Side Story 1: Zhao Zhongheng's Fairy Tale

29 Dec, 2025

Side Story 1: Zhao Zhongheng's Fairy Tale

It was a nameless little village at the foot of the Seventh Peak.

It was deep autumn. The maple leaves covering the mountains were as red as an inexhaustible sunset, and even the wind carried the dry, fragrant scent of foliage.

The ancient ginkgo tree at the village entrance was like overturned golden ink, its leaves rustling down in the evening glow, paving the ground in dazzling splendor.

The wind rose.

Golden butterflies circled in the air, riding the lingering warmth of the setting sun, until one finally landed lightly on the nose of an old man dozing under the tree.

"Ah... Ah-choo!"

Startled from his slumber, the old man let out a short, sharp sneeze.

He rubbed his somewhat clouded eyes. In his vision, a small, chubby, waving hand gradually solidified from blurry to clear.

A pudgy child of six or seven, holding a large gourd, was tilting his head to look at him, cheeks flushed red.

"Grandpa! Grandpa! I brought the wine!"

The little chubby boy shook the heavy gourd, his face serious as he looked at the old man before him and spoke expectantly.

"You promised you'd finish telling us that story! No going back on your word!"

A tender hand tugged at the old man's sleeve. Behind him, a group of children with their hair tied in childish buns gathered like sparrows, chirping and demanding the ending.

"Yes, yes! What happened later? Did that fairy in purple really marry Zhao Zhongheng?" A little girl with pigtails asked, her eyes full of anticipation.

The old man struggled to sit up straight, took the gourd, and gulped down a mouthful.

The spicy warmth with a hint of sweetness flowed down his throat into his stomach. He let out a long, hot breath, and the knife-carved wrinkles at the corners of his eyes seemed to relax a little.

He looked at these children, his gaze full of warmth.

At that moment, on the ridge not far away, an old farmer shouldered his hoe and returned home. The calls of village women summoning their families for dinner rose and fell amidst the smoke and hearth-fire atmosphere.

The elderly and the young, all content and joyful.

The old man cleared his throat. His gaze passed over the playful crowd, fixing on a certain point in the void. A childlike smile floated onto his lips: "Of course...

The day they married, the snow fell heavily, yet it wasn't cold at all..."

The old man's voice grew soft and dreamy. In his narration, it was a world as magnificent as a painted scroll, as flawless as a dream.

"After marrying, they made their home on the Seventh Peak.

It was the place where they grew up together; every blade of grass and every tree knew them. They did not seek immortality, nor did they contend for the Great Dao. They only wished to guard each other."

"So, Zhao Zhongheng built a wooden house full of plum blossoms there, and Ding Xue loved to practice her sword there most of all.

Her sword light was like snow. Zhao Zhongheng would always sit to the side, using spirit fire to warm a pot of sweet plum wine, smiling as he watched his heroic and spirited beloved.

In their lifetime, they met many passing travelers."

The old man took a sip of wine and continued leisurely.

"Huang Yan, Gu Muqing, Yan Yan, Xu Qing, Wu Jianwu...

But these travelers were, in the end, merely passersby in the two's lives. Once the door was closed, the turmoil of the outside world had nothing to do with them."

"They walked hand in hand through many places."

"They once drifted freely on a small boat across the Forbidden Sea, watching the red sun gild everything at the horizon's edge, watching sea beasts leap from the water, watching the smiles in each other's eyes;

They once through dense forests, plucking various precious herbs under the watchful eyes of strange beasts. The originally crude herbal compendium, supplemented and perfected by their combined efforts, had become a magnificent tome;

Ghost Emperor Mountain, the Palace of Laws, the Imperial Capital, the Sacrificial Moon..."

"They left their footprints on every inch of the rivers and mountains of Wanggu, but in the end, they still returned to the Seventh Peak, that home belonging to them."

As the old man spoke to this point, his eyes seemed to reflect a sky full of fiery trees and silver flowers.

"Back then, mortals set off fireworks below the mountain, dim yet brilliantly dazzling.

And Ding Xue turned her head, smiling at Zhao Zhongheng, behind her a rain of flowers fell."

"Even though her posture was no longer as straight as in her youth, even though wrinkles gradually appeared at the corners of her eyes, her smile never diminished in the slightest.

Time is fleeting; in the blink of an eye, a lifetime had passed."

