If You’re Not Here, What’s the Point of Becoming Immortal?

The 23rd microfiction extra. This story also includes an extra to the extra.

[Daoist, Your Tree Has Blossomed]

The first time Mu He felt pain was the day Qing Xuan fell asleep.

He was a tree spirit nurtured in an immortal pond for a thousand years. When a High God kicked him down into the mortal world, he thought it was just a tribulation that would hardly trouble him.

Back then, he was a withered little sapling. A young man in a gray Daoist robe found him and planted him in front of a temple.

"Little tree, Granny from down the mountain brought osmanthus cakes today. Here, smell how fragrant they are."

"Little tree, Master scolded me for not focusing when I practice swordsmanship, but watching you sprout is much more interesting."

"Little tree, a whole sixty years have passed in the blink of an eye. You're taller than the temple gate now..."

The young man became an old Daoist, his voice roughened by the years. He said he was going somewhere far away, then leaned against the tree trunk and never opened his eyes again.

Mu He had no heart, yet every inch of his rings hurt. The pain made him want to scream, to weep.

In the next instant, his green branches faded away and his leaves turned into clothes. A youth of sixteen or seventeen fell to the ground, trembling as he clutched the body growing cold. Scalding tears fell onto the Daoist robe, spreading into dark stains.

Only then did he understand that the seven emotions and six desires the High God had spoken of were knives that gouged out the heart and carved through the bones.

Afterward, the great tree in front of the temple always blossomed white in early spring, just like the color of the young Daoist's robe that year.

People said they had seen a youth in green standing beneath the tree, murmuring to himself:

"Qing Xuan, you said there was reincarnation in the mortal world. I've waited a hundred years. Why haven't I heard your footsteps yet?"

Mu He: I blossomed, I bore fruit, but the one who planted me will never come back.

Qing Xuan: If there is another life, I'll still be the little Daoist who waters you, from black hair to white.

[Naive tree spirit uke x gentle Daoist seme]

1. Prepare for major angst. The Daoist dies young, and the tree spirit lives alone for a hundred years, with memories of him running throughout the story.

2. The warmer the beginning, the more painful the end. A thousand-year-old tree spirit doesn't understand love, and by the time he does, there's no going back.

3. 1v1, HE (the extra makes up for the angst with sweetness). He survived a tribulation of love in the mortal world, but lost the person who was supposed to help him through it forever.

Theme: You are my final tribulation, but in the end, you cannot stay by my side for a lifetime.