The colossal carriage had been advancing through the Golden Prairies for five days. The sound of the heavy iron and wood wheels crushing the packed earth was the only noise breaking the silence of the vast, monotonous sea of grass.
The journey's routine had established itself quickly, dictated not by the trio's needs—their bodies forged in Primordial Qi and wide‑open pores knew neither hunger nor mortal fatigue—but by the limits of the flesh of the beasts pulling them. The four pure‑blood black horses were magnificent, but they remained mortal. They needed two daily breaks: one at noon, under the blazing sun, to drink fresh water and graze; and one at night, when darkness swallowed the prairies, so they could sleep.
For Yù Méi, noon was tolerable. She spent the time chewing, sharpening her instincts, or ignoring her sister's dark poetics. Night, however… night was a private hell.
When the sun vanished and the carriage stopped in the middle of nowhere, Yù Méi scaled the vehicle's side and lay on the roof of the rear compartment. The armored vault, where the eighty thousand coins, the gold bars, and the sacks of spirit stones rested, was a hard, cold bed of steel and solid wood. For her, whose bones were denser than iron itself, the hardness was not the problem.
The problem was what happened in the front cabin.
Punctually, every night, the luxurious cabin of dark velvet transformed into the epicenter of an earthquake. The multi‑ton colossal vehicle creaked, swayed, and trembled violently on its axles. And it lasted exactly two hours. Two hours of auditory and sensory torture for the Untouchable Petal.
Lying on her back on the vault's roof, Yù Méi clenched her teeth as her brother‑in‑law's infinite Yang and her sister's devoted Yin leaked through the cracks in the wood, heating the night air. The sound of their bodies colliding was dense, heavy—the impact of a universe demanding tribute from an ocean. And Yù Qíng's moans… there was nothing ethereal or untouchable about them. They were muffled cries, hoarse, wet, beginning as tearful pleas and ending in strangled howls of a woman being driven beyond the limits of physical and sensory exhaustion.
Precious seed, hungry tree, deep roots, fertilizer, Yù Méi thought ironically, digging her nails into the steel roof with each crash that made the carriage jump. To hell with the metaphors. He's destroying this cart's springs and whatever's inside it.
Yù Qíng's limit was exactly two hours. After that, her mortal body collapsed from pleasure and exhaustion, and silence finally reigned. But for Yù Méi, silence was even worse. Because when the cabin stopped trembling, the tension in her own muscles, the shameful wetness between her thighs, and the excess of martial energy left her boiling with instinctive jealousy and frustration.
Yù Méi's solution was simple, carnivorous, and violent.
She leaped from the carriage roof into the tall grass, ran kilometers into the night, found the first wild beast or careless predator that crossed her path, and punched its skull into pulp. It was the only way to cool her blood. Then she dragged the carcass back, skinned the prey, and prepared it for the next day's lunch.
On the morning of the fifth day, the fury of the previous night had already become the roasted meat of that dawn.
On the front bench, under the shade of the velvet awning, Yù Méi held the reins loosely with one hand while tearing a succulent piece of wild boar leg with her teeth—a beast she had beaten to death hours earlier. The four black horses ran at a steady pace, devouring the last leagues of the prairie.
The inner cabin door opened softly, and Yù Qíng stepped out to get some air.
Her sister was immaculate, as always. The navy‑blue dress fell perfectly over her generous curves, her porcelain skin glowed with the vitality of one saturated with Primordial Qi, and there was no trace of the broken, sweating woman who had begged for mercy the night before. She stopped at the edge of the driver's seat, watching the horizon where the prairies began to die, giving way to a dense mist.
The Untouchable Petal's eyes, however, were not on the horizon. They were on her sister's feet.
Yù Qíng stood, but her bare, flawless feet did not touch the carriage's wood. There was a space—no thicker than a sheet of paper—between her skin and the swaying plank. She floated. Completely still, absorbing the vehicle's brutal jolts without her body so much as trembling.
Yù Méi swallowed the meat and sighed, the sound laden with instinctive envy.
"I've been trying to do this since my pores opened," Yù Méi grumbled, cracking her neck. "But every time I push my Qi downward, either I crush the ground with the weight of the impact, or I get thrown up like a startled frog. How do you not sink and not rise?"
Yù Qíng did not look away from the landscape. The constant wind did not tangle her black hair; it merely swayed, controlled by the same imperceptible Qi field that kept her suspended.
"Because you use Qi like a hammer, little flower," Yù Qíng answered, her voice soft, her tone professorial, masking patient sadism. "You want to strike the earth so that it rejects you. But the earth is heavy, and your hammer ends up turning back on you."
