Chapter 98
"Return to the peak?"
Qing Zhouxue was momentarily stunned. "Master, why suddenly..."
Yun Shuchen gripped her wrist tightly, breathing rapidly, and said with her last shred of rationality, "I must return to the peak now. Hurry."
She truly looked anxious. Qing Zhouxue set aside the food she'd been feeding her, scooped her up in her arms, and held her horizontally. Instinctively, she didn't use her cultivation, so she couldn't fly on a sword. Just as she was at a loss, the Qingshuang Sword, with remarkable intelligence, flew over on its own and carried both of them into the air.
The journey wasn't long.
Holding Yun Shuchen, Qing Zhouxue felt she seemed lighter than before. In the past, without using spiritual power, she'd needed great effort to lift a grown woman of similar build, but now she no longer felt that precarious unsteadiness.
They descended from the flying sword. Hurried footsteps, and the door slid open—
The moment Yun Shuchen's back touched the bed, she spoke. "You... go out. Close the door properly."
Her mind had been dazed by the surging waves of passion, and her first impulse had been to keep her. But a final thread of perilously fragile pride made her say the words to send her away.
Her love poison had last flared a hundred years ago, and never with such ferocity as this. What state she'd fall into, she couldn't predict at all.
It was precisely because she loved her that, if there were any chance at all, she didn't want to humiliate herself too badly in front of her. When she lost all awareness, Yun Shuchen couldn't guarantee what she might do, and that feeling filled her with deep unease.
She instinctively rejected such unease.
"Master, this..."
She couldn't see, and she'd just recovered from a serious illness. Facing such an abnormality, Qing Zhouxue naturally couldn't trust her to be alone in the room. Yun Shuchen turned on her side, her knuckles white from clenching, her voice so suppressed it seemed ready to shatter at any moment. "Leave... quickly."
She sensed her disciple made no move to go, and Yun Shuchen feared she'd collapse the very next second. She had no time to waste with her. She gathered the little spiritual power left in her dantian and pushed it toward her.
Her disciple staggered back a step. Unwilling to make her master strain herself further and cough blood, she had no choice but to walk out the door and close it tightly. At that very instant, a barrier suddenly descended on the door, as if afraid she might come back in.
Inside, the room fell completely dark.
Amid the silence, Yun Shuchen finally let go of her last thread of rationality with relief.
Her fingertips hooked around the sash at her waist and tugged it open in one motion. Her robes scattered around her body, and as she twisted, the cloth slipped off her shoulder.
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Hot and heedless, her mind hazy, she struggled to strip off the rest of her clothes. Where the strength came from, she didn't know, but she grabbed the fabric and tore at it with all her might. The sound of rending silk rang out abruptly.
In the dim, overlapping shadows, her fingers traced her lips, then tilted her head back, sliding her fingertips slowly down, tracing the line of her neck.
It itched... because she hadn't touched enough.
In her haze, Yun Shuchen couldn't help but think of Qing Zhouxue. Her own hand no longer felt like her own, and when it touched... it felt strangely unfamiliar.
These places, too... Just thinking this, Yun Shuchen suddenly felt her body surge with...
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A sigh escaped her, like a wisp of smoke from a lotus lamp, curling and dissipating.
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When it came to a dao companion... Yun Shuchen was impossibly picky; it would be a miracle for anyone to catch her eye. And she knew she was petty-minded by nature. If she discovered that the one lying beside her had also dual cultivated with other women, she knew she'd be jealous enough to lose her appetite. If there was no real feeling and it was just a fleeting tryst, she couldn't bear the closeness of strange women; they always felt unclean—Yue Changge often laughed at her for having too many rules, rejecting this one and that one, and said that whoever could get into her bed would be a paragon among men, and it served her right to be celibate and alone for all these years.
Through the tides of passion, she vaguely thought, this obsessive need for perfect control was indeed not good.
But even if it wasn't good, all these years, Yun Shuchen still hadn't let go of her pride.
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And so, in those lonely sleepless nights of years past, she'd handled it herself. This kind of thing wasn't unfamiliar.
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One thin thread of thought remained clear, hazy, and it drifted back to Qing Zhouxue's face. Her disciple was beautiful, with deep black brows and eyes, lips red without any color. She...
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Except for those few times that went too far... she rarely thought of her in that way. Perhaps because Qing'er had a face that seemed... not suited for such thoughts, or perhaps because she truly couldn't bear to defile her with such fancies...
At this moment, like threads of silk, spreading everywhere, until almost her entire body was consumed by... and there was even a longing to teach that pure young woman...
