The mountain peak was wrapped in a profound, crystalline quiet, a silence so complete it felt like a third, watchful presence. Moonlight, cold and silver blue, spilled over the wind swept summit, catching in the frost tipped grass like scattered shards of pearl and painting the jagged rocks in monochrome. At the center of the clearing, a small, dark lacquered table stood between two seated figures, an island of civilization in the wild heights.
The only sound was the gentle, rhythmic clink of porcelain as Xie Yingying poured tea with meticulous, practiced ease, her movements economical and precise, a ritual performed with unconscious grace. Delicate steam, smelling of ancient herbs and high mountain springs, curled upward like incense smoke before quickly dissipating into the chill, thin air.
The tea's fragrance lingered, light and grassy, with a subtle, warming depth that hinted at spiritual nourishment. Su Min's eyes lowered, lingering on the familiar, unfurling steeping leaves in her cup, recognizing their shape and color.
"You dried these yourself," she said quietly, the observation a simple recognition of effort and care.
Xie Yingying's lips curled into a faint, almost imperceptible smile. "You recognized them?"
"Mhm." Su Min lifted the cup, letting the warm, fragrant steam brush her face. "My plants, right? The bamboo spirit leaves from the south. I grew them specifically for soothing shattered meridians. They're difficult to cultivate."
"I heard tales of a healer who raised them like pets," Xie Yingying replied, her voice casual but honest, layered with hidden meaning. "They said her tea could settle even the most restless, damaged meridians. I found that… curious. So I sought some out."
Su Min hummed, noncommittal, and took a slow, appreciative sip. The flavor was sharp, clean, and faintly tasted of memory, a ghost from a quieter, more vulnerable past she had carefully buried. She never expected anyone to remember that obscure chapter of her life, or for the leaves she had nurtured to find their way back to her in such a way.
The silence that followed wasn't awkward, but deeply thoughtful, the kind that forms naturally between two people who know a shared secret they don't need to speak aloud. Below them, thick clouds blanketed the sleeping valley, their surfaces silvered by the moonlight, obscuring the world they're about to re enter. This moment was a rare, suspended pause in a world that offered few such respites.
"I always thought tea was an overrated mortal affectation," Xie Yingying said, swirling the pale, golden liquid in her own cup with idle fingers. "A waste of time. But this… isn't bad. It has a certain clarity."
Su Min gave a soft, breathy snort of genuine amusement, the sound low and rare in the stillness. "High praise."
"From me? It's," Xie Yingying affirmed, her tone dry.
Su Min looked up. Xie Yingying wasn't smiling, but her usual cool detachment had thinned at the edges. Her dark eyes, usually reserved and ancient, held a flicker of genuine, human warmth, a small crack in her immortal facade.
"You've changed," Su Min said, the observation slipping out unbidden. "From the first time we met. You're less… rigidly sealed. Less like a perfect, dangerous statue carved from ice."
"I suppose I have," Xie Yingying conceded, her gaze turning distant but not cold. "Or maybe I've just remembered how to act human. The gestures, the small courtesies. They must be relearned after a long sleep."
That drew a quiet, genuine laugh from Su Min, a soft sound that seemed to chase the lingering chill from the air around them.
"I was never good at small talk," Xie Yingying continued, her voice a low murmur, confessing a social inability that stemmed from a lifetime of being revered and feared. "Not as a Holy Maiden. Everyone either wanted something from me, or feared what they wanted. And then I slept through a few centuries. That isn't exactly conducive to good social graces."
Su Min didn't press her, simply reaching forward to pour them both another cup, the gesture a silent offering of more time and a safe space.
After a comfortable pause, Xie Yingying leaned forward, her arms resting on the low table, her wide sleeves fluttering softly in the mountain breeze.
"Have you ever heard of the Heavenly Yin Sect?"
Su Min frowned faintly, searching the vast depths of her comprehensive knowledge. "No… I haven't. The name doesn't sound familiar, even in the ancient histories I've studied."
Xie Yingying let out a soft breath, a note of quiet resignation settling over her like a fine layer of dust. "I'm not surprised. No one remembers it anymore. It's as if it never was."
Her gaze drifted upward to the full, luminous moon, its face clear and bright. "It was once a great sect. Ancient. Proud. But that was long, long before the Heavenly Decay began to ravage the world. You know the curse, the one that strikes every cultivator above the early Golden Core stage, where their power turns volatile and their lifespan bleeds away like sand through a cracked hourglass."
Su Min nodded slowly, her silent, focused attention an unspoken invitation for Xie Yingying to unburden herself.
