Chapter 1
The day I was born, everyone across the Four Seas and Eight Wilds laughed themselves sick.
The divine clans that had been lining up to arrange a betrothal with me suddenly developed terrible illnesses, took Buddhist vows on the spot, or, in the most extreme cases, abruptly entered cultivation retreats from which they would emerge triumphant or dead.
That day went down in history as Year One of the Immortal Realm, because the entire balance of power shifted overnight.
And somehow, the dragons became the foremost clan in the realm.
Ha. Ha.
Such is the power of being ugly.
Honestly, I could have lived with a black upper half and a white lower half.
Why did it have to be black on the left and white on the right?!
I suppose I’d won some kind of genetic lottery.
Countless times, I sighed at my parents. “Father, Mother, I suspect your marriage was a mistake.”
They each gave me a resounding smack. “The greatest mistake was giving you a mouth.”
How vicious.
As if looking like this weren’t enough, they wanted me mouthless too.
I did have one friend: a red-furred fox named Chi Zhen, whose eyesight wasn’t very good.
“You actually look quite special,” he said, trying to comfort me.
“Especially ugly?”
Chi Zhen paused. “Especially interesting.”
Great. Now I was an ugly person with an especially interesting face.
Two hundred years earlier, demonic energy had burned Chi Zhen’s eyes while he was sealing away a demon beast at the Vastness of Mingshui.
Ever since his return, his vision had been poor. People looked blurry to him.
He had come to the Ninth Heaven to seek out the dragons and borrow our clan’s greatest treasure to heal his injuries.
Two hundred years later, his eyes were the only injury he still hadn’t treated.
I asked why he hadn’t fixed them yet.
Chi Zhen said a blurry world was a beautiful world.
He could develop three secret crushes in a single outing.
When I was two thousand, I became the dragon clan’s imperial princess.
Father kept dropping enormous hints that the young crown prince of the neighboring qilin clan should come and ask for my hand.
The crown prince decided to play the socially clueless idiot. No matter how Father hinted, he pretended not to understand.
Father was deeply troubled. Patting my shoulder, he said, “There’s something wrong with that boy’s head. He can’t understand plain speech. You’re better off not marrying him.”
Father, you’d sooner believe the qilin crown prince was an idiot than admit he didn’t want to marry me because I was too ugly.
Honestly. I could cry.
A few days later, to my surprise, Chi Zhen heard about it too.
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “The qilin clan chose an idiot as their crown prince?”
“Could they be plotting something?”
Wonderful. This one was in a league of his own.
Only Mother saw through the mystery, although it wasn’t much of a mystery.
A rare trace of worry crossed her face. “Yaoyao,” she said, “even if you never find a husband you love, it doesn’t matter. The dragon clan will always stand behind you.”
I wanted to say it didn’t matter too.
But damn it, however ugly my face was, my fantasies were gorgeous.
I fucking loved handsome men.
Preferably handsome men who were noble and powerful.
But when you fancied someone, you couldn’t just look at what they had to offer.
You had to take a look at yourself too.
In my twenty-five-hundredth year of being single since birth, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I went in search of the Xuanwu clan, legendary for their healing arts and their habit of wandering the world.
After three hundred years, I finally found one of them on the shore of the Eastern Sea.
Silver hair cascaded down his back. Dressed in white, he was exquisitely handsome, with an effortless air of nobility.
His beauty left my mind blank. I forgot why I’d come, and the first words out of my mouth were, “Get married?”
His lovely face went still for a moment, then slowly softened. “Isn’t that a little fast?” he asked with a quiet laugh.
He hadn’t outright said no.
Practically the same as being married already.
I was about to ask how long we ought to wait when he changed the subject entirely.
“Was there something you wished to ask me, Your Highness?”
Only then did I remember why I was there. I explained the problem with my appearance in detail, then brought the conversation seamlessly back around. “So when are we getting married?”
His raven-dark lashes lowered as he considered it. “Your appearance is probably caused by two divine powers within your body failing to merge, each resisting and rejecting the other.”
Right. He’d quietly skipped the marriage question again. What a difficult man.
“Cultivate diligently and fuse the two powers. That may resolve your condition.”
“And if it doesn’t, will you take responsibility?”
For me.
Heh. I could play word games too.
He looked up with a faint smile. The breeze stirred the silver hair behind him, like a river of stars in motion.
His voice was gentle. “Yes.”
Well, that was my future sorted.