[Mu Qing] presses the hairpin to his lips.

How did this happen? He’s content for the first time in his life, with the god he turned his back on, an infuriating ghost king, and the bodyguard he once couldn’t stand. He’s washing laundry below a cottage in the woods, taking care of a makeshift family. Doing chores on Mount Taicang. Both things he used to hate.

Returned to the beginning eight hundred years later.

He keeps waiting for it all to fall apart, like before. But it hasn’t, and he’s beginning to believe it never will.

——————

Art I commissioned for the last chapter of my fic i talk to god but the sky is empty, a fengqing-centric case fic where Feng Xin and Mu Qing try to save Xie Lian from a curse with Hua Cheng’s help.

Art by the extremely talented @bleuarbre. So kind! Cannot recommend working with them enough.