The first time Yue broke a celestial law… ten million lives ceased to exist.
Yet in that instant… she was only thinking about the rain.
"If the world ends tomorrow," she whispered, standing at the edge of the Ninth Heaven, "I want to see the rain with you once more."
Yan did not answer.
He never answered when he knew he should refuse.
The eternal sky turned beneath their feet like an ocean of motionless gold. There were no seasons there. No time. No death.
Only balance.
In the distance, a group of newly ascended spirits crossed the gardens of the Celestial Palace. One stumbled, still unable to bear the weight of its new existence. Yue watched it fall… and discreetly extended her energy to steady it before the guardians noticed.
"You cannot keep doing that," Yan murmured without looking at her. "Every intervention alters the flow of Samsara."
"Every life we save preserves the balance," Yue replied with a faint smile. "Heaven counts numbers. I count names."
"And when Heaven forgets a name… someone must remember it. Even if that someone disappears afterward."
Yan closed his eyes.
Because if he looked at her one second longer… he would have destroyed the balance by his own will.
He knew that difference between them… was the fissure where their ruin would be born.
And yet, Yan extended his hand.
His fingers brushed Yue's.
A minimal gesture.
An irreversible error.
The universe trembled.
The judgment bells of the Celestial Palace began to toll before their skin parted.
"A hundred lives will not suffice to pay for your audacity."
The sentence fell before thunder could form in the sky.
But the judgment had begun long before.
It had begun the instant their hands touched.
It had begun with a world dying.
The air of the Ninth Heaven tore open.
An invisible fracture split the Palace of Supreme Clarity, and eternal light shattered like crystal struck by a blow no god admitted hearing.
Yan felt the impact first in his bones.
It was not pain.
It was something worse.
As if his divinity were being slowly torn from his blood.
His knees trembled.
He tried to resist… and failed.
The floor of stardust forced him to kneel. Every particle beneath his skin began to blacken, as if the universe itself rejected his existence.
Blood burst from his palms as his nails dug into flesh.
But the blood did not fall.
Celestial Law allowed no impurity in that hall.
Yan lifted his gaze.
Not toward the judges.
Toward Yue.
The palace floated above seas of golden clouds. Suspended jade columns upheld a sky that knew no error.
But that day… eternity trembled.
The judges of Heaven watched from thrones of light without form or age. They were not beings.
They were the idea of judgment made presence.
There was no anger in their regard.
Compassion is not part of the laws that hold the world together.
Nor is freedom.
Before them, Yue remained kneeling.
The light surrounding her body quivered, as though the firmament hesitated to touch her.
Cold pierced her divine bones, yet her back stayed straight.
Not from pride.
But because she knew that if she bowed her head, she would forget Yan's face.
Her crime was not betrayal.
It was the sovereignty of the heart.
Two pillars of cosmic order had chosen to look upon one another.
And Heaven, sensing imbalance, answered with silence.
Not because love broke the world.
But because love had already broken one.
"Show them," ordered a voice from the tribunal.
Space before them tore open.
A vision unfolded.
A lesser realm floating among distant constellations appeared suspended in the void.
Silver forests.
Cities of living crystal.
Millions of souls who would never know war.
Yan felt his soul freeze.
He recognized the world.
He had diverted its orbit to save Yue.
"Do you know how many souls breathed there when you chose to love?" the tribunal asked.
The memory returned like a blade.
An instant in which Yue was dying.
A broken oath.
An order no god had the right to give… and that Yan chose to ignore.
Yan had seen two futures.
In one… Yue died alone beneath an indifferent sky.
In the other… a kingdom burned while she breathed.
Yan chose without hesitation.
And never again believed he deserved to be called a god.
An instant.
A decision.
A turn in the current of fate.
The realm began to fracture.
The mountains collapsed first.
Then the oceans evaporated as though the sky had forgotten how to hold them.
Souls screamed without voice as gravity unraveled.
Amid the ruins of the collapsing world… a child stretched out his hand toward a sky that no longer remembered how to hold stars.
Yan would never forget that gesture.
Even if Heaven forced him to forget everything else.
Yue inhaled sharply.
"Stop…"
The tribunal did not answer.
The realm imploded.
Silence.
Ten million lives vanished in a breath that never became sound.
Yue struck the floor with both hands.
Celestial laws trembled.
"I was the one who asked him!" she cried. "I demanded his help! Punish me, not the world!"
Her celestial energy erupted around her, momentarily cracking the tribunal's seals. For a fraction of a second… Yue altered the judgment.
The palace shook.
Yan lifted his head in horror.
It was the first time Yue had openly defied the tribunal.
"You swore to uphold balance," said one voice, ancient as the first dawn. "Not ignite it."
Fragments of future realities exploded around them.
Yan saw empires burning.
Cities reduced to ash.
Fields covered in corpses that no longer remembered their names.
In one vision… his own sword pierced Yue's chest.
And worst of all… in that vision Yan was smiling.
Because in that life… at least he would have touched her before losing her.
The phantom impact tore through his soul like lightning.
Yue saw as well.
She saw her kingdom burn.
She saw her crown fall into mud.
She saw her hands holding Yan's lifeless body while rain washed blood that would never cease to fall.
The vision vanished.
Silence returned.
Heavier.
Final.
Yan understood then what the judges would never speak aloud.
Heaven did not punish love.
It punished the imbalance love left behind.
Yan had begun to believe—or perhaps fear—that every time their destinies intertwined, the world sought a price no one knew how to measure.
Perhaps it was not a law.
Perhaps it was only a pattern no one had ever broken.
To love Yue meant condemning more than himself.
Empires would fall.
Innocents would pay.
