Chen Baohong is the cultivation world’s number one Immortal Venerable Gu Changjue’s partner. She is gentle and quiet, and never argues with anyone.
Everyone in the Three Realms knows that Gu Changjue keeps her around only because she’s obedient, considerate, and never causes trouble.
Until one day, Gu Changjue misses Chen Baohong’s Golden Core Ceremony because he’s helping his beloved get through a tribulation.
Chen Baohong fails to form her Golden Core, leaving her meridians badly damaged. Then Gu Changjue brushes her off with a casual “Maybe next time.”
She neither cries nor makes a scene. She simply returns quietly to her cave dwelling.
The next day, Chen Baohong curls up beneath her quilt, showing only her eyes.
“I’m an egg. Could you walk a little more softly? You’ll crack my shell.”
“You’re a person.”
“What do you know? You’re not an egg.”
Gu Changjue: ???
He tries to peel her out of the quilt.
Chen Baohong struggles desperately. “Don’t touch me! Your hands are too cold. They’ll mess up the temperature I need to hatch!”
Gu Changjue asks, bewildered, “What are you even talking about?”
She eyes him warily. “Are you trying to eat me? You’re a bird. You fly so high on your sword every day, so you must be some kind of bird. Birds eat eggs. It’s only natural.”
Gu Changjue is silent for the time it takes an incense stick to burn.
*
Later, after scouring ancient texts, Gu Changjue finally finds an obscure account of “cognitive inversion caused by demonic obsession with heartbreak.”
So he swallows his pride, personally lays warm spirit-jade in a nest, and uses his spiritual energy to keep that “egg” warm every day.
Chen Baohong nods with satisfaction. “Your character is awful, but you’re pretty good at incubating eggs.”
On the day she hatches, Gu Changjue kneels before her and finally confesses the love he has never dared to voice.
After that, he cares for her for another three hundred years.
Over those three hundred years, she is lucid sometimes and confused at others. When lucid, she calls him Gu Changjue. When confused, she calls him a bird.
But one day, Chen Baohong quietly looks at him for a long time. “Gu Changjue, I’ve always known I was a person.”
Gu Changjue freezes.
She smiles. “But being human hurts too much. When I was an egg, at least you stayed by my side.”
After saying this, Chen Baohong closes her eyes.
This time, she never wakes up again.
Theme: To be decided
