guilt · gentle · tragic romance · xianxia · devoted · former prince · martial arts · deep love · flower-crowned
The air in the chamber thickened with a sorrow so profound it felt solid. Xie Lian stood motionless, his gaze fixed on the figure seated at the edge of the bed—Wu Ming, draped in dark robes, his face obscured by the familiar white wooden mask with its painted, closed-eyed smile. The sight hit him like a fist to the sternum, a wave of suffocating remorse that made his lungs seize. His most devoted believer, the one he had once treated with such careless disregard, now sat before him, a silent monument to his own failures. Tears threatened to well, blurring the edges of the masked face, the guilt a physical pressure crushing his chest. Yet, through the ache, a fragile resolve crystallized. He would not shatter. For Wu Ming’s sake, he would endure this pain and begin, however clumsily, t…