The door closed.
Shen Mo felt as if all his strength had been drained from him, and he slumped onto the edge of the low couch.
From beyond the pavilion, the distant uproar continued; the tea tasting segment at the Gathering of Beauties Platform was still underway.
Those cheers filtered through layer after layer of walls until they reached him as a muffled drone, like invisible insects crawling across his eardrums.
Cold wind rushed in, making the candle flame flicker and casting his shadow on the wall in shifting lengths, now long, now short.
The wind carried the scent of flower fragrance from the depths of the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion, cloyingly sweet, mingled with some indescribable smell of face powder.
He looked down at the jade slip in his palm.
The dual cultivation manual Liu Meiniang had given him.
The instant his divine sense probed inside, those intricate pathways of spiritual power unfolded across his mind, so clear it was as if someone had traced a meridian map inside his body with light.
Pure yin qi sank downward; pure yang force floated upward.
They converged at the qi sea, spiraling through the purple mansion.
It was not plunder.
It was union.
The manual was written with extraordinary thoroughness, almost as if it had been composed specifically for beginners.
Rather, every time he read it, he discovered that the description of one particular vital point was so precise, it seemed tailored specifically to his own constitution.
Mutual nourishment of yin and yang.
Each nurturing the other.
“We were born perfectly matched.”
Qin Shuying’s voice suddenly echoed in his mind.
It was in the small cottage on Heavenly Sword Peak, when she had steadied him from behind, her chin resting in the hollow of his shoulder, her warm breath brushing against his ear as she spoke those words.
Shen Mo yanked his divine sense out of the jade slip.
The candle flame jumped.
He stood by the window, his hand clenched around the jade slip, its edges digging painfully into his palm.
No.
Something was wrong.
When Liu Meiniang had given him this manual, she had called it “a small token, hardly worth mentioning.”
But this cultivation method was far too compatible with his constitution. Too perfect to be some casual gift. It was more like—something prepared specifically for him.
Just like that sheer garment.
Just like those rules of the tea tasting segment.
This wasn’t greed born of a momentary whim.
It was calculated.
Starting from the moment she had made him change into those clothes, or even earlier—from the moment he had stepped into the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion and registered for the Flower Queen Competition, someone had already calculated every step he would take.
Shen Mo’s breath hitched for an instant.
He tucked the jade slip into his robes, pressing it against his chest, and turned toward the exit of the pavilion.
The stairs were narrow, and the wooden steps let out faint creaks beneath his feet. He walked down, one hand on the wall, the rough grain of the wood cold beneath his fingertips.
When he reached the landing of the second flight of stairs, a wave of flower fragrance stronger than before washed over him, carrying with it a faint, elusive scent of blood.
Shen Mo’s steps halted.
The blood scent was very faint—so faint that only someone with his constitution’s acute sensitivity to aura could have detected it at all.
He stood at the landing, his gaze dropping toward the bottom of the stairs.
A spirit lamp hung from the ceiling of the landing, casting a pale, sickly light that revealed a thin, dark red trace on the wall.
The trace extended from the stair railing into the depths of the corridor, as if something had been dragged through here.
Shen Mo’s fingers silently pressed against the mother-son talisman and the ice soul jade.
Qin Shuying had said this jade pendant could block a fatal blow.
But what if what was coming wasn’t a single blow, but—
“Master Shen.”
The voice came from behind him.
Very close.
Close enough that it seemed to brush against the back of his neck.
Shen Mo spun around, pressing his back against the wall, the ice soul jade glowing with a faint halo in his palm.
Someone was standing in the corridor.
It was a young woman dressed in the servant attire of the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion, her face delicate and pretty, holding a tea tray with a cup of spirit tea still steaming on it.
The young woman seemed startled by his violent reaction, stepping back half a pace as the tea cup swayed slightly on the tray.
“Manager Liu instructed this servant to deliver tea,” the young woman said, lowering her head, her voice soft and gentle. “She said the young master must be weary from the tea tasting segment, so a cup of spirit tea to warm the body would do.”
Shen Mo did not take it.
His gaze landed on her cuff.
At the edge of the cuff was a small patch of fabric slightly darker than the surrounding cloth. Not a stain, more like the trace left behind after being soaked in water and then dried.
And mixed into that water was a hint of blood.
“Set it down,” he said.
The young woman obeyed, placing the tea tray on the small table at the landing, offered a bow, then turned and retreated into the depths of the corridor.
Her footsteps faded.
Shen Mo looked at the tea.
The liquid was clear, a verdant green, the fragrance of the spirit tea rich and pure. Nothing unusual.
He did not drink it.
He simply picked up the cup and slowly poured the tea into the flower bed outside the window.
The scalding tea splashed onto the soil, sending up a small wisp of white steam.
When the mist dispersed, the color of the soil darkened for an instant, then returned to normal.
Nothing happened.
Shen Mo placed the empty cup back on the tray.
Was he being too paranoid?
He turned and continued down the stairs.
Two steps out.
A very faint sound came from behind him.
Not footsteps. It was the moist, slithering sound of some soft tissue sliding across a wooden surface.
Shen Mo did not look back.
He quickened his pace, the ice soul jade blazing bright in his palm.
The slithering sound followed him for five steps, then stopped abruptly. As if something had been erased from a higher dimension.
Shen Mo stepped out of the side gate of the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion. The night wind rushed to meet him, dispersing the powder and flower fragrance clinging to his clothes.
He drew a deep breath, the cold air flooding his lungs, and only then realized his back was soaked through.
The commotion from the Gathering of Beauties Platform continued.
