One day Lan Xichen will ask Meng Yao why he chose to go to Qinghe after his mother died. Meng Yao will say that he chose the Nie Sect because of Nie Mingjue’s well-known distaste for Jin Guangshan, but the truth is at once simpler and more immediate: Meng Yao walks out of the sea, hangs the pouch with his mother’s ashes around his neck, and vows never to swim again until he gets her other-skin back from Jin Guangshan. Qinghe, tucked between mountain peaks and barren hills, is as far from this gentle sea shore as he can think of. That Nie Mingjue turned out to be a man Meng Yao didn’t expect and couldn’t anticipate was an accident. - In which Meng Yao makes promises he cannot keep, some things are irreversibly broken, and the villain earns his due punishment at last.

The boy came to UCR_1669321_QH with the night shuttle. This was significant only because the ID he showed to Auntie Huaifeng on paperwork duty is clearly fake, and he didn’t leave with the next shuttle outbound—he wandered further into the belly of the station instead, asking about work. Auntie Huaifeng reports this all to Mingjue through the comm right from her rickety booth overlooking the station shuttleport in gleeful, cracking bursts.