Zhì Yuǎn was already awake when the first ray of sunlight sliced through the bamboo slats.
The fever that had burned in his chest was gone. The thick Yin he had extracted from Yù Qíng during the night had cemented the inner walls of his channels. The young man's body felt heavy against the straw, stable and cold. His blood ran thick.
Beside him, Yù Qíng tried to sit up. A choked gasp tore from the girl's throat.
She braced her hands on the mattress to lift her torso. Her elbows trembled. Her thighs, which had locked around her husband's hips in relentless friction throughout the entire night, now shook without the strength to support her own weight.
Yù Qíng dragged herself to the edge of the bed. She stretched her arm to reach the clay bowl of water on the wooden bench. Her cold fingers closed around the ceramic. Her wrist gave out.
The bowl shattered on the bamboo floor. The dark liquid quickly disappeared between the gaps in the planks.
Zhì Yuǎn pushed himself up. The young man stepped off the bed, walked across the floor, and knelt in front of his wife.
Yù Qíng clenched her jaw. The bones in her face cracked loudly in the room. She dug her nails into her own knees, scratching the pale skin while staring at the wet shards on the floor. The girl's breathing quickened.
— I'm weak — her voice came out dragged and filled with self-hatred. — How am I supposed to endure your weight if my body breaks after just one night?
Zhì Yuǎn's large, warm hand moved forward and rested on Yù Qíng's leg. The spasm in her thigh stopped beneath the weight of that palm.
— You can be sure of one thing, my love — Zhì Yuǎn's voice sounded deep, firm, and direct. — I will make you cultivate, no matter what it takes. But only next time.
A shiver ran down the girl's spine. Yù Qíng leaned her torso forward, pressing her body against her husband, who was still kneeling in front of her. She rubbed her face against his neck and purred provocatively, her voice thick with 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.
The young man's hand rose. His calloused thumb brushed against the girl's cold cheek.
— Your body isn't just exhausted — it was also severely strained tonight — he continued, practical and non-negotiable. — You need to recover first so we can test this properly.
Yù Qíng opened her mouth to insist.
Zhì Yuǎn stood up from the floor. The man's broad shadow covered the girl. He grabbed his wife's bare shoulders and pushed her backward, forcing her to lie down on the wrinkled sheets. Then he dragged her body until her legs were back on the mattress and covered her up to the neck.
— Stay lying down — he ordered, turning his back to pick up his gray tunic from the floor. — I'm going up the slope to bring fresh meat.
———
For four days, Zhì Yuǎn did not let Yù Qíng leave the bed.
Exhaustion confined Yù Qíng to the straw mattress. Her husband took control of the cabin and forbade his wife from performing any task. The recovery of her channels strictly required immobility and the fresh meat soup her husband brought from the slope to prepare.
The end of the fourth day brought her strength back.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Yù Qíng's legs no longer trembled. Color had returned to her face. She followed Zhì Yuǎn's every movement with an attentive, silent gaze.
Night fell.
Zhì Yuǎn checked the door bolt and turned around. His tunic slipped off his broad shoulders and fell onto the bamboo floor. His chest was red. The heat stored for four days throbbed beneath his skin.
Yù Qíng stood up in the dim light. Her nightdress slipped off and fell to the floor. She walked naked toward her husband, her chest rising and falling quickly.
— My body has rested, A-Yuǎn — she said, pressing her face against his chin, her breath hot against his skin. — Put that fire in me now. Wreck me until I can take it.
Zhì Yuǎn did not answer. His warm hand grabbed the girl's hair, pulling her nape into a rough kiss. The impact pushed Yù Qíng backward. Her heels scraped the floor until her back hit the straw bed. The frame creaked.
The friction began without warning. Zhì Yuǎn anchored his weight on her thighs and entered in one thrust.
Yù Qíng gasped. Her teeth sank into her lower lip until it bled. Her slender legs locked around his waist, her heels pulling at her husband's broad back with every thrust. The sound of flesh colliding echoed in the dark room.
Zhì Yuǎn set a heavy rhythm. Sweat glued their skin together. She moaned hoarsely, her nails digging into his shoulders, tearing the skin.
Exhaustion hit quickly.
Zhì Yuǎn looked inside her body. Beneath her sweaty skin, Yù Qíng's channels were still withered and dry, descending into the hollow void in her chest. His limit snapped. His spine locked. He drove his hips into the straw, cracking the girl's pelvis, and came deep inside her.
The seed erupted heavy, scalding, and pure. A pure charge of red, hot Yang.
Zhì Yuǎn held his breath. Using his own internal weight, he pushed that mass of fire through his wife's dead channels, straight into her hollow chest.
The Yang invaded the void.
The shock was absolute. The heat fried the channels dry. Yù Qíng's jaw locked. Her back arched in a brutal jolt. Her moan of pleasure turned into a strangled scream of agony. Her skin turned red like iron in fire. The sweat on her neck dried with a hiss. Her blood boiled.
— A-Yuǎn! — she gasped, drooling. Her nails tore at his back, drawing thick blood. Her body convulsed on the bed.
