Lu Qianqiao (陆千乔) has walked the earth for two centuries. He has been a teacher, a strategist, a wanderer. He has sat beside emperors and slept in caves. He has met countless people—men who feared him, women who desired his power, disciples who betrayed him. Yet in all that time, he only gave his heart to one person: Xin Mei (辛湄).
The 28th episode of Fate Chooses You (佳偶天成) reveals a buried memory: his master Duan Xianyin (段仙音) tortured him as a cultivation tool, so he killed her and erased the trauma. He lied to himself about having a loving family. But three moments of tears—not loud sobs, but quiet cracks in his armor—tell the real story. They explain why a man who had every reason to hate still chose to love, and why that love landed on one woman in a million.
Two Broken Tears
The first tear fell on a rainy night, decades before the drama begins. Lu Qianqiao had just escaped from Duan Xianyin’s cave. His body was covered in scars from her experiments. He sat behind a market stall, watching a father buy candied fruit for his daughter. The girl laughed. The father wiped her chin. Lu Qianqiao felt something hot slide down his own cheek. He touched it. Salt. He had forgotten he could still cry. That tear was not for the pain. It was for the realization that he had never once been that child. His mother abandoned him. His father was murdered. And the woman he called “master” only wanted his Zhan Gui (战鬼) body—a rare hybrid of human and warrior ghost tribe.
The second tear came fifty years later. He had taken a young man named Zong Dingdi (宗定帝) as his only disciple. He taught him swordsmanship. He protected him from assassins. He helped him win a bloody throne. At the victory banquet, Zong Dingdi poured wine for Lu Qianqiao. The cup was laced with poison that would seal a Zhan Gui’s powers. Lu Qianqiao caught the scent before drinking. He looked at his disciple’s eyes—cold, calculating, grateful but not loving. He put the cup down and walked out of the palace. Only when he reached the empty mountain path did he let a single tear escape. Not from betrayal. From exhaustion. He had given kindness. He had received a knife. Again.
After that, he stopped expecting anything from anyone. He built a false memory in his mind—a gentle master, a cozy home, a reason to exist. He told himself he was fine. He helped people without asking for return. He taught Su Taiyi (苏太乙) and founded Chongling (崇灵) Valley as a safe place for outcasts. But when Su Taiyi later sacrificed his own bones to complete Lu Qianqiao’s human form, Lu Qianqiao did not cry. He had learned to lock his tears in a box. The box was heavy. And it stayed shut until Xin Mei kicked it open.
The Final Tear
He met Xin Mei during a crisis in Bei Xiang (北襄). She was a cultivator from a minor sect, not particularly powerful, not particularly famous. What she had was a blunt sense of justice. When others avoided Lu Qianqiao because of his Zhan Gui blood, she stood in front of him and shouted at a crowd: “He saved your village. He owes you nothing. You owe him an apology.” No one had defended him like that. Not in two hundred years. He stared at her. His chest felt strange—not pain, not gratitude, but something warmer. Something dangerous.
He did not fall immediately. He tested her. He watched how she treated servants, how she spoke about money, how she reacted to fear. She was not perfect. She made mistakes. But she never pretended. When she promised something, she delivered. When she disagreed, she said so. Little by little, Lu Qianqiao let down the walls he had built after Zong Dingdi’s poison. He started hoping again. That hope terrified him more than any enemy blade. Because hope meant he could be hurt again. And he was so tired of being hurt.
The third tear came on their wedding night. Not from joy—from a blood pact. In Fate Chooses You, a Zhan Gui can seal a life-bond with a spouse. If one dies, the other feels it. If one is near death, the bond can pull them back. Lu Qianqiao had made the pact as a practical measure. He did not expect it to activate. But months later, when Xin Mei lay bleeding from a demon’s claw, his chest burned. He found her in the snow. He carried her for three days to a healer. On the third night, with her pulse fading under his fingers, he wept. Not silent tears this time. He sobbed like a child. He begged the stars, the gods, the empty sky: “Not her. Anyone but her.” She survived. And he finally understood why he had waited two hundred years. Everyone else had taken his kindness as weakness. She had taken it as a gift. He had not loved because he was afraid. But she made fear feel small.
That is the truth of Lu Qianqiao’s three tears. The first was for a childhood he never had. The second was for a trust that was poisoned. The third was for a love he almost refused to try. Two hundred years, many faces, many places—but only one person who saw him not as a tool, a monster, or a ghost. Only Xin Mei. And that made all the difference.
