Chapter 480: Price of Death

The Heavens did not understand the quiet, devastating, world-altering power of a small hand holding onto a finger.

As Jiu Zui stood with his silver sword raised, shielding his feral, weeping, beautiful disciple, his mind did not process the threat of the Star-Seers.

His mind drifted back, falling through the brutal, jagged corridors of time, returning to a night shrouded in secrecy, rain, and absolute desperation.

It was raining in the capital.

Not a gentle, cleansing shower, but a heavy deluge that turned the cobblestone streets into rivers of mud and sorrow.

Jiu Zui had not been a drunkard then. He had been the ethereal, respected Sovereign of the Drunken Peak, a man whose beauty rivaled the moon and whose sword arts were whispered about in terrified reverence.

He had been sitting in his private pavilion, meditating upon the stillness of the Dao, when the wards of his mountain shattered.

He had drawn his sword, expecting an assassination attempt by the Demonic Palaces.

Instead, stumbling through the torrential rain, her heavy velvet cloak soaked through, her face pale as a corpse and her breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps, was Lady Lin.

She was dying.

The chronological friction, the curse of the Tower, the toll of the forbidden Red Thread ritual, it was tearing her physical body apart. She collapsed onto the polished wooden floor of his pavilion, coughing out dark blood onto his white boots.

"Yue-Ying!" Jiu Zui had gasped, dropping his sword, dropping to his knees, his hands hovering over her trembling form, terrified to touch her lest she shatter. "What have you done?! The backlash—"

"Jiu Zui," Lady Lin had interrupted, her voice a wet, rattling wheeze.

She reached out with a trembling hand, gripping the lapel of his silk robes with a strength born of maternal desperation. "I do not have time. The hounds are already coming for me, they are tracking my scent. I slipped away from the estate in the chaos of the storm."

She had shifted her cloak, pulling back the heavy, rain-soaked velvet.

Resting against her chest, swaddled in thick, dry silk, sleeping soundly despite the apocalyptic storm and her mother’s dying breaths, was a tiny, fragile newborn baby.

Lin Ji’an.

"They will come for her," Lady Lin had wept, the tears mixing with the rain and blood on her face. "The Tower will not let her live in peace. They will isolate her and make sure she has no one to lean on. I have bound her fate to Yue’er’s son to give her a shield, but... but she has no foundation. She has no blessing."

In the orthodox world, the Blessing of the Ascended was not a mere formality.

It was a foundational ritual. When a child of a noble house was born, an elder of immense spiritual power would bestow a blessing, placing a seal of their own Qi over the child’s heart.

This seal acted as a beacon, a protective ward, and a tether to the mortal plane. Without a blessing, a child’s soul was adrift, vulnerable to demonic possession, bad luck, and the cruel whims of fate.

"My husband cannot do it. His cultivation is martial, his Qi too violent for a newborn’s meridians," Lady Lin had choked out, her grip tightening on his robes. "And there is no elder in the capital who would dare bless a child marked by the Tower. If they sense the anomaly in her fate, they will hand her over to the Seers."

She had looked up at him, her beautiful, dying eyes filled with a pleading so intense it had cracked the ethereal Sovereign’s heart squarely down the middle.

"Please," she had begged, offering the swaddled baby to him. "You are the only one I trust. You are the only one strong enough to hide the blessing beneath the veil of your own immense power. Please, Jiu Zui. Bless my child. Be her godfather in the shadows."

Jiu Zui had stared at the tiny, sleeping infant.

He was a man of the sword, a cultivator who walked the lonely path of the heavens. He did not know how to hold a baby.

He did not know how to be a father.

But he had looked at his dearest friend, bleeding out on his floor, offering him the most precious piece of her soul.

He had reached out, his long, elegant, flawless hands trembling violently as he took the bundle of silk from her arms. He had cradled the baby against his chest, terrified of breaking her.

He had channeled a tiny, delicate fraction of his Sovereign Qi into his index finger. He had gently, reverently pressed his fingertip against the center of the baby’s tiny chest, right over her beating heart.

"I bless you, Lin Ji’an," Jiu Zui had whispered, his voice cracking, the tears finally falling from his ethereal eyes, dropping onto the baby’s cheek. "May your spine be as unyielding as iron. May your heart remain warm in the winter. And may my sword stand between you and the dark, until the stars themselves burn to ash."

The seal had flared, a soft, brilliant silver light sinking into the baby’s chest.

At the touch of the magic, the baby had stirred.

Tiny, delicate, fragile fingers had uncurled from the silk swaddling. The baby had reached up, her eyes still closed, and had wrapped her minuscule hand firmly around Jiu Zui’s index finger.

She had held on.

In that exact moment, the ethereal, flawless Sovereign of the Drunken Peak had died. The man who cared about his appearance, who cared about his status, who cared about the Heavens... vanished.

He was replaced by a father.

Lady Lin had smiled, a weak, relieved, heartbreakingly peaceful smile. She had closed her eyes, her hand slipping from his robes.

That time, she had breathed her last breath on the floor of his pavilion, leaving him alone in the rain, holding a baby whose tiny hand refused to let go of his finger.

Jiu Zui stood in the Stargazing Tower, his grip white-knuckled on the hilt of his silver sword, the phantom sensation of those tiny, newborn fingers still burning like a brand against his skin.

How could he let go of those hands?

The child didn’t need to know everything.

She didn’t need to know that he had held her as a baby while her mother’s corpse cooled on the floor. She didn’t need to know the true depth of his grief, or the painful, soul-tearing torment he had endured across seventeen lifetimes.

It was a pain worse than death.

Death was a release. Death was quiet.

But for the ones who lived, for the ones who retained the memories of the resets, the pain was an active, breathing, carnivorous monster that ate them from the inside out.

Jiu Zui had watched her die seventeen times.

He had watched her die in the snow, die of poison. He had held her broken, bleeding body on battlefields, in alleyways, and in burning pavilions. Every single time she returned, she came back slightly more fractured, slightly more guarded, carrying the invisible scars of a universe that hated her.

He had watched her bright, innocent smile slowly erode into the cynical, tyrannical, spatula-wielding defensive mechanism she wore today.

He couldn’t protect her from the resets. He couldn’t fight the World Will.

The unfathomable agony of his own helplessness had driven him mad. He had shattered his own mirrors because he couldn’t stand to look at the flawless, ethereal face of a Sovereign who was too weak to save a little girl.

He had turned to the cheapest, most corrosive alcohol he could find, drinking himself into a feral, unwashed stupor just to numb the screaming in his head, just to blur the memories of her blood on his hands.

He had become a monster, a joke, a vagrant. All to survive the pain of loving a child the universe wanted dead.

And Yan Zhaoge?

Jiu Zui glanced out of the corner of his eye at the Overtime Boss.

Yan Zhaoge had never held the baby, he had not been her godfather. But Yan Zhaoge was Jiu Zui’s only friend.

For centuries, Yan Zhaoge had watched the most brilliant, beautiful, majestic Sovereign of their generation slowly destroy himself.

He had watched Jiu Zui weep over a clay jug, screaming at the Heavens until his vocal cords bled.