Yù Qíng turned her face to her sister. That sweet, dark smile—the one that appraised the whole world as a garden ready for harvest—was there.
"This technique was not stolen from any dead sect. My husband created it for me," she said, her voice melting into pure devotion. "He calls it the Floating Lotus Step. He thought manipulating Spatial Laws just to keep my feet from getting dirty would be a waste of the energy he is forging. So he used the Wisdom to dissect raw Qi. What supports my feet is not force, Méi. It is vibrational repulsion."
Yù Méi blinked, stopping the boar bone an inch from her mouth. "Repulsion what?"
"I adjust the vibration of my Qi to enter exact dissonance with the Qi of the earth beneath me. The world repels me just enough to cancel my weight. And the marvel of my heaven's mind…" Yù Qíng's eyes gleamed with blind adoration, "…is that the friction of this technique absorbs Qi from the environment itself. I gain more energy floating passively than I would standing still. It's as natural as breathing."
Yù Méi rolled her eyes and huffed.
Of course it is, she thought, tearing off another piece of dried meat aggressively. He builds a way for you to never touch the earth again, and the technique still comes out energy‑positive. Lazy magic. Must be nice being a god's favorite pet.
"Fine, I get it. Dissonance, vibration, lazy magic," Yù Méi said with her mouth full, snapping the reins at the horses. "I prefer the ground. At least the ground breaks and makes a good noise when I stomp on it hard. But speaking of breaking things… where are we going, anyway? The grass is gone."
Yù Qíng looked forward again.
The landscape had changed brutally. The golden ocean of the prairies ended abruptly in an abyss of dense gray mist. And tearing through that mist toward the heavens rose the Southern Mountains.
But they were not ordinary mountains. They had no gentle slopes or green valleys. They looked like colossal needles of black stone—thin, sparse, monstrous—driven into the earth by gods in a fit of blind fury. The perpetual mist hid the bases of almost all of them, making the peaks seem to float in the void. Wooden bridges of rotted planks and gigantic iron chains connected some of the smaller pillars, swinging terrifyingly over the abyss.
The air changed. The residual Qi in the atmosphere was absurdly thicker here. It smelled of ozone, ancient stone, and an age long dead.
The cabin door opened once more, and Zhì Yuǎn stepped onto the veranda. His charcoal‑gray tunic was immaculate, and the black silk cloak drank the morning light. He lifted his black, unfathomable eyes, assessing the colossal vision of the needle‑like mountains.
He did not see stone. He saw the shattered engineering of the Transcendent Age.
"Parasites," Zhì Yuǎn murmured, his deep, commanding voice resonating not only in the air but in Yù Méi's bones. He traced a line with his long finger, pointing to the highest peak piercing the clouds ahead. "They built wooden shacks on the altar of dead giants and believe they rule the heavens."
"It is the border of the Misty Peak Sect," Yù Qíng informed, her black eyes sweeping the entrance to the mountainous region like a farmer choosing where to run the plow. "According to the Thunder Clan's records, they control the main needles."
"Excellent." Yù Méi cracked her knuckles, still greasy with boar fat, feeling the density of the air tingle in her fire‑forged muscles. "I hope they come down to charge a toll. I'm tired of killing pigs."
The universe seemed to have a bad habit of swiftly granting the Untouchable Petal's violent wishes.
Before the carriage could even approach the first stone pillar marking the ascent of the winding road, a sharp, piercing whistle tore through the clouds above them.
Three shadows descended from the mist in a steep dive. They rode no griffins, no spirit beasts. They were three men dressed in flowing white and blue robes. And beneath their feet, steel swords gleamed, emitting a strange vibratory hum as they cut through the air in a precarious but ostentatious balance.
They landed on the stone road about twenty meters from the carriage, blocking the path. The impact of the landing and the breaking of the sword vibrations raised a cloud of dust and gravel.
The carriage stopped. Yù Méi chewed the last piece of meat, swallowed, and spread her widest, wildest, most genuine smile.
The guards of the Misty Peak Sect walked toward them, their chins raised with the arrogance typical of those who believed that the mere act of flying separated them from mortal trash.
"Stop the cart and descend with your heads bowed!" shouted the patrol leader, a sharp‑faced man with a rigid posture, his hand resting arrogantly on the hilt of the sword he had just used as transport. "You stand before the sacred border of Misty Peak. Mortal luxury carts do not cross this soil without paying the Sect's tithe and demonstrating the proper res—"
He did not finish the sentence.
The atmosphere froze. A pressure far heavier than the mountain air descended on the road, coming not from the three guards, but from the sky just above them. Another whistle tore through the mist. Much faster. Much colder.
