Immortal Paladin

117 A Bittersweet Skewer

If there was one thing the Heavenly Eye lacked, it was imagination.

Had it possessed even a shred of it, Nongmin would have foreseen this moment, this humiliation, lightyears in advance. But no. There were rules, limitations, and principles of divine sight that even he could not override.

First, the Heavenly Eye was limited by actionable facts and plausibility difference. It could not show him what defied logic, only what could possibly happen within the realm of reason.

Second, the granted omniscience was not so omniscient after all. It only worked within his territory, bounded by the sacred lines of spiritual jurisdiction.

Third, and most damningly, even if he could see all things... he could not see them all at once in a single breath. He needed to digest the information, and even with his Tenth Realm cultivation, he could only interpret and digest so much.

And so, the most feared man in the world, the Grand Emperor Nongmin, stood in awkward silence, boxed in by a dilemma his Heavenly Eye could not solve.

"Little Nongmin," said Xin Yune with a bright smile that melted ten thousand years of frozen karma. She pulled a sparkling tanghulu from her Storage Ring, the skewered red hawthorns glistening with a candy shell that shimmered in the light like spiritual pearls. "Want a candy?"

Her voice was casual, but not unintentional. There was a mother’s challenge buried in it, a gentle prod to stir memory, emotion, and vulnerability.

Nongmin’s eyes, golden with faint trails of spiritual current, flickered open. The Heavenly Eye spun within his soul, accessing not the present, but possibility.

In one future, he politely declined.

"More for me!" Xin Yune would laugh, twirling the tanghulu like a sword and biting into it with exaggerated glee. Her smile would be real, and her joy untainted.

In another, he reached out and accepted the candy.

"Aiyo, my son’s still just a baby inside," she’d say with a teasing grin, pulling him into a side-hug and ruffling his hair, even if she had to hover to do so. Again, the joy would be real.

So what was the right answer?

Both were right. Both made her smile. Both ended in her happiness.

His jaw tightened.

“This is illogical,” he thought. “The question should have one optimal answer. Why do both branches lead to fulfillment? Is this... quantum benevolence?”

And then… another ripple of future vision opened. An unlikely possibility. An implausible, almost irrational one.

Da Wei reached in and stole the tanghulu.

He moved like a bandit: shoulders relaxed, face utterly shameless, and the kind of smile only someone with no moral stakes could wear.

Nongmin’s body responded before his mind caught up.

Flash!

The air cracked as he moved in an instant, his fingers like iron as they snatched the tanghulu from Da Wei’s hand mid-swipe. The candy skewer floated an inch above his palm, untouched by even gravity itself.

Da Wei blinked.

Then he grinned. Slow. Wicked. Like he’d planned it all.

“Huh,” Da Wei said, eyes twinkling. “Didn’t think you’d go for the candy and the dramatic reveal. You really are your mom’s son.”

Nongmin said nothing. His face remained calm, but his internal qi frothed like an ocean storm. He'd seen a thousand futures, but this? This was not supposed to happen. This was... chaos. Ridiculous. Nonsensical. And yet…

"Aiyo! My baby is so cute!" Xin Yune giggled, suddenly appearing behind him and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her chin rested lightly against the curve of his neck. “You protected Mama’s candy! My little Emperor, so fierce, so clever~”

"...I did not intend to—"

“Shhh,” she cooed, planting a kiss on his cheek. “Don’t ruin the moment.”

The Heavenly Eye spun inside him, useless now. He could no longer predict her. And maybe that was the point.

Nongmin, Lord of the Realm, Grand Emperor of Eight Territories, slayer of gods and planner of epochs, stood still with a candied skewer in hand and his mother wrapped around him like a warm scarf of affection.

Across from him, Da Wei casually leaned against a column, watching with interest, lips curled upward like a fox who’d stolen a chicken and returned it just to see what would happen next.

Imagination, Nongmin realized, was not just irrational.

It was dangerous.

Still, this result was… acceptable.

Nongmin bit into the candied hawthorn on the skewer. The sweet and sour juice mixed with the delicate crack of the sugar glaze. The flavor grounded him. It was a strange contrast to the mental whiplash he'd just endured. His mother still held him gently by the wrist, guiding him forward through the path as if he were no older than five.

And right beside him, like an unwanted shadow that refused to disperse even under direct sunlight… was Da Wei.

Nongmin’s gaze slid sideways, not with annoyance but with cold curiosity. His Heavenly Eye spun, not outward, but inward, reaching into the nearby timelines that splintered like hairline cracks in the porcelain of fate. A single question formed in his spiritual voice, spoken through Qi Speech, a language only wieldable by cultivators whose soul had surpassed the threshold of mortality.

