Light Reaching Every Speck of Dust

Mom, why can't I beat her? Oh, so she has cheats enabled.

Princess Rui Sheng, Li Qianzhu, died in early spring of the second year of Tianhua, at the age of twenty.

She was secretly poisoned by the new emperor. Fearing that she was blessed by fate, after her death he sealed the major acupoints throughout her body with eighty-one soul-pinning nails, vowing that she would never be reincarnated.

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the third year, the birthday of the Celestial Worthy Who Relieves Suffering, the new emperor visited Taiyi Temple in person to pay his respects. To his astonishment, he saw Li Qianzhu, alive and radiant, walking out of the Hall of the Three Pure Ones.

He stared at her in panic, first blurting out her name, then stumbling into silence.

Li Qianzhu came before him, resting her horsetail whisk across her right arm as she raised her left hand in a greeting.

"Your Majesty has mistaken me for someone else. This poor Daoist's religious name is..."

"Miaozhen."

Li Qianzhu once saw an immortal when she was young. She was six years old, and peach blossoms covered Fuyu Mountain. A young deity emerged from the rosy clouds and handed her a square of silk.

For many years afterward, alone within the cold, shadowy red walls, she kept watch over his statue and dreamed one dream after another.

Later, she drifted through the mortal world as a lonely wandering spirit. His statue was her only companion. Carrying him on her back, she crossed through the splendor of the mortal world, over lofty mountains and through deep snow. He thought she wanted to return to life.

Actually, she only wanted to reach his side.

Under the Celestial Worthy Who Relieves Suffering were eighty-one spirit officials. The twenty-eighth was Xuansi. His jurisdiction was Fuyu Mountain, atop the firmament, stretching eight thousand li in every direction.

Xuansi considered meeting Li Qianzhu the unluckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

She was always crying. She cried when she got lost and couldn't find her way home, when she had to part from her father and mother, and when she was forced into a political marriage. She cried while waiting for him, and cried when he never came.

He listened to her cry from his shrine. Over time, he had grown numb to it, thinking her tears were crocodile tears. But then one day, she suddenly stopped crying.

He found himself longing for her, wishing she would cry again over those trivial little things. In his mind, he composed a whole basketful of things to say, every one of them meant to comfort her and tell her not to cry.

But he would never again have the chance to say them to her.

His light shone through the vast worlds, clear as water, and once it had illuminated even the smallest speck of dust.

From "Linjiang Immortal" by Chen Zengshou, Qing dynasty

A seemingly aloof, cunning princess who is actually the world's biggest pampered darling x a pure-hearted, desireless immortal who is hopelessly lovestruck and easy to fool

Synopsis written on September 1, screenshot saved.

Theme: People must not give in to their fate.