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.

“No, I don’t want anything,” Nie Mingjue said, deeply relieved to have identified that he had not, in fact, forgotten to fill out his calendar. “I’m stuck in a time loop.” “…ah,” the guard said, looking taken aback – he must be new to Qinghe, like many of the cultivators in the army. Like Meng Yao, for that matter. “Is that…bad?” “No, it’s fantastic. I’m going back to sleep. No one is to bother me all day.”