Chapter 3

Wesley's tears spilled at once as he dropped to his knees at my feet.

"Brother, I've let you down, I know. But I was born infertile, and I'm only a three-tailed spirit fox with limited talent for cultivation. That's why that woman threw me away."

"Rena is the only one who doesn't look down on me, the only one willing to marry me. I love her. I'll never find anyone worth leaning on more than her. You've cared for me for hundreds of years. Just care for me this one last time. Please?"

So he still remembered that I'd cared for him for hundreds of years.

My parents were ordinary folk in the mortal realm. When I fell gravely ill, they grudged the cost of treating me.

They still had my younger brother, after all, so they left me deep in the mountains, hoping the beasts would eat me and be done with it.

It was Wesley, who couldn't even take human form yet and had slipped out to play, who carried me on his back and hauled me home to Blackpine Hollow.

While the fox healer treated me, he discovered I had a rare gift for cultivation.

So Wesley begged his parents not to let such talent go to waste, said he'd always wanted a human brother, and pleaded with them to take me in.

And so they gave me half of their resources and helped me ascend to godhood.

I swore then that I would repay the Ashford family, that I would be good to Wesley.

The spirit stones, the immortal elixirs, the treasures I was granted, I sent them all their way like water.

But it was precisely because I'd treated him as a true brother that the betrayal cut this deep, this bitter.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

"Wesley, you've been failed by someone yourself. You should know an unfaithful woman can't be trusted."

"If you still care about me as your brother, cut off all ties with Serena, and I'll go on watching over you and caring for you the same as before."

Wesley hesitated a few seconds, then finally shook his head, tears still on his face.

"No. Rena just hadn't figured out before whether what she felt for you was the kinship of comrades-in-arms or love. Now she's certain she loves me, and she'll never fail me."

"Brother, I know you've done a great deal for me. I'll give the immortal manor back to you, I can even give up being the master craftsman's apprentice. But Rena is the one thing I can't return."

It was the answer I'd expected.

And still the grief in my chest wouldn't stop.

I pulled the corner of my mouth into something like a smile and said quietly,

"Wesley, what you're doing now is every bit as shameless as the man who seduced your fiancee away."

He froze. Then, when it sank in, he pulled the enchanted relics out of his boundless pouch.

He hurled them at me one after another, like a man gone mad, nothing left of the pitiful figure from a moment ago.

"Charles Griffin, if not for me back then, you'd still be a lowly mortal, gnawed to pieces by beasts long ago. What right do you have to call me shameless?"

"I'm sick of being handed scraps of charity by a stray like you. I will marry Rena. I'll be the God of War's husband, and I'll keep you crushed under my foot forever!"

I stood there frozen, forgetting even to fight back.

So in his eyes, hundreds of years of my kindness had only ever been charity from a stray.

A humiliation, even.

Wesley had lost all control, and a relic caught the tip of his finger and split it open.

Habit carved into my bones made me reach out without thinking, wanting to check the wound.

The next second, a surge of spirit energy came straight at me.

Caught off guard, I was blasted clean off my feet, my lower back slamming into the door pillar, and the pain forced a low grunt out of me.

Serena shielded Wesley in her arms and glared at me, furious.

"Charles Griffin, you knew Wes has a heart condition, and you deliberately provoked him while I was gone. Now you want to hit him too? You're the shameless one here!"

She unfastened the boundless pouch at her waist.

"As for the master craftsman, I've already withdrawn Wes from his tutelage. The spirit stones and treasures in this pouch are more than enough to cover this immortal manor and those raw materials of yours. From now on, stop dredging up this nonsense to hold over us!"

Wesley threw the pouch into my face, weeping.

"Charles Griffin, our brotherhood is severed from this day. Never appear before me again."

"I won't let anyone take my future wife from me ever again!"

The mouth of the pouch hadn't been tied tight, and the heavy spirit stones flew out with the motion.

They struck my forehead on the spot and drew blood.

But neither of them so much as looked at me. Serena called for the servants to carry the chests off to their new home and, supporting the still-sobbing Wesley, walked away.

Even from a good distance off, I could still hear her soothing him in that gentle voice.

I looked down at the blood on the ground and, with a bitter smile, let my tears fall.

The year Wesley's fiancee scorned him, she ran off on their wedding day with a man of higher spiritual power, one who could give her children.

He became the laughingstock of all Blackpine Hollow.

All he knew to do was weep and sever his own tails to end his life. It was a gruesome scene.

Even Serena was shaken watching it, and she leaned into my arms, still frightened.

"Charlie, so this is how it feels to be betrayed by the one you love. Such agony. I would never do that to you. If I ever did, let everyone spit on me and let me meet a wretched end."

Later, when Wesley saw that I had all but drained my spirit energy to regrow her tails and save her life, and had angered the clan chief by wounding one of Blackpine Hollow's own,

I was sentenced by the Heavenly Emperor to a hundred military lashes, and for three whole months I couldn't rise from my bed.

He'd taken my hand then, heartsick for me.

"Brother, I'm the one who dragged you into this. I won't be so cowardly again. I want to be a great tree that shelters you too."

But now, every last one of them had gone back on their word.