“What are you doing, Da Wei?”

The man walking beside him didn't respond aloud, but in the alternate futures, Nongmin saw it.

“Watching you,” Da Wei said in one strand of time. “Making sure you’re not lying. Or doing anything weird. You know… Emperor stuff.”

Nongmin returned to real-time and scoffed, a short, dry exhale that carried with it the precise measure of disdain he deemed appropriate.

His mother turned her head slightly, her eyes peeking at him through a curtain of dark hair. “What’s so funny?”

Nongmin hesitated. His mind turned. For a moment, he debated telling her. Then, with the faintest smirk forming on his lips, he gestured at the man beside them with his skewer.

“Mother,” he said in his proper, regal tone. “Is it just me, or is this commoner a bit of a bother?”

Xin Yune blinked. Her pace didn’t change. “Oh, I think it’s fine for him to hang around.”

Nongmin stopped walking. His body remained calm, but his heart shuddered ever so slightly with an unfamiliar sensation.

Betrayal.

His mother—his ally, his constant—had just sided with Da Wei. The man who once threatened to dance her on a pole to summon him. The man who just tried to steal his tanghulu. The man who, by all logic and structure, should not be here.

Well, it was kind of his fault he was here…

Nongmin narrowed his eyes.

“Why didn’t I check that response beforehand?” he thought bitterly. “If I knew Xin Yune would side with him…”

Then realization hit.

“I wanted to manipulate her. Just now… I thought of using the Heavenly Eye to predict her answer. To nudge her toward the response I wanted.”

Nongmin’s throat tightened. The taste of hawthorn lingered in his mouth, but it now felt oddly bitter. A low tide of guilt swept through his chest, cooling his qi and coiling it around his heart like a silent reproach.

He remembered the promise he made.

Long ago when he first opened the Heavenly Eye, when the world felt like a scroll to be rewritten, he had drawn a single line in the sand. “I will not use this power to manipulate Mother. Not even once. Not even for her safety. Especially not for my comfort.”

He bowed his head slightly. Not to anyone. Just to himself.

“Fool,” he told his inner voice. “You nearly crossed the line without realizing it.”

Beside him, Da Wei remained quiet. His hands were behind his head, walking as if this were all a stroll and not a moment of emotional upheaval.

Nongmin bit into the next hawthorn.

The sugar cracked again.

This one was a little sweeter.

The past few days had unraveled more than he liked to admit.

He had stood at the height of cultivation. Held the Heavenly Eye. Read infinite threads of reality. He was supposed to know better. But now—walking beside his mother and Da Wei trailing like a persistent shadow—Nongmin couldn’t keep lying to himself.

He had manipulated her.

Not just in minor ways. Not just with harmless white lies or calculated omissions. No, he'd wielded the Eye like a scalpel, cutting and suturing moments so subtly even she hadn’t noticed. A soft suggestion here. A spontaneous encounter there. A few nudges to ensure that she stayed in the capital a little longer, saw a certain flower bloom, heard a melody drift from the right street at the right time.

And all for what?

To buy her a smile. A few moments of joy. A sense of peace that wasn’t born naturally but designed.

Because her time was running out.

For centuries, Nongmin had exhausted every method to lengthen her life. He'd searched forbidden ruins, bartered with timeless existences, and even attempted to rewrite destiny itself, only to be met with the same cruel truth: there was no clear path forward. No pill. No art. No deal worth making. Even he, with all his gifts, couldn’t cheat fate for her.

And so, slowly, despair gave way to something else.

Resignation.

He stopped looking for answers and began searching for something harder to define. He started asking: What does happiness look like?

That was when he realized something horrifying.

He didn’t know.

He lacked imagination. As much as the Heavenly Eye could see, it couldn’t create. It worked with probability, causality, and memory. But it didn’t dream. And without that, he was lost.

So, step by step, he tried.

He looked into tens of thousands of futures, breaking himself apart across a million potential lives. He viewed them all with cold scrutiny and a growing ache in his heart.

There were futures where she died in his arms, smiling. Others where she never smiled again, growing bitter at the burden of an immortal son. Some days ended quietly with tea and silence. Others ended with unspoken regrets and words left unsaid. All of them were… wrong.

Until he stopped looking at himself.

He cast his gaze outward.

Zhu Shin had a conversation with her on a riverside bridge: nothing dramatic, just heartfelt. His mother laughed, truly laughed, and Nongmin had replayed that moment dozens of times.

