Hua Qian stood in the center of her clinic, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. The cold fury that had slammed into her from Di Jun was already fading, but its memory was like a frost on her skin. She looked at him, standing by the window, his back still to her, a statue carved from ice and shadow.
He was jealous. The Demon Lord, the Asura Blood Emperor, was jealous of a simple woodcarver. The thought was so absurd it was almost laughable, but the raw, possessive pain of it was real. She had felt it.
"You had no right," she said, her voice shaking with a mix of fear and anger.
He turned slowly, his golden eye still holding a flicker of that hellfire. "I have every right. Your soul is bound to mine. Every touch you give to another man, I feel. Every smile you offer, I feel. It is a… distraction."
"A distraction?" she repeated, her voice rising. "That was Lin Bo! He is a friend! He gave me a gift! That is all!"
"A gift he gave because he desires you," Di Jun snarled, his voice a low growl. "I could smell his pathetic, mortal longing from across the village."
The sheer audacity of it, the violation, made her blood boil. "You cannot feel my feelings and then punish me for them! This bond, this… curse, it was your idea! You cannot just use it to control me!"
"I am not controlling you," he said, taking a step towards her. The air grew heavy, the pressure of his presence making it hard to breathe. "I am reminding you of your place. You are mine to heal, mine to protect. You are not for the eyes of mortal boys."
He was so close now. She could see the faint, dark veins of the curse spreading from the wound on his chest, up his neck. He was a masterpiece of power and pain, and he was terrifying.
"And what about you?" she shot back, refusing to back down. "Am I allowed to be jealous? Am I allowed to feel the rage you still hold for the woman who shot you? The woman you still love, even after she tried to kill you?"
The words hung in the air, a direct hit.
Di Jun froze. The fire in his golden eye died, replaced by a vast, chilling emptiness. For a moment, she thought he might strike her. The coldness that radiated from him was so profound it felt like it could freeze her very soul.
"You know nothing," he whispered, his voice devoid of all emotion.
"I know what I felt," she said, her voice softening. She wasn't trying to win an argument anymore. She was trying to understand. "I know that a part of you is still back in that celestial palace, with her. That part of you is still in love. And that part of you is keeping you from healing."
He stared at her, his expression unreadable. Then, he did something she did not expect. He laughed. It was a dry, broken sound, full of self-loathing.
"Love?" he said, turning away from her and running a hand through his dark hair. "You call that love? What I feel for her is not love. It is a scar. A deep, ugly scar that has been carved into my soul. You cannot heal a scar, little healer. You can only learn to live with the pain of it."
He turned back, his eyes locking onto hers. "You want to understand my wound so badly? You want to know my sorrow? Fine. Then look."
He unfastened the top of his black robe, pulling it aside to expose his chest. The black wound from the celestial arrow was a sickening sight, a vortex of dark energy that seemed to drink the light. But it was not the only mark on his perfect, pale skin.
Across his heart, over the place where the arrow had struck, was another scar. It was an old scar, thin and silver, shaped like a crescent moon. It was not a wound from a battle. It was delicate. Almost beautiful.
"What is that?" Hua Qian asked, her voice barely a whisper.
"This," Di Jun said, his voice thick with a bitterness so old it was almost a part of him, "is the first scar she gave me. A long, long time ago. Before she was a goddess, when she was just a celestial apprentice, and I was… something else. We were sparring. Her practice blade broke. A shard of it cut me here."
He touched the silver crescent with his thumb. "I remember it so clearly. She cried. She thought she had hurt me terribly. I held her and told her it was nothing. That it was a mark I would cherish forever."
He looked up at Hua Qian, his dual-colored eyes filled with a pain so deep it made her own heart ache. "This scar, from a moment of shared youth and clumsy affection… this hurt more than the celestial arrow. The arrow was meant to kill me. But this… this was meant to be a memory of love. And now, it is just a reminder of the biggest lie of my long life."
He let his robe fall, covering the scars once more. "So you see, you cannot heal me. To heal me, you would have to go back in time and unmake every moment I ever spent with her. You would have to carve out my heart. And I am not sure there would be anything left."
Hua Qian stood there, speechless. She had thought she was treating a physical wound, a magical curse. She now understood she was trying to heal a history. A lifetime of love and betrayal, etched onto his very soul.
She was no longer just a healer. She was an archaeologist of the heart, tasked with excavating a thousand years of pain. And she had no idea where to even begin to dig.