Chapter 420.2: At Last, I See You

Zhe Gui came to a stop before a lakeside.

Suddenly, surprise crossed Moon Frost's face. "Huh, she's not alone after all?"

In the distance, a figure wrapped head to toe in a black robe appeared. From her figure, it appeared that it was a woman. Wariness flashed through Moon Frost's eyes.

Jin Li frowned. "Mythic."

Moon Frost furrowed her brow, trying to place the stranger's identity. "Who is she? Some Mythic from the Absolute Moon Abyss?"

The black-robed woman and Zhe Gui had stopped by the lakeside, seemingly exchanging something.

Just then, Moon Frost blinked in surprise. "Huh, looks like someone besides me remembered your birthday after all. There's a letter here for you."

All outside correspondence passed through special channels into her master jade slip. Just moments ago, she'd received quite a few letters, and one of them was addressed to none other than Jin Li.

Jin Li kept her eyes fixed on the black-robed woman, still lost in thought. "Oh."

After all, there were not many Mythics in the Absolute Moon Abyss. Whoever the traitor turned out to be wouldn't sit well with her. She paid little mind to the letter. As Moon Frost had said, she was a Moon Maiden. On her birthday, a few flatterers were bound to send something her way regardless.

Moon Frost asked, "Want me to open it?"

For cultivators at their level, splitting attention between two things at once was nothing at all. Jin Li's expression stayed calm.

Moon Frost sounded genuinely surprised. "Huh, you actually know someone from the Second Heaven? Looks like the letter was sent all the way from there. Moreover, it’s from three years ago and only arrived now?"

The letter should have sat at its previous relay point half a month earlier, timed to reach Jin Li on the seventeenth of July. Beneath the moonlight, the woman in the saffron-gold gown felt her heart skip a beat.

Extracting the information, Moon Frost sealed it into a jade slip and handed it to her. "Take a look. It seems to be some kind of cultivation technique."

Ripples seemed to stir across Jin Li's clear, bright eyes. "How curious. Sending a technique all the way from the Second Heaven to the Sixth Heaven."

A flicker of anticipation and dread stirred within her as she rested her fingers upon the jade slip. "Seeing You" was the very name of the technique. Her eyes grew misty in that instant.

The second line that Red Bridal Armor had once relayed drifted back into her mind. "Once, I did not see you and sorrow piled like unmelting snow. My longing stretched deep across all ages. Now, I do not see you and my gaze strains like dew on jade. I am drunk on the years both past and present. In the future, I will surely see you. I will not resent our meeting's delay, nor begrudge how brief the light was between us."

There, at the edge of the Seventh Moon Lake, the figure of the Faceless Sword God rose up in her mind. He sat alone through the winter snow with his fishing rod in hand. He had been waiting for her all along. Back then, she hadn't even known him yet. Nor had he recognized that the little girl he'd once met was the very one he'd been waiting for all this time.

Jin Li gripped the jade slip tightly. From the name of the technique alone, she was absolutely certain this was from him. An overwhelming joy surged through her. He was still alive! He had come to see her! He was in the Second Heaven!

With a pleading look, she turned to Moon Frost, urgency in her voice. "Moon Frost, I have to go to the Second Heaven!"

She couldn't bear to stay in the Sixth Heaven any longer!

Moon Frost's smile froze, as though something had just occurred to her. "It's from him?"

She didn't want her dear friend leaving the Divine Moon Palace.

Suddenly, Moon Frost's expression changed drastically. "Wait, something here is..."

The black-robed Mythic had pulled back the veil over her head, revealing a familiar face.

"The deputy envoy!"

That woman was none other than the deputy envoy of the Absolute Moon Abyss, a Mythic who held partial authority over the Serene Radiant Waning Moon. A deputy envoy turning traitor was an entirely different matter from a mere Mythic defecting.

Moon Frost's heart plummeted and her face turned pale. "The Serene Radiant Waning Moon here has been disabled!"

If a Mythic from the Moluo Clan set foot here now, the Yang Spirits of the Absolute Moon Abyss wouldn't even be able to respond in time. Why would the Moluo Clan let such a chance slip by?

Sensing the thick air of conspiracy, she felt endless regret. She shouldn't have followed along! A Heavenly Venerable of the Absolute Moon Abyss had almost certainly already arrived! Jin Li's brow furrowed slightly, her fingers listlessly twisting the hem of her robe. She wasn't as composed as she appeared.

Moon Frost was deeply worried. "What should we do?"

It was too late to send communications back to headquarters.

Just then, a cold wind swept through and Moon Frost felt a bone-deep chill. As the wind rose, it was as though spring had descended upon the heavens and earth, covering them in flowers. A blanket of snow drifted down from the sky. Beneath the moonlight, the snowflakes glittered like crystal.

Moon Frost tensed. A masked figure in blood-red robes emerged, a sword in hand. Snowflakes settled on his shoulders and caught in his black hair. The two Mythics by the lakeside immediately bowed, not daring to look directly at him.

Moon Frost's teeth clenched and a wave of overwhelming threat washed over her. A Yang Spirit! He has to be a Yang Spirit! It was over...

Before she could think any further, Jin Li sprinted through the swirling snow, heading straight toward the masked man. Moon Frost froze for a single instant.

The man came to a halt, his voice deep. "I came forth from Heaven's End and have waited for you a long, long time."

Moon Frost seemed to see a masked figure sitting upon a blue stone by the lake. With his sword in hand, he waited. The years continued on and the Ancient Qichun Tree added another few rings to its trunk.

Then, Jin Li danced beneath the moonlit snow, as graceful as a butterfly. The man watched with a gentle expression. He knew she was the one he had waited for all this time by the Seventh Moon Lake. A promise made long ago, spanning time and space, was now so close, yet it still felt like a dream.

She came to a stop three steps away from him. "Qi Yuan!!!"

Her eyes brimmed with tears. She was afraid, anxious that it was all merely a dream. Qi Yuan removed his mask, revealing his fine features. They were both strange but familiar to Jin Li. Like jade, he was pure and handsome.

Still carrying his sword, Qi Yuan moved toward Jin Li, honoring the promise he had made so long ago. "To see you dance so gracefully is like drinking the finest wine."

The line seemed to answer that second line from so long ago.

Now I do not see you, and my gaze strains like dew on jade, drunk on the years both past and present.Now I see you before me, and it is like drinking the finest wine.

Jin Li gazed at him as if he were the only thing that existed in the whole world. She trembled, her shoulders shaking. The endless wave of longing, built up over years like mountains and seas, spilled out at once.

Qi Yuan rolled back his wide sleeves to reveal a pale, bare arm. "Jin Li, I've found you."

There, on skin that had once been unmarked, a faint waning-moon mark was slowly forming. That mark had been left by the little Moon Maiden. When Qi Yuan awoke after killing the alien demons at Earth’s End, the mark had vanished. Now, it had returned once more.

Jin Li stood still, gazing at his face. "I've been waiting for you."

She reached out, cupping his face in her hands, just as she once had cupped the face of the Faceless God in the temple. Time and space seemed to converge into one.

In life, we rarely meet, moving like the Shen and Shang stars[1]. At last, I see you.

1. Because Shen and Shang lie roughly 180 degrees apart on the celestial sphere, as one rises in the east, the other sets in the west. They can never occupy the sky together. They represent eternal separation. ☜