1 Chapter 1 - The Child of Heaven

"Your holiness! Please, slow down! What if you will trip! What if you injure yourself?!"

A female servant and her personal guard chased after an unruly young child running around like wild abandoned. Her clothes fluttered messily around as the strong wind blew across her face. Her hair had tangled with itself, others were strewn across her face and was left with a bird's nest. She was barefoot and her feet was dirty and full of cuts. Still, the five-year-old kept running and running.

"Ha! Then that would be nice! If my body gets ruined, I can finally rid of all those idiots who chase after me!"

Her skin was fair and radiant. Her face was bright and her eyes looked as if they held an entire galaxy within them. She was the child of heaven, the human embodiment of the goddess Wei Qi.

After she was born, the entire empire rejoiced. It has a been a decades since the Long Empire was last graced with the presence of a child of heaven. They had lost the previous one, who sacrificed herself for the sake of the empire, ending the war which destroyed the lives of countless people.

However, Lan Wei Qi was born unlike all the others. For once, the child of heaven did not have the memory of the predecessors. The people speculated that it might have been because of the way the child before her, Zhou Wei Qi, died. The always calm and soft temperament of the child of heaven was then replaced by... trouble one after the other.

"Your holiness, please! Even if you injure yourself, you are still the child of heaven, the embodiment of our goddess! It will not change anything!"

The moment it was said, Lan Wei Qi stood to a halt. The smile on her face was no longer there, replaced by a disappointed expression.

"Eh? Why?"

She turned and walked back slowly. The female servant and her guard both stood dumbfounded as she walked past them.

"Y- Your holiness, where are you going?" the female servant asked.

"Let's go back, jiejie. What are you still doing there? Cheng-ge too."

"Yes!"

The female servant and the guard both sighed in relief. They had been chasing her for hours that they thought their feet would fall off. No matter how physically fit they are, they can never match up to the child of heaven.

The children of heaven possessed the strongest of bodies and the greatest of powers. This was one of the things Lan Wei Qi was different to her predecessors. The previous children of heaven all had healing powers while she... she had exactly the opposite.

Lan Wei Qi possessed a power so destructive that even she, herself, fears it. She was forbidden to use great amounts of it and even if she wasn't, she would not dare use even a spark. When she came to the age where she was able to understand what being the child of heaven meant, she was euphoric at the idea of having the ability to heal. In fact even when she was still very young, she admired very much the profession of being a doctor. The horror of finding out how much destruction she could bring shook her entire being and she fell into a coma for a month.

She woke up as this unruly child who hated her identity as the child of heaven.

This worried the holy temple and the people. Everyday, the priests would visit her to check on her situation and people would leave flowers outside of her residence as a gesture of assurance that they were not afraid of her.

Lan Wei Qi looked like a draped cloth the way she was leaning outside the window of he carriage; dead and lifeless. Her whole arm was hanging outside and the windowsill has been embedded on her sulking face "Luo jiejie, where are we? Why is it taking so long?"

"Your holiness, we are entering the gates of the capital. Please lighten up. The people will be worried," Luo Luo tried to lighten up the sullen mood of her young miss.

The white carriage attracted the attention of the people. Their faces brightened as they called out to her.

"Your holiness, please brighten up!"

"Your holiness, you look prettier when you smile!"

"I love you!"

Out of the crowd, she noticed a woman carrying a child looking like a dumpling with his chubby cheeks stuffed with food. She wanted to get down and take a bite off him.

"Stop," she said and the carriage halted. She took the hairpin that Luo Luo has fixed onto her hair earlier and leaned out to give it to the child. The woman, her husband and their other children seemed to be high up the clouds in astonishment and delight. "When you grow up and find someone you like, I am sure this will bring you luck."

"Perdy!" the small child had only started to talk, and thus spoke incoherently. Still, it made him more adorable.

"Thank you, your holiness!" The family all bowed in gratefulness to her.

They continued on their way and this time, Lan Wei Qi no longer looked like a draped cloth on the windowsill, however she still looked a bit dejected.

"Did anything upset you, your holiness?" Luo Luo asked in worry.

"Jiejie, Cheng-ge, I wasn't able to get a bite of his cheeks." Lan Wei Qi pouted, her chubby cheeks puffed out.

Luo Luo and Si Cheng looked at each other and chuckled in unison.

"Huh? Why are you laughing? What's so funny?" Lan Wei Qi demanded an answer as she continuously puffed out her cheeks.

Both found their young miss very adorable. Her mood was lifted a little and she was not as dejected anymore.

"Oh my, your holiness, it seems we have arrived," Luo Luo realized. She and Si Cheng got down first before he had held out his hand to help their young miss down.

"Qi'er."

"Master!" Luo Luo and Si Cheng bowed when they saw the head of the Lan family who has just returned from the military camp.

"Gege!" Lan Wei Qi's dampen mood immediately dissipated into thin air. "You're back!" She immediately sprinted and ran into her older brother's arms. He carried her to the air and twirled her around.

"Of course, I had to come back," Lan Wangji said as he carried her all the way inside the manor. "This older brother missed his little sister so much! It hurt so much to part."

The siblings were actually fifteen years apart. Lan Wangji was the son from the first wife who passed away ten years ago. His father remarried after some time and had Lan Wei Qi, his beloved sister. However some of the side families rebelled and planned to get rid of the main family. Their parents got killed and Lan Wei Qi only got to know the presence of her parents for a year. She does not even have a recollection of it.

Lan Wangji was only sixteen years old then, but he had a reputation as a prodigy in all the arts. He held out against the rebelling side families and with the support of the holy temple and the holy knights, he became the head of the Lan family. He acted as Lan Wei Qi's father, mother and brother all together, however he had duties to attend to as the new head and he has recently been promoted as captain in the imperial army. He has to leave her to go to the military camp.

"Gege, how long are you going to stay?" Lan Wei Qi asked him. "We should plan what to do! I want to do a lot of things with you!"

"Gege is staying for one whole day. We have a lot of things to do, don't we?" Lan Wangji asked her with a smile.

"Yes!"