’d have to look into his eyes. And if I looked into his eyes, I couldn’t possibly leave him there. Every step of the way, he was blackmailing me.

The elders all gathered around me, warning me that Heartless Dao cultivators were terrifying, that they supposedly killed anyone they fell in love with to prove their Dao, and that as the young lord, I absolutely mustn’t fall for one!

What a mess. Not one of them could tell I was being blackmailed.

I’d keep him for two days at most, figure out why he was blackmailing me like this, then send this first disciple of Xuantian Sect back to the Upper Continent without letting him stay a minute longer. Better yet, I’d make him pay up first.

*

Three months after staying in the Lower Continent, Jiang Yungui decided that Yan Duzhou wasn’t quite like the arrogant, unrestrained, and violent young lord of the Lower Continent described in the rumors.

Only his extraordinary talent lived up to the stories. Apart from being a little talkative, Yan Duzhou was wonderful in every way. He spared no expense to cure Jiang Yungui’s poison, went to great lengths to find him a spiritual realm for cultivation, took him riding the wind on a sword all over the Great Wilderness, and brought him all kinds of novel things each day.

It was just that sometimes... he didn’t seem very bright.

Pointing at the demon they’d just killed together by the roadside, Yan Duzhou looked aggrieved. “Did you kill him to prove your Dao?”

He kicked an evil cultivator who lay motionless on the ground, pacing back and forth. “Did you kill him to prove your Dao?”

He kicked the fallen beast a few times, gritting his teeth. “Did you kill it to...”

Jiang Yungui didn’t like talking. He only knew that when Young Lord Yan started babbling strange things he couldn’t understand, grabbing him and kissing him might do the trick.

One of the elders had taught him this when he was discreetly asking about Yan Duzhou’s preferences. He wasn’t sure how it was supposed to work.

Yan Duzhou, who had been hopping mad just a moment ago, did indeed shut up, but not for long.

“Didn’t I tell you last time? You can’t just kiss people whenever you want! Do you even know what it means to kiss someone?!”

Wasn’t it just a brief touch? It didn’t seem all that different from touching someone’s arm or hand.

Jiang Yungui shook his head and waited for him to explain.

Yan Duzhou stammered for ages, unable to get anything out. At last, he quietly came out with something even stranger. “Do you want to kill me to prove your Dao?”

“Why would I kill you? If this is about interrupting my cultivation back then, you needn’t take it to heart...”

He had barely asked when the other man grabbed his shoulders and started shaking him back and forth.

“Why don’t you want to kill me? Aren’t you a Heartless Dao cultivator?”

“You still won’t let me be your Dao companion? You were the one who blackmailed me back then! Are you really just pretending with me? I knew that kiss was an act too! Jiang Yungui, do you even have a heart? You don’t have a heart at all! ...Forget it. What pastries do you want today?”

Jiang Yungui: ...?

A jealous top who gets jealous of everything, even of his own love-induced insanity, x a bottom who doesn’t understand him but indulges him without limit ()

* The familiar couple’s back-and-forth, one true pairing, both sexually inexperienced, happy ending. Two kids in love, and they’re still hopeless romantics without neglecting their real responsibilities ^_^

* An unconventional Heartless Dao. It’s not the bizarre kind where you have to kill your spouse to prove your Dao.

* The top fell in love with his darling at first sight and is so lovesick it’s getting a little weird, so this probably isn’t for extreme top stans. The bottom is an aloof beauty to everyone else and lets his partner have his way with him at home, so this probably isn’t for extreme bottom stans either.

* Not suitable for any extreme group. Respect for words and other people is the bare minimum. I will never use illiterate, forced, and misplaced terms, and I’m not interested in one-sided, extreme gender narratives.

Gently setting down a blurb for another upcoming novel

*

I met Mingchuan on the first day of snow.

Following the direction the clan chief had pointed, I found an ancient raised platform. Plates and candlesticks had been scattered everywhere, and the place was empty. Mingchuan sat there alone, quiet and still, with black hair and snow-white skin. His features had a strangely beautiful quality.

In the bitter wind and snow, he seemed not to feel the cold. His long hair hung loose, his bare feet rested on the stone tiles, and his lowered gaze brushed past me.

There was very little written about the worship rites of the Nine Miao God. I never expected that the “old friend’s nephew” Professor He had gone out of his way to arrange as an interview subject would turn out to be an offering sent to the altar.

Even when I wrapped him in my coat, he didn’t react at all.

“Did they force you to come here?”

