Xiao Wangshu found a boy in a prisoner cart in the Gobi Desert.
Barefoot and clad in a single thin garment, bound in iron chains, with a cinnabar mole at the corner of his eye as bright as blood.
Everyone said he was the royal family's sharpest weapon, Number Gengshen Seventy-Nine, and should be destroyed on the spot.
But Wangshu remembered the child who had clung to his armor in the sea of flames in Nanzhao eleven years ago.
He defied the imperial decree to spare him, named him "Shiwei," taught him to read, and gave him warmth.
Until the night of the new moon, when the boy drank blood from his wrist to ease his pain, tears mingling with blood as they ran down his face:
"Weapons... aren't allowed to say they're in pain."
Wangshu wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "With me, you can."
Later, with flames of war raging along the frontier, Shiwei unleashed all five of his insects for Wangshu, slaughtered every pursuer, and murmured as he lay dying:
"In the next life... find me sooner."
Wangshu knelt in the snow and swore, "There will be no next life. In this one, you have to live and love me."
But he didn't know...
From the day that blade was forged, its edge had always been pointed at him.
The moment it pierced Wangshu's heart, Shiwei could finally say:
"See? I fell in love with you long ago."
Theme: It's better to be human after all.