"My sect tried everything," Xie Yingying's voice darkened, shadowed by the memory of a millennia long, slow death. "Every secret art, every forbidden ritual. But in the end… it claimed everyone. Not by battle. Not by betrayal. Just time. And the heavens themselves turning against us. I watched them all fade away."
"I was supposed to awaken much later," she said, her lips curving, thin and bitter. "Near the prophesied opening of the Golden Core Avenue. That was the plan. A strategic reemergence. But instead, I was dragged awake three centuries too early by a fool with more ambition than sense."
"And then you suddenly decided to strike at me," Su Min finished, an echo of their violent, chaotic first meeting.
"Clashing blades. Measuring strength. Not exactly the traditional start to a fruitful alliance." A faint, wry smirk touched Xie Yingying's mouth.
"True. But somehow… here we're." Su Min watched the tea leaves settle at the bottom of her cup, a quiet admission of the strange, winding path they had taken to reach this shared summit.
Xie Yingying's dark eyes turned intent, focusing on Su Min with renewed intensity. "And you? You've yet to tell me anything truly real about yourself. You're a collection of facts, not a story."
"Everything I've said has been true," Su Min replied, a hint of wariness entering the depths of her gaze. "Just not everything worth knowing."
"Clever dodge."
"It's a useful skill for survival."
"I did some digging," Xie Yingying said, her voice dropping to a near whisper, making the confession feel intimate and charged. "Just to understand. I needed to know who I was choosing to fight beside. Who I was trusting."
Su Min remained impassive, but the subtle tension in her shoulders lessened almost imperceptibly. She knew what was coming. She'd been waiting for it.
"I found a ghost," Xie Yingying said simply. "A wandering alchemist in the southern frontier. Hidden deep in the mist veiled mountains. You treated wounds, healed illnesses, asked for nothing but herbs and ores as payment. You saved people, Su Min. Quietly. Consistently. Without letting anyone name you saint or sinner. You just… did the work. For years."
Su Min's hands curled slightly in her lap, the only sign of her discomfort. "You make it sound noble. It was just practical."
"It is noble," Xie Yingying countered, her voice unwavering and clear. "But I also found the rest. The Su Clan. Wiped from the records. Executed for a rebellion they never joined. Erased."
"I was fourteen," Su Min said softly, her voice flat, the practiced monotone of someone reciting a deep, old trauma that had been carved into her soul. "Too young to stop it. Too old to pretend it never happened."
"The Yong Prince rebelled, and we were accused of backing him. At that time, my father had already pledged our allegiance to the Emperor. But we had ties, old friendships and kinship bonds. That was enough," Su Min continued, as if reciting something she had once read in a history scroll about another family entirely.
"They came during the evening meal. My parents were dragged away. My uncles tried to reason, my elder cousin resisted, but it did not matter. The decree had already been sealed. After weeks of torture masked as interrogation, they carried out the sentence. Execution at dawn."
She paused, her fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on her teacup.
"My father… he bargained with his last breath. Begged them to spare me. Promised I would be no threat. And in a way, they listened."
Xie Yingying's brows knit slightly. "You survived."
Su Min gave a humorless smile. "That depends on what you call survival. I buried my family. I still remember the smell of blood mixed with rain. But mercy," she said the word like it tasted of ash, "meant being sold."
She exhaled, her voice dropping low. "A fallen noble girl makes for excellent stock. Educated, well-bred, defanged. The Chunhong Brothel took me in before the ashes of our ancestral hall were even cold."
The mountain wind stirred again, this time with a sharper, colder edge, as if sympathizing with the memory.
"I escaped," she said, and for the first time, there was unyielding steel under the calm surface. "I did not know then that the brothel was more than just a pit of indulgence. Its mistress was not just a trafficker. She was a cultivator, feeding on the vitality of young girls to restore her strength. And me…"
"You were exceptional," Xie Yingying said quietly.
"Yes," Su Min said, her eyes reflecting the cold starlight. "She could smell it on me. My talent. My latent qi. If she devoured me, she would have returned to her peak in a single night."
"That old witch from the Hehuan Sect?" Xie Yingying asked, her voice quiet, a shared recognition of ancient evils and their practitioners.
Su Min nodded once, a sharp, decisive motion. "The Emperor feared what I might become. They were allies. His soldiers hunted me across three provinces, like a dog chasing a rabbit."
She leaned back, her eyes looking far into the past, where the world was painted in fire and terror. "In early autumn, they cornered me in the Minshan range. Hundreds of men. I had a simple choice, die by the sword or die by the flames. I rode straight into the forest fire they had set. They didn't expect that. They thought I would choose a cleaner death."
"The Jishui River was just beyond," Su Min continued, her gaze fixed on the impassive moon as if it were a witness to her past. "Massive, kilometers wide, raging with the autumn melt. I had one chance. I pushed everything I had, every last drop of qi and will to live, into the soles of my feet and leapt."
