The pale, cold light of dawn had begun to wash over the white stone courtyard, dissolving the shadows of the early hours.
Seated on the veranda's recliner, Zhì Yuǎn slid his thumb across the last jade scroll stolen from Elder Bai. In the blink of an eye, white dust trickled from his fingers. The millennia-old relic was reduced to nothing after its martial intent had been entirely dissected by the man in the charcoal-gray robe.
Zhì Yuǎn's dark, unfathomable eyes rose, coming to rest on the plain-faced girl who remained kneeling at the edge of the veranda. Bái Wǎn was still trembling subtly. The moisture that had soaked her white robe during the hours of biological terror in the corridor had long since dried, but the thick scent of sandalwood and ozone from the bedroom still clung to her pores.
"The memory in this stone is shallow." Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice reverberated in the wood, cutting the icy air with unshakeable practicality. "Your sect's libraries must hold the sealed foundational tomes that the old man outside could not access. Go to the pavilions and bring back everything recorded on jade or bone."
Bái Wǎn inclined her head until her forehead nearly touched the floor. The girl's breath faltered for a second.
"I obey your command, my Lord." Her melodious voice floated into the air, thick with emotion. She raised her right hand, revealing a darkened silver ring on her thumb. "My grandfather granted me a storage jewel of considerable capacity. I will bring back every shelf this space can swallow."
In the corner of the veranda, Yù Qíng let out a low, velvety laugh.
The woman in blue was reclined in an armchair, her bare feet hovering three millimeters above the bamboo floor. Her pale skin radiated the freshness of the pure Yin that had overflowed throughout the night. Her black eyes glittered as she observed the new recruit's hunched shoulders. The girl's prolonged isolation was evident; throwing her alone into the sect's halls in the light of day could wither the root before its time.
"The sun has only just risen, little lotus," Yù Qíng murmured, rising with a lethal slowness. "And roots that have grown trapped in the dark tend to trip over their own legs when they step into the light. I will go with you."
Mò Yán, who was resting at the back of the room organizing the piles of shattered jade, raised her face. The young woman with snow-white hair wore her scandalous Hanfu. The purest white silk embraced her ribs, and the crossed collar, pulled dangerously low, displayed the generous swell of her neckline without a single protective layer. The pale valley of exposed skin carried a continuous feverish flush from the hours she had spent as a furnace in the dark.
Mò Yán's scarlet irises met Yù Qíng's eyes, and the mutual understanding was silent.
"Allow this sister to accompany you, Sister Qíng," Mò Yán offered, tilting her head slightly. The woman's incredibly rigid, polished posture broke the vulgar impression the dress insinuated. "My experience navigating pavilion bureaucracy will be useful in accelerating our husband's harvest."
Zhì Yuǎn did not respond. He simply rested the back of his neck against the recliner and turned his eyes to the bright morning clouds, accepting the escort of his wives with the same inertia with which he breathed.
Yù Qíng glided through the air to the edge of the veranda. She did not reach for veils or fabric to cover her face. The priestess raised her right hand, and the vibration in her Dantian activated the fragment of the Law of Space and Karma that her husband had planted in her veins in the past.
The air around the three women bent with a nearly inaudible hiss. The sunlight that struck them refracted abnormally. It was not pure invisibility; it was a distortion of perception. Any mortal or cultivator who looked in their direction would see only the scenery behind them, their eyes sliding over the women's existence as water slides off the surface of a lotus leaf.
"A small trick our heaven taught us so we wouldn't have to dirty our blades on ants all the time," Yù Qíng purred, her black eyes gleaming as the distorted veil stabilized. "Let's go."
Minutes later, they were walking along the white stone walkways of the Celestial Mirror Hegemony.
Morning disciples hurried past within inches. A group of 2nd Pillar cultivators conversed loudly, crossing the exact path where Mò Yán was displaying her Hanfu with its colossal neckline and snow-white hair, yet the men's eyes simply failed to register the women's presence. They instinctively adjusted their steps, guided by the spatial distortion, utterly oblivious to the abyss grazing their shoulders.
