Chapter 2 — The Mighty, All-Powerful Genie

Thin smoke rolled up from the mouth of the lamp, gradually forming into a tall figure standing still in the middle of the underground room, jet black hair, deep eyes that seemed to contain a thousand years of bottomless depth. Cảnh Bách Nguyên clasped his hands behind his back and bowed slightly, following the habit he had repeated countless times in front of this man over the past thirty-five years.

"You called me in the middle of the night, probably not to ask about my health." His voice is still deep, but has lost the coldness of the early days, replaced by a discreet concern that only observant people can recognize.

Vĩnh Bảo sat down on the wooden chair placed in the room, leaning on a cane, breathing somewhat heavier than usual. "The doctor said my heart could stop beating any time in the next six months. Maybe sooner," he said those words lightly as if he were discussing the weather, causing Bách Nguyên to pause for a moment.

"Have you told this story to Nhã Kỳ?"

"No. And I won't tell, until everything is arranged." Vĩnh Bảo looked straight into his eyes, his eyes no longer had any hesitation. "Bách Nguyên, I have been thinking about my third wish for the past twenty years. I thought I would use it to ensure Nhã Kỳ's future - giving her a solid position, a suitable marriage, or simply a few more decades of life so I can be there to watch her grow up. But tonight I realized I thought wrong for twenty years."

"What are you going to do?"

"I will use my last wish to give you your freedom."

The space in the underground room seemed to freeze. Bách Nguyên stood motionless, his deep eyes shining with something he had never allowed himself to reveal for a thousand years — a confusion so pure that it was almost painful. "Do you know what you are saying? The price of giving freedom is not small. You will lose the last wish that could save your own life."

"I know very well." Vĩnh Bảo smiled, the smile of a person who had calmly accepted death a long time ago. "But a wish cannot prolong my life for more than a few more years, while you have been imprisoned for a thousand years. I do not want to be one of those who have used you for millennia out of fear of death. I want to be the last, the one who is different." Bách Nguyên was silent for a long time. In its entire history, no one has ever suggested this. Not because no one knows about the curse's loophole - that loophole has been recorded somewhere in ancient texts that many scholars have studied - but because no one is foolish enough to give up the almost limitless power of the three wishes just to free a life without blood or flesh and blood. "Why? You have a whole corporation, a granddaughter to protect. You can use a wish to prolong her life, to see her grow up, get married, have children."

"It's because I still have her that I can't do that." Vĩnh Bảo's voice was low, carrying a pain that had been suppressed for a long time. "Nhã Kỳ grew up in a family where emotions were always measured by interests. Her parents died early, and relatives surrounded her just waiting for the day I closed my eyes to fight for the inheritance. She is smart, strong, but also arrogant and pitifully lonely, because she does not believe that anyone alive can love her without money or power of the Tang family. If I use the last wish to prolong my life, I am only postponing that fear for a few more years, not solve the root problem. But if I give you freedom..."

"You intend to drag me into your niece's affairs," Bách Nguyên said, not a question.

"I want to ask you a favor, not an order." Vĩnh Bảo emphasized every word. "After being released, you will transform into a real person — able to grow old, able to hurt, able to love. I know you have the complete right to refuse this request, and if you refuse, I will still use the wish to release you, without any conditions. But if you are willing, I want you to marry Nhã Kỳ, officially, legally, within five years. Not for you to protect her forever — she needs to stand on her own two feet." her own legs - but for those five years, there was someone by her side, silently helping her through the most difficult time when I was no longer there, without revealing that I was helping her. I want her to learn to believe in her own abilities first, and then, if fate allows, learn to believe in another heart that does not come close to her.

Bách Nguyên walked to the only small window of the underground room, looking out at the dark yard behind the villa where the late moonlight shone down on the rows of tall black star trees. "You're betting the rest of your granddaughter's life on the hands of a being who has never lived a day as a human."

“I am betting on your dignity, which I have witnessed over the past thirty-five years, not on your magic.” Vĩnh Bảo replied, his voice not wavering at all. "You don't have to love her. I can't force anyone's heart, even with three wishes. I just need you to stay by her side, protect her from the pitfalls that a twenty-five year old girl who has never experienced life cannot predict, for five years. After five years, if both of you have no feelings for each other, you are completely free to leave, divorce, live your own life. That is a promise of honor, not a term of a curse."

A long silence passed. Bách Nguyên thought about the thousand years he had lived without choices, about the first time in his life someone gave him a suggestion instead of an order. He thought about the feeling of being himself, of tasting a meal, of feeling the rain falling on his skin, of living and dying like a normal human being — things that for millennia had only existed in his imagination while listening to Vĩnh Bảo tell stories. And he also thought about the man in front of him, the only friend he had ever had, preparing to risk his own last chance of survival just for a promise to his niece and a life not related by blood.

"I agree," he said, his voice firm. "But I want you to know, I won't pretend to love her if I don't truly feel it. And I won't force her to love me either."

"I don't need you to pretend anything." Vĩnh Bảo smiled, his eyes finally relaxed, as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders for twenty years. "I just need you to be you. That's all she needs, even though she doesn't know it yet."

He stood up, walked with his cane in front of the glass cabinet, and placed his trembling hand on the cold bronze lamp body for the last time in his life. "Cảnh Bách Nguyên, my last wish: be free."

Orange-yellow light flared brightly throughout the underground room, swirling around Bách Nguyên's body like a gentle tornado of fire, tearing apart layers of invisible chains that had bound him for a thousand years. He felt something shatter in his chest, and then a completely new sensation flooded in—heart beating, lungs breathing, blood flowing through his veins for the first time in a millennium. When the light completely went out, the bronze lamp in Vĩnh Bảo's hand became empty, just a truly inanimate antique, with no soul left inside.

Bách Nguyên stood there, his hands trembling in front of him, looking at each pattern on his palm as if he were seeing them for the first time. He felt the cold of the underground room touching his skin, felt his heart beating rapidly in his chest — the feeling of fear, the feeling of being alive, the feeling of being human.

"Are you okay?" Vĩnh Bảo asked, his voice visibly weakened after having used up his last wish.

"I... I'm breathing," Bách Nguyên said, his voice carrying an uncontrollable tremble for the first time in a thousand years. "I'm actually breathing."

The next morning, in the large breakfast room of the villa, Đường Nhã Kỳ, twenty-five years old, wearing a delicately tailored ash gray business suit, sat opposite her grandfather, whose usual cold expression, until he slowly placed in front of her a marriage certificate with her name already filled in, only missing a signature, and next to it was an unfamiliar name: Cảnh Bách Nguyên.

"Grandpa, what is this?" She asked, her voice beginning to tremble with indignation when she heard him briefly explain that she would have to marry a man she had never met, within five years, according to his will.

"You'll understand why later," Vĩnh Bảo just said that, his eyes were both determined and filled with a deep guilt that Nhã Kỳ, in her anger, did not have time to recognize. "I beg you, just this once. Trust me."

Nhã Kỳ stood up, her hands clenched the edge of the table until they turned white, her eyes glittering angrily, looking straight at her grandfather - the only person in the world she still trusted - and in that moment, she was completely unaware that a strange man named Cảnh Bách Nguyên was standing quietly in another corner of the villa, learning to breathe like a human for the first time in a thousand years, preparing to enter her life in a way that neither of them could have expected.