(Chu Feng's Final Lesson)
The rice terraces shimmered gold under the autumn sun. Chu Feng wiped sweat from his brow, his mortal hands calloused but steady as he scythed through stalks. Beside him, a teenage apprentice — the horned mutant boy from Bonecarver's Village — struggled with his rhythm.
"Your swings are too angry," Chu Feng adjusted the boy's grip. "The blade isn't a weapon here."
"But it's boring," the boy grumbled. "I want to learn Phoenix magic! Or Void explosions! Or—"
A mud clod smacked his head. Ling'er stood atop the irrigation ditch, her rolled-up trousers caked in clay. "Your Big Brother Feng once thought farming beneath him too. Now look — best rice in three provinces."
The boy blinked. "Really?"
Chu Feng tossed him a stalk. "Taste it."
As the boy chewed, wonder replaced defiance. "It's… sweet?"
"Sunlight made flesh," Ling'er smiled. "More powerful than any spell."
[Closed Thread: Chu Feng's Rejection of Glory]
(Li Zichen's Atonement Complete)
Li Zichen's clinic had become a shrine of dried herbs and faded thank-you notes. He massaged his missing fingers, staring at the final vial of moonbell essence. The plague was over. The farmers walked straight again.
A shadow filled the doorway — a Chu Clan elder, his silk robes dull with dust.
"Begone," Li Zichen said wearily. "I treat no nobles."
"Not even one seeking poison?" The elder placed a jade box on the table. Inside lay a withered heart — his own, blackened by corruption. "The Clan's last patriarch requests mercy."
Li Zichen recognized the symptoms — the same decay he'd fought in Chu Feng. "Why not beg the Heavenly Thunder Sect?"
"Their new healers… lack your expertise." The elder spat blood. "Our vaults hold treasures. Name your price."
Li Zichen uncorked the moonbell vial. "I charge one copper coin. And your name."
As the elder drank the bitter draught, Li Zichen burned the jade box in his hearth. When the man left cured but nameless, he etched a final entry in his ledger: "Patient 10,000: The man who taught me cruelty. Paid in full."
[Closed Thread: Li Zichen's Debt to His Clan]
(Sect's Last Reform)
Elder Wen's hammer struck the debating table. "All in favor of dissolving the Heavenly Thunder Sect's cultivation monopoly?"
Hands rose — former mutants, lowborn disciples, even a mortal rice merchant. The vote was unanimous.
As artifacts of oppression were publicly melted into farming tools, a disciple asked, "But how will we maintain order?"
"By earning respect, not fear," Elder Wen said, handing her ceremonial robes to a tailor. "Now help load these plowshares for the north."
Outside, children chased fireflies where the Corpse Refinery once stood. The sect's final edict fluttered on the wind: "Let the land teach what our arrogance obscured."
[Closed Thread: Sect's Institutional Transformation]
(Jiang Yue's Quiet Legacy)
Chu Feng found Ling'er at the shrine's pool, her reflection rippling beside Jiang Yue's. "They've started calling her the Mother of Second Chances."
"Better than 'System Creator'." Ling'er tossed a pebble, scattering the image. "I've been remembering… things."
"Don't." Chu Feng gripped her hand — warm, mortal, real. "The past is compost. Let it feed tomorrow."
They replanted lotuses until dusk, their laughter unburdened by prophecies. When a traveler asked Jiang Yue's name, Ling'er simply said, "A gardener who loved her son."
[Closed Thread: Jiang Yue's Historical Legacy]
(Ling'er's Full Circle)
At the harvest festival, villagers begged Ling'er to perform the Phoenix Rebirth Dance. She refused until children offered a crown of wildflowers.
Her bare feet traced forgotten steps on moonlit soil — no magic, no flames, just a woman dancing. When she finished, the mutant boy asked, "Will you teach me?"
"Only if you promise to change the ending."
As he stumbled through the motions, Ling'er whispered to Chu Feng, "I used to hear her voice — Jiang Yue's — in every flame. Now… just crickets."
"Good," Chu Feng kissed her salt-streaked temple. "You're finally here."
[Closed Thread: Ling'er's Identity Beyond the Phoenix]
(Mutant Village's First Wedding)
The mutant smithy's forge had been repurposed into a banquet hall, its walls draped with wildflowers instead of chains. Young Jin – the boy who'd once asked if Fang Kun died brave – stood trembling in patched wedding silks, his horns polished to a shine. His bride, a healer's daughter with vines growing through her hair, giggled as she adjusted his crooked sash.
