The stars above glittered like distant sparks of a forgotten war. Ye Zai stood alone on a mountaintop, the wind tugging gently at his simple white cloak. Beneath him stretched the world oceans, cities, forests all blissfully unaware of what had just transpired.
The gods who once ruled over universes, who spoke with thunder and shaped galaxies with idle thought, were no more. Ye Zai had defeated them not out of hatred, but because their reign had become cruel, thoughtless. Now the cosmos was quiet, and Ye Zai… Ye Zai was tired.
"I could crush stars between my fingers," he mused aloud, "yet I can't fill the emptiness in my heart."
He descended the mountain not with flashes of power, but with slow, human steps. Earth, this small blue planet tucked away in a corner of the universe, fascinated him. Here, people lived not by the swing of power, but by the sway of simple dreams: families, friendships, love.
It was in a small town, nestled by a river lined with cherry blossom trees, that he decided to stay.
He lived simply, renting a modest room above a bakery. Ye Zai found a strange satisfaction in routine: helping the old baker carry sacks of flour, fixing broken lamps, teaching children little tricks with pebbles harmless magic, disguised as sleight of hand.
That's when he met her.
Her name was Lin Xue.
Lin Xue was no goddess. She was no warrior, no wielder of cosmic flames. She ran a tiny flower shop at the corner of the street. Her life was a quiet one, her smile like the first warm breeze of spring. For reasons Ye Zai couldn't fully explain or perhaps didn't want to he found himself returning to that flower shop almost every day.
At first, he was awkward. How did one speak to someone who wasn't a god, a king, or a tyrant? But Lin Xue laughed at his clumsy words and strange questions.
"You act like you've never bought flowers before," she teased once, handing him a bouquet of forget-me-nots.
"I haven't," Ye Zai admitted, scratching his head sheepishly. "In my old life, there were… no flowers."
She didn't pry. She only smiled and said, "Then it's time to start planting some."
And so, Ye Zai did.
He planted a garden behind the bakery, a secret place only he and Lin Xue knew about. Every day, after he finished helping the townsfolk, he would visit the garden. And sometimes Lin Xue would be waiting there, weaving stories of her childhood, dreams, and hopes into the air like golden thread.
Seasons turned. The cherry blossoms fell and returned again.
One night, under the full moon, in the secret garden they had built together, Ye Zai knelt on one knee, holding a ring he had forged himself not from star-metal or celestial crystals, but from the simple silver he had mined with his own hands.
"Lin Xue," he said, voice steady, "I have no great kingdom to offer you, no riches beyond the stars. Only myself a man who has seen too much, fought too hard, and now wishes for nothing more than a life beside you."
Lin Xue stared at him for a moment, eyes wide then laughed softly, tears shining in her lashes.
"You're a fool, Ye Zai," she whispered. "But you're my fool."
She said yes.
And for the first time in his life, Ye Zai the slayer of gods, the weaver of fates felt truly, completely at peace.
The years passed like a soft dream.
Ye Zai and Lin Xue built a life together in the little riverside town, their days filled with simple joys tending the garden, baking bread with the old baker, walking hand-in-hand beneath the cherry blossoms when they bloomed.
Ye Zai never told her about the gods he had defeated, or the universes he had once crossed with a thought. Those things belonged to another life, one he had left behind. Here, he was just a husband, a man learning to live gently.
Then, one crisp autumn morning, Lin Xue called him into their home with a smile wider than any he had ever seen.
"Ye Zai," she said, placing his hand gently against her belly, "we're going to have a child."
He froze.
For a moment, the world seemed to vanish, leaving only the soft heartbeat he could feel under his palm not a god's pulse, not the rhythm of a star collapsing into a black hole but a tiny, fragile life. A miracle, beyond all the wars and destruction he had ever known.
Tears filled Ye Zai's eyes before he could stop them. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her hands, trembling with a joy so fierce it hurt.
"A family," he whispered. "Our family."
The months that followed were among the happiest of Ye Zai's existence.
He spent days building a small cradle from the finest wood he could find, enchanting it just slightly so it would never splinter, no matter how much time passed. He wove protections into the walls of their home, old spells disguised as lullabies, safeguarding their unborn child from dangers no mortal could see.
And then, on a night when the stars seemed to hum softly in the sky, their son was born.
They named him Xiao Lan —"Little Blue," after the river that ran beside their town, and the endless sky Ye Zai had once soared beyond.
The boy had his mother's gentle smile and his father's eyes: ancient, deep, filled with secrets even he did not yet understand.
From the moment he opened his tiny hands to clutch Ye Zai's finger, something stirred within Ye Zai's soul. A sleeping giant, vast beyond imagining, shifted faintly in the depths of his being.
He ignored it.
This was not the time for power. This was the time for life.
Ye Zai became a different kind of warrior: the kind who woke in the middle of the night to rock a crying child back to sleep, who told stories by candlelight, who taught Xiao Lan to walk by holding his hands through the fields of flowers they had planted.
When Xiao Lan grew older, he showed signs of odd talents lifting pebbles without touching them, making flowers bloom with a laugh. But Ye Zai and Lin Xue only smiled, never questioning it. He was their miracle, after all.
And though the stars beyond still flickered with distant threats, and though old gods whispered in fear of the being who had once unseated them, Ye Zai no longer cared.
He had chosen this life.
Not of conquest. Not of dominion.
But of love. Of family. Of building rather than destroying.
And in the secret places between worlds, something ancient watched Ye Zai's simple happiness.
It smiled if such a thing could smile knowing that soon, when the time was right, the sleeping titan within him would awaken once more.
But for now, Ye Zai was content.
For now, the strongest being in existence lived not as a ruler of the stars, but as a father, a husband, and a man finally at peace with the universe he had fought so hard to protect.