Yixuan didn't try to keep them.
With the same detached calm as ever, she simply gave Qianye and Jane one day to handle mundane affairs—canceling their hotel booking, settling whatever loose ends remained in the human world.
Her posture stayed lofty and unruffled, as if the undercurrent-laced confrontation in the courtyard had never happened at all. And yet, the fleeting, unreadable glimmer that had passed through her mismatched eyes only deepened Jane's doubts.
The moment they stepped out of Suibian Temple's dark-red gate—like crossing a threshold between worlds—the afternoon sun and roaring street noise swallowed them whole.
Chenghuiping's marketplace grit was as vivid and rough as ever, violently at odds with the temple's dusty stillness, its cool incense, and the tight, invisible tension of that silent clash.
The sharp-edged, sugary smile on Jane's face deflated the instant sunlight hit her skin, like a punctured balloon.
She didn't speak at first.
She walked in silence, but her pace was slower than usual, as if every step sank into unstable sand. The usual alert, sly sparkle in her blue-green eyes had been replaced by something heavy—uncertain, suspicious, thinking—while her neat brows drew into a small, tight crease.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Like the most meticulous detective, she replayed the courtyard scene frame by frame inside her head.
Why had her emotions been set alight so easily—like dry tinder splashed with oil—erupting into something that looked almost uncontrolled, almost hysterical?
Yes, the impulse came from her instinct to protect Qianye, her refusal to be separated from him. But the intensity, the way it burst out—too fast, too fierce—wasn't her.
She wasn't reckless. Years of undercover work had trained her to move only after calculation, to bury genuine emotion beneath layers of crafted masks—like a rat in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment.
A blunt, street-level shouting match didn't fit her style at all.
And what chilled her even more was Yixuan's reaction.
A disciplined cultivator, the revered leader of Yun Kui Mountain—rumored to possess strength on the level of a Void Hunter—someone who should have long since cut through worldly passions…
And yet she'd been provoked by a few barbed lines into visible pressure, then a retaliation laced with humiliating, almost market-stall cruelty.
"Watch the gate."
Those four words stabbed Jane's eardrums even now.
Yixuan had quickly pulled herself back, then "allowed" Jane to stay with the cool magnanimity of someone who granted a favor that could not be refused. But that first surge of pressure—and that whispered follow-up—had carried heat, spite, and momentary loss of composure that did not belong to a true master.
Two people meeting for the first time, who should have maintained basic courtesy while testing boundaries… why had they detonated like sparks in a powder keg?
The escalation had been too fast.
Too unnatural.
As if an invisible hand had been plucking at both their nerves—tightening strings, amplifying every tiny shadow in their hearts, pushing them toward the edge.
Jane's gaze drifted, worried, to the person beside her.
Qianye seemed immersed in the relief and fragile hope of having found a path. His clear green eyes shone, reflecting the first hints of neon in the street. Even that stubborn silver cowlick bobbed with his slightly lighter steps.
He hadn't dug into the strange undertow beneath the clash. Or perhaps his clean, almost blunt-hearted nature made it easier for him to believe the surface explanation:
His respected master required him to stay and cultivate. His close companion refused to be apart. The conflict, while fierce, was therefore "understandable."
That unguarded joy on his face was so real, so bright, that Jane couldn't bear to smash it immediately with her cold suspicions, couldn't bring herself to stain this rare calm.
But a thought—like a coiled viper—tightened around her heart:
Had the pink, tainted, seductive power inside Qianye… grown stronger?
Had it evolved to the point where it could quietly influence those around him—stirring irritation, igniting resentment, magnifying the smallest negative emotions—like ink dropped into clear water, spreading until the entire mind was stained?
She didn't dare follow the thought too far.
It made her spine go cold.
If even someone like Yixuan—keen in perception, deep in cultivation—could be nudged without noticing…
Then this thing wasn't just a "power running wild."
It was something far more insidious: an invisible erosion of the psyche.
Unease and aftershock surged up in her like freezing tidewater. Almost without thinking, Jane reached out and gripped Qianye's hand—hard.
Her fingers were cold.
And trembling, just slightly.
Qianye felt the chill and the almost painful strength of her hold and snapped out of his bright, dazed relief. He turned and saw Jane's lashes lowered, casting a faint shadow beneath her eyes.
There was no teasing smile now, no easy confidence—only a thin veil of worry… and, for the first time he'd ever seen from her, something that looked like fragility.
He stopped at the corner of the crowded street. Vendors shouted. People rushed by. The world kept moving around them.
With his free hand, he covered their clasped hands gently and, slowly, firmly, laced his fingers through hers.
His palm was warm and dry—alive with a steady heat that chased the cold from her fingertips.
"Jane," he said softly, but clearly enough to cut through the noise, the tone soothing—almost like a promise. "Whatever you're worried about… don't be afraid. I'll be by your side."
It was the kind of line she should have said.
The kind of vow she should have carried.
Hearing it from him—clumsy, sincere, heavy with truth—hit her harder than she expected.
Jane looked up and met those clear green eyes, filled with open concern and absolute trust.
It was like clean water under moonlight, washing the darker speculation out of her chest. The sticky anxiety loosened, strangely soothed by his purity.
She smiled again—re-donning her familiar mask of slyness and ease—but this time there was warmth behind it, real warmth.
She squeezed his hand back, as if confirming he was truly there.