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Worried that her master might be in trouble, Qing Zhouxue had leaned her back against the door outside and hadn't gone far, thinking she could call her anytime when it was convenient.
She watched the barrier flicker, bright and dim, following the ebb and flow of Yun Shuchen's consciousness.
Qing Zhouxue frowned. Then she heard things moving around inside, and her unease grew.
There was not only movement but also faint, muffled groans. Before long, the woman's voice grew increasingly hard to contain, even taking on a faint sobbing tone.
Qing Zhouxue pressed her hand against the door. The barrier was so weak it would break at the slightest touch. Getting in wouldn't be hard at all.
It was just... why did her master's voice sound so strange? It didn't seem like from pain but from pleasure.
Suddenly, Qing Zhouxue recalled that day five hundred years ago in the brothel, the sounds the fox demon and the young woman had made—it seemed the same, that sighing, blissful delight.
She thought of the scorching temperature of the skin she'd touched. Her face was expressionless, but within her, waves crashed violently for a while, and before she knew it, she couldn't help but connect it to the novels she'd read, and suddenly she understood.
Her hand, which had been pressed against the doorframe, lowered softly.
Qing Zhouxue silently checked the surrounding barriers, including the mountain-protecting formation, making sure even the birds outside Heyi Peak couldn't hear.
She'd meant to move farther away—after all, Yun Shuchen had sent her out, clearly not so she'd stand at the door listening to such things.
But for some reason, she hesitated for a moment, and her steps away were a little too short. She listened to her master's low breaths, the soft, lingering notes, trembling murmurs, and scattered, muffled groans that seemed to come from pain.
Qing Zhouxue twisted a strand of her own hair behind her back, tugging until it was nearly ready to snap before she let go. Her breathing, too, grew disordered along with the rhythm. Seeing no one around, she couldn't help but press down on the place that had grown abruptly a few years ago and rubbed it just a little. Would this... feel good?
Mm, no sensation.
She had no choice but to lower her hand and silently recite a calming sutra. She tried to push away the tangled thoughts in her mind, but she could no longer wipe them clean as easily as she once had.
In the end, she sealed off her hearing, leaned against the door, and watched the afternoon sun slowly set in the west, until her own shadow disappeared into the dusk.
Indoors.
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But the tide of passion had barely receded when it flooded her body again.
She couldn't control herself. Even exhausted, she could only continue.
No one knew how long passed.
When Qing Zhouxue listened closely again, there was no sound from inside. The barrier, too, had completely shattered once the person fell asleep.
Qing Zhouxue pushed open the door and tiptoed inside.
On the floor lay a knocked-over vase, broken into several pieces. There were also scattered outer robes—some intact, some torn to shreds. An inner robe, ripped into strips.
The scene was quite chaotic.
Qing Zhouxue knelt on the ground, picked up the vase shards and torn cloth, and gathered them temporarily into her storage ring, planning to throw them out later. Amid a scrap of cloth, she happened to pick up a small undergarment embroidered with pink peonies... Her master's girlish tastes seemed never to have changed.
After searching carefully for a while, the floor was finally clean, and only then did she have a path to walk toward the bed. Qing Zhouxue looked up. Behind the beaded curtain, the figure seemed to have fallen asleep, breathing evenly.
She walked over softly and lifted a corner of the curtain. Sure enough, Yun Shuchen's shoulders were exposed. Qing Zhouxue carefully pulled out the blanket that was tucked under her and covered her up properly. Yun Shuchen shifted, as if feeling hot, and turned over, leaving half of her pale back exposed in a very alluring pose.
Qing Zhouxue had no choice but to borrow from one place to patch another, pulling out the part of the blanket that was now under her and covering her snugly. As she tucked the blanket, her hand accidentally touched her back. It was slick with sweat and had turned cool in the air.
That wouldn't do. Qing Zhouxue frowned. With her constitution, sleeping like this would surely bring on a chill.
"Master?" Qing Zhouxue leaned over and shook her shoulder. "How about bathing first before you sleep?"
Yun Shuchen was shaken for a long while, half-awake. Frowning, she pushed her hand away weakly, her voice soft. "...Want to sleep."
Qing Zhouxue absolutely could not let her catch another chill. Seeing she couldn't wake her, she went to boil some water and fetched a wooden basin.
Fortunately, her clothes had been removed, which made things very convenient for Qing Zhouxue. She threw back half of the blanket, wet a cloth with the hot water, wrung it out, and wiped her body down, then took a dry cloth and wiped her all over again.
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"Master, it's me."
Yun Shuchen woke up completely.
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For a moment, she didn't know how to react.