A sword of silver light descended in a perfect spiral, cutting through the air currents with a grace the three previous guards were centuries from achieving. The blade stopped in the air a few inches from the ground, and the figure standing on it leaped lightly, landing without making a single sound.
Yù Méi blinked.
The woman who had descended from the sword was beautiful by mortal standards. She wore white and blue silks of the highest quality, embroidered with silver threads that mimicked swirling clouds. She had the appearance of a woman in her early twenties, with delicate features, haughty eyes, and the posture of someone who had never had a wish denied. The silver sword flew back into the sheath on her back with a perfect click.
What the silk‑clad woman did not know, however, was that Zhì Yuǎn's inner vision had already dissected her existence. He saw the Qi channels stabilized by time, the forced opening of a dantian, and the age her body perfectly concealed: eighty‑two years. A virgin elder, isolated on a mountain, kept young by the crumbs of Qi from a dead age, believing herself an immortal fairy.
"Incompetent trash!" The woman's voice—Lín Xiù—cut the air like a whip as she turned to the three guards, who immediately paled and bowed in panic. "Did I not tell you not to extort travelers at the borders as if we were road bandits? Our sect has a thousand years of history, and you sully our name demanding coins from mortals? Kneel and apologize!"
"Y‑Yes, Young Mistress Lín!" The three guards dropped to their knees on the stone road, terrified.
Lín Xiù crossed her arms, huffing with the indignation of a spoiled princess. Satisfied at having demonstrated her absolute authority and "kindness and justice" right away, she finally turned to the colossal carriage to dismiss the "poor mortal travelers" with a noble wave.
But her eyes locked.
Lín Xiù's breath failed. Her heart, which had not beaten for any man in eighty decades of arrogant reclusion, missed a beat so violently that blood rushed immediately to her cheeks.
In the space of a second, the entire façade of stern authority evaporated.
Lín Xiù's eyes did not see the enormous carriage. Did not see Yù Méi smiling like a beast about to strike. And they refused to acknowledge Yù Qíng's overwhelming beauty, dismissing her almost instantly in a block of pure jealous denial: A jade vase, Lín Xiù's ego thought instinctively, protecting itself from the glaring inferiority. Just some mortal covered in beauty pills to adorn the trip.
All her attention, all her soul as the "genius" of Misty Peak, was devoured by the man on the carriage's veranda.
Zhì Yuǎn stood there, his black hair swaying in the dense breeze, his charcoal‑gray tunic outlining a body sculpted in perfection. The aura around him was not visible, but the unfathomable, indifferent, crushing pressure he exuded—like a god walking among insects—struck Lín Xiù like a sledgehammer.
He is… he must be an ancestral monster, her mind screamed, romanticizing the vision to sick levels of Xianxia fantasy. An unfathomable master who has found the fountain of youth!
Lín Xiù swallowed hard. She quickly smoothed the folds of her silk robe, puffed her shoulders to disguise her nervousness, and opened a smile she judged to be breathtaking and irresistible.
"I apologize for the rudeness of the dogs at our border, Senior," Lín Xiù said, her voice suddenly sweet, soft, laden with an admiration so naïve that Yù Qíng nearly laughed out loud. "I am Lín Xiù, of Misty Peak. It is an honor to see a cultivator of such presence arrive at our mountains. Allow me to offer you the hospitality of our Sect as our Honored Guest!"
On the carriage roof, Yù Méi lowered her hand, which had already been clenched into a fist. She looked at the woman in white, blinking slowly.
She burned Qi just to keep the soles of her boots clean getting off that sword, Yù Méi thought, watching the "immortal fairy" with carnivorous boredom. And now she's looking at my brother‑in‑law like a bitch begging for a bone.
Yù Qíng, standing beside her husband, appraised Lín Xiù with the coolness of a cook feeling a pumpkin at the market. Eighty decades of age. A stagnant, virginal, reclusive Yin. Eighty decades accumulating resources on those peaks.
The wife's sick, devoted mind calculated the situation in a blink. There would be no massacre here. Killing the guard at the farm's entrance would be foolish when the vault sat just above the clouds.
Yù Qíng opened her poetic, deadly, unfathomably gentle smile for the deluded woman who had just willingly offered her own life and foundation to be devoured.
"It would be an honor to accept your generous hospitality, Young Mistress Lín," Yù Qíng replied, her melodious voice floating in the mist.
Lín Xiù, blinded by romantic fantasy and ignoring the abyssal smile of the woman beside her "future beloved," only nodded, happy to be leading the escort.
The hungry universe had finally received its invitation to dinner.
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