After That Weak Junior Sister Came Down the Mountain

Li Daoyuan was accepted as a disciple by an immortal sect. His master said he was a Daoist prodigy.

Mi Xiao was from the same village, though they weren't close. Before Li Daoyuan entered the immortal sect, she had secretly fallen for that handsome boy, elegant as a plum blossom and bamboo.

Luckily, Mi Xiao also entered the immortal sect later, though she still didn't dare let herself hope for too much from Li Daoyuan.

Li Daoyuan turned out to be even more formidable than she had imagined.

He became the chief disciple and the greatest among the younger generation of cultivators.

Li Daoyuan often went down the mountain on missions. What Mi Xiao looked forward to most was squeezing in with the other disciples to watch him return.

A prodigious young genius, a white-robed sword immortal, renowned throughout the Nine Provinces, as graceful as jade.

Until the day he returned with a female immortal.

-

Mi Xiao's world was a book.

That female immortal was the heroine, and Li Daoyuan was the hero. In the tangled love and hatred between a demonic saintess and an emotionless sword immortal, Mi Xiao was merely a passerby without even a name.

Just as no matter how hard she tried, her cultivation remained utterly ordinary.

The cultivation world was cruel. On Mi Xiao's very first mission, she ran into a beast tide. Li Daoyuan, meanwhile, was accompanying his heroine as she sought a fortuitous encounter.

Ordinary disciples like Mi Xiao were nothing but ants beneath the claws of demon beasts, caught up in the protagonists' tragic romance.

Again and again.

Li Daoyuan was the chief disciple, her senior fellow disciple, and... the person she liked.

How could she not have hopes?

Li Daoyuan would never remember how, in the most ordinary days of his life, the children in Little Stone Village halfway up the mountain played house.

That day, he was the groom, and she was his bride.

-

On the day Li Daoyuan chose his path, his master said he had the makings of someone who could cultivate the Heartless Dao.

He turned his head away without a word, gazing at the white clouds and golden sun crow among the mountains. In his mind appeared a pair of eyes veiled in morning mist. She was always looking down.

The Immortal Venerable privately said that Li Daoyuan's character and natural gifts were beyond reproach. It had been centuries since the cultivation world had seen such talent, but he was far too attached to romantic love.

-

Later, Li Daoyuan fought with all his might against the fate pressing down on his karma and soul, trying not to love Yu Qingyi.

It wasn't Yu Qingyi who made him abandon the Heartless Dao. It wasn't Yu Qingyi who once pretended to marry him in a secret realm. And it certainly wasn't Yu Qingyi who made him want to tie their fate threads together again and again.

When he severed every last one of his sword bones and could finally reach out to the timid yet stubborn junior sister who had never once met his eyes,

Mi Xiao looked straight at him. Her eyes were still like the soft, thin mist in the mountains. She gently curved them into a smile, just as they had in countless dreams.

She wore ordinary mortal clothes, her hair arranged in a married woman's style, her expression carefree.

"It's been a long time, Senior Brother."

Li Daoyuan was lost in thought. For a long time, he had believed she disliked him a little, since she never called him Senior Brother.

That day, the future leader of the righteous path turned white-haired overnight.

Mi Xiao, however, began to worry.

She hoped her ordinary, happy life would not be disrupted again.

An ordinary, insecure yet stubborn and passionate heroine who can always find a way to be happy

VS

A lofty, aloof flower who is pure-hearted and stubborn, a truly righteous gentleman

I want to write a bittersweet story about embracing the one you love even when fate ties a red thread between you: childish first love and a gentleman driven to madness.

[A short story I want to write while drowning in academic papers: secret crushes, melodrama, angst, ending undecided.]

[In my usual style, the hero will suffer both physically and emotionally, but a secret crush inevitably hurts the heroine too. I plan to start with Mi Xiao trying to give up on Li Daoyuan.]

Theme: Though the moss flower is tiny as a grain of rice, it still strives to bloom like a peony.