Zhì Yuǎn was already awake when the first ray of sun sliced through the bamboo slats. The fever that had burned in his chest was gone, for the thick Yin he had drawn from Yù Qíng during the early hours had cemented the internal walls of his channels, leaving his body heavy against the straw, stable and cold while the blood ran dense.
Beside him, Yù Qíng tried to sit up and a choked gasp cut through her throat. She braced her hands on the mattress to lift her torso, but her elbows faltered and her thighs, which throughout the entire night had clamped around her husband's hips in relentless friction, now trembled without the strength to support her own weight.
Dragging herself to the edge of the bed, Yù Qíng stretched her arm to reach the clay bowl of water on the wooden bench, but the moment her icy fingers closed on it, her wrist gave way. The bowl shattered on the bamboo floor and the dark liquid vanished quickly through the gaps in the boards.
Zhì Yuǎn raised his torso at once, leaving the sheets to step onto the floor and kneel in front of his wife.
Yù Qíng clenched her jaw with such force that the bones of her face cracked loudly. She dug her nails into her own knees, scratching the pale skin while she stared at the wet shards on the floor with her breathing quickened.
"I'm weak," her voice came out dragged and full of hatred for herself. "How am I going to bear your weight if my body breaks in a single night?"
Zhì Yuǎn's large, warm hand advanced and rested on Yù Qíng's leg, making the spasm in her thigh stop under the weight of that palm.
"You can be sure, my love," Zhì Yuǎn's voice sounded grave, firm, and direct. "I will make you cultivate, no matter the cost. But only next time."
A shiver ran down Yù Qíng's spine and she leaned her torso forward, pressing her body against her husband's as he knelt before her. She rubbed her face against his neck and purred provocatively, her voice laden with a drawn-out seduction.
"Do it now, A-Yuǎn…"
Zhì Yuǎn looked at the deep dark circles under her eyes and the undeniable tremor shaking his wife's arms.
"No."
His hand rose and his calloused thumb brushed Yù Qíng's icy cheek.
"Your body is not only exhausted, it has already suffered severely tonight," he continued, practical and unyielding. "You need to recover first so we can test this."
Yù Qíng opened her mouth to insist, but Zhì Yuǎn rose from the floor and the broad shadow of his body covered her completely. He seized his wife's bare shoulders and pushed her backward, laying her by force onto the rumpled sheets before pulling her legs back onto the mattress and covering her up to the neck.
"Stay lying down," he ordered, turning his back to pick up the gray tunic from the floor. "I'm going up the slope to bring fresh meat."
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The next four days exacted the real price of having the interior of the body emptied by force.
On the first night, the cold that remained in Yù Qíng's dry channels spread into her flesh and, even under three thick wool blankets, her lips turned purple and her teeth chattered until the gums bled. Every time she drew breath, the withered paths below her sternum ached as if they were filled with sand and ground glass. She had no strength in her fingers even to hold the wooden spoon, needing Zhì Yuǎn to lift her nape with one hand to pour the warm meat broth little by little down her throat.
During the early hours, when the cold fever made her legs suffer involuntary spasms, Zhì Yuǎn took off his tunic and pressed his own scalding chest against his wife's bare back. He used the heat accumulated in his own blood as a living ember to keep the cold from stopping her heart, locking his jaw to restrain himself while Yù Qíng's weak hands tried, even in delirium, to pull his hips into her.
Without yielding to the woman's demands, he hunted on the slope, cooked, wiped the cold sweat from her skin, and kept her confined to bed, at the end of the fourth day, the trembling stopped and the blood returned to color her face.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, Yù Qíng swung her legs lightly with her face already flushed, following every movement of Zhì Yuǎn with an attentive and mute gaze.
Night fell.
Zhì Yuǎn checked the lock on the door and turned, letting the tunic slip from his broad shoulders and fall to the bamboo floor. His chest was red and the heat stored for four days throbbed beneath the skin.
Yù Qíng stood in the dimness, let her shift fall to the floor, and walked naked to her husband, her chest rising and falling quickly.
"My body has rested, A-Yuǎn," she said, pressing her face to his chin while her breath beat hot against her husband's skin. "Put that fire in me now. Mold me until I can take you completely."
Zhì Yuǎn did not answer. His warm hand seized his wife's hair and pulled her nape into a brutal kiss. The impact pushed Yù Qíng backward and her heels scraped the floor until her back struck the straw of the bed, making the frame crack.
Without warning, Zhì Yuǎn anchored his weight between her thighs and entered her all at once.
Yù Qíng gasped, biting her lower lip until it bled. Her thin legs wrapped tightly around his waist and her heels pulled at her husband's broad back with every thrust. The sound of flesh striking flesh echoed in the dark room.
Zhì Yuǎn set a heavy rhythm. Sweat soon stuck their skins together while she moaned hoarsely, digging her nails into his shoulders until the skin tore.
Exhaustion hit quickly.
Zhì Yuǎn looked inside his wife's body. Beneath the sweaty skin, Yù Qíng's channels remained withered and dry, descending into the emptiness of her chest. His limit broke and his spine locked. He drove his hips into the straw, cracking Yù Qíng's pelvis as he came deep.
The seed surged heavy and seething, a pure load of hot Yang.
