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Mo Qing arrived at the Shen Mansion gatehouse the following morning, earlier than Shen Miao had expected. She had already arranged things beforehand, slipping silver to the concierge through Shuangjiang and having him introduce Mo Qing as a distant cousin. Since the gatehouse guards were sorted by rank and position, Mo Qing had asked only for the outermost post, and so he settled in without trouble. Three days passed quickly. On the morning of the third day, Ren Wanyun had everything prepared well before dawn and sent her attendant Xianglan to inform Shen Miao of the arrangements. Before the carriages departed, the whole party gathered at Rongjing Hall. Old Lady Shen addressed them with a grave expression, the usual sort of instruction about conducting oneself properly in a sacred place. She rarely made the trip to Wolong Temple herself. The temple sat too far from the city, and though it had a reputation, it drew far fewer worshippers than the closer temples in town. Why she had ch...

The Jiuhua Sect's Five Elements Master specialized in water, so his disciples had naturally refined ice techniques to a sharp edge. When they saw their senior brother seal Yu Chen in a block of ice before he could even draw a trick, the rest broke into laughter. "Su Yishui raised this kind of trash? Why do they bother throwing punches and making noise?" The young Xishan disciples who had come up the mountain behind their senior brother burned with anger at that. Senior brother Takakura was already moving to rush forward when junior sister Ranran caught his arm from behind. Their Uncle Shi had been frozen solid before he could pull off a single move. What good could a few green recruits do against disciples who could manage that? Takakura assumed his junior sister was frightened, so he only glared at her and said, "A man of honor cannot swallow this humiliation. These bastards are walking all over us. Are we supposed to tuck our heads in like turtles?" Ranra...

Xue Ranran crouched down and quietly gathered the scattered Qingxin pills her master had thrown to the ground. When she straightened up, she pressed her lips together and waited for the scolding. Su Yishui stood in silence for a long moment, then turned and walked away without a word. She felt no relief at all. She had been frail since childhood, always a burden to her parents. Now that she had finally found a path forward by learning to refine medicine, she had nothing useful to show for it. How could that not wear on a person? Qiu Xi, standing nearby, had no sense of his junior sister's low spirits. He let out a small sigh on her behalf and said quietly, "Looks like Master couldn't even be bothered to scold you properly. Go back inside and keep your head down." Xue Ranran gathered the remaining pills into their box without a word, planning to compare them against a proper batch later to figure out where she had gone wrong. Then she went obediently to her room, sh...

"Has anyone ever told you that you have sexy lips?" Cheng Jia traced her fingers across his mouth and smiled. "Turns out it's not just your hair that's soft." She held his face and leaned in. Peng Ye didn't pull back or say a word. He tightened his grip. "Hiss." She let go instantly. He scolded her, quiet but firm. "Stop looking for distractions." He stood, gathered the white gauze coiled around her neck with one hand, produced a pair of shears with the other, and cut through it with a clean snick. When Peng Ye finished and looked back, Cheng Jia's forehead was soaked in cold sweat. It landed on him then. She had been enduring the whole time. The teasing, the jokes, all of it had been her trying to keep her mind off the pain. He felt like an idiot. He looked at the cut on her hand and felt worse. He had asked her what happened at the wrong moment, and never once asked whether it hurt. Now her face was drained of color...

Peng Ye had no answer for that. He studied her face. Her expression was flat, almost bored, as if she had asked nothing more than "So what do you think of me?" But something in her tone told him she was needling him, really asking: "How much did you miss me?" Either way, he said nothing. Cheng Jia sipped the ginger soup slowly. Some color came back into her face. When she seemed steadier, Peng Ye asked, "What happened to your neck and hands?" Cheng Jia pressed her lips together, a wave of pain moving through her forehead, but she turned away before he could see it. "After they pulled me out, I walked to the post station," she said. "I ran into a madman on the way." Peng Ye's brow creased. "A madman?" "He had something wrong with him mentally." She paused, turning the memory over. The man had been muttering to himself, his eyes moving over things in a way that was wrong. She had tried to go around him. He ...

After a long silence, Chen Aijia let out a low breath. "Go eat something." "I'm fine." Xia Chan's head felt hollow. "I'm not hungry." The more she turned it over, the more she regretted getting involved. She'd only pushed herself up against someone else's wall. If she were the one lying sick in a hospital bed, she'd still want He Huaisheng to come. That much she knew. But now she wasn't sure of anything. Chen Aijia's words kept circling back. What good does it do, him being here? Most men chased pleasure and fled from inconvenience. They wanted you young and beautiful, always. Let yourself get sick or plain, and they'd find reasons to disappear. Xia Chan sat there until her chest felt cold all the way through. Footsteps in the corridor. She looked up. It was Fu Ruyu, back again, a plastic bag in her hand. She glanced at Xia Chan, eased the door shut, and set the bag on the bedside table. "He bought food. For ...