And still… he could not stop.
His eyes reflected the palace's shattered light.
He did not seek forgiveness.
He had learned that Heaven does not listen to those who love.
It listens only to those who obey.
Yan had never been a god of words.
He had always been the one who carried weight in silence.
He only wanted to memorize Yue.
The almost invisible tremor of her lashes.
The uneven rhythm of her breathing as she fought not to cry.
The tear suspended in the air, frozen before falling… before reincarnation devoured even her name.
His love did not burn.
Did not beg.
It endured.
Yue held his gaze.
There was no fear in her eyes.
There was light.
There was a sorrow that refused to surrender.
Yue had never been docile.
Not even before destiny.
She did not see future ruins.
She saw only Yan.
And in her world… loving him was worth any price.
The air vibrated.
The stars beneath their feet began to go out one by one.
Yue stepped forward.
Celestial laws creaked like chains drawn to their limit.
"If the world is going to break us," she whispered, "then we will shine until the end."
For an instant… the tribunal wavered.
Several constellations shifted their orbit. It was the first time in millennia that Heaven's balance hesitated.
Yue thought love had been accepted.
That Heaven, at last, had yielded.
Hope lasted less than a heartbeat.
"If your love seeks to fill the void," declared the eldest of the judges, "then the void shall be your only home."
The universe held its breath.
"You will descend. A hundred lives will not suffice to pay for your audacity. You shall be dust. You shall be conflict. And in the end… you may not even remember what you once swore to protect.
"And each time you remember… the world will pay for it."
As it spoke, new visions opened.
More violent.
More inevitable.
"In your passing," it continued, "empires will learn the price of loving against Heaven."
The palace light fractured further.
Then the executor of the decree stepped forward.
Zhu Rong.
Flame of Celestial Judgment.
The god extended his hand toward the heart of the palace.
Space opened like torn flesh.
From within emerged a block of ancient jade, forged in an era when even gods bled fire.
The jade pulsed.
Not like stone.
Like it held the final breath of a god who died loving.
Yan felt the pulse synchronize with his soul.
And with Yue's.
Yue was the first to reach out.
Her fingers brushed the jade's surface… and the stone answered.
The entire palace shuddered.
Yan felt terror for the first time in millennia.
The jade split.
The sound belonged to no world.
It was a dragon drowning in the sky.
It was a phoenix bleeding out mid-flight.
The stone turned crimson.
It was not color.
It was wound.
"This jade shall be your thread," Zhu Rong pronounced, "…and your noose."
Fragments of jade floated between them, bound by a breathing light.
"In the mud of empires you shall seek one another.
Your reincarnations will be born in eras of war, betrayal, and downfall."
The jade burned between their hands without touching skin.
Then it absorbed something.
The memory of the first moment they loved.
Yue screamed.
Because the memory fading… was not the first they shared.
It was the only one in which they had been happy without guilt.
Yan tried to hold the memory… and watched it crumble into red dust.
"The punishment is not only to forget," Zhu Rong said.
"The punishment is to know you were once loved… and not remember by whom.
"Where the Crimson Jade beats, the ancient records say love rarely brings salvation. They say it always demands something no one wishes to give."
Yan extended his hand.
It did not tremble from fear.
It trembled from guilt.
Because he understood the price.
If he loved her… the world would bleed.
He remembered her laughter.
A golden echo no eternity could erase.
He remembered an absurd promise.
We will watch the rain together… without the thunder of war.
Yan understood too late that some promises are not broken by time.
They are broken by history.
His fingers brushed Yue's sleeve.
A minimal touch.
The last warmth before the void.
Yue smiled.
Not for the gods.
Only for him.
If they were to be lost… at least they would have loved.
The jade was cast into the void.
It fell through clouds, storms, and eras.
Each layer of heaven changed color as it passed.
As it descended…
A mortal army celebrated its victory.
A child laughed beside a river.
An empress crowned her heir.
The jade struck the root of Mount Heng.
The earth screamed.
Rivers turned red.
The sky darkened.
The army vanished beneath fire and stone.
The river became black mud.
The empress died without understanding why her blood burned from within.
Not from wound.
From compensation.
The world remembered.
The earth knew that debt would never heal.
To mortals, the jade would be a miracle.
To Heaven… a warning.
Centuries would pass.
Kings would call it a blessing.
And their kingdoms would burn believing they had been chosen.
They would never understand the truth.
The jade was not a gift.
It was a debt.
The wheels of Samsara began to turn.
Divinity was torn from the Dragon and Phoenix's bones with the wet sound of something breaking from within.
They descended to the mortal world.
Not as gods.
Not as lovers.
As two souls condemned to find each other in the midst of chaos.
And in the era of the Warring Kingdoms…
The jade awakened.
It did so in the calloused hands of a general who did not yet know how to love.
War drums thundered beneath an ash-laden sky.
The general raised the jade… and for an instant saw the reflection of a woman crying beneath the rain. He did not know her name. He did not know why his chest burned as he watched her die a thousand times in a single heartbeat.
And somewhere in the world…
A young woman embroidered a military emblem she did not understand why she knew by heart.
A woman waited for his return without knowing Heaven had already begun to collect its debt.
Because when the Crimson Jade awakens…
It does not ask whom you love.
It simply awakens… and the world begins to tilt toward a price no one can name at first.
And when you finally understand the answer…
The jade has already chosen for you.
And some chroniclers whisper it always demands a name.
…and that name is often the one you swore to save.
But no one has lived long enough to confirm whether that tale is warning… or destiny.
Because the Crimson Jade does not always separate lovers.
Sometimes it merely decides who must carry the memory… when the world has already forgotten.
鳳凰