Shen Mo threw her hand off.
That movement took all his strength, causing Zhou Yunying to stagger back half a step.
She wasn’t angry, however; she merely looked at him, the smile in the depths of her eyes deepening.
“What is the Lord doing?” she asked. “I am discussing this with the Lord in good faith. Why get so upset?”
Shen Mo did not speak.
He glanced around — the street had emptied at some point.
The loose cultivators, vendors, and pedestrians who had been there moments ago were nowhere to be found.
The doors and windows of the shops on both sides were tightly shut, leaving not even a crack.
The snow fell heavier and heavier, settling in a thin layer on his shoulders and hair.
A chill crept up from the soles of his feet, rising until it reached his heart.
“Move,” he said.
Zhou Yunying did not budge.
The three female cultivators behind her did not move either.
Shen Mo grit his teeth and stepped forward.
Just as he took a single step, a hand suddenly gripped his wrist and yanked him back.
He stumbled into someone’s embrace. Before he could steady himself, a hand pinched his chin and forced his face upward.
“So handsome.” Zhou Yunying leaned in to look at him, her gaze sliding from his eyes to his lips, then down to his neck. “I have been in this marketplace for so long, yet I never knew Jiaoyue Peak was hiding such a fine specimen.”
Shen Mo struggled to push her away.
But that hand gripped him too tightly, making his chin ache. With his half-step Foundation Establishment cultivation, he couldn’t even move under the suppression of her mid-Foundation Establishment power.
“Let go.”
Those two words were squeezed out from between his teeth, his voice so raspy it didn’t sound like his own.
Zhou Yunying did not let go.
She lowered her head, leaning close to his neck, and took a deep breath.
“So fragrant,” she murmured, her voice carrying a bone-chilling sense of satisfaction. “Fragranter than any I have ever had before.”
Shen Mo trembled all over.
It wasn’t just fear.
It was something else.
Seven years.
For seven years, he had looked after this peak for Su Wan’er, tending to those disciples and guarding an empty cavern.
He had learned to read account books, distribute elixirs, and bow with dignity under the mocking gazes of female cultivators before withdrawing as if nothing were wrong.
He had thought this was stability.
He had thought that as long as he was thorough and proper, virtuous and dutiful, he could live a peaceful life in this female-dominated world.
But now, on this empty snowy street, pinned in a stranger’s embrace with his chin held tight, he suddenly understood.
‘There is no such thing as stability in this world,’ he realized. ‘There is only the strong and the weak.’
He was simply too weak.
So weak he couldn’t even break free, let alone escape.
Zhou Yunying’s hand slid down from his chin to his collar, her fingertip hooking onto a frog button.
In the next second, however, she let out a sharp scream.
Shen Mo bit down hard on the webbing of her hand. He bit with savage intensity, his teeth sinking into her flesh as the metallic taste of blood instantly spread in his mouth.
Zhou Yunying let go in pain, and he took the chance to shove her away, staggering back several steps until his back hit the wooden door of a shop.
“You—!” Zhou Yunying clutched her hand and looked down. A circle of bloody tooth marks was seeping red. She looked up, the smile on her face gone, replaced by a dark, sinister expression. “You refuse the easy way?”
Shen Mo leaned against the door, panting, with her blood still staining the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away harshly with his sleeve and met her gaze. The look in his eyes made Zhou Yunying pause.
She had seen many things in such eyes — fear, humiliation, pleading, and resignation.
But the eyes of the man before her held none of those.
There was only coldness.
Cold as well water in the middle of winter, cold like the eyes of a corpse she had once seen in a mass grave.
“You’re looking for death.”
She spat those words out and waved her hand.
The three female cultivators surrounded him.
Shen Mo tried to run, but before he could take a step, someone grabbed his arm and yanked him back. He stumbled and fell to the ground, the snow pouring into his collar with a bone-piercing chill.
Before he could crawl back up, a hand grabbed his hair and pulled his head back.
“Bite me again, then.” Zhou Yunying knelt down, looking down at him. She held up her bleeding hand and brought the wound close to his eyes. “Look closely. You did this.”
A muffled sound came from Shen Mo’s throat, like that of a trapped beast.
“Let go,” he said.
His voice was so raspy it hardly sounded like his own.
“Let go?” Zhou Yunying laughed, a dark and gloomy sound. “I originally intended to just have some fun and let you go, but I’ve changed my mind.”
She leaned in until her nose almost touched his face.
“I’m going to take you back to Chaoyun Peak, lock you up, and play with you slowly. Once I’m bored, I’ll give you to the subordinates. Isn’t your Peak Master Su in seclusion? When she comes out, do you guess she’ll still recognize you?”
Shen Mo’s pupils shrank.
He began to struggle, kicking and hitting like a madman, but the three female cultivators pinned him down firmly. With a knee pressed into his back and a hand clutching his hair, he couldn’t even move.
Zhou Yunying stood up, watching him struggle on the ground like a fish out of water.
“Take him away.”
She turned.
She took two steps.
Then she suddenly stopped.
Shen Mo lay on the ground, his face pressed against the icy snow. He saw the three female cultivators holding him down freeze simultaneously.
Their faces…
The color drained from their faces at an eerie speed, turning deathly pale, then gray, then —
*Thud.*
The first woman collapsed. Her head rolled off her neck and landed in the snow, her eyes still wide open.
*Thud.*
The second.
*Thud.*
The third.
The three corpses fell almost at the same time. There were no screams, no struggles, and at first, not even any blood — by the time Shen Mo realized what had happened, the blood finally gushed out, staining the snow beneath them a piercing red.
Zhou Yunying stood in place, unmoving.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to move.
She didn’t dare.
At some point, a thin red line had appeared on her neck.
Beads of blood were seeping from it, dripping one by one into the snow.
“Turn around.”
A voice rang out.
The voice wasn’t loud, and it held no emotion. But hearing it made Shen Mo tremble.
Zhou Yunying slowly turned around.
Shen Mo lay on the ground, looking through the pool of piercing red, and saw the person at the end of the street.
She wore frost-white robes.
Her dark hair flowed loosely.
Her features looked as if they had been drawn stroke by stroke with the finest brush.
But her eyes were too cold.
Cold as thousand-year-old ice — one look was enough to make one’s blood freeze.
She stood there without a sword.
Yet the red line on Zhou Yunying’s neck was gradually deepening.
“Peak Master… Qin…”
Zhou Yunying’s voice squeezed out of her throat, shaking uncontrollably.
She tried to kneel, but the moment her legs bent, her head slid off her neck.
The head landed in the snow, rolled twice, and stopped in front of Shen Mo.
The eyes were still open and the mouth agape, the fear on her face not yet faded.
Then the blood sprayed out.
Like a dark red fountain, it shot high into the air, hissing as it landed on the snow.
Shen Mo lay on the ground, staring into the eyes of the severed head.
Those eyes were fixed on him.
In them, he saw his own reflection — face covered in snow, blood at the corner of his mouth, and hair disheveled.
A pair of frost-white boots stopped at the edge of his vision.
He looked up past the boots — frost-white Taoist robes, a frost-white collar, a frost-white chin, and a frost-white face.
A peerless, icy beauty.