A beat of heavy silence hung between them, the image of that desperate leap vivid in the cold air.
"My boots kissed the water. And I ran across it. I didn't sink."
Xie Yingying blinked, a rare show of pure, unguarded surprise at the sheer audacity and impossibility of the action. "You ran across the Jishui? That's…"
"I didn't stop to check if I could. I just ran." She opened her eyes, the present returning to her gaze. "And when I made it across, I collapsed. Half dead from exertion and burns. But free. That night, I stopped being the last daughter of the Su Clan. And I started being just Su Min. Only Su Min."
Xie Yingying finally broke the long silence that followed, her voice softer than the moonlight surrounding them. "I'm sorry."
Su Min shook her head, a firm, dismissive motion. "Save that. It doesn't change anything. Sorry doesn't bring back the dead."
"No," Xie Yingying agreed, her tone solemn. "But it explains something. It makes sense of what I couldn't understand before."
Su Min turned her head slightly, brows raised in quiet question. "Explains what?"
"Why you're still kind."
Su Min paused, genuinely taken aback by the statement. "I'm not," she said after a beat, the denial reflexive. "I just… It's a transaction. A simple exchange. I need herbs, ores. They bring them. I treat their wounds. That's all. There's no kindness in it."
She stared down at the tea's surface, moonlight rippling in its reflection. "I did not want to be a hero. I just wanted to survive."
"And yet, you managed to do both," Xie Yingying said, her words gentle yet unwavering, refusing to let the truth be dismissed. "You survived a hell that would've broken anyone else into a monster, and you chose to heal instead of harm. That's a choice, Su Min. That's kindness."
Another hush settled over the peak, deeper and more contemplative than the last. Then, Xie Yingying spoke again, her voice a low murmur, offering an unsettling piece of insight, a shared secret from the annals of forgotten history.
"She wasn't always like that, you know," Xie Yingying said, shifting the topic to the brothel mistress. "The Demon Queen you escaped."
Su Min glanced up, quietly surprised by the sudden, profound shift in the conversation.
"The cultivator who marked you for death," Xie Yingying continued. "She was born with a Ghost Body, rare, coveted. A physique made for spiritual seduction and draining life force. But no one cared about that at first. She was sold, by her own mother. To a place like the brothel that held you."
A gust of wind passed through, shaking tiny, glistening droplets of dew from the nearby pine needles.
"She lived as livestock until her physique awoke," Xie Yingying said, her tone matter of fact yet laced with a thread of pity. "When it did, she drained the men who came to her, taking their essence, their power, their lives. That's how she obtained her first cultivation method. But from that day on, she had a taboo. One word she would've never tolerated hearing, a word that could send her into a killing rage."
Su Min spoke it softly, the word hanging heavy and poisonous in the thin mountain air. "Mother."
Xie Yingying nodded. "No matter how powerful she became, how high she climbed into the ranks of the Hehuan Sect… that's word was poison to her. It broke her more than the brothel ever did. Sometimes, monsters are just what girls become when no one ever lets them be anything else."
The simmering, old fire of hatred in Su Min's gaze dimmed, then cooled into something more complex and weary. The understanding was there, but the hatred remained, a cold stone in her gut. "She was still a monster. She still chose to prey on the weak."
"She was," Xie Yingying agreed without hesitation. "And she did."
They sat like that for a long time. Quiet. Still. Two women marked by trauma, two ghosts from different worlds sitting beneath the same moonlight, living anyway, breathing in and out.
Companions, if not yet friends, bound by a shared understanding deeper than any sworn oath could ever be.
Beneath them, the demon they had come to face stirred again in its prison of earth and shadow. The ground trembled faintly, just a breath, a subtle vibration through the rock, but it was enough. A stark reminder of the violence and chaos that waited in the valley below, the reason for their alliance.
Then, as the moon reached its zenith, casting the world in its brightest, most revealing light, a foul, concentrated deathly aura surged from the heart of the valley, ripping through the peaceful night. The scent of sulfur and rotting decay choked the clean, cold air, a palpable wave of corruption.
"It's emerged."
In an instant, the tea was forgotten. The moment of peace shattered. Both women stood in perfect unison, the transition from contemplative silence to lethal intent instantaneous and seamless. Their faces hardened, eyes sharpening as they locked onto the source of the disturbance far below. A palpable, crushing pressure pulsed upward from the valley, a spiritual weight that felt heavier, stronger than either of them had anticipated. A Corpse King at the Golden Core level had broken free of its earthly cocoon, bringing its ancient, mindless malice into the world. The pause was over. The battle had begun.