Zhì Yuǎn held his breath and used his own internal force to push that mass of fire through his wife's dead channels, straight into the hollow of her chest.
The Yang invaded the void.
The shock was absolute and the heat scorched the channels dry. Yù Qíng clenched her jaw and her back arched in a brutal jolt, turning the moan of pleasure into a strangled roar of agony. Her skin turned red as iron on the coals, the sweat on her neck dried with a hiss, and the blood boiled from within.
"A-Yuǎn!" she choked.
Her body began to convulse on the bed while her nails tore at her husband's back, drawing thick blood.
Zhì Yuǎn saw her internal walls cracking as the fire consumed her. The only water capable of extinguishing it was hidden at the bottom of Yù Qíng, and he needed to force her body to release the Yin.
He seized his wife's hips, sinking his fingers into the hot skin. The next thrust was blind and brutal. The bed cracked when he struck against her pelvis with all his weight, crushing the already inflamed nerves. The pain mixed with the fire and Yù Qíng screamed, tearing her throat.
"Take it out!" she choked, her eyes rolling back. "A-Yuǎn… it's burning!"
Zhì Yuǎn clenched his teeth and continued thrusting without pause, feeling his own sweat drip and hiss on her skin. Yù Qíng's body gave out and her spine arched in one last violent spasm. The convulsion squeezed the woman's interior around her husband, and the extreme friction finally tore from the depths of her the heavy, thick, and icy torrent.
The pure Yin. The black water.
Zhì Yuǎn pulled that icy mass and shoved it back with violence against Yù Qíng's burning pathways, trying to put out the fire. But the swollen channels repelled the entry. The ice struck head-on against the living fire. The thermal shock shattered his wife's internal structure and made her chest boil with even greater force.
Yù Qíng's throat constricted. She choked with the cartilage cracking, and thick blood leaked from the corners of her mouth, staining the pillow while her muscles went rigid as boards on the bed.
Zhì Yuǎn's inner vision fixed on the impact. Watching the extreme friction of those two forces fighting for the same space, he understood the truth at once. The base of the fire and the ice was identical, and all that destruction arose purely from the direction in which each energy turned.
Before the pressure split his wife in half, Zhì Yuǎn inhaled hard and sucked the entire storm of black Yin back into his own veins. He isolated the shock and left the woman's core taken only by the burning heat.
Sweat ran down the bridge of Zhì Yuǎn's nose.
Yù Qíng's chest still burned with the remnants of the red Yang and the internal walls continued frying dry. He needed to invert that energy from the inside out, forcing a mill that reversed the movement of the fire itself.
Zhì Yuǎn bored his inner vision into the red residue throbbing inside his wife and brought the crushing weight of his own will down upon the heat.
He crushed the energy. He forced the hot light to form clenched teeth of pure friction and mounted a provisional axis. The pressure made the veins at his temples jump thick and rigid beneath the skin when he ordered the reverse rotation.
The structure crumbled and the fire melted the imposition. Yù Qíng choked again, with more blood dripping down her chin.
Zhì Yuǎn's molars ground. He seized the energy a second time, remounted the block, and applied brute force to the axis.
The form gave way again.
A thick drop of dark blood ran from Zhì Yuǎn's right nostril and dripped onto Yù Qíng's pale collarbone. The effort of bending those invisible forces tore his consciousness down the middle. His wife's bloodied hand rose trembling and her nails scratched the side of her husband's neck in an exhausted spasm.
Zhì Yuǎn's jaw contracted with such force that the bone cracked in his mouth and a tooth split.
He threw all his perception against his wife's innards, seizing the blaze for the third time. He fused the gears with the brute weight of lead and advanced without pause.
The axis drove into the flesh. The mill gave the first forced turn.
The friction tore Zhì Yuǎn's inner vision, stretching the energy beyond the limit.
Crack.
The invisible crash ran to the tips of both their fingers and the red Yang shattered. The light boiled at a single point and collapsed in the time of a heartbeat, changing color before pouring out of the mill a black, lethargic, and purely icy matter.
The cold moisture covered Yù Qíng's torn channels. Where it passed, the dark water healed and thickened the wounded flesh. The feverish red of the skin faded little by little, returning the natural pale-white tone as soon as the inflammation yielded.
Yù Qíng released her breath all at once and lost consciousness completely on the bed, overcome by exhaustion.
Zhì Yuǎn slumped onto his side on the mattress. His broad chest pulled the stifling air of the room in noisy gasps, with dried blood staining his chin and his left hand still trembling lightly on the sheet.
With his dark gaze fixed on the blood-and-sweat-stained face of his unconscious wife, the thought that he had nearly killed her weighed like lead on his mind. The error had come purely from ignorance. He had the brute force, but he had acted blind, pushing the energies in desperation without knowing the real path of those channels nor a way to protect her during the shock.
Silence took over the dark room until Yù Qíng's chest gave a jolt. She dragged her consciousness back by force and turned her face on the pillow, dragging her thin fingers across the mattress until she found her husband's trembling hand and squeezed his skin.
"It didn't hurt that much…" she murmured, in a thread of voice that scraped her throat, opening a sickly, fanatical smile on her bloodstained lips.
Zhì Yuǎn wiped his nose with the back of his free hand, facing the madness of the woman who preferred to be torn apart rather than let him go.
"Lie," he answered. "But next time, I won't burn you."