In the sky above, the protective formation of the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion cast its faint spirit light patterns across the night, like an enormous, invisible spiderweb shrouding the entire building.
At the landing of the corridor.
The emptied tea cup sat quietly on the small table.
On the inner wall of the cup, where the tea had not touched, a line of extremely faint writing appeared under the spirit lamp’s light.
It was a messaging technique carved into the porcelain itself with spiritual power.
Only when the tea was poured out completely would it reveal itself.
The characters lasted for only three breaths before they began to fade.
First breath, “toward.”
Second breath, “B.”
Third breath, the characters vanished completely.
The tea cup’s inner wall returned to its original smoothness, as if nothing had ever been there.
At the top of the tallest spirit tower in the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion, a lamp that had been lit until this very moment quietly went dark.
In the darkness of the tower’s summit, someone let out a soft laugh.
“How interesting.”
The voice was light, faint, like a hidden river flowing beneath ice.
Upstairs, in the VIP box adjacent to Su Wan’er’s, Yun Fuling slowly swirled the wine glass in her hand.
Behind her, the two corpse puppets had fully merged into the shadows, not even a trace of ghost fire remaining.
Her gaze passed through the crowd and landed on Shen Mo’s faintly visible profile behind the bamboo curtain. A slow smile curled at the corner of her mouth.
She had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.
The tea tasting segment ended, and the twelve candidates ascended the stage once more.
Shen Mo stood in the seventh position, neither ahead nor behind.
He kept his eyes lowered, letting his breath gradually settle.
As he steadied himself, he suddenly sensed something.
Among all the burning, playful, and admiring gazes from below the stage, one look was different.
It was warm.
Warm like a cup of hot tea held in both hands on a winter’s day, like a bowl of warm porridge left on the table late at night, like the clumsy hands that hadn’t known where to rest when the bridal veil was lifted seven years ago.
Su Wan’er.
Shen Mo’s heart clenched violently.
She was here.
She had seen it.
From beginning to end, she had been here.
The realization crashed over him like a basin of ice water.
His instinct was to lower his gaze, to hide from that stare, to bury himself somewhere—but the stage was blazing with light, and there was nowhere to hide.
He could only stand there, wrapped in the gazes of ten thousand female cultivators.
And his wife was right there below the stage, a mere few dozen spans away, watching every bit of it with perfect clarity.
Shen Mo’s fingers dug deep into his palm.
He didn’t even know what exactly he was hurting for.
He let his gaze drift over the surging heads below the stage, past the bamboo curtains and drapes of the reserved seating, past the female cultivators still flushed from the tea tasting segment, and settled on a shadowed corner.
Shen Mo froze mid-step in his blood’s cold rush.
The person wore a moon-white long robe, with dark patterns embroidered on the cuffs.
The distance was too great; her features were a blur of silhouette.
But Shen Mo didn’t need to see clearly.
He recognized that outline.
He recognized that slightly forward-leaning stance. When she jumped off her flying sword, she always leaned forward just like that, as if she couldn’t wait to walk toward him, yet afraid that moving too fast might startle something.
Su Wan’er.
She had come.
She was here.
She had been here from the very beginning.
“Honored guests!”
The emcee’s voice pulled him back to reality from his daze.
“The tea tasting segment is complete. By now, I trust you have all taken in the splendor of our twelve candidates. Next comes the final voting segment of this Flower Queen Competition! The rules remain unchanged—every honored guest holding a viewing jade token will score the candidates in four categories: voice, appearance, skill, and elegance. Each category is scored from one to ten points, and the candidate with the highest combined total shall be crowned this year’s Flower Queen!”
A stifled stir rippled through the audience.
Many female cultivators had already picked up their jade tokens, their gazes sweeping back and forth across the twelve candidates on stage, making their final assessments.
“Before the voting begins,” the emcee’s voice rose a pitch, “in accordance with tradition, each of the twelve candidates has one final opportunity to state their heart’s desire to the honored guests. This statement will not count toward the score, but perhaps it may touch a heart or two.”
This was the oldest tradition of the Flower Queen Competition.
One sentence.
It could be a poem, a wish, anything at all.
It was said that hundreds of years ago, a man of humble origins had spoken the words “I want to live like a person” in his final statement, and the entire venue fell silent. He went on to claim the Flower Queen crown as the dark horse of that year.
Since then, this segment had become the most unpredictable variable of the Flower Queen Competition.
Because skill could be practiced, and appearance could be refined, but only the heart could not be disguised.
Shu Yu Gongzi spoke first.
He stepped forward, his warm and gentle features carrying just the right measure of humility, his voice as clear and crisp as his zither: “May the zither be my heart, and the zither my soulmate, growing old together with you.”
A round of applause rose from the audience.
Soulmate, growing old together—those were words female cultivators loved to hear.
Chiyan Langjun followed, his words as flamboyant as the man himself: “My crimson flames can burn the heavens, but they can also warm a single person. I wish for one heart, and never to part until our hair turns white.”
As he spoke, his gaze shot directly toward the red-robed true lord, drawing a wave of amused laughter from the surrounding crowd.
The Shuang Bi Xiongdi exchanged a glance, then spoke in unison: “Brothers united, their strength can split metal. We seek a pair of hearts, and will never betray you in this life.” Their voices overlapped, producing a strangely harmonious resonance.
Xuepo Gongzi was silent for a moment, then spoke only four words: “Wish for one glance.”
No explanation, no preamble, his tone utterly indifferent.
But it was precisely that coolness that made the eyes of many female cultivators below the stage burn even brighter. The harder something was to obtain, the more people wanted it.
Fifth.
Sixth.
It was Shen Mo’s turn.
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