This novel is currently being written in full before release. [Hard at work]
Gentle, courteous, secretly twisted and obsessive senior disciple x unsociable, nonhuman dragon girl and the unattainable first love x scheming, talented actress and prestigious young heiress
During a routine patrol at sea, Fang Jiuwei, a disciple of Penglai Island, came upon a spirit boat caught in a disaster and kindly rescued a mortal woman who claimed to be the ship's doctor.
The woman spoke gently, smiling as she said, “Thank you for saving me, miss. I'm deeply grateful. Could I trouble you to take me in for a while?”
Fang Jiuwei decided to see her kindness through and brought her back to Penglai. The woman settled in obediently, but showed no sign of leaving. Instead, she practiced medicine around the island each day to repay her debt.
As she watched the island's patients recover one by one from their unusual and difficult ailments, Fang Jiuwei could never have guessed that the woman she had rescued from the water was Su Wanzhao, senior disciple of the Lingshu Valley sect, the most celebrated genius in the cultivation world in five thousand years, and the person most likely to ascend to immortality in the Three Continents, where no one had ascended for millennia.
Yet when the leadership of Lingshu Valley changed, Su Wanzhao simply walked away and began wandering the world. Ever since, she has been surrounded by gossip and speculation.
Just as Su Wanzhao could never have imagined that the beautiful young woman who rescued her would, beneath the moonlight where no one could see, reveal a pair of slender, lustrous horns like carved jade: she was a member of the dragon clan, extinct for hundreds of years.
The girl stared at her in astonishment, then gently raised the tail behind her.
“Would you like to touch it?”
*
Two women, each keeping secrets, grow closer and closer.
Until the fire that scorched the night sky bright as day, amid mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, Fang Jiuwei took the hand reaching out to her without hesitation.
Fang Jiuwei did not know that while the world coveted a dragon's body, Su Wanzhao wanted her freedom and soul as well.
The candle flame flickered. She woke from a dream in the middle of the night.
Su Wanzhao's face wore the same gentle smile as always, her gaze dark and unreadable as she leaned softly toward Fang Jiuwei.
Warm breath brushed her ear, and a voice almost wickedly beguiling whispered:
“Will I be in your dreams too, Jiuwei?”
*
Shen Xuzhi of the Jiangting Shen clan: born to a distinguished family, a talent beyond compare. Countless people hoped she would follow in her ancestors' footsteps, comprehend the Dao, and ascend to immortality. She only smiled and said nothing.
At the Contest for the Heavens, she was accidentally poisoned by a strange toxin and saved by Su Wanzhao. But she also saw the cruelty concealed beneath the Lingshu Valley senior disciple's flawless mask.
From then on, Shen Xuzhi put away all the admiration she had felt for her.
Many things in this world have no cause and effect, and no clear explanation. Shen Xuzhi never liked forcing reasons onto things. Yet from the first time she saw Fang Jiuwei beside Su Wanzhao, jealousy had been smoldering deep within her.
What was she jealous of? That she had lingered for so long while Su Wanzhao never once stopped, yet Fang Jiuwei could have her so easily? Or that when it came to Fang Jiuwei, she was always one step too late, letting Su Wanzhao get there first?
Time and again, she awoke from a dream of glory, only to realize it had all been an illusion.
Was this the price of her craving for a false reputation and lingering for so long?
“What if I told you that from the moment I first saw you, I hated that fate had played us such a cruel trick, making me arrive one step too late?”
Shen Xuzhi once thought she was born with exceptional talent and favored by fate. Only later did she learn that no one controls the consequences of their actions.
The distant Jade Capital lies far away; no word has come from beyond the sea.
,
The three leads are Su Wanzhao, Fang Jiuwei, and Shen Xuzhi, and all three are romantically entangled. None of the main characters are perfect; each has her own flaws.
Fang Jiuwei: It's not love, it's a sense of civic duty. Either of those two would be a danger to society if you let her loose.
The characters' values are not the author's values. Some characters are morally reprehensible. They're bad women, bad women, bad women (emphasis added). Please don't judge the female characters too harshly, and don't blame me for the women I write.
All romantic relationships are between women. Men appear only as villains, minor characters, or cannon fodder.
The character designs were commissioned. Please don't use them without permission.
Theme: Through wind and rain, we walk hand in hand, without regret.