"Big Brother Feng said you'd faint before the vows," she teased.
"I'm not—" Jin's protest died as Li Zichen entered, bearing saplings potted in melted shackle-metal.
"Moonbell trees," the disgraced noble announced. "They'll bloom where nothing else grows."
The mutants hesitated. An elder spat: "We want no noble's charity!"
Li Zichen rolled up his sleeves, revealing scarred arms. "These saplings survived the plague fields. Like us."
As the couple planted the first tree, its roots pulsed faintly – not with magic, but resilience. When Jin kissed his bride, the mutants cheered through tears. Somewhere in the crowd, a reformed Heavenly Thunder disciple whispered: "Who needs cultivation when we've got this?"
[Closed Thread: Mutant Integration]
(Elder Wen's New Purpose)
The border checkpoint reeked of stale mistrust. Elder Wen – now stripped of her title – stood between two former enemy sects, her cart of golden rice gleaming under nervous stares.
"The Heavenly Thunder Sect offers three hundred bushels," she declared, "in exchange for your medicinal herbs."
A scarred cultivator sneered. "Since when do immortals grovel for mortal crops?"
"Since we learned hunger tastes the same for all." She tossed him a rice ball. "Test it for poison if you dare."
The man bit, then froze. Memories flooded him – childhood harvests, his mother's laughter. With a trembling hand, he passed the rice to his starving disciples.
By dusk, the cart returned laden with herbs. As Wen unloaded them at a mortal clinic, a child asked: "Are you a goddess?"
"No," she smiled, wiping sweat. "Just a farmer who remembers her sword."
[Closed Thread: Sect's Geopolitical Role]
(Shrine's Mundane Miracle)
Pilgrims gathered around the shrine's dying oak, its branches skeletal from decades of neglect. A mortal blacksmith knelt, pressing compost to its roots. "My grandfather planted this. I'll not see it fall."
Days passed. Farmers shared their scant water. Children picked grubs from its bark. When Chu Feng arrived with grafting tools, Ling'er stopped him. "Let them try."
On the seventh dawn, a single bud unfurled – not through qi or divine intervention, but stubborn care. The blacksmith wept as villagers crowned the tree with lanterns.
"See?" Ling'er elbowed Chu Feng. "Better than your fancy gardening."
He snorted. "Says the woman who killed a god."
The tree thrived for generations, its growth rings telling a sweeter story than any scripture.
[Closed Thread: Mortal/Cultivator Equality]
(Chu Feng's Ordinary Joy)
Ling'er's "surprise" left the hut smokier than a alchemist's lab. Chu Feng stared at the lumpy rice cakes – some glowing faintly green, others harder than sect relics.
"I followed the recipe!" she protested, face smeared with ash.
Jin burst in with mutant children. "Auntie Ling'er, the village dogs are howling at your smoke!"
As Chu Feng bit into a cake, his jaw creaked. "Delicious. If we were…"
"Don't say 'starving during the apocalypse'."
The mutants salvaged the mess, transforming charcoal cakes into ink and fertilizer. By nightfall, the village celebrated with proper sweets – and a ceremonial cake-tossing at Ling'er.
"Happy birthday, old man," she laughed, wiping custard from her hair. "Still better than fighting Void Lords."
[Closed Thread: Chu Feng's Contentment]
(Final Sunset)
The couple sat on their porch, hands intertwined and joints stiff with age. Fireflies rose from the rice fields like living stars.
"Remember when we thought saving the world meant grand battles?" Ling'er mused.
Chu Feng squeezed her hand. "This is grander."
Their scars had softened – his system corruption faded to faint silver lines, her phoenix burns mellowed into sunspots. In the village below, Jin's grandchildren raced through moonbell groves, their laughter unburdened by old wars.
As dusk deepened, a familiar figure approached – Li Zichen, leaning on a sapling staff. Without a word, he placed two rice cakes (properly baked) beside them and left.
The last firefly settled on Ling'er's palm. "Do you ever miss it? The power? The purpose?"
Chu Feng kissed her graying hair. "I've got all the purpose I need right here."
When the dawn came, their chairs sat empty. But the rice grew tall, the shrine tree blossomed, and the world turned quietly onward.
[All Threads Closed. The Cycle Broken.]