Still no answer.

Professor He’s old friend was abroad and would need some time to come pick him up. After hanging up, I looked at Mingchuan. “Would you like to... come with me for now?”

Mingchuan looked at me, tilted his head, and slowly nodded.

*

Ever since Mingchuan moved in, Chu Zhihua felt like the hallucinations caused by staying up late to write his thesis were happening more often.

Fleeting shadows, time passing at a strange rate, bizarre and uncanny dreams...

“You know,” Chu Zhihua said, putting a straw in the drink and handing it over, “last night I dreamed the Nine Miao God told me it likes creme brulee vanilla cream puffs with double pearls, and wanted me to put that in my thesis... Innovation doesn’t mean you can just make stuff up like that.”

Mingchuan raised his eyes and chewed his pearls without changing expression.

“Do you think it’s weird too? Or am I just too tired lately?”

Mingchuan thought for a moment, then pushed over the little flowerpot on the windowsill and blinked. The rose seeds had only been bought yesterday, yet today they were already about to bloom.

...It must, surely, just be the academic pressure getting to me.

Chu Zhihua glanced at the branches and buds that had appeared overnight, then at Mingchuan, who was looking at him expectantly.

Actually, even if it wasn’t... that was fine too.

But not everyone thought it was fine.

The exalted god was furious that his careful disguise had been discovered in just half a month, and decided to stop pretending.

“You mean you want to imprison me in my own home,” Chu Zhihua said, sitting on the sofa as he considered the divine revelation he’d just heard, “until you learn how to be a human in this world?”

Anyone who’d been human knew that being human wasn’t easy.

On the first day after promising to learn how to be human, Chu Zhihua found Mingchuan in their residential compound, trying to greet every bird that passed by with his tentacles.

On the second day, Chu Zhihua spent half an hour and ten matcha puddings persuading Mingchuan to take the elevator downstairs instead of jumping straight off the windowsill.

On the tenth day, Chu Zhihua opened the door to find Mingchuan sitting cross-legged on the balcony, proudly announcing, “I’ve learned how to be human. It was easy.”

Chu Zhihua looked at the shadow by his feet, which smoothly slid over to the fridge, opened it, took out a little cake, shut the door, and glided back to the balcony in one seamless motion. “...Really?”

*

The Nine Miao God was born amid war and steeped in wickedness. The ritual used to summon it had been completely banned a century ago and had gradually become a clan secret.

The day the reckless young people accidentally summoned it, the clan members scattered in terror, afraid they’d become the evil god’s sustenance.

By coincidence, the student who had arranged to come for an interview a few days earlier showed up at that very moment.

It was a shame, really. He was a cheerful, handsome young man with a bright future. The clan chief gritted his teeth and pointed to the raised platform at the heart of the snowstorm.

“The person you’re looking for is there.”

When the storm had passed, both the young man and the evil god were gone.

A few months later, the clan chief opened the door and found the young man who should have become the evil god’s sustenance long ago.

“Hello. I was looking for the wrong person last time. I’ve come to ask again.”

The being no one else could see or hear was now obediently holding his hand. The instant their eyes met, coiling, twisting shadows accompanied by strange, faint shrieks crawled across the floor, walls, and ceiling once more.

“All right, don’t be angry yet. We’ll talk about it later.”

The young man affectionately squeezed the monster’s hand and whispered in its ear.

The clan chief struggled to regain his composure, his hand trembling. “You don’t know? This, this isn’t...”

“I know,” the young man said, turning to frown. “Keep your voice down. He can’t hear things like that.”

Mingchuan slowly turned away, refusing to look at the man behind him. Annoyed, he rubbed his forehead against Chu Zhihua’s shoulder, and most of the shadows reluctantly withdrew.

His attempt to pass as a modern human had failed again today.

He’d been learning from Chu Zhihua for ages. Pretending to be human was such a hassle.

* Both are inexperienced, happy ending. Still a sweet, romance-focused story about a couple. A golden-retriever Chu teaching a god of evil who slept for so long he knows nothing about modern society, an emperor-type fully automatic chaos machine, how to be a law-abiding modern god (?). The title and blurb may change, but it’ll probably be something like this.

* Mingchuan is an evil god who acts completely differently in public and in private. Chu Zhihua will put on his 800-meter-thick rose-colored glasses and insist, “My darling just occasionally has trouble controlling his magic. He’s actually so cute ^^”

* Probably not suitable for any extreme stans.

Theme: I wish to go to the boundless sea.