Chapter 16: The Spirit Spring

"It wasn't me — it was him." Yun Wan grabbed Xie Tingyun by the arm and shrugged.

A problem?

An enormous one.

Qin Zhiyan stepped forward, voice tight with urgency. "The spider demon's core — is it still intact? I'll pay anything."

"That's going to be difficult."

"Why?"

"I ate it."

"You — ate it??" Qin Zhiyan's face went white, her pupils shaking like she'd just watched someone use a priceless antique as a doorstop.

A six-hundred-year-old demon core. Gone. And the person who ate it was still stuck at Qi Refining.

The words came out before she could stop them: "What a waste!!"

Yun Wan raised an eyebrow.

The outburst jogged something loose in her memory — a scene from the novel this world was built on. The male lead, Chu Lin, had infiltrated enemy territory searching for his missing junior brother, only to get captured. Cornered and nearly dead, he'd broken through to the second level of Golden Core, slaughtered the spider demon, consumed the core, and vaulted straight to Nascent Soul in one clean arc.

Except that wasn't what happened.

Because Yun Wan had shown up and quietly eaten his breakthrough.

She let the realization settle, then smiled. Not bad. I robbed the protagonist.

"We killed the demon," she said pleasantly. "Whether I throw the core away or eat it is my business. What's it to you?"

Qin Zhiyan knew she was right. She also absolutely refused to accept it. Her teeth pressed together hard enough to crack.

She had spent months planning to ask her father to arrange a match between herself and Chu Lin once he reached Nascent Soul. That future was gone now. Buried. Because of this woman.

"I — I hate you!" The insult she wanted wouldn't come. The more she thought about it, the worse it hurt, and finally the tears broke through. She dropped her head and sobbed.

Her fellow disciples stood frozen around her, too afraid of the young lady to offer comfort.

Yun Wan watched the crying with mild helplessness. She reached into her storage bag, dug out a trinket she'd been carrying for a while, and held it out. "Here. Call it compensation."

It was a deep-sea luminous pearl, perfectly round. Inside it, tiny seasons turned — snow drifted in miniature storms across a world the size of a fist. Beautiful. Functionally useless.

The effect was immediate. Qin Zhiyan's crying stopped. She took the pearl with both hands and turned it slowly, her expression softening in spite of itself, the anger draining away as the snowflakes swirled.

Then she looked up, tear tracks still damp on her cheeks. "Do you want money for it?"

"No."

She accepted that with visible relief, though the irritation hadn't fully left her eyes.

"Put your fingerprint here." Yun Wan held out a slip of paper. "You owe me. Three days to pay. Interest starts after that."

Qin Zhiyan stiffened. "I am the daughter of the Jingyue Sect leader. You think I'd cheat you?"

"I'm reminding you kindly," Yun Wan said. "I didn't say you would."

The glare Qin Zhiyan gave her could have scorched stone. She pressed her fingerprint onto the IOU, spun on her heel, and flew off on her sword without another word, her senior brothers trailing behind her.

The grove felt larger once they were gone.

Yun Wan tucked the IOU carefully into her bag and counted everything: fifteen thousand spirit stones, a stack of talismans, a set of pills, several magic tools, and multiple bolts of brocade and silk.

She stared at the fabric for a moment, then looked up.

Behind her stood a row of half-demons. Bird-men — tall, lean, their upper bodies bare, wearing only rough black trousers with no shoes. Their wings hung dusty and unkempt at their backs.

Even she found it rough to look at. A refined cultivator would recoil.

She'd take them to the city tomorrow. Find a tailor.

"Come here."

They fluttered over at once, crowding around her, wings overlapping.

"Master—"

"Master, Master—"

"Master, master, master—"

A chorus of bright, chirping voices like a tree full of sparrows.

Yun Wan pressed both palms over her ears. "Alright. Stop."

"Yes, Master."

"Yes, yes, Master."

She stood very still. "Don't move. I'll—"

"Yes, Master."

"No talking."

Silence. Then, very small: "...Yes, yes, Master."

She gave up trying to feel anything about it and lined them up. Measuring was straightforward enough, but the problem was structural — wings, tails, legs considerably longer than a human's. How was she supposed to explain any of that to a tailor?

She was still working through it when a pair of hands reached past her.

She startled. Looked up. Xie Tingyun stood at her shoulder, his profile calm and distant.

"I'll do it."

"What?"

"Their clothes. I'll make them. You can step back."

Yun Wan stared at him.

Bodyguard. You can sew?

She stepped aside immediately.

