Three days before the alignment of the seven stars, I received a photo from Xiao Jin: Mudan was standing in front of the window of "Xiao Jin's Flower Shop", her fingertips gently touching a pair of twin peonies that would never wither. The timestamp in the corner of the photo showed three in the morning, and Mudan was wearing her pajamas.
"She comes every night," Xiao Jin wrote in the message. "Like a sleepwalker, stroking the petals and talking."
I tossed my phone onto the sofa, leaving the freshly finished final chapter of *Jade Dynasty* spread out on the coffee table. In the novel, Fairy Mudan seals a strand of her primordial spirit into the peony hairpin she wears before leaping off the Executioner's Terrace. In reality, Lin Mudan's office desk drawer actually held an antique peony hairpin—one I had secretly slipped in last week.
Chapter 200