Several days passed in a haze of blissful, quiet domesticity. The passion of their nights settled into the gentle, sunlit warmth of their days. Their new reality took shape, not in grand declarations, but in small, intimate moments. It was in the way Xue Lian would pause her work on a decree to watch Lan Yue practice her sword forms in the garden. It was in the way Lan Yue would pour Xue Lian a cup of tea without being asked, knowing exactly when she needed it. They were no longer Empress and companion, but two halves of a whole, their lives intertwining with a natural, unforced grace.
This morning, they were in the Grand Library. Xue Lian sat at a large table, diligently working through a stack of reports from her commanders, the faintest line of concentration between her brows. Across from her, Lan Yue had foregone the scrolls. With her cultivation fully restored, she felt a deep, instinctual need to reconnect with her own spiritual core. She sat on a plush cushion, her eyes closed, her hands resting on her knees as she fell into a deep, profound meditation.
Her mind was a calm, silent sea, a state of tranquility she hadn't fully experienced in months. She let her spiritual sense expand, feeling the potent, dark energy of the palace around her, no longer threatened by it but simply observing. She pushed her senses further, reaching for the familiar, clean energy of her own soul…
And that's when she heard it.
A voice, not of sound, but of pure spiritual essence, echoed in the deepest part of her consciousness. It was a voice she knew better than her own.
*Master? Master, can you hear me?*
Lan Yue's meditative calm shattered. Her eyes flew open, her heart giving a sudden, sharp jolt. She looked around the silent library, but there was no one there but Xue Lian, who was still focused on her work.
*Nightfall Crescent?* she sent back, a tentative, disbelieving thought.
The response was a flood of frantic, relieved energy. *Master! By the celestial heavens, it's you! The connection… it's restored! It's been six months! Half a year of silence since the link was severed! Are you alright? Where are we? I can't feel the spiritual ley lines of the human realm!*
The sword's panicked words crashed over Lan Yue like a tidal wave. Each piece of information was a blow.
Six months.
Half a year. The library seemed to waver before her eyes. Had it truly been that long? An entire change of seasons had likely passed in the mortal realm. She tried to count the days, but they blurred into a seamless, beautiful tapestry of debates in this very library, of watching a festival from a private balcony, of shared meals and whispered confessions, of long, passionate nights that bled into soft, quiet mornings. She had been so completely immersed in her new world, so captivated by the woman who ruled it, that the passage of time had become utterly meaningless.
The link was severed.
She thought back to the day of her abduction. The chaos, the disorientation, and then… a strange sense of muted power. She had attributed it to the demonic energy of the Netherworld suppressing her righteous cultivation. But now, she understood. The elegant, simple choker Xue Lian had removed in the bath… it hadn't just been a piece of jewelry. It had been a shackle, a restriction collar that had dampened her cultivation to a mere ten percent of its true strength. That was why she had lost contact with her Spirit Sword.
The old Lan Yue, the proud Head Disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect, would have been incandescent with fury at such a violation. To have her power, the very core of her identity, so casually bound…
But as she sat there, her heart pounding, she felt no anger. There was only a slow, dawning, terrifying sense of wonder.
She had been living with only a fraction of her true strength for half a year, and she hadn't even realized it. She had felt so whole, so utterly, completely seen and cherished by Xue Lian, that the loss of ninety percent of her power had registered as nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Her happiness was no longer measured by the depth of her cultivation, but by the presence of the woman sitting across from her.
"Yue?"
Xue Lian's voice cut through her spiraling thoughts. She was looking at Lan Yue, her work forgotten, her face etched with concern. "What is it? You're pale as a ghost."
Lan Yue looked at her Empress, her lover, the woman who had both imprisoned her and set her free. She took a shaky breath, the truth pouring out.
"My sword," she began, her voice quiet. "Its name is Nightfall Crescent. It's a Spirit Sword, bound to my soul. The connection… it was just restored." She looked down at her hands, then back up at Xue Lian's worried face. "It told me… it's been six months."
She watched for a flicker of guilt in Xue Lian's eyes regarding the collar, but she pressed on, needing to voice the real revelation, the one that shook her to her very soul.
"Half a year," she repeated, a note of awe in her voice. "And I didn't even notice."
The confession hung in the air between them. It was a testament to Xue Lian's gentle care, to the depth of their connection, and to the profound, irrevocable way Lan Yue's entire world had been remade. The last remnant of her gilded cage had just been revealed, and instead of rattling its bars, she had simply marveled at how little they had mattered at all.