“Honored Teacher, when did you find out?”
“The third day,” Chen Mo said. “You were reviewing documents in the study when you suddenly got a splitting headache. Blood Orchid helped you into the inner chamber. I passed by and saw several crumpled papers on the floor. I unfolded and read them.”
“They were prescriptions you wrote yourself, listing seventeen herbs, with Pure Yin Body’s Yin Essence written at the very end. Beside it, you’d drawn a circle, and inside the circle were three small characters—”
He didn’t finish.
Chao’er’s lips trembled slightly.
Chen Mo’s voice remained calm. “When you drew that circle, the tip of your brush pierced through the paper.”
Chao’er stood frozen in place.
“So these past few days, Honored Teacher…” Her voice began to crack. “Playing chess with your disciple, letting your disciple lean against you in the sun, picking leaves out of your disciple’s hair—all because you knew? Not because you wanted to be with your disciple, but because—”
She couldn’t finish. Because the answer was already stuck in her throat.
Not that she didn’t want to say it. She was afraid to hear it.
Chen Mo didn’t answer.
“Your disciple doesn’t want this.” Chao’er’s voice finally shattered. “Your disciple doesn’t want Honored Teacher to give it out of pity, out of guilt, out of having no other choice. Your disciple wants Honored Teacher’s willing heart, wants Honored Teacher to give it freely, wants Honored Teacher to—”
“Chao’er.” He called her name.
She stopped.
“The Yin Essence… is already gone.”
Chao’er’s pupils contracted sharply.
The feeling of stepping into empty air while falling from an immense height.
Her heart plummeted into her abdomen, blood rushed to her limbs, and her ears rang with a dull buzz.
She saw Chen Mo’s lips still moving, but the sound she heard seemed muffled, as if through a layer of water.
For a man, giving his Yin Essence to someone meant placing the right to bear his offspring, the qualification to continue his bloodline, and the very foundation of his existence in this world into that person’s hands.
It wasn’t as simple as a single dose of medicine.
“You’re lying, right?” She suddenly moved.
Not lunging. Slamming into him.
Both hands seized his collar, shoving him backward onto the bed.
Her strength was astonishing. Chen Mo’s back struck the bedboard with a dull thud.
She gave him no time to react. She pressed her entire body down, knees wedged against his waist, hands braced above his shoulders, pinning him firmly to the bed.
Her hair cascaded down like a curtain, shrouding both their faces in the same shadow.
“Your disciple’s Yin Essence—no, Honored Teacher, let me… completely, utterly… possess you, let our life essences merge in the most intimate way… we’ll bear the most perfect child.”
Chen Mo opened his mouth, squeezing out a few dry words from his parched throat: “I… I really don’t have any left…”
The air froze solid.
The tenderness on Chao’er’s face cracked apart like an exquisite mask, inch by inch.
The fingers she braced at Chen Mo’s side made faint cracking sounds from the force of her grip.
“Gone?” She bit off each word. “Given… to… whom?”
Chen Mo looked into her eyes.
In those eyes were barely concealed disappointment and jealous flame.
“Qin Shuying.”
Within Chao’er’s pupils, the dark red completely swallowed the clarity.
The most precious thing on his body had already been taken by another woman.
“When?” Her voice returned to calm.
Calm was more chilling than rage.
“On Jiaoyue Peak, shortly after Wan’er emerged from seclusion, she took it…”
“What right does she have,” Chao’er’s voice was so low it seemed to seep out from cracks in the earth.
“I had no choice at the time.”
“Your disciple demands a reason.”
“She saved my life.”
“Your disciple saved you too.”
“She taught me cultivation.”
“Your disciple can teach you too. Your disciple is the Old Ancestor now. Your disciple can give Honored Teacher the entire Southern Wilderness Demon Cultivation’s resources, cultivation methods, elixirs, cave paradises. Anything that Qin Shuying can give, your disciple can give ten times over.”
Her voice grew faster and more fragmented, as if pouring out a lifetime of grievances in this single moment.
“Your disciple met Honored Teacher before she did. Your disciple has known Honored Teacher for seven years. How many days has that Qin Shuying known you? What right does she have—what right does she have to take Honored Teacher’s—”
She couldn’t finish.
Her fingers had curled into fists at some point.
Her nails dug into her palms, leaving crescent-shaped bloody marks.
“Chao’er.” He called her.
His tone was gentle—the same tone he’d used when she first arrived at Jiaoyue Peak at ten years old, when she had nightmares at night and ran to his room, and he sat by her bedside, reaching into the blanket to hold her hand.