Sikao Biaoji, of all people, had a loud and heated argument with her about something absurd: peach wine, perhaps. It ended with both of them hurling insults and giggling like fools.

There were futures where she never saw her son in her final moments. And yet… she died happy.

Why?

Because she lived. Truly lived, with people who saw her neither as the Emperor’s mother nor the Divine Physician, but just as Xin Yune.

And then… somewhere in the thousands of threads… he saw it.

Da Wei.

A stranger. An anomaly. A man who walked like a mortal but defied every expectation. Nongmin had never liked him. Still didn’t. But… the threads were clear.

In reality after reality, Da Wei was there.

He made her laugh. He annoyed her. He challenged her. Sometimes they fought. Sometimes they just sat under the stars, saying nothing. But each time, each thread, ended the same way:

She smiled.

And in some of those futures… rare, golden ones… she died smiling. It was the kind of smile he used to see when he was just a boy everytime he made small mistakes or just made a poor joke.

In a quiet field. In a bustling street. In a tiny cabin far from civilization. The location changed. The people changed. But Da Wei was there. Always.

And in those same futures, when Nongmin finally looked at himself, he realized something terrifying.

He was… at peace.

And so, back in the present, biting into his candied skewer, Nongmin said nothing as Da Wei walked beside him.

He didn’t need to ask again what Da Wei was doing.

Because now… finally… it all clicked.

Da Wei wasn’t his enemy. Nor his pawn.

He was the piece Nongmin never knew he needed. The piece he couldn't move, couldn’t predict… but the one that made the whole board make sense.

And as the final hawthorn disappeared from the stick, Nongmin whispered under his breath, barely audible:

“…So that’s the answer.”

His mother looked at him. “Hm?”

He blinked, offered her a smile, not one he rehearsed or calculated, but something soft and unguarded.

“Nothing,” he said.

Just… everything.

The scent of roasted chestnuts and spiced meat skewers drifted lazily through the streets of the Imperial Capital, as the sun dipped into a gold-tinged horizon. The clamor of children, merchants, and cultivators wrapped the trio in a living, breathing nostalgia.

Nongmin walked slowly, hands tucked behind his back, as his mother practically skipped ahead, dragging him by the wrist. A full-grown man with the Heavenly Eye and enough political power to shift continents… and yet, here he was, being towed along like a stubborn boy too proud to admit he enjoyed the attention.

She stopped every few stalls to buy something—sweet lotus root, grilled tofu, sugar-dusted rice cakes—and he ate all of it without resistance. Not because he particularly wanted to. But because she offered.

Da Wei trailed just behind them, arms crossed, eyebrows slightly raised. His presence was casual, but Nongmin knew that the man was observing everything, him especially, with the suspicious patience of someone waiting for a snake to show its fangs.

“Hey,” Da Wei said, “you should talk more.”

Nongmin didn’t even look back. “About what?”

“Anything. You’ve got a squeaky little voice, but we’ve heard worse. You might as well use it.”

Nongmin frowned. Squeaky? He turned halfway and glared. “My voice is dignified. Elegant. Measured.”

“It’s nasally,” Da Wei corrected. “You sound like a baby duck pretending to be a tax collector.”

His mother stifled a laugh. Nongmin gave her a betrayed look.

“You know,” Da Wei continued with a smirk, “as a former teacher, I feel morally obligated to make awkward kids speak up in class. Consider this homework. Talk. Tell us a joke or something.”

Before Nongmin could respond with the full might of his dignity, his mother clapped her hands with delight. “Oh, oh! I have one!”

Nongmin froze. “No.”

“Yes!” she beamed. “Do you remember the time you got your little robes stuck in the well pulley and you spun around until you passed out?”

Da Wei raised an eyebrow. “Please. Elaborate.”

“No need…" Nongmin started, but she’d already begun.

“So he was six, right? Went out to practice some ancient technique involving balance or whatever. But he tripped, got tangled in the rope, and the pulley launched him like a roast duck on a spit! Round and round he went… arms out, eyes spinning… until he flopped down and fainted! The servants were terrified. Thought he was possessed.”

Da Wei burst out laughing, holding his sides. “You passed out?! That’s gold.”

“I was calibrating my meridians,” Nongmin said stiffly.

“Oh, is that what the chicken noises were for?” Da Wei asked, trying to catch his breath.

“I didn’t make…"

“And then,” his mother chimed in again, “there was the time he tried to impress the girl from the carp clan by flying on a sword. Only, he forgot to bind the soul core to it and crashed into the lotus pond. He came up looking like a soggy turnip.”

“Mother,” Nongmin said, voice brittle.