Xie Tingyun drew wood into needles and wove grass into thread. A flick of his fingers and the needle threaded itself. He moved with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd done this ten thousand times.

"Half an hour," he said.

Yun Wan's eyes lit up. She wanted to learn that. She could expand — open a clothing branch, corner the cultivation world's fashion market—

"I want to—"

"You can't." He said it without looking up. Matter-of-fact.

"Why not?"

"Your cultivation isn't sufficient."

The insult landed clean and deep. She deflated.

Xie Tingyun's mouth curved, just slightly. "On the way back I noticed a pool behind the mountain. Dense spiritual energy. It might help your cultivation along."

At the word pool, Yun Wan realized she hadn't bathed in a very long time. She didn't know the Cleansing Spell, and even if she had — she preferred warm water. The actual feeling of it.

"Where?"

"I'll take you."

She told the half-demons to watch the silk and followed him into the trees.

He hadn't exaggerated. The spring sat cradled between two mountain faces, larger than any they'd found before. A narrow pass in the rock let the water spill downward in a quiet stream. The surface held the reflection of a crescent moon, shivering gently with the current — still, silver, impossibly clear.

Yun Wan pulled off her shoes and socks, dipped her toes in to check the temperature, then remembered Xie Tingyun standing behind her.

"Are you bathing too?"

"I'll keep watch. Don't worry about me." He turned his face away, expression composed.

That didn't sit right with her.

"The pool's large enough," she said. "You take the left, I'll take the right. We bathe, we go back together." She added: "I won't look."

He glanced at her sideways. Then walked to the left without a word.

She waited until he was well out of sight before undressing and slipping in.

The water was warm and soft. It wrapped around her and she exhaled long and slow — the first real breath she'd taken since she arrived in this world, it felt like.

She looked at the surface. The spiritual seal still blurred her reflection. She unbound her hair, let it fan out around her in the water, then after a moment reached up and removed the seal entirely.

Her true face looked back at her.

The demon core or that night with Xie Tingyun — something had changed. Her features were sharper, more vivid. Dark brows, bright eyes, a warmth at the corners that pulled the gaze. Her skin under her fingers was smooth as poured water.

She thought briefly of the woman whose face and life this had originally been. Hoped she was somewhere good. Peaceful. Happy.

Yun Wan washed. The other side of the pool stayed quiet.

Xie Tingyun sat still in the water with his eyes closed, breathing measured, letting the spiritual energy seep into his meridians. His cultivation was recovering — slowly. He was barely at Enlightened. Another three years to reach his peak.

Three years. He could wait.

He was deep in the rhythm of it when something slippery pressed against him.

His heart lurched. He kept his eyes shut and said, evenly: "Stop."

It didn't stop.

"Wanwan."

Still nothing. He knew she wouldn't listen — and if he were honest, he wouldn't have minded much, except that the situation made it impossible. He reached his limit and opened his eyes.

An eel. Three feet long. Winding away through the water on its own business.

The breath left his body. He sank straight down, sending a ring of ripples across the surface.

"Xie Tingyun?" Yun Wan's voice carried across the water. "Are you alright?"

She swam over before he could answer.

The moon was full and high. He was half-submerged, long hair loose around him, expression fractured from its usual stillness — like something composed that had just been startled into honesty.

Yun Wan looked at him. Her gaze moved, without her entirely intending it to, from his face to his jaw, his throat, his collarbones — and stopped where the rippling water began.

She swallowed.

It took a real effort to get herself back.

"I heard a sound from your side," she said, firmly. "I came to check. That's all."

Xie Tingyun chose not to notice the look in her eyes. "There was an eel."

"Where?"

He paused. "On your leg."

Yun Wan looked down. Then reached into the water without thinking. "Don't be afraid — I'll get it off. An eel bite is dangerous, especially here—"

"Don't—"

Her hand was already in the water. She found it immediately, closed her fingers around it, and blinked. "This one's enormous." One roasted would be a full meal.

Xie Tingyun went very still. His breathing had changed.

Something was wrong. She could feel it without being able to name it, and then she heard his voice — low, rough, clipped: "I already killed the eel."

A long silence.

Yun Wan let go.

She looked at him. He looked back at her, his face a careful blank that somehow made everything worse.

She submerged herself completely.

She surfaced a few feet away, moving steadily toward the far bank, leaving behind only a string of bubbles.

Xie Tingyun watched them rise and scatter across the surface.

He pressed two fingers to his temple. Closed his eyes.

Let out a breath that had been waiting a while.

It was deeply, thoroughly uncomfortable.