Time in Suibian Temple's courtyard seemed to stretch until it was almost unreal.
Jane leaned against a mottled wall, arms crossed, fingertips tapping lightly against her sleeve without rhythm. Her "tourist disguise" felt more like a nuisance now—her wide-brim hat had long been taken off, and her sunglasses were in her hand, lazily spinning between her fingers.
Her blue-green eyes were sharp as an eagle's. They swept over the thin dust on the ground… then slid back to the stone-lion Bangboo named Shiye.
Shiye looked intensely curious about the "guest who was left behind," but there was a hint of wariness mixed in too. It kept a cautious distance of several steps, its round stone head tilted to one side. Its yellow electronic eyes didn't blink as they watched Jane, and from time to time it let out a low, stone-scrape "mm-nh," as if asking something… or trying to soothe her.
Jane didn't acknowledge it.
All her focus was tied to the quiet-room door that remained shut.
It was too quiet.
Quiet enough to be unsettling.
No raised voices. No impact of force. Not even the muffled rhythm of a conversation carried through. That absolute silence felt like a net slowly tightening around her heart.
Jane knew Qianye had secrets—she'd seen the occasional shadow that passed behind those clear green eyes, the subtle "wrongness" in him that even he might not fully realize. But she'd never imagined the situation was severe enough for the sect leader of Yun Kui Mountain to intervene personally… and to exclude Jane, his "partner," from the room.
Yixuan… that woman was powerful beyond reason.
Jane still remembered the earlier moment—how she'd been crushed into immobility with casual ease. That wasn't mere technique. It was something closer to a rule of reality itself. The vigilance Jane prided herself on had become a paper wall in front of Yixuan.
This waiting wasn't just worry anymore.
It was anger—raw, humiliating anger at her own powerlessness.
And beneath that, a fear she didn't want to admit.
The fear of losing him.
Because it had already happened once, hadn't it?
Sunlight struggled through thick branches overhead, dropping shifting patches of brightness at her feet—restless, flickering, like her thoughts. The stale scent of old wood and dust, mixed with the distant blur of street noise, made the courtyard feel like an isolated island. The stillness pressed down hard enough to choke.
Jane had always been someone who controlled the situation from the shadows.
But now she could only stand here like any ordinary, anxious lover—waiting outside a closed door, waiting to be told what remained of her place in his world.
She could even hear her own heartbeat, a little faster than it should have been.
And she could hear her own breath too—tight, careful, as if her lungs were afraid to draw too deep and find out the air had already been stolen.
Jane closed her eyes and waited.
She waited for the soft click of that door opening.
Inside the quiet room—
"Call you… Master?"
The request caught Qianye off guard.
He looked at Yixuan's face—so close, so clear, a faintly amused smile resting on her lips. He didn't react like an inexperienced boy, flustered and red; instead, a thin flicker of surprise passed through his eyes, then sank into deeper calculation.
Call her "Master." Was that flirtation? A test? A probe into his temperament? Or something with sharper meaning?
But as his mind turned, Yixuan's smile faded.
The gentle atmosphere in the room cooled in an instant. Her presence settled into something heavier, her gaze sharpening until it felt like a mirror that reflected not his expression, but the truth beneath his skin.
"Of course," she said, her voice returning to its earlier clarity—colder now, and edged with authority.
"Before you speak, I need to know where the 'root' lies. To hide illness from a physician is to invite death. Likewise, if the cause is unclear, even the best method cannot lift a deep affliction."
Her eyes were precise as a scalpel.
"As a healer, Qianye, you should understand. More than most—you should understand that without the true origin, any treatment is only scratching through a boot."
She leaned forward slightly, the air in the room tightening under the weight of her scrutiny.
"The power inside you… that unnatural force—where did it come from?"
Her tone wasn't loud, but it went straight to the core.
"What I sense carries a foundation of spiritual resonance… yet it is unlike natural creation, unlike the laws of sun, moon, mountain, and river."
"This power is closer to something forcibly catalyzed by extreme external influence—perhaps even… polluted."
Her brow tightened as if she were following a subtle ripple no one else could see.
"And the nature of it…"
Her gaze turned colder.
"It is saturated with… twisted allure, and profanation."