“Even the koi pitied you,” she said fondly, patting his head.

Da Wei leaned closer and whispered just loud enough for Nongmin to hear, “I’m gonna collect these stories like spirit stones.”

Nongmin stared straight ahead. He tried not to let the flush rise to his cheeks. He reminded himself, he chanted it like a mantra, that he was the Grand Emperor. A wielder of cosmic secrets. Master of nations.

…And yet, right now, he was just a boy again. A boy walking through familiar streets. A boy whose mother had a hand on his wrist, and whose dignity was steadily unraveling.

But in the warmth of her laughter, and the echo of Da Wei’s chuckles, he found, much to his own horror, a faint smile creeping onto his lips.

He didn't suppress it.

Not this time.

The moon hung low and full over the Imperial Capital, its silvery light bathing the city in quiet reverence. The night breeze carried a lazy coolness, rustling leaves and lanterns as the city began to fall asleep.

Within the palace’s inner courtyard, tucked behind walls that had heard a thousand secrets, Nongmin sat cross-legged on a cushioned mat, a plate of candied hawthorn beside him, and his mother humming as she combed her long black hair.

The room was humble by imperial standards: no jade tiles, no gold-rimmed curtains, only soft silks and woven mats, the way she preferred it. It was the room she had once slept in before he ascended to the throne, untouched even after all these years.

“Are you going to keep staring at the floor, or are you going to talk to your mother?” she said without looking up.

Nongmin blinked. “I am talking to you.”

“No, you’re mumbling.”

“I am dignified.”

She gave him a flat look through the mirror. “You’re sulking.”

He crossed his arms. “I am not sulking. I am… contemplating.”

“Sulking,” she confirmed.

He looked away.

This wasn’t going well.

Nongmin had spent the entire evening trying to “usher in” his childish side. After all, he had combed through hundreds, no, thousands, of alternate realities in search of the best ending for her. And more often than not, the ones that made her happiest were the ones where he stopped trying to act like a god and just was her son.

So he tried. He really did. He had let her feed him candied fruits again. He let her ruffle his hair. He even sat on the floor cross-legged instead of his usual upright lotus stance like some transcendent elder about to deliver a sermon.

It was hard. Incredibly hard. Every time he relaxed, he caught himself monitoring the Qi flows of the palace, or checking his precognitive threads. Every time he tried to smile, it felt like a negotiation with his own muscles.

Still, he persisted.

“I brought something,” he muttered finally.

His mother turned, interested. “Oh?”

He reached into his sleeve and awkwardly produced… a hand-drawn picture. It was old—centuries old, from the first years after he inherited the Heavenly Eye. A child’s drawing, depicting a crude version of her holding his hand, standing in a garden with stick flowers and a crooked sun.

She blinked.

“I thought you threw that away,” she said softly.

“I archived it in a pocket realm,” Nongmin said, averting his eyes. “For preservation.”

She laughed. Not the amused kind. The moved kind. The kind that made his chest tighten. She took the drawing with delicate fingers, and for a long time, didn’t say anything. Just smiled at it.

“You really were a strange boy,” she said fondly.

“I still am,” he admitted.

“Mm. Except now, you hide it under layers of cosmic awareness and imperial posture.”

Nongmin hesitated. “Is that… bad?”

“No,” she said. “But it’s okay to peel those layers back. Just a little. Sometimes.”

There was a pause. A long, comfortable one.

“…Do you want to braid my hair?” she asked suddenly.

He froze. “No.”

“Too complicated?” she teased.

“It’s illogical,” he grumbled. “My dexterity is meant for qi threads, not vanity rituals.”

She handed him the comb.

He stared at it like it was a sword made of scorpions. Still, after a moment, he sat behind her, carefully parting her hair like he’d seen her do countless times. His hands were clumsy, his movements stiff, but he tried.

Each pass of the comb brought with it memories of being small, of sitting exactly like this, of her humming old lullabies as the world outside faded away.

And for a few rare minutes, Nongmin didn’t feel like the Emperor. He didn’t feel like the wielder of the Heavenly Eye. He just felt like a son again.

She didn’t comment on the crooked braid. Crooked only because of his emotions. Xin Yune only leaned back slightly, resting her weight against him.

“I missed this,” she murmured. 

He didn’t answer. He didn’t trust his voice. 

But in his heart, cold, calculating, and often unbearable even to himself, he etched the moment down as sacred.

He would remember this night, not through a vision, not through a reality thread, but for what it was: something he’d lived, awkwardly, honestly, and with all the childlike love he could summon. 

It was love.

Plain and simple.

But just as complex as it was incredible.