The spiritual pressure of an eighth‑stage mortal cultivator was not something to be ignored. When released with hostile intent, it should weigh like a boulder on the shoulders of an ordinary mortal, forcing them to their knees and stealing their breath in pure terror.
Mù Chén, the Core Disciple of Misty Peak, released his aura deliberately as he finished climbing the jade steps toward the observation terrace. His goal was simple: crush the audacity of that vulgar concubine who dared laugh at his sect's martial arts, and by extension, send a warning to her insolent "Senior."
However, when Mù Chén's aura struck Yù Méi, the reaction was not what he expected.
The Untouchable Petal stopped chewing her roasted bird thigh. The pressure the young master exuded crashed against her hyper‑dense bones and muscles and dissipated, feeling like nothing more than a warm, irritating breeze on a summer day. She slowly turned her face toward him. Her almond eyes evaluated him from head to toe, and a wide, predatory, genuinely happy smile tore across her face.
Finally, Yù Méi thought, her knuckles tingling with anticipation. One of them came to be broken.
Mù Chén frowned, bothered by the absence of terror in that mortal woman's eyes. Her smile was not submissive; it was the smile of a butcher eyeing a fat pig.
"You find this amusing, woman?" Mù Chén's voice was sharp, full of the arrogance of one who considers himself the world's elite. He stopped two paces from her, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his ornate sword. "Your Senior may be a guest of the Great Elder, but that does not give you the right to pollute our sacred grounds with your street manners. What do you know of the Dao of the Sword to dare laugh at our disciples?"
Yù Méi wiped the grease from her fingers on her trousers and cracked her neck. She took a step toward him, the difference in height doing nothing to diminish the colossal shadow her physical presence cast. She wanted so badly, so very badly, to grab that smooth, aristocratic neck and use it to crater the stone floor of the terrace.
But then, her sister's voice echoed in her mind. The tree needs time to be pruned by the roots. Do not break the branches yet, little flower.
Yù Méi sighed, a long, painfully bored sound. She forced the mask of the "Untouchable Petal" back onto her face, erasing the murderous smile and replacing it with an unapproachable coldness.
"I don't know anything about the Dao of the Sword," Yù Méi replied, her voice dry, turning her back to him and leaning over the stone railing again. "I only understand that if someone jumps three meters in the air spinning like a top, they leave their ribs exposed long enough for anyone to rip out their liver with a bare hand. I thought your dance was pretty. That's all."
Mù Chén's face turned purple with indignation. The insult to his sect's secret technique, disguised as an ignorant comment, was unbearable.
"Insolent!" He stepped forward, grabbing her shoulder hard, his fingers imbued with Qi to cause pain. "You need to learn your pl—"
Yù Méi's hand moved in a blur. Before Mù Chén's brain could process the mortal's speed, her fingers closed around his wrist, squeezing with the force of an iron press. The young master's Qi flow was instantly disrupted by the sheer density of her flesh.
Pain exploded in his arm, and Mù Chén's eyes widened in shock.
Yù Méi looked at him sideways, her eyes gleaming with a promise of extreme, suppressed violence.
"Don't touch me," she whispered, her voice vibrating with a bestial timbre. She released his wrist, pushing him lightly backward, and picked up the rest of her bird thigh. "Go play with your little sword somewhere else, boy. I'm eating."
What Yù Méi did not know, of course, was that the "boy" before her was, in fact, over two hundred years old.
In the world of cultivation, time was an incredibly deceptive metric. Spending two centuries locked atop a mountain, parasitizing ancient matrices, absorbing Qi crumbs, and being flattered daily by mortal servants and sycophantic disciples did not temper anyone's mind or heart. It merely preserved youthful arrogance in a kind of cheap immortality formaldehyde. Mù Chén might have lived two hundred springs, but he possessed the emotional maturity of a spoiled teenager who had never been punched in the mouth.
To make the "young master's" humiliation worse, Yù Méi demonstrated total contempt for the unwritten rules of "face" and "territory" that governed those cultivators' lives. She did not stay on the terrace to assert dominance. Finding him too irritating to share the same air, she simply turned her back and walked away with heavy steps, aggressively biting into her bird thigh.
Mù Chén was left behind, alone. His wrist throbbed painfully, his pride shattered, his face twisted into a mask of pure hatred. No one in two centuries had ever turned their back on him with such boredom. And he swore to himself that this would be the last time the blonde bitch did so.
---
At the Guest Pavilion, far from the training arena, the scene was one of poisoned serenity.
Yù Qíng sat in the white‑stone garden, pouring tea into delicate porcelain cups. Before her, Lín Xiù tried to maintain her composure, but her eyes kept drifting toward the interior of the pavilion, where Zhì Yuǎn remained motionless, studying an ancient scroll, not sparing her a single glance.
The fairy of Misty Peak had already performed her Crescent Cloud Sword Dance for two consecutive hours in the garden. Sweat soaked beneath her white and blue silks. And the "ancestral monster" she had fallen for had not even turned his head. Frustration was corroding the walls of her eighty‑year‑old vanity.
