Director of Studies

***Danmei pre-release, The Advent Realm: The bride I was supposed to marry is gone. You owe me a bride, don't you? (Synopsis at the very bottom.)

***Synopsis:

In Qingye's dreams, snow falls all year on Jiuwai Mountain.

Snowflakes settle on Qingye's eyelashes. He lowers his head to gaze at the little mound of earth where the flowers, still unopened after many days, are buried.

A hand comes to rest against his forehead. Amid the howling north wind, its touch is astonishingly hot.

"Didn't I tell you? It's too cold on Jiuwai Mountain. You can't grow flowers here."

The voice behind him is gentle and resigned.

Qingye looks up, but no matter what he does, he can't make out the other's face. Only a deep blue emblem flickers in and out of view against the boundless white of the snow.

He stubbornly lowers his eyes. "There are always flowers that like the cold."

Just as there will always be someone who isn't afraid of me.

He swallows the second half of the thought, leaving it to the wind.

Six thousand years of rain and snow pass in cycles. At last, as the final wisp of black wind sweeps over the crimson-turning Illusory Sea, the emblem comes into view again.

Only now, its deep blue has become a blazing red.

***Synopsis for the danmei pre-release, The Advent Realm:

Late at night, in a cemetery.

The moment the gray mist descends, Yi Cheng arrives on the scene.

As an inspector for the Advent Realm Administration, his mission is to figure out the rules before the Advent Realm fully takes shape. This time, it's a ghost marriage. A tombstone cracks, and the bride's phantom begins to form. She needs a living person to marry her in a ghost wedding.

She chooses him.

The moment Yi Cheng catches sight of the man holding an umbrella in his peripheral vision, it takes him half a second to decide.

He steps aside.

The phantom bride drifts past him and reaches for the man. They're the only two living people in the cemetery, so one of them has to be the groom.

And yet a search of the entire Seventh City-State's database turns up no three-dimensional scan of the man.

Then Yi Cheng sees him raise his eyes, his gaze unfathomably deep, and casually clasp his hands together.

The phantom bride shatters, scattering like ash from burnt paper.

Yi Cheng takes half a step back, but something catches his foot. He looks down and sees a strip of red silk protruding from the cracked tombstone, somehow already wrapped around his ankle.

A bright red bridal veil falls, blocking his vision.

The last thing he sees is the man's faintly smiling lips.

"The bride I was supposed to marry is gone," he says. "You owe me a bride."

Theme: Do good without worrying about where the road leads