She leaned forward again—but this time there was no intimacy in the motion. Only solemnity, like a mountain pressing down.
"Tell me, Qianye. Who did this to you? What was done?"
Outside the door—
Jane's tapping stopped.
A faint ripple—barely perceptible—seemed to brush the edge of her awareness. It was sticky, sweet, seductive in a way that made her skin crawl… then it vanished so fast she almost wondered if she'd imagined it.
Her brows drew tighter. She straightened from the wall, eyes locked on the door as if she could pierce it by will alone.
Shiye seemed to feel something too—it made a low, wary sound, its electronic eyes flickering.
Inside the quiet room—
Qianye's body tightened for an instant.
The memory—wrapped again and again in reason and distance—was being touched with bare hands.
But he didn't break. He didn't cry.
The tears had been spent long ago in nights no one saw. The panic and rage had been drained through repeated interrogations and forced retellings, until all that remained was a thin, hard shell of ice… and a fatigue so deep it could pass for calm.
Sarah's face—fanatic, possessive.
The underground detention ward at the Public Security Bureau.
The cold, humiliating touch.
The grotesque sigils that woman traced over him.
And the ritual she called "awakening the Holy Son"—a rite drenched in desecration and control.
The broken dream fragments that followed, pieces too sharp to hold.
They were all still vivid.
But now it was as if he viewed them through frosted glass—pain dulled into something colder, deeper, more numb.
He'd told this story before.
Each retelling had once felt like ripping off a scab. At first it bled. Later it only hurt in a muted, deadened way… with a bitter disgust at how calmly he could speak about it.
Now, facing Yixuan, it felt like another clinical recounting—except some part of him suspected this time might be different.
He drew a deeper breath. His hands clasped in his lap, knuckles whitening slightly.
His face stayed steady—so steady it was almost unbearable to look at.
"It was a woman named Sarah," he said evenly, without tremor—like reading from a case file.
"Secretary at Farview Industries. A core member of the Hymn Society."
He could list her identity with terrifying clarity.
"She decided I was the 'child' of the 'First Ancestor' they worship. She called me 'Holy Son,' 'my love,' 'darling'… and a lot of other disgusting names I won't repeat."
A faint, exhausted curve touched his lips—more contempt than humor.
Then he told the sequence.
How he was lured.
How the cell felt like suffocation.
How Sarah's hunger and greed were endless, as if she were shaping a tool.
And finally, in an almost brutally minimal sentence, he described what mattered most:
That woman used a profane "union" as ritual—
to forcibly shatter something inside him.
As if lighting a hidden bloodline with filthy fire, twisting whatever that power once might have been into what it now was:
a pink-tinged force reeking of warped temptation and fall.
He didn't shout. He didn't choke on the words.
His voice stayed flat.
And that flatness, more than any sobbing confession, revealed the weight of what he'd endured—how much it had taken to compress himself into this silence.
Yixuan listened without expression, like a carved statue.
Only in the depths of her pupils did a colder current gather—quiet, but violent underneath. Her hands remained elegantly placed… yet her fingertips pressed subtly into her robe, leaving faint creases.
When Qianye ended with a tired, self-mocking line—"And now I'm like this… a walking source of temptation and trouble"—the room fell into a long, heavy silence.
Incense smoke continued to curl upward as if time itself had paused.
Yixuan closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, her gaze had sharpened into clarity—decisive, unwavering. The coldness hadn't left; it had simply condensed into something harder: will.
"I understand," she said.
"What was forced upon you is filth and distortion. But that power is not your original sin. And it is not beyond correction."
She looked at him like a mountain that could bear weight without cracking.
"Now answer me."
Her voice was calm, but it carried the authority of a path that had been walked and proven.
"Are you willing to take me as your master? To step onto a road that may be thorned and demanding—requiring resolve and courage—but whose purpose is to cleanse the filth, rebuild your foundation, and let you truly command your own fate, rather than be defined and controlled by others?"
Qianye lifted his head.
In her eyes he saw something he'd never found in any other listener:
Not cheap pity.
Not curiosity.
Not helpless regret.
Not cold exploitation.
But an actual possibility—grounded in strength, in method, in a clear way forward.