"…That's my line, Qianye," she said, voice returning to its usual playful cadence—yet edged with unwavering resolve. "You're the one who needs protecting, okay?"
She blinked, and the light returned to her eyes.
"Come on. Let's cancel the room first. And then…" Her smile brightened. "We'll go get that 'Bala Bala' dessert again—call it a celebration."
Qianye looked at her, saw the brightness return, and his shoulders finally loosened.
"Okay," he said, and nodded firmly.
Back inside Suibian Temple, where silence reclaimed the air and time seemed to slow—
Yixuan did not linger in the courtyard to watch them go.
She carried the stone-lion Bangboo—Shiye—back into the tea room where cool incense drifted in clean lines.
Shiye's behavior was still wrong. Its eyes were hollow, limbs stiff, nothing like the lively, clingy little creature that had circled Qianye earlier. It was less a Bangboo now than a statue with its spirit removed.
Yixuan set it down on the dark matting and knelt on a cushion with the elegant composure of someone painted into an ancient scroll.
Her orange eyes—ringed faintly with green—rested on Shiye without ripple, as though she were staring at a tool, or looking past its stone shell into whatever rot squirmed inside.
"So," her cool voice echoed lightly through the tea room, not a question but a statement, "that little disgraceful spectacle outside… was you pushing from the shadows."
Shiye did not respond.
Silence spread. Incense smoke rose straight, as if time itself had frozen.
Then—just before the ash at the tip of the stick could fall—
Shiye's empty yellow eyes flickered.
For an instant, a strange pink light flashed through them.
A razor-thin beam—condensed, tainted, seductive—shot out without warning, like a viper's strike, aimed directly at Yixuan's forehead.
It wasn't meant to break flesh.
It was meant to pierce the mind—disturb judgment, stir desire, inflate darkness.
Yixuan didn't even blink.
At the moment the beam should have touched her skin, an old wooden ink-line tool resting behind her—something that looked casual and inert—rippled.
A veil of black ink-like light formed in front of her, thin as cicada wings and yet brimming with absolute warding.
The pink beam hit it with a soft hiss—like hot metal plunged into cold water—and vanished, swallowed whole. The barrier didn't even shiver.
At the same instant, a finer thread of pink energy—far subtler, far more cunning—spilled from a seam in Shiye's head. It tried to slip away into the air, using the collision as cover.
"Impurity. Still trying to run?" Yixuan's voice sharpened. She made a brief, cutting motion with two fingers.
A pale, crystalline sigil flashed into existence—structured, ancient, clean as flowing water and fierce with suppressive force.
It snapped into place like a net, sealing the fleeing thread in a shining cage.
The pink energy writhed, twisting into distorted shapes, screaming soundlessly in a way only the spirit could hear—but it could not escape. It was trapped like an insect in amber.
Yixuan frowned slightly.
This filth was more malignant than she'd expected. Ordinary containment might risk contamination. She was already turning over sealing methods in her mind—
When a sharp, clear birdcall split the tea room.
A tiny creature perched quietly on her shoulder—her Qingming Bird, usually no more threatening than a soft black pom-pom—suddenly unfolded.
In a blink, it expanded from palm-sized fluff into a majestic form, wingspan nearly a meter wide. Its feathers were black brushed with gold, immaculate, with a faint, rain-washed blue glow at the tips of its long tail plumes.
Before Yixuan could even finish her thought, the bird shot forward.
Its beak struck like a perfect set of forceps.
And it swallowed the trapped pink thread in a single snap—like pecking up a worm.
The moment it finished, the bird let out a small, satisfied sound—then promptly shrank back to its harmless pom-pom form.
Its eyes closed.
It slipped off Yixuan's shoulder, limp with sudden sleep.
Yixuan caught it instinctively. Warm. Soft. Breathing steady. As if it had simply eaten a meal too rich and needed to digest.
The tea room fell quiet again.
Yixuan stared at Shiye—whose eyes had returned to their normal, innocent flicker. It let out a confused little sound, like it didn't even know what had happened.
Even with Yixuan's composure, she was momentarily still.
Her Qingming Bird could devour something like that?
And not suffer, but sleep—like it had fed?
This was outside her understanding.
She placed the now-normal Shiye in the corner, instructed it to remain still, and set the sleeping bird gently into a bamboo basket lined with soft cloth.
Then she walked to the window.
Outside, the sun had sunk behind distant hills. The sky bled into a beautiful but faintly ominous haze of orange and violet-gray.
In the far distance, Chenghuiping's lights began to bloom, one after another, forming a blurred sea of stars trying to push back the dark.
A new disciple.
Fufu returning.
Her spirit-bird's sudden change.
That pink filth revealing just how cunning and invasive it truly was.
The road ahead was fog and undertow. A track of fate and choice was quietly laying itself beneath her feet, allowing no retreat.
Night fully arrived.
Moonlight had not yet bared its edge; only the temple's lamps glowed behind her, casting a long, firm shadow.
Yixuan exhaled a faint, nearly inaudible sigh.
"A turbulent season…" she murmured.
And the lamps in Suibian Temple burned on.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
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My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
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Uma Musume: From Beginner 135
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Checking In in Demon Slayer 80
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Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 45
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 45
The Uma Musume Who Became 40
I'm Definitely Not the King of 45
After Maxing Out Every Class 45
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