"It is a beautiful art, Young Mistress Lín," Yù Qíng said, offering the steaming cup. Her voice was soft, velvety, laden with the infinite patience of a weaver preparing a trap. "The control of wind currents you demonstrated is truly worthy of the heights of these mountains."
Lín Xiù accepted the cup, forcing a modest smile, though bitterness was clear in her eyes.
"I thank you for your words, Madam," Lín Xiù replied. She hesitated for a moment, insecurity finally breaking through the mask of the untouchable "Genius." "But… it seems my modest art is not enough to please the Senior's eyes."
Yù Qíng smiled gently, a smile that exuded maternal understanding and pity. She took a sip of her tea, her black eyes fixed on the disciple.
"My heaven is a man whose Dao is as deep as the abyss, Lín Xiù," Yù Qíng murmured, adopting an almost conspiratorial tone. "A god who walks among the winds and stars has forgotten what the voice of ordinary people sounds like. Your sect's disciples pass by him every day, flaunting auras and swords, and to him, it is like hearing dry leaves tapping on the ground."
Lín Xiù swallowed hard. The analogy was beautiful and cruelly precise.
"But you…" Yù Qíng finally turned her face to Lín Xiù, and her black eyes gleamed with admiration so well‑acted it would deceive the heavens themselves. "You are different. The Qi flowing in your veins is not like that of the other disciples. There is a purity in you. A resonance that I saw his eyes follow when you fly across the courtyard."
Lín Xiù's heart leaped violently against her ribs.
"He… he followed?" the cultivator's voice came out thin, her arrogance crumbling into pure romantic vulnerability.
Yù Qíng smiled gently, her cool fingers lightly touching Lín Xiù's hand as it gripped her sword.
"My heaven is a man who only turns toward what has true foundation," the priestess whispered, planting the poison directly at the root of the girl's vanity. "Words do not touch him. Displays of wind do not move him. But the true weight of the world… the deepest mysteries and the purest sacrifices… those, he perceives. A rare flower only attracts a god's attention if it has the courage to show its roots."
Yù Qíng withdrew with the same fluidity with which she had arrived, leaving Lín Xiù alone in the garden.
The eighty‑year‑old girl took a deep breath, her eyes wide, her fragile mind spinning around the blue woman's words. True foundation. The weight of the world. Roots. She did not need swords or poems to catch the ancestral monster's attention. She needed to prove to him the weight of what the Misty Peak Sect truly hid. She needed to offer him something he could not ignore.
Lín Xiù turned and walked toward the sect's inner halls. Her steps were hurried, determined, guided by the perfect illusion of one who thought she had just discovered the map to an immortal's heart.
Yù Qíng returned to serving her tea, but her sharp gaze caught movement at the edge of the pavilion. Yù Méi had just entered, stomping her bare feet aggressively, her face twisted in frustration, her jaw clenched. Behind her, far enough not to be noticed by normal mortal eyes, Core Disciple Mù Chén watched her, his eyes burning with obsessive resentment.
Yù Qíng analyzed the scene in an instant. Her sister had been accumulating martial frustration and repressed sexual tension for days, forced to listen to the visceral Dual Cultivation every night in the carriage without any outlet. Mù Chén's pride was wounded, and he was clearly planning retaliation against the insolent blonde who had rejected him.
A wicked, perfect plan bloomed in the priestess's mind.
If Lín Xiù was about to bring the sect's vault to Zhì Yuǎn's lap of her own free will, they would no longer need to maintain false courtesies for much longer. And the "little flower" deserved a toy to relieve her jealousy and tension.
Yù Qíng rose gracefully and walked to the edge of the courtyard, where she knew Mù Chén could hear her clearly if he used his Qi to amplify his hearing.
"Méi, dear," Yù Qíng called, her voice echoing softly through the pavilion. "You seem so frustrated. I thought you were enjoying the outing."
Yù Méi huffed, crossing her arms.
"There's no outing to enjoy. The men in this place are all peacocks. They talk tough, leap in the air, and think that makes them strong. They're all weak and irritating. I miss someone who isn't afraid of danger."
Yù Qíng smiled, her eyes sweeping the shadows where Mù Chén hid.
"Loneliness makes you impatient, little flower. Go rest. Tonight, my husband and I will be occupied in our quarters. You will be alone on the upper terrace of our pavilion. Have some wine and admire the moon. I am certain that if there were any truly strong and courageous man on this mountain, he would know how to find his way to such a beautiful woman who cries out to be dominated."
Yù Méi looked at her sister as if she had lost her mind, but the subtle, dark wink Yù Qíng gave her made her close her mouth.
In the shadows, Mù Chén bit the bait, hook and line. An arrogant smile bloomed on his aristocratic face. The vulgar blonde had not rejected him because she thought him weak; she had rejected him because mortal women demanded a demonstration of pure domination. And tonight, he would invade the guest pavilion, take the arrogant woman for himself, and prove to the mysterious guest who truly ruled Misty Peak.
The trap was set. And the slaughter was scheduled for midnight.
---