Fate's promise

Prologue

120 years after Mo Yuan's return

Since Ye Hua had come back to her, Bai Qian had given little thought to her Shifu, the man she had waited 70 000 years for. Her world was so full of Ye Hua's love and attention that she never felt Mo Yuan's absence in her life. Her biting words, "I've been unfilial," had slipped from her mind like wine through cupped hands; words that had cut Mo Yuan to his core, a fact that she had failed to notice. 

When Ye Hua returned her sole focus had been on nursing him back to his full strength. The extent of his injuries and loss of cultivation, which had been replenished by Mo Yuan as best as possible, meant that he wouldn't be able to take the lightning bolts required to become the Celestial Heavenly Lord. A fact that gave Bai Qian a sense of ease – although she felt strongly about him, she felt as strongly negative about the Celestials and their rules.

-------------------------------------------------------

The scattered years

Bai Qian, Queen of Qing Qiu

For 90 000 years, Mo Yuan had been the sole focus of her life. Having hidden herself in Qing Qiu to keep him safe, she had experienced very little of the Immortal Realm. She mostly spent her days and nights talking to him and sharing her thoughts on the many scrolls she had borrowed from Kunlun and Zhe Yan. She would sit in Yanhua Cave for hours, reading her mortal stories out loud to him so he could hear her laughter. Sometimes she would practise with the fan and show him new stances and techniques she was learning. She wrote all her missives, letters and notes on the desk she had placed near his bed. And always there was the smell of fresh peach blossoms.

On good days she would hold an informal court in the gazebo near the lake so she could take care of the needs of her people, offering advice and dispensing justice objectively. Her easy manner and obvious concern made her people love her. She would stroll through the marketplace to see how people were living, to know if they were happy, to listen to their wants. Under her rule Qing Qiu seemed more like the mortal world in that her people lived naturally, relying on hard work and often self-taught skills to make a living rather than using magic. As the years passed, sometimes her niece and Bai Qian's heir, Feng Jiu, would join her so she could learn how to govern when she became queen.

On bad days she ran through all the mistakes she felt she had made that had weakened Mo Yuan enough so that in the end the only choice he had was to sacrifice his soul.

Even though Qing Qiu was a place of peace, Bai Qian shared the martial arts skills and weapons training she had learned as Mo Yuan's disciple with her people. Her failure to save herself and Ling Yu when they were held prisoner in the Ghost Realm haunted her. Her childish decision to take a shortcut to Qing Qiu led to their capture by Qing Cang. Not only had she given Qing Chan the excuse he needed to go to war with the Celestials, she had also been the cause of Mo Yuan's further loss of cultivation when he rescued them. She believed it was the invitation to the adoption of Ninth that had made Mo Yuan realise where they were. She never asked herself how it was that he found her so easily in a realm so large. Knowing that she had told him where she was herself would have been soul-destroying, especially with all that was to follow.

She knew now that he had given her the task of making 30 000 copies of 'The True Classic of Vacuity' so she would be safe on Kunlun Mountain for her ascension trial. She had learned from First Senior that Shifu had already decided to take the trial for her even before he went into seclusion. It was her lack of training and inability to take the lightning bolts and survive that weakened him even further. It was a blessing that she didn't know how much damage her sobbing outside his mediation cave after this did to his healing.