Chapter 1258: Yuzukis’s Fantasy at the Soundless Play

The moon had finally escaped whatever pale veil had hidden it earlier, rising clean and luminous above the lake until its silver glow joined the thousands of stars scattered across the night.

Phei and Melissa noticed none of it.

They were still too absorbed in the small world they had made beneath the ancient tree, his arm around her and his hand returning again and again to the quiet warmth of her stomach while the news she had given him continued rearranging everything he had once imagined tomorrow would contain.

Perhaps heaven had grown curious.

One distant star seemed brighter than before, gleaming with enough brilliance to distinguish itself from its innumerable companions, though neither of the two below ever raised their heads long enough to see it.

Moonlight spilled across the lake and formed a trembling silver road toward the wooden dock, the water carrying that celestial glow all the way to their feet.

Heaven could have saved itself the effort.

Phei had already found something brighter.

There was a tiny life growing inside Melissa, still hidden so completely that the rest of the world had not been granted so much as a glimpse, and somehow that invisible little person had already reduced the moon, the stars and every expensive wonder Phei had ever seen to decorative scenery.

The stars and the moo were beautiful, certainly but his child had entered the competition without possessing fingers yet and somehow won by humiliating margins.

Phei’s palm moved over Melissa’s stomach again.

He smiled.

Perhaps that was why, despite the instincts he had developed over the last several weeks, he never bothered properly examining the estate around them. True Void Sense had grown far beyond the timid perception it had been when first awakened.

Even without consciously spreading it through the hills, Phei had felt concealed presences scattered throughout the surrounding land hours ago.

He simply had not cared.

There had been no hostility in any of them:

Several carried signatures he was very much familiar with enough for his instincts to dismiss almost immediately, and after Melissa had whispered that she was carrying his child, the entire hidden world could have gathered in the forest wearing matching ritual robes and Phei probably would have needed several reminders before bothering to ask why.

Had he actually looked more, he might have laughed.

Melissa’s secluded romantic escape was guarded like someone expected a little emperor or empress to be born before sunrise.

The villa rested upon a gentle rise overlooking the lake, surrounded by forested hills whose dark slopes descended toward the water beneath pine, cedar and ancient broad-leaf trees. Hidden among those woods, above the roofline, along distant ridges and inside places ordinary perception would have crossed without ever realizing someone stood there, powerful figures kept silent watch over the estate.

Some balanced upon branches too slender to support mortal weight, their presences folded so deeply inward that insects crawled across the bark beneath them without noticing anything unusual while others rested upon distant rocks overlooking the lake, while several simply floated among the darkness above the hills, disappearing whenever thin clouds wandered across the moon.

Their positions were deliberate...

...wide enough apart that one attack could never sweep away the entire guard, yet close enough that anything hostile entering the estate would quickly discover that romance had somehow acquired its own army.

A little excessive, perhaps.

Yesterday Phei might have thought so.

Tonight it suddenly felt reasonable.

The young Dragon sitting beneath that tree had already become one of the most important members of the Ryujin Tiamat bloodline, and whatever Phei was slowly becoming, even those closest to him and didnt know what he really was had begun understanding that Dragon alone might eventually become too small an answer.

Melissa complicated that matter further.

She now carried his child!

If Phei’s blood was truly as pure and strange as every new revelation suggested, then the tiny life beneath Melissa’s heart could inherit his whole bloodline profound enough to make very old people develop very dangerous interests the moment they learned of its existence.

The Ryujin Tiamats who knew the matter way too much and fondly had no intention of politely waiting for that day before becoming paranoid.

High above the wooded slope east of the villa, Yuzuki Hayashi floated with both arms folded beneath her chest like they were some concealment veil wrapped around her and the man beside her was so completely unperceivable that even the moonlight seemed uncertain whether anything occupied that piece of sky.

Yuzuki had been watching the dock for far too long; that was her official complaint she had already prepared should anyone ask.

The less official problem was what had happened to her face sometime during the last hour.

Her eyes had become embarrassingly soft.

Far below, Phei shifted closer to Melissa beneath the blanket. Yuzuki could not hear a word because a sound barrier enclosed the dock so that no one would hear what they say, yet hearing hardly seemed necessary. Melissa remained tucked against Phei’s side while his hand kept wandering back toward her stomach with the helpless fascination like he had forgotten the rest of her body existed.

Yuzuki watched his palm settle there once again and sighed.

’This is so... disgustingly sweet.’

Beside her, Ryuzen Raizen Hayashi gave a quiet, deeply agreeable, "Mm-hm."

Yuzuki’s eyes moved sideways. "Why are you humming... I didn’t ask you anything."

Ryuzen floated with both hands folded comfortably behind his back, his robes scarcely disturbed by the wind. "You sighed at me."

"I sighed at the situation."

"It sounded conversational." ℯ

She stared at him for several seconds, discovered there was no respectable way to continue that argument and returned her attention to the lake.

Another minute passed before Phei apparently said something amusing. Melissa laughed, turning her face against his shoulder and hid into his embrace he kissed her hair and the rest that happened was all affectionate enough that Yuzuki’s mouth began curving before she caught the treacherous expression and converted it into a very deliberate yawn:

"Are we seriously going to stand here watching this soundless play for the entire night?"

Ryuzen nodded mildly. "Mm-hm."

Yuzuki looked at him again. "That’s your whole answer?"

"Yes."

"I could be sleeping."

"Mm-hm."

"I could be cultivating or literally anywhere else on Paradise."

Ryuzen gave another thoughtful nod. "You could... yet here you’re sis."

Her eyebrow twitched.

He was enjoying this far too much.

The bastard even had the dignity to look peaceful while doing it.

Yuzuki faced the lake again and watched Phei lean close to Melissa’s ear. Whatever he whispered made the older woman’s expression soften, and she turned enough to kiss his lips before settling against him again.

Yuzuki exhaled slowly through her nose. "It looks exhausting."

That finally earned more than a hum. Ryuzen turned his head toward her. "What does?"

She gestured vaguely toward the couple. "That."

"Being happy?" he asked.

Yuzuki rolled her eyes. "Gods, you’re hopeless romantic."

"A romantic?"

"And nuisance yes."

Ryuzen accepted the correction with the faintest smile and looked toward the dock once more. "It is beautiful, though, isn’t it?"

"Of course you’d say that." She rolled her eyes.

"What is wrong with saying it?"

"Nothing."

Ryuzen remained quiet for long enough that Yuzuki should have become suspicious... then he asked, "Don’t you ever picture something like that?"

Her eyes narrowed immediately. "Picture what?"

He inclined his chin toward the lake. "Something like that. A home you actually want to return to. Someone waiting there who makes all the cultivation world, family politics and bloodshed worth enduring. Maybe having children and with enough strength that nobody can casually tear any of it away from you. Reaching the end of the day and knowing exactly why you spent all those years becoming stronger."

Yuzuki stared at him.

Unfortunately, the scene beneath them chose that exact moment to betray her.

Phei had taken Melissa’s hand and brought it against his lips. Even from the hillside Yuzuki could see the way Melissa looked at him afterward, with a happiness untouched by cultivation, their messed up but freakish powerful family, influence or any of the things their world usually worshipped.

They were just two lovers who couldn’t live without the other and celebrating a new life that was about to join them.

Something warmed in Yuzuki’s expression:

She killed it immediately. "Me?" she scoffed, recovering with admirable speed. "Living like that? Have you actually looked at their lives?"