The carriage rattled softly as it rolled out of Fallen Town, its wheels grinding against the uneven dirt road. The disguised merchant's daughter sat quietly, her veil lowered to hide the storm swirling across her face.
The farm shrank behind her, swallowed by the horizon, but Lai's presence lingered. No—haunted was the word.
The Empress's Turmoil
For years, she had been Empress of the Mortal Empire.
Crown heavy upon her head, throne cold beneath her body, duty pressed into her bones.
There had been no room for girlish fancies, no time for secret glances at passing men. From the day she ascended, her heart had been placed in chains—bound to her people, shackled to the empire's survival.
And yet…
Why, after one encounter with a mortal farmer, did her chest throb like a drum? Why did her pulse quicken at the memory of his gaze—casual, almost lazy—yet sharp enough to sever Heaven itself?
She closed her eyes, but the memory was clearer still:
The way Lai leaned on his hoe, dirt staining his palms. The faint curve of his lips when he named a price that would bankrupt a noble. The quiet, amused cruelty in his words, as though the empire's plight was nothing more than a bug gnawing at a leaf.
It should have terrified her.
It did terrify her.
But beneath the terror was something else. Something that made her skin prickle and her chest tighten. Something she had thought herself immune to, long ago.
"Ridiculous," she whispered into the carriage's silence.
Her guard stirred, still pale from fainting at Garfield's aura. "Your Highness?"
"Nothing," the Empress snapped—too quickly, too sharply. Her voice betrayed her.
Her guard blinked, then lowered her head. The Empress turned her face to the carriage wall, but inside her thoughts unraveled.
What was this feeling? Admiration? Fear? Longing?
The way Lai had stood among his crops, he seemed less like a man and more like the axis of the world. As if the soil bent toward him, as if even the sun slowed its descent to grant him more light.
Her hands, hidden in her sleeves, clenched tightly. "Calm yourself," she whispered. "You are the Empress. You do not tremble for a man. You do not… yearn."
But her body betrayed her. Every time she replayed his smile, her heart skipped, her breath caught, her cheeks warmed like a girl glimpsing her first love.
It was absurd. Unthinkable. Terrifying. And yet… she could not stop.
The Empress's Reflection
By the time the capital's distant silhouette rose against the setting sun, her decision was clear.
She could not ignore him.
Whether he was savior, destroyer, or something beyond either, Lai was a storm she could not turn away from. He terrified her, yes—but he also drew her, like a moth to a flame.
And somewhere, buried beneath her iron discipline, a whisper curled in her chest:
What if… he looks at me again like that?
Her lips parted slightly, trembling, then pressed into a thin line. She despised her weakness, and yet she clung to it as if it were the only proof she still had a heart.
The empire awaited her, soldiers bowed before her, ministers begged for answers. But her mind drifted back to that farm, to a man who called himself nothing more than a village farmer.
Back at the Farm
Meanwhile, under the same twilight sky, Lai leaned against the fence post, watching Garfield wrestle with iron golems in the yard. Blanca sat by the irrigation channel, humming softly as Ao Guang scolded her on posture. Long Fei was tied to a tree again, wincing as wooden golems hammered him half to death.
The cabbages swayed gently in the evening breeze. The pumpkins glowed faintly under the setting light.
Lai smiled faintly, almost to himself.
It had been years since he first stepped into this world. He had wandered across universes, broken through barriers, erased gods with a word. Power was no stranger to him—nor was loneliness.
But here, in this small corner of soil, something felt… different.
The work was simple, yet strangely fulfilling. The crops grew as though they loved him. The farm was quiet, yet it rang with laughter, curses, and the groans of his students.
And the people nearby—those mortals he had never asked for tribute, never demanded worship from—looked upon him not with fear, but with quiet respect.
He leaned his head back, staring at the sky where stars blinked faintly awake.
"…Strange," he murmured. "Since coming here, things make sense."
He couldn't explain it. It wasn't cultivation, nor was it destiny. Just a nagging sense, deep in his bones, that this world had threads pulling at him in ways the others never had.
Was it chance? Fate? Or perhaps the beginning of something he had never dared to allow himself: belonging.
He chuckled softly, shaking his head. "Belonging, huh? A farmer among mortals. Who would've thought?"
Behind him, Garfield yelped as an iron golem broke his nose again. Long Fei screamed at the sky, "MASTER, I'M GONNA DIE!" before a wooden fist silenced him.
Lai smiled wider.
The cabbages swayed again, as if laughing with him.
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