A hope sharp enough to cut chains.
Something inside him—his thin shell of ice—made a quiet cracking sound.
A little light seeped in.
He didn't perform a dramatic bow. He just looked at her, as if engraving the promise into bone.
Then he spoke with the same calm he'd used to recount his humiliation—only now it was heavier, steadier, like forged steel.
"I'm willing."
A beat of silence.
Then he added the title—not loud, but unshakable.
"Master."
This time there were no tears.
Only a quiet, hardened resolve—like metal cooled after fire.
Yixuan nodded.
"Good."
One word, but it landed like a mountain—an acceptance that carried responsibility.
She rose. Her white robe shifted, and a clean, cool current seemed to move with her, washing away the lingering sweetness in the air.
"Then come with me. Your rebirth begins now."
She spoke again, casually, as if discussing errands—yet every word carried weight.
"For the next few days, you'll stay here in Suibian Temple. If you've booked hotels or lodgings, cancel them early."
"And as my disciple, you'll need clothes. Most Yun Kui disciples are away or traveling, but if I want to… I can call over a laborer—"
She paused, corrected herself with a small smile.
"—a diligent senior sister. You'll get along with her, understood?"
Somewhere behind the calm, her amusement turned slightly… mischievous.
Looks like you can't keep vacationing, Fufu. Sorry—Qianye comes first.
Qianye stood as well. His posture was steady now. The faint haze that always clung to his brow had thinned, replaced by something clearer: direction.
Deep inside him, that pink power stirred—one resentful twitch like a sigh—
and then it sank again, deeper, quieter.
As if it had realized the boy it once could drown in shame was no longer alone.
"Yes, Master," Qianye said evenly. "I'll do as you say."
His step was firm—stable and strong—as he moved toward the door that would open into an unknown future.
The quiet room door opened.
Jane looked up at once.
Yixuan stepped out first—cold and immaculate.
Jane's eyes cut past her immediately, locking on Qianye.
He looked… different.
Same delicate face. Same stubborn silver cowlick.
But in those clear green eyes, there was less of the old wavering uncertainty.
More quiet conviction.
He still looked tired, yes—but his presence felt anchored, like a drifting boat that had finally found something solid beneath it.
Jane's heart didn't settle.
It tightened.
A sour twist of emotion rose—part relief, part unease at that unfamiliar firmness that hadn't come from her.
She didn't ask what had happened. She just stepped forward, her gaze sweeping sharply between Qianye and Yixuan before she spoke in a controlled, even tone.
"Done?"
"It's done," Qianye answered first, a trace of apology in his eyes as he looked at her.
"And… Jane. Master says I need to stay here for a while. So… the hotel room—only you can go back. I'm sorry. I couldn't spend more time with you…"
"Then I'll—"
Jane cut in immediately, voice decisive.
"I'm afraid you can't," Yixuan interrupted gently—yet with absolute finality.
She moved to stand before Jane, elegant and composed, but her presence pressed down like unseen pressure.
"My disciple must undergo a crucial closed cultivation of the mind. During this period he must remain perfectly calm. He should not be near feminine temptation."
Yixuan's gaze rested on Jane—not contemptuous, simply declarative, like stating a natural law.
Jane fell silent for a beat. The air around her chilled.
Then she lifted her eyes.
A sharp glint flashed in her blue-green pupils, like a snake's tongue in the dark.
Her lips curved into a sweet, poisonous smile.
"Oh? Is that so?" Her voice was soft, each syllable edged with frost. "But if that's the rule…"
She let her gaze travel—slow, deliberate—over Yixuan's face and the graceful figure beneath the plain white robe.
"Master Yixuan… aren't you also 'feminine temptation'?"
She slowed her speech further, savoring the cruelty.
"Or do you have absolute confidence… that your—"
She paused with surgical precision, as if tasting a filthy word before choosing it.
"—base body…"
"…won't interfere with my little doctor's cultivation?"
Her sarcasm sharpened into something openly insulting, dripping with mockery.
"If that's truly what you believe…"
Her final words were almost a breath.
"…then you really are…"
"…so very high and mighty."
For half a second, Yixuan's eyes narrowed.
