Chapter 4
Chapter 4: Lord of the River of Oblivion
A new moon hung over the River of Oblivion—more precisely, the six-hour window when the waning moon and the new moon traded places.
A thin crescent barely clung to the sky, and it was Ghost Month besides. This was the time of year when the moon’s power was weakest.
Fog rose from the River of Oblivion. The soul-bearing boat hovered above the surface, blurred and barely visible.
Nian Niang watched Song Wei Chen sink without a sound, the corners of her mouth lifting into a cold smile.
Then she dissolved into a cloud of black mist and vanished from the lonely boat.
But the River of Oblivion was not truly empty.
Gu Cang Yue—the lord of the River of Oblivion—was hidden at the bottom of Blackwater.
He was furious.
He was weak.
Every year, these six hours were the most dangerous time for him, when his power scattered and then gathered again. Tonight he was so diminished he couldn’t even take form. He clung to existence as a human-soul only, thin as smoke. Any cultivator with a bit of skill could end him.
So, each year at this time, Gu Cang Yue hid in the safest place he could think of: the deepest part of the River of Oblivion. He waited it out, counting each second with the stubbornness of survival.
The irony was cruel.
Enduring the hours at the bottom of Blackwater was almost enough to kill him.
Gu Cang Yue was a fallen god. In the Dream Realm, his name alone could make people tremble. Yet he had two weaknesses.
The first was solitude.
The second was darkness.
He feared it—hated it—with a sharpness that came from old wounds.
His true form was a luan bird from the Western Mountains of the Great Wilderness, feathers white as moonlight, gleaming with a silver sheen. Such divine creatures were born of auspicious signs and doomed to a lifetime of loneliness. Ancient texts recorded, “When the luan bird appears, all ages are at peace, yet it is one of a kind.”
The longer it lived, the lonelier it became. It flew across the three thousand great thousand worlds, searching without rest for its own kind, clinging to a chance so small it bordered on madness.
One day it passed over the River of Oblivion, during Ghost Month, as the moon shifted. In the weak light, it saw a faint reflection of itself in Blackwater and mistook it for another luan bird.
It dove.
It never rose again.
Its power scattered into the River of Oblivion. The High God of the Great Wasteland vanished from the world, and in his place remained Gu Cang Yue—the lord of the River of Oblivion.
That was why he could endure many things, but he could not endure being alone in pitch-black water, where you could not see your own hand. The darkness beneath the River of Oblivion devoured light and sound alike. Below the surface, everything was blind.
Each second felt like it might split him open.
Gu Cang Yue was on the edge of madness when he sensed something above—a faint phosphorescence blooming in the black.
The glow looked like the silver-moon sheen of his own feathers.
[Another of my kind?]
His heart kicked hard. He surged toward it.
Only when he drew close did he see the truth.
It was a young woman in White Robe, already unconscious from drowning.
And the light—
The light was coming from her.
“River of Oblivion water absorbs all light,” Gu Cang Yue thought, stunned. “How is this possible?”
Even as he wondered, the glow began to dim, thread by thread.
Life.
The light was tied to her life.
Gu Cang Yue made his decision in an instant—the way a man who has tasted light can no longer accept endless night.
He forced what little power he had left into a single spell, shaping it into a huge bubble of air and wrapping her inside.
The girl remained unconscious. But the light stopped fading. With the bubble, she clung to one thin breath.
Gu Cang Yue, drained, could no longer even maintain a human-soul shape. He hovered beside the bubble as the spirit of a luan bird, trembling with the strain.
By casting the spell, he would recover slower than usual. He would have to remain underwater longer. His danger grew.
And yet, time felt less unbearable.
Because there was light.
He watched the sleeping girl closely, unsettled by the strange sense of familiarity.
Who was she?
Why did she feel… close?
And what was that soft glow? Was she, like him, a fallen god?
But the White Robe looked like the uniform of the Dust Warden Office. If she was one of their grievance-breakers, how could she be a woman?
Questions filled his mind, and the questions—at least—kept the darkness from swallowing him whole.
But air was air. It ran out.
The bubble’s oxygen dwindled. Soon it would be gone, and she would die.
Gu Cang Yue was still far from recovered.
He needed to send her to land.
But in his current state, he couldn’t.
A cruel dilemma tightened around him.
Above the River of Oblivion, the fog slowly thinned.
Morning arrived.
Ding-ling. Ding-ling.
A wind chime rang—clear and bright, the same rhythm as a phone alarm.
Song Wei Chen reached for her phone without opening her eyes. She fumbled for it, heavy-lidded, bones aching with exhaustion.
“Awake?”
The voice was male.
Song Wei Chen sat bolt upright, shock punching the breath out of her.
A man in her room?
She turned toward the sound—and froze.
This wasn’t her home.
It was an ancient room, simple but refined. A walnut bookshelf lined one wall, filled with bound volumes. Beside it stood a Xiangfei-bamboo plant stand holding a small pine bonsai. A large walnut desk sat in the center with brush and ink laid neatly out. Steam curled from a teacup, and incense smoke wove upward in thin, lazy spirals.
Behind the desk sat a man in black, holding a book high enough to hide his face. All she could see was a straight back and long fingers, knuckles defined, steady on the page.
“I got up too fast,” Song Wei Chen muttered, eyes squeezing shut again as she flopped back. “My eyes are still dreaming. I need to sleep.”
Then the hardness of the bed registered.
The pillow was hard too. Square.
What kind of decent home had a square pillow?
This wasn’t her bed.
Her eyes flew open.
The man was still there.
He hadn’t moved at all.
[Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.]
Song Wei Chen grabbed her head and raked her hands through her hair until it stood in wild tufts.
Ding-ling.
The chime rang again. Her eyes brightened. Alarm. Of course—this had to be a dream.
She looked toward the sound.
There was no phone.
Only a wind chime hanging under the eaves, ringing in the breeze—a real one.
Hope drained out of her so fast it left her hollow.
Song Wei Chen drew her knees up and buried her face against them, arms wrapped tight.
Images crashed through her mind, tangled and sharp: a bridge, a fall, Blackwater, a lantern, a man in mist.
Reality and dream blurred until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
She felt like Yang Zi Qiong in Everything Everywhere All at Once—only in Song Wei Chen’s multiverse, there was no one she could rely on at all.
A chair scraped.
Footsteps approached the bed and stopped.
“If I’d arrived half an incense stick later,” the man said calmly, “you would have frozen to death.”