The gratitude was genuine. That was the worst part — or the best part, depending on whose perspective you asked. The divine qi he had poured into them through hours of sex had done what decades of training, pills, and meditation couldn't. It had shattered their bottlenecks like glass. The golden pillars of light that had shot through the roof and into the sky were proof. The entire capital had seen it. Two more women, blessed by the Breeding Immortal.
Shen Ling's crush — that breathless, embarrassing infatuation that had started when she looked up at his Dharma body in the sky and thought 'he's beautiful' — had transformed overnight into something deeper. Not love, not exactly. Closer to devotion. The kind of attachment that forms when someone gives you something you desperately wanted and couldn't get yourself, and the giving came wrapped in so much pain and pleasure that your brain stopped sorting the two apart.