Her whole body trembled.
“What Qin Shuying took was only the Yin Essence,” Chen Mo said softly. “Not the me who sat under the ginkgo tree with you these past few days. Not the me who picked fallen leaves from your hair. That me hasn’t been taken by anyone.”
Chao’er looked up at him.
“Honored Teacher, what you gave her… was Yin Essence that takes ten months to condense into a single drop, and it was Honored Teacher’s very first drop! Your disciple… your disciple wouldn’t even let anyone touch a single strand of Honored Teacher’s hair, but she—”
Her tears fell.
Drop by drop, splashing onto her goose-yellow sleepwear. Crying and laughing at the same time, she wiped her face messily with the back of her hand.
When she finished, new tears welled up again, impossible to wipe clean.
“Your disciple has been by Honored Teacher’s side for seven years. Every single day. When Honored Teacher wasn’t there, your disciple was. When Qin Shuying wasn’t there, your disciple was. Your disciple is the one who boils hot water for Honored Teacher every morning. The one who silently refills the lamp oil when Honored Teacher stays up late handling peak affairs. The one who already has medicine brewed and brought to the bedside when Honored Teacher is sick and doesn’t even know it yet. Your disciple did all of this, and Honored Teacher never saw it. Or—did see it, but it just wasn’t worth anything?”
Chen Mo said, “I thought you respected me, were grateful to me, because I raised you. I thought that was a disciple’s devotion to her teacher.”
Chao’er’s hands dropped completely. “Do you deserve your disciple?! Do you deserve me?! In your heart, I’ll never measure up to that cold, heartless woman, is that it?!”
After venting a torrent of overwhelming fury, the madness in her eyes settled into something darker—a deeper lust fire.
“Fine. Just fine. You gave her Yin Essence, didn’t you? Then I want a hundred drops! A thousand drops! I’ll make you repay what you owe me double!”
As she spoke, she gave Chen Mo no chance to catch his breath and pressed down on him again.
Her movements were rougher than any time before, carrying a punishing ruthlessness.
“No Yin Essence? Then compensate with something else!”
She hissed viciously into his ear, her breath scorching hot. “Give me everything—those unclean things that slut touched, and the parts of you still thinking of others… all of it! I want more! More!”
In the time that followed, Chen Mo was plunged into a vortex of pure physical torment. He dimly felt those unclean things being received by her in a nearly sacred ritual.
The tips of Chen Mo’s ears burned. His fingers dug into her hair ends, trying to push her away, but stopped the moment they touched the top of her head.
Her hair was very soft, with a small tuft of rebellious fuzz at the crown that caught the light in a faint chestnut hue.
She’d had that tuft of fuzz since she was little.
Every morning she’d sit before her bronze mirror combing her hair, and no matter how she combed it, it wouldn’t lie flat.
She’d always end up storming over to him, puffed with frustration.
He’d say, if it won’t lie flat, then let it be—it looks pretty sticking up anyway.
A hundred emotions surged through him.
Chen Mo never imagined this day would come.
Her dream had come true, but he felt utterly out of place.
After a bout of frenzied plundering, Chen Mo lay sprawled on the jade bed like a pile of mud, chest heaving violently, eyes unfocused, too weak to lift even a finger.
Chao’er didn’t get up. She lay on top of him, her fingers gently tracing his swollen, kissed lips.
“Yin Essence takes ten months to condense anew,” her voice drifted down from above—soft, steady. “Next time, it will be Chao’er’s.”
“Ten months,” she counted on her fingers. When ten fingers weren’t enough, she started over from the beginning. “Your disciple can wait.”
Western wing room.
Chen Mo smoothed the last layer of ointment over the edge of the wound on Su Wan’er’s chest.
The spirit medicine Blood Orchid had sent was of fine quality—one jar of coagulating blood and flesh ointment for external application, and three returning origin pills to replenish spiritual power.
Half an hour ago, the woman with the missing ear had led two young subordinates and stacked new supplies at the western wing room’s door.
No knock, no word. They set the things down, bowed, and retreated.
He walked to the washstand and washed his hands in the half basin of warm water remaining.
The water rippled, then gradually stilled.
His face was reflected in the basin.
Brow bone, nose bridge, jaw, lips.
A face he’d looked at for over twenty years.
But the person in the water right now felt unfamiliar to him.
In his eyes, there was the reflection of a gap in a door.
Deep in his pupils—thin, black, stretching from the center of the pupil to the edge of the iris, like an old wound carved into the depths of his eyes.
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