Fanfiction3: A-Li's Three Lives, Three Worlds - Chapter 60 (Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms 三生三世十里桃花)
Chapter 60
written by LigayaCroftedited by kakashi & Panda
There had only been two instances in his very long life when time had completely stopped for The Observer.
The first had been when he found out that his Beloved was sentenced to be forgotten forever, a fate that was worse than death.
Today was the second. Her red ribbon, which held part of her hair together in a small twist at the back of her head, fluttered in the wind behind her as she briskly walked. Her smile, which the most beautiful of mortal sunrises were patterned from, beamed with a happiness that reached into his tired, immortal heart.
It evoked memories of their own immortal youth, of how she would smile to herself as she walked along the pink-laden grounds of a peach blossom grove then break into a run the closer she got to his position.
She was his first love, his eternal love. They would have been married by now hadn't she chosen to prioritize their mission to create the Second Creation, or hadn't her banishment taken place tens of millennia after.
Their long immortal lives have been testament to the fact that there were no limits to what he would do for her. For her, he descended to rule the First Creation mortals for more than 110,000 years. And for the love of her, he had stripped himself off of his powers so he could watch over her, sure that a life of not being with her was the harsher alternative.
But it didn't matter because he was a patient man. He knew fate had destined them together to fix the atrocities Fuxi had committed during his reign, and one that continued to perpetuate in the thousands of years that followed. It was the rule of the Heavens to balance injustice with justice, and nobody could mete that out better than His Beloved herself.
One couldn’t make fire with rain.
Unless you were an extremely powerful god.
He just had to set the stage for her.
But today…
Time froze for The Observer as he watched her joyously approach Li and wrap her arms around the Usurper’s neck to pull him down for a long kiss.
Heat unlike any he had felt in millennia flooded The Observer’s being. Fire flowed in his veins and it took all of his cultivated discipline not to rip the lovers apart right then and there.
How could this Usurper have gone this far with His Beloved?
What power did the boy have that he was able to make her fall in love with him in two mortal lifetimes?
And now, there was a baby on the way.
It was a staggering sight to see His Beloved pregnant. She had had children but she had never been pregnant before, and The Observer had always attributed that to the Heavens sealing her womb because of how powerful she was.
A quick mental count on the timing pointed to the possibility that his moorings had slackened again around the time the baby had been conceived — which could only mean something in her had released, too. It had to be Li’s ability to cancel magick around him, passed into her when she conceived their child, a skill The Observer sensed had grown stronger since he had last seen The Usurper in the mortal realms.
It was a power that Li carried latently too. Even now, The Observer saw that Bailòng’s containment, touted to be the most powerful binding magick of the First Creation, a magick that was supposed to be able to bring to heel any of the Second Creation, could barely hold back Li’s powers. It brought into question the how. Had the boy been training with someone?
To distract himself from the pain of watching His Beloved look at Li in a way she had never looked at his own countenance before, The Observer shifted his gaze to her belly.
There was a reason Fuxi and Nüwa had had twins — the boys were to even out their parents’ powers between them. For a mortal carrying an immortal offspring, Huo Zheng looked… normal as compared to Nüwa who had been incredibly weakened by her own pregnancy. With his eternal eyes he saw how the energy of Hundun directly and seamlessly flowed into His Beloved’s womb, raw, like the purest of spring waters.
The child His Beloved carried was definitely an abomination. It had to be. It carried the latent qualities of its Mother’s Yuanshen, and what of Li? The Observer had never seen anything like the boy before. His half-mortal core hid the breadth of all of his abilities from others but not from The Observer. The boy’s potential reminded The Observer a lot of the boy's grandparents during their prime.
Who would balance out that child’s power when it came out?
Further, once born, that child would forever tether His Beloved to the Second Creation. It would be an aberration to his plans to topple the dynasty that Fuxi had created, to his own plans of starting the Third Creation with her.
The Observer turned from the hurtful sight and moved in determined steps toward the town gates.
A baby in the way.
A baby was in his way.
His Beloved was his, first and always.
Yet why did she keep slipping away?