The mind bears all creation, its essence being the primordial energy sustaining existence. External realities prove but fleeting dreams, shape-shifting illusions offering no anchorage - only endless pursuits and spiritual bewilderment.
Staring into mirrors, mortals gasp at emerging grey hairs and eyes clouding with ash. Mechanical smiles fossilize faces, revealing how mere months can calcify souls into unrecognizable forms.
Three moons had waxed since Bai became Yang Renzhu's favored confidant. Sheltered by power and prestige, survival concerns vanished like morning dew.
Yang basked in perceived fortune, believing he'd found a soulmate. To him, Bai embodied the perfect blade - exquisitely crafted yet sheathed in humility. The young diviner mastered esoteric arts like Qimen Dunjia, offered companionship without arrogance, wisdom without ostentation.
Nightly, Yang ascended Mystic Star Pavilion's forbidden third floor with his protégé. Bai traced celestial orbits across starmaps as Yang produced rice paper bearing his birth chart - eight characters normally guarded like imperial seals.
This gesture of trust remained unreciprocated. In three months, none save Shuiqian had glimpsed Bai's true nature.
Analyzing Yang's astral destiny with surgical precision, Bai charted decadal fortunes and monthly cycles. He tempered fatalism with strategic hope: "Virtue accumulation might yet alter fate's currents."
"Other fortune-tellers peddle golden Buddhas and feng shui charms," Yang marveled. "You alone speak of cultivating kindness. But changing one's nature..." His sigh carried midlife despair.
"Have you witnessed successful defiance of destiny?"
Bai's smile crystallized like frost on executioner's steel. "None."
Yang's shoulders slumped beneath cosmic insignificance - a mayfly confronting eternity. Strands of silver hair fluttered like surrender flags.
"Except myself," Bai whispered into night winds, sparing himself memory-erasure spells.
Watching Yang's defeated posture, Bai tasted power's narcotic thrill. Gold, manipulation, and wrath filled his gnawing void temporarily. Yet solitude's chill always returned, driving him deeper into ravenous pursuits, eyes blazing with feral intensity.