The Fifth Year of My Secret Romance with My Master

My name is Qiu Gu. I'm an ordinary little bird, and I've been raised at Lize Palace since I was young.

Lize Palace takes protecting the people of the Xuan Kingdom as its duty, so all its disciples are upright, ambitious, diligent, and eager to learn.

All except me.

I have terrible talent. Whenever I feel like trying to improve, my master tells me not to push myself and that it's perfectly fine to simply be myself and go with the flow.

My fellow disciples envy my pretty face. They think I can just act pitiful and easily win my master's indulgence, but they don't know how much I envy their strong, healthy bodies, able to soar through the skies and roam the earth.

Still, perhaps they should envy me too, because when no one is watching, I can lazily snuggle in my master's arms, pull a wooden comb from my robes, and have him groom my feathers. I can even be intimate with him and cultivate together with him.

...My relationship with my master has been a secret for five years.

*

Later, everything changed abruptly, and I learned that I carried the last trace of an ancient, lost spiritual vein within me.

Those who possess a spiritual vein must avoid great sorrow and resentment, or the vein may easily be driven down an evil path and bring devastation upon all living things.

My master was with me... only to calm the spiritual vein inside me.

But I found that hard to believe. After all, my master was truly good to me.

That is, until the barrier of the Xuan Kingdom broke and the grounds outside Lize Palace filled with kneeling people, their heads packed together in a sea.

They all begged my master to use the spiritual vein to mend the kingdom's barrier and save its people.

I quietly hid in the corner of the great hall where I used to love watching my master hold meetings, and saw countless doubts and inner conflicts rise in his usually placid eyes.

He looked at me.

**

The day the barrier of the Xuan Kingdom was repaired, the Suzaku's mournful cry split the long night.

Immortal Venerable Changyin used the spiritual vein to mend the barrier and save the people. He also saw through his tribulation of love, and everyone believed he had ascended to godhood.

Yet Immortal Venerable Changyin, who should have taken his place among the gods, was shrouded in purple-black miasma, his heart consumed by demons. The dignified, holy immortal had fallen into darkness.

**

Changyin left Lize Palace for years. When an old friend ran into him and saw that he was still afflicted by demonic obsession, they asked what he was looking for.

Changyin touched the wooden comb in his arms.

"I... am looking for a little bird I've raised for a very long time."

A dignified master devoted to all living beings, the pursuer X a beautiful, delicate, adorable, clingy, lazy, easygoing bird, the pursued.

PS: Super old-school melodrama. The pursuer chases his wife. Enter at your own risk if that's not your thing. The blurb is in first person, but the story is in third person.

Blurb dated 2023-07-11

Theme: You can't have everything. To gain something, you must lose something.