The old man's eyes grew somewhat dim. He said softly,

"Ding Xue grew old. White hair crept up her temples, yet she still loved to lean against Zhao Zhongheng's chest, listening to those love-talk lines she had grown tired of hearing."

In his murmur, a scene that perhaps never happened seemed to appear before the old man's eyes.

In that scene, Ding Xue tilted her head, looked at the person beside her who was also no longer young, and said with a laugh,

"Zhao Zhongheng, I love you."

In that scene, Zhao Zhongheng replied warmly,

"And I love you too."

In that scene, Ding Xue laughed and asked mischievously,

"But, why do you love me so much?"

In that scene, Zhao Zhongheng also laughed. He tightly held that wrinkled hand and whispered softly,

"Probably because... loving you is my Dao."

...

The old man finished his tale, let out a long sigh, looked at the children around him, took another drink of wine. His hoarse voice echoed in the dusk.

"In the end, they fell asleep smiling, together forever and happy.

Just like in the fairy tales."

Now the sky grew even dimmer. The sun had completely sunk below the horizon. The children, having heard the ending, dispersed one by one, satisfied.

They jumped, laughed, talked about that perfect hero and that happy fairy.

The village's cheerful noises gradually faded away.

Only the old man's smile faded bit by bit in the dusky twilight, revealing a loneliness like withered wood.

He carried the wine gourd, walking unsteadily along the path piled with fallen leaves.

In the bamboo grove behind the village, the autumn wind sighed desolately, tousling his grizzled beard.

Amidst the withered grass that reached past his ankles stood two solitary graves side by side.

On the left tablet was engraved: "Tomb of Ding Xue."

The stone was cracked from years of erosion, but the area around the grave platform had been cleaned spotless.

On the right tablet was engraved: "Tomb of Zhao Zhongheng."

It was an empty mound the old man had painstakingly carved himself, silently awaiting its master's return.

The old man slumped to sit between the two graves, natural and familiar, just as he had guarded her front all those years ago.

He opened the gourd, first poured half before Ding Xue's tablet, then raised the rest to his head and drank deeply.

The strong liquor burned his throat, making him cough violently. A glimmer of tears shone in his cloudy eyes.

"Xue'er, do you hear me? I told the children today that we lived a happy life."

The old man muttered in a low voice, the sound exceptionally desolate on the empty, barren slope.

"I said Xu Qing was just a passerby, that you didn't even remember his face. I said we traveled over countless rivers and mountains, that you laughed like a child in my arms every day."

He looked at the stone tablet bearing the characters "Ding Xue," as if he saw again those years when Ding Xue stood on the Seventh Peak gazing into the distance, remembered the firm "no regrets" in her mouth when he had once asked her.

She and her true love forgot each other in the wide world.

And he, just like this, accompanied her for a lifetime.

From an infatuated, reckless youth to a white-haired tomb keeper.

The old man smiled self-deprecatingly. The starlight in his eyes was completely extinguished by the night.

"I lied."

To that silent, barren mound, he softly uttered these words he had hidden for a lifetime.

"You never loved me, and I never possessed you. But I told this lie so often that even I almost started to believe you really smiled at me in that illusory rain of flowers."

In the distance, the village lights flickered.

And deep in this silent bamboo grove, there was only an old man, guarding a beautiful lie, muttering incessantly.

But an indescribable aura began to rise from the old man's withered body. It was no simple breakthrough in realm, it was the Dao of his entire life, reaching perfect completion at this very moment.

Behind the old man, the void began to violently twist and fold.

Hum—

A blurred, brilliant ring of light slowly took shape, transforming into a miniature small world.

Within that small world, there was no desolate chill of reality, no shattered bamboo grove.

There was only a wooden house full of plum blossoms.

Snowflakes fell quietly. A beautiful woman wearing a pale violet daoist robe, her hair in a ponytail, was accepting a cup of warm wine handed to her by a youth.

She smiled so sweetly, her eyes full of that youth's reflection.

The youth draped a fox fur over her shoulders. The two smiled at each other in the snow. That glimpse of happiness was so real it was heartbreaking.

It was the fairy tale Zhao Zhongheng had told for a lifetime.

Leaning against the tombstone, the old man watched the hazy, beautiful small world behind him, watched the Ding Xue who smiled at him in the dream, and gradually became entranced.

But the realm breakthrough he had yearned for in his youth, at this moment, was as insignificant as dust to him.

The night wind blew past, bamboo leaves rustling.

Like someone sighing softly, or like someone bidding farewell in silence.