He’d had children before, those he knew and even those he did not; of those he knew, the names they called him varied throughout the centuries: fuqin, die, even fuhuang. The thing about immortality is that you end up outliving everyone around you, and it gets much easier to stop investing your heart one way or another; until Ying Li, he had vowed not to steep himself so deep into the lives of children he might see dying before his eyes again. And yet, it still stung bitterly when, after ten years – nothing to him, but half a lifetime to Shangqi and Xialing both – both of his surviving children seemed to be doing all they can to avoid calling him Ba.