Zhì Yuǎn saw her inner walls cracking. The fire was consuming her. The only water to extinguish it was hidden deep inside her. He needed to force his wife's body to release her Yin.
He grabbed her hips, his fingers sinking into her hot skin. The next thrust was blind and brutal. The bed creaked. He slammed against her pelvis with his full weight, crushing her already fried nerves. Pain mixed with fire. Yù Qíng screamed, tearing her throat.
— Take it out! — she gasped, her eyes rolling back. — A-Yuǎn… it's burning!
Zhì Yuǎn clenched his teeth and kept thrusting without pause. His sweat dripped and hissed against her skin. The girl's body collapsed. Yù Qíng's spine arched in one final violent spasm. The convulsion ground her insides around her husband. The extreme friction tore the heavy, thick, glacial torrent from the hollow depths of her body.
Pure Yin. Black water.
Zhì Yuǎn pulled the newly expelled glacial mass. He violently pushed the Yin back against Yù Qíng's burning pathways, trying to extinguish the fire. The girl's swollen channels repelled the entry. The ice collided head-on with the living fire. The thermal pressure shattered his wife's internal structure. Her chest boiled with even more violence.
Yù Qíng's throat locked. She choked, cartilage cracking as thick blood leaked from the corners of her mouth and stained the pillow. The girl's muscles stiffened on the bed like planks under the thermal shock.
Zhì Yuǎn's inner vision locked onto the impact. He dissected the dust and extreme friction generated by the collision of the two forces fighting for the same space. The naked truth emerged beneath the young man's perception: the base of fire and ice was identical. The lethal aggression was born purely from the direction of the rotation.
Before the pressure tore his wife in half, Zhì Yuǎn inhaled brutally. The young man sucked only the storm of black Yin back into his own veins, isolating the danger and abandoning the woman's Furnace purely infested by her own burning fire.
Sweat ran down the bridge of Zhì Yuǎn's nose.
Yù Qíng's chest still burned with the remnants of the red Yang, her inner walls frying dry. Her furnace demanded a mechanical inversion from the inside out. The solution lay in forcing the gears to reverse the movement of that same energy.
Zhì Yuǎn drove his inner vision into the red, throbbing residue inside his wife. Using the crushing weight of his own Will, the tension in his skull descended upon the girl's fire.
He crushed the energy.
He forced the hot light to form clenched teeth of pure friction, mounting a provisional axis. The pressure slammed the veins in his temples against his skin, thick and rigid. He ordered the reverse rotation.
The structure collapsed. The fire melted the imposition. Yù Qíng choked again, more blood dripping from her chin.
Zhì Yuǎn's molars ground together. He grabbed the energy a second time. He reassembled the block, cemented the teeth of heat, and applied brute force to the axis.
The construct gave way again.
A thick drop of dark blood ran from Zhì Yuǎn's right nostril, dripping red and viscous onto Yù Qíng's pale collarbone. The weight of moving invisible laws was tearing his consciousness in half. The girl's bloodstained hand rose trembling, her nails scratching the side of her husband's neck in an exhausted spasm.
Zhì Yuǎn's jaw contracted so hard that the bone cracked hollowly in his mouth. A tooth fractured.
He forced his perception against the woman's viscera, grabbing the fire for the third time. He fused the frictional gears, imposing the blunt density of absolute lead. The shock advanced with blind violence, without pauses.
The axis drove into the flesh. The mill made its first forced rotation.
The friction tore at the young man's inner vision, stretching the fabric of energy beyond its structural limit.
Crack.
The invisible thunder reverberated to the tips of both their fingers. The red Yang shattered. The light boiled at a single point and collapsed, transmuting color in the exact time of one heartbeat. From the hole of forced friction, black, lethargic matter poured out of the gear, endowed with a glacial and pure density.
The cold moisture covered Yù Qíng's torn channels. Where it had been boiling, the water healed and thickened the flesh. The redness of her skin disappeared, returning to its natural pale white. The inflammation ended.
She exhaled in one breath. Exhaustion crushed the girl, and her body completely shut down on the bed.
Zhì Yuǎn collapsed onto his side.
His broad chest pulled in the stale air of the room in noisy gasps. Dried blood stained the man's own chin. His left hand rested on the sheet, still trembling slightly.
Zhì Yuǎn's dark gaze locked onto his unconscious wife. Her face was dirty with blood and sweat.
He had almost killed her.
The realization sank into his mind, heavy as lead. The failure stemmed purely from ignorance. He possessed the raw strength, but he had operated blindly. Guided only by instinct and the urgency of survival, he had forced the collision while ignoring the actual path of the flow, unaware of any method to protect the woman's channels during the shock. He had acted in the dark.
Silence reigned until the girl's chest suffered a jolt.
Yù Qíng forcefully pulled her consciousness back. In the darkness, the young woman turned her face on the pillow. Her slender fingers crawled until they found her husband's trembling hand, squeezing his skin.
— It didn't hurt that much… — she murmured, her voice scraping against her throat. The sick, fanatical smile marked her bloodstained lips.
Zhì Yuǎn wiped his nose with the back of his free hand, absorbing the madness of the girl who preferred mutilation over letting him go.
— Lie — he replied. — But next time, I won't burn you.