Lian Qiao had fallen many times in her brief, chaotic celestial existence.
Out of cloud beds. Into sacred ponds. Once—rather memorably—into her master's private peach wine barrel.
But never, not once, had she fallen into forbidden territory.
Until now.
She lay draped over the outstretched wings of a stone phoenix, its carved eyes glaring judgment at her limp form. Her limbs dangled. Her braid was half-untied. One embroidered slipper had vanished into the wind.
She groaned, eyes fluttering open, as the first thing to reach her senses was a scent — cold, clean, and ancient.
Smoke and snow. Iron and silence.
Lian Qiao sat up slowly, wobbling slightly on the narrow back of the statue, and looked around.
The sky here was... still.
Not the playful, peach-blossom skies of her sect, but pale, vast, and untouched — like a blank scroll before ink had graced it. Black cliffs jutted into nothingness, veiled in eternal mist. The wind did not sing here. It simply watched.
And in the center of it all stood a temple so tall it disappeared into the clouds. Its gates were made of dragonbone. Its roof bore a single banner — ink-black, with a silver circle in its center.
No immortal training ground ever dared raise such a flag.
"Oh no," Qiao whispered, dread curling in her chest. "I landed in the... Eastern Sky?"
She scrambled to her feet on the phoenix's back and looked down — and froze.
At the base of the statue, staring straight up at her with an expression carved from stone and storm, was a man.
Tall. Unmoving. Dressed in robes the color of midnight, edged with golden sigils. His face was unreadable. Sharp as a sword, beautiful in the way an untouched blade was beautiful — dangerous, not meant for admiration.
His long hair billowed softly in the stillness, caught by some secret breeze that dared brush past him.
Mo Yujin.
Lian Qiao didn't recognize him, of course.
She only saw a terrifying, cold immortal glaring at her as if she had ruined his very soul.
"...Um." She cleared her throat, voice high and nervous. "Hi."
No response.
"I didn't mean to fall here."
Still nothing.
She swallowed. "I was practicing spatial jumps. It's part of the third-tier curriculum. You know, the one after don't touch cursed artifacts but before avoid reincarnation lakes?"
The immortal blinked once. Slowly.
"Also," she added, flailing slightly to balance, "do you happen to know how to send someone back to the Peach Blossom Sect? Without, you know, turning them into a cloud or a sacrificial offering?"
There was a long, empty silence.
Then, he raised a hand.
Qiao's body tensed.
A shimmer of divine energy bloomed between his fingers — silver-white and edged in pale blue, cold enough to sting from where she stood. A spell? A smite? A banishment scroll?
She panicked.
"WAIT!" she yelped, arms flailing. "You can't kill me! I'm very young! Spiritually, I mean. Not that I'm not mature! I just haven't had my divine tribulation yet!"
The energy paused mid-air.
Mo Yujin tilted his head, just slightly, as if watching a sparrow pretend to roar.
Then he spoke, his voice deep, low, and carrying the quiet weight of centuries:
"You are trespassing."
Qiao's heart skipped. "Right. Yes. Totally valid point."
"You crossed sacred bounds."
"Also fair! I do that. A lot, apparently."
He stepped forward. She stepped back — right off the statue.
She shrieked, arms pinwheeling—
And landed directly into his arms.
Mo Yujin caught her effortlessly, one arm under her knees, the other at her back.
She stared up at him, wide-eyed. "You—you caught me."
He did not blink. "You fell."
"I always fall," she breathed.
And then, too startled to stop herself, she added, "You smell like a snowstorm."
He blinked. Once.
She winced. "I wasn't flirting. I mean—unless that's legal here, in which case, I was very flirting—"
"Silence," he said.
She shut her mouth immediately.
He looked at her for a moment longer, his face unreadable. Then turned and began walking — still carrying her, as if she weighed nothing at all — through the obsidian courtyard toward the towering temple.
"Wh-where are we going?" she whispered.
"To ask the heavens," he said, "why they dropped you into my domain."
And just like that, Lian Qiao, spiritual trainee, dumpling enthusiast, and frequent accident-waiting-to-happen — was carried into the heart of a realm no immortal dared approach.
And the winds above the Celestial Realm whispered, for the first time in millennia:
The Immortal Who Never Fell... has just caught a girl.