Bái Wǎn walked ahead, her small hands sweating cold. Walking flanked by those two figures who erased their own existence from the world was terrifying. The oppressive gravity the two wives radiated tugged painfully at the young woman's lower abdomen with every step she took.
They crossed the main stone bridge leading to the Sect Library.
The enormous red oak gates were already open, guarded by only two bored cultivators. The pavilion housed no lethal skill manuals — only general and historical knowledge — which made rigorous security unnecessary.
Bái Wǎn quickened her pace, relieved to see the gates. But before her boots touched the wood, Yù Qíng snapped her fingers.
The spatial distortion wavered. Yù Qíng and Mò Yán remained hidden, but the fold of reality around Bái Wǎn was undone, returning the girl's figure to the visible world precisely in the middle of the bridge.
Bái Wǎn froze, her jaw locking instinctively as she came face to face with two feminine silhouettes walking in the opposite direction.
Jiāo and Měi Lín wore fitted silks in shades of lilac and red. Their millimeter-precise makeup reeked of the sickeningly artificial perfume of cultivators who had barely grazed the 1st Transcendent Stage. Měi Lín, lazily spinning a feathered fan between her fingers, arched an eyebrow at seeing the novice materialize out of nowhere in the middle of the bridge.
"Well, well... it seems our great disgrace survived the night to crawl in the dust," Měi Lín's voice cut through the wind, sharp and venomous. The fan snapped against her palm with a crisp crack. "We heard a crash coming from your grandfather's pavilion last night. We figured the old man had finally coughed up enough blood to die and left you out in the streets."
Jiāo let out a shrill little laugh, her eyes sweeping over Bái Wǎn's plain white robe with pure contempt.
"Must be going to hide in the books again," Jiāo mocked. "No use trying to polish your brain, little rat. The young masters laughed out of pity at your name at last night's banquet. A cultivator who isn't even good enough to decorate a mortal's bed."
The blood drained completely from Bái Wǎn's cheeks.
The girl hugged her own arms. The terror was not from the insult; it was from knowing that two steps away from her, two entities capable of annihilating the entire mountain were watching.
Mò Yán, standing in the invisible shadows, clenched her teeth. The white silk of her neckline rose and fell heavily. The contempt that the heir of the Shattered Heaven felt for that hollow arrogance prickled through her veins, the flush of revulsion climbing up her pale neck. She took a step forward, ready to shatter those two idiots' kneecaps.
But Yù Qíng was faster.
The goddess in blue slid through the distorted space. Her bare feet hovered a hand's breadth from Měi Lín's face. The invisibility fell like a torn curtain, and the atmospheric pressure on the bridge became suddenly thick and suffocating as lead.
Měi Lín opened her mouth to gasp, the feathered fan tumbling from her fingers. The morning light did not weaken, but the crushing presence and the unreal beauty of Yù Qíng paralyzed the lungs of both local cultivators.
"The problem with poisonous weeds," Yù Qíng's velvety voice floated out, sweet as a blade sliding across a throat, "is that they suck the nutrients from the soil believing themselves to be priceless orchids."
Yù Qíng did not raise her hands. Only the sadistic, lethal smile curved her crimson lips. The Sea of Devotion in the priestess's belly rippled. The concept of blind submission penetrated through the auditory canals of Jiāo and Měi Lín, grinding what little Qi the two possessed and obliterating the foundation of their egos in a single heartbeat.
The will of both women was shattered. The eyes of each lost focus, their sharp arrogance melting into a glassy, vaguely feverish, drooling expression. Their shoulders drooped, their breathing becoming ragged and erratic.
"Your hollow vanity is obstructing my new little sister's path," Yù Qíng's whisper sounded like a perverse spell, seeping directly into the corrupted biology of the two. "You're feeling so much heat right now, aren't you? A heat that your silk garments won't let escape. Walk to the disciples' central plaza. Strip off those silks that are suffocating you. Stand bare under the sun, console each other's flesh, and show the entire mountain just how tender you two can be."