A blade-cold pressure surged through the courtyard. Even the sunlight seemed to dim.
Shiye let out an uneasy low sound and tucked its stone head down.
Then the pressure receded like a tide.
Yixuan's aura relaxed again.
She didn't explode.
She didn't even look angry.
Instead, her lips curved into a small, tranquil smile—almost inscrutable.
She stepped closer with the casual ease of an elder approaching a junior and patted Jane's shoulder lightly. Her fingertips carried a faint, icy chill.
"Very good, Miss Jane," Yixuan said, calm and faintly approving—like she'd just heard a clever line, not an insult.
"Straightforward. Protective. Rare qualities."
Then she pivoted—tone casual, but meaning unarguable.
"Since you're so determined, then stay here as well. Suibian Temple is humble, but we can clean up a few guest rooms well enough to keep out wind and rain."
Jane's pupils tightened. She hadn't expected that.
She forced the surprise down and put on her sweetest, most polished smile.
"Oh? Then I'll have to thank you, Master Yixuan…"
"…for your generous kindness."
The words "generous kindness" landed with a loaded aftertaste.
"No need," Yixuan said lightly.
Her smile warmed a fraction.
Then she curled a finger at Jane—an almost playful little beckon.
Jane hesitated, caution flickering in her eyes, but only for an instant. She leaned in to hear whatever this unfathomable sect leader wanted to say.
Yixuan inclined her head and brought her lips close to Jane's ear—so close their breaths carried heat.
Her voice dropped to a whisper only the two of them could hear, soft as feather-down… each word perfectly clear.
"Just one thing."
"If I need to focus on teaching my disciple…"
She paused—then let a hint of cold amusement creep into the softness.
"…I hope Miss Jane will…"
"…watch the gate…"
"…very, very well."
She stretched the phrase out gently, like a blade sliding in slow.
Not only a command—an elegant humiliation.
In one sentence, Jane's status shifted from "partner" to "guard," to something lower still.
Yixuan straightened, smile serene, as if she'd merely offered a practical reminder.
Jane's body went rigid for the briefest moment.
Then her sweet smile deepened—too deep.
In her eyes, ice and fury braided together, bright enough to cut.
Dust floated lazily in the sunbeams.
The courtyard remained calm.
But the invisible smoke of conflict had become thick enough to choke.
In a corner no one noticed, Qianye's left hand—hidden behind his back—flickered with a tiny, living pink glow in his palm.
It moved like a sly snake.
First it bounced once, mimicking a smug, triumphant posture.
Then it melted into a finer stream, winding up his fingers with twisted affection… before slipping under his skin and vanishing as if it had never existed.
Only one presence sensed it—
Shiye.
The Bangboo clinging to Qianye's leg widened its yellow eyes so far the internal mechanisms clicked. It almost let out a warning "mm-nh!"
But at that exact instant—
the pink "snake" snapped out again at a speed too fast for eyes to catch, not a physical strike but a cold, precise mental stab.
It pierced Shiye's simple core awareness without sound.
"Mm…nh…?"
Shiye's throat produced a short, muddled gurgle. The light in its eyes shuddered like a candle in wind, flickering wildly—then dimming into emptiness.
Its round hands loosened their grip on Qianye's leg, the little body wobbling as if it had lost all support.
Qianye felt the pressure suddenly lighten—
and then, almost immediately, the grip returned with a new intensity.
This time the hold was rougher, stronger, nearly possessive—tight enough to make his leg ache.
He blinked, startled, and looked down.
Shiye was still hugging him, but its eyes no longer carried curiosity.
They were vacant.
Hollow.
Qianye sighed, helplessly amused, and crouched to pat its cold stone head.
"Little Bangboo," he said gently, "don't squeeze so hard. I can't walk."
Shiye didn't respond.
Its empty eyes turned slightly, focusing on Qianye's face.
A few seconds passed.
Then, as if it had finally processed the instruction, it chirped—perfectly normal in tone, perfectly wrong in feeling:
"Mm-nh!"
But its grip didn't loosen at all.
And the dust in Suibian Temple's courtyard drifted on, slow and weightless—unaware that something unseen had already begun tightening its coils.
Join here to read ahead.
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