A retainer Long Wu had placed in Baihe Township in advance — kept there against a day that might never come — the Qilin had always lived as an ordinary commoner. His skill was of no use in that town, and he was never once unhappy about it. To him, dying of old age there may have been the best outcome there was, because it would have meant that his master’s family was safe.
Then, in The Order’s twelfth year, a hurried knocking at the door ran through him like a ripple across still water, and slowly turned the second half of his life in a direction nobody could have guessed.
How much waiting in this world lasts a whole life? How many people would spend a lifetime keeping one promise? The Qilin did not mind wasting a life in a little town called Baihe; he even hoped that was how his life would go. Because it would have meant that man and his family were well.
That man was Long Wu, the most hoped-for of the Long family’s direct line, who had once done the Qilin a great kindness. Since then the Qilin had followed him willingly and served him.
Everyone said Long Wu was the one most likely to become the next head of the Long family. Long Wu himself knew very well that his brothers and sisters would never let it be.
So he had put the Qilin on the board early, hidden away from everything that was about to happen.
After years of training, the Qilin would wait quietly in Baihe Township — for a lifetime, or until the great task arrived.
If nothing happened, so much the better: Long Wu would take the seat and hold the power, and though the Qilin’s skill went unused, he could live out his years in peace.
But the wheel of fate rolled onto the other track in the end.
That day a hurried knocking startled him. A woman stood at his door — a woman worn out and in a bad way.
In her arms, held tight, was a baby.
The Qilin understood at once: his benefactor had met with disaster, and his own task had only just begun.
Her name was Mo Zhaoyun, a maid to Long Wu’s wife, and the baby in her arms was of course Long Wu’s only son. The task for the Qilin and Mo Zhaoyun was to raise the child between them, so that one day the Longs could be restored.
And then the Qilin noticed something. Having followed Long Wu for years, he knew the born nobility about the man — a quality of which even a small baby carries a faint trace. On this baby, said to be Long Wu’s son, there was not a trace of it.
The Qilin had his doubts. But the conversation that followed proved that this woman really was his master’s wife’s maid, so he put the doubt down and decided to raise the child with Mo Zhaoyun. They named him Long Fuyuan, treated him as their own, and raised him carefully.
Over the long years the three of them, who had begun as strangers, became as close as blood, holding each other up through bad times and guarding each other.
As Long Wu had asked, the Qilin gave Long Fuyuan the Long family token, taught him the Long family sword art, and passed on the family’s sword manual — everything he had, thoroughly. Everything, that is, except the one thing that runs in Long blood: the golden blade-aura. That he could not teach, because he did not have it.
As Long Fuyuan grew he became handsome and fine, his Long family swordsmanship reached real mastery, and there was an elegance in everything he did. More and more he looked like a true heir of the Longs — except in one thing. He could never bring out the golden blade-aura that stands for the family.
Faced with a boy who tried with everything he had and still could not raise the aura, the Qilin put it down to his age, while his own doubt grew heavier. Thinking back to the first time he saw Long Fuyuan, he was by now almost certain that the boy was not Long Wu’s child.
And still the Qilin buried the doubt. For one thing, even if the boy was not Long Wu’s son, the Long family had fallen and the true heir was gone; Fuyuan could still hold up the family’s name and restore it. For another, in the years with Mo Zhaoyun and the boy he had come to love them, and he was not willing to open the question himself and break the family apart.
In The Order’s thirty-first year the Mask Riots broke out, and Long Fuyuan decided to go out into the Wulin as a nameless swordsman, and once his name had grown on his own merit, to declare himself the heir of the Longs — and then everyone would answer. Watching him go, full of life, the Qilin and Mo Zhaoyun stood at the door and prayed for him: that he would make something of himself, and that he would come home safe.
At first everything went as Long Fuyuan had expected. Back in Baihe Township, the Qilin and Mo Zhaoyun heard word of him often: he was pulling orthodox people out of trouble wherever he went, and many of the older Wulin hands recognised the Long heir at once from how he moved and how he used a sword. Before long, without ever declaring who he was, he had gathered a following of orthodox fighters who chose to go with him.
But accidents come without warning. One day Long Fuyuan turned up in Baihe Township, uneasy, clearly carrying something heavy. Home, he said at once that he wanted to speak with his master’s wife, and the two of them had that conversation.
What the Qilin had not expected was that afterwards Long Fuyuan went mad, walked out, and vanished.
So the Qilin and Mo Zhaoyun, each carrying a secret, set out to look for their son — and never saw the boy they had raised for over twenty years again.
What Mo Zhaoyun did not know was that the past she had hidden so carefully had long since stopped being a secret to the Qilin.
And what the Qilin believed was that as long as he never said it out loud, she would be easier in her heart.
In the end, following the clues, the two of them came to Long Wu’s old residence, Xinglong Manor — and found it occupied by masks of every kind, and many of those masks could bring out a golden blade-aura.
The two of them searched the manor for the boy, and just as they entered Long Wu’s old bedchamber, the Qilong Chamber, The Order’s people arrived at the same moment.
Recognising them at a glance, the two took their stance to fight to the death. The man who had come said that neither of them had been through Transcension and neither was a wicked person, so there was no need for him to raise a hand.
Mo Zhaoyun answered for both of them. First, the Long family had been destroyed by The Order, and the two of them carried a blood debt with it that could never be settled. Second, The Order’s people had come here looking for the boy, and as the boy’s parents they had to protect him.
So the two sides fought hard on the roof of the Qilong Chamber, and the Qilin and Mo Zhaoyun came out a little the worse, both of them dying.
In the last of their lives they told each other everything, and only then did he learn that she had never once been at peace, keeping that secret alone.
Looking back over a life, the great mistake had already been made — and the only thing he regretted was that one thing.
Because knowing her and being beside her had already been enough to fill every regret of a life.
The Qilin looked at Mo Zhaoyun and smiled. In that moment his heart was calmer and quieter than it had ever been.
Before they closed their eyes, each saw in the other’s eyes the love of a lifetime, and a whole world inside.
The Qilin’s only wish was that in another life he could be a real family with Mo Zhaoyun and Long Fuyuan, and live out an ordinary, quiet, happy life together.