In unison, vacant, lascivious, sweaty smiles stretching their painted lips, Jiāo and Měi Lín nodded blankly.
The two untouchable fairies of the peak turned their backs. Swaying their hips in a grotesquely vulgar manner and panting like bitches in heat, they began marching toward the sect's communal center, their hands already feverishly pulling at the laces of their lilac and red robes.
Bái Wǎn's breathing hitched into a sharp hiss.
The girl stared at the backs of the bullies who had made her youth a silent hell. They had not been killed, but the fate the woman in blue had imposed on them was infinitely worse than death in the rigorous, orthodox world of cultivation. They would be the social ruin and the immortal shame of their own bloodlines.
"Garbage recycles itself when planted in the right place, Bái Wǎn." Yù Qíng turned her face toward the novice, the sweet smile returning. She snapped her fingers, and the veil of spatial invisibility swallowed the trinity once more. "Let's go. My heaven does not like to be kept waiting for his reading."
Bái Wǎn trembled from head to toe. The sterile morality of the books shattered against the walls of her stomach. Her lower abdomen heated violently. The girl with the round cheeks swallowed down the bile and the indescribable ecstasy of absolute power, hurrying toward the library.
The guards at the red oak gates continued chatting about the weather, completely oblivious to the three women who floated through the double doors on distorted air.
The interior of the library smelled of aged bamboo and ink. Bái Wǎn did not hesitate. Wrapped in the invisible protection, the young woman activated the mark of her darkened silver ring. She ran along the endless shelves. Geological history manuals, maps of the upper continent, chronicles of secret realms and ancient beasts. The jewel blazed, sucking dozens of heavy shelves of wood, jade, and bone into its own void.
The work was silent and swift. The desperation of survival had died; what drove Bái Wǎn's thin arms now was a feverish need to return to the pavilion and pour that knowledge at the feet of the man in black.
When the library had been reduced to empty corridors, they made their way back.
The sun was already shining higher. As they crossed the central courtyard beneath the invisible veil, Mò Yán's sharp ears caught the commotion.
Dozens of disciples were running in a frenzy along the stone walkways.
"By the ancestors, did you see it?!" A young disciple choked, his face as red as a tomato, whispering hysterically to a companion as they passed within inches of the three invisible wives. "Senior Martial Sister Měi Lín and Jiāo! They tore off their own clothes in the middle of the fountain plaza!"
"I saw it!" the other replied, laughing in a filthy, breathless way. "They were completely naked, rolling on the hot stones and moaning loudly! Měi Lín had her fingers inside her — well, they were rubbing against each other in front of everyone like animals in heat! The Disciplinary Hall had to throw heavy containment nets just to separate them! The Sword Peak Master's face nearly melted with shame!"
The disciples vanished around the bend, laughing at the historic scandal.
Beneath the protection of the distorted space, Mò Yán released a long, slow breath. The feverish flush covered the skin of the diplomat's neck, her scarlet irises shining with the poison her new sister had injected into that sect.
"Mortal dignity is a thin, fragile sheet of paper," Mò Yán murmured, her panting breath straining the white Hanfu in a scandalous way. She looked at Yù Qíng with pure adoration. "It is a blessing that our heaven allows us to melt our own shackles only in the dark of our own home, Sister."
Yù Qíng smiled languidly, floating toward the isolated pavilion.
And walking just behind them, Bái Wǎn pressed the silver ring against her chest. The girl with the round cheeks bit her own lips. The fear of old sages and the docile morality she had known had turned to ash in the morning light. The promise of absolute power and the brutal, corrupted control those women exercised over the world struck her directly in the belly.
The academic servant no longer wished merely to scrub floors. As she caught sight of the bamboo roof of her old pavilion, the only thing Bái Wǎn desired was to bend her knees, pour the entire library into his lap, and discover what it would feel like to have her own sanity shattered by the hands of that god.