No! He's only pretending. Don't fall for it. He's done this before.
Xiao Qingyue nodded quietly, keeping her face calm even though her heart was racing. She had slept fully dressed, just like every night now, ready for anything. When she woke up, she reached for the comb on the small wooden table beside the bed and started running it through her long dark hair with steady strokes. Before she could finish, Wu Qin stepped closer.
"Let me," he said softly, plucking the comb from her hand. He began brushing her hair himself, his movements surprisingly gentle.
Xiao Qingyue dared not refuse, but her body started shaking uncontrollably anyway. Old memories flooded back in an instant—the times he had seized her hair and smashed her head against the floor or the table. When he yanked it hard, it always felt as though her scalp would tear free from her skull. She tried to stay still, but the trembling only grew worse.
"Got Parkinson's? Quit shaking," he said with a light laugh.
"I…" She did not even understand the first part of what he said. The harder she tried to stop trembling, the more her shoulders shook.
Wu Qin could not help laughing a little more. "Silly girl, you just have to defy me, huh?"
"N-no… I'm not…"
He asked knowingly, tilting his head. "Then why are you still shaking?"
Xiao Qingyue wished the earth would open up and swallow her whole right there. "I… can't control it…"
"Cramp-prone constitution?" The corner of Wu Qin's mouth curled up in amusement. He knew full well she possessed an ancient ultra-sensitive divine-beast physique. It was innate. And she was beautifully curved, full-breasted and round-hipped. Her figure was perfect in every way.
After they finished breakfast together, Wu Qin passed the cultivation art to her without any warning. Xiao Qingyue never imagined he would actually teach her a technique, let alone a complete Heaven-grade art that even the Lingyun Sect did not possess. And it suited her perfectly, matching her ice-based foundation like it had been made for her alone.
Wait—what if there is something wrong with this art? she thought, her fingers tightening around the jade slip.
"It's fine," Wu Qin said, reading her hesitation easily. "If I wanted to harm you, I'd be less roundabout about it." After ten thousand years together in their previous life, he could read her thoughts like an open book.
Her heart chilled at his words. Could this man actually read minds? "I… didn't mean…" she started, but then decided to cultivate it anyway, even though doubts still lingered in the back of her mind.
Why was he doing this? Wasn't he afraid that once she grew strong she would escape—or one day defeat him? Was he really that confident in himself? He might pay for that arrogance someday. She seemed to glimpse a tiny ray of hope for the first time in ages, bit her lip softly, then lowered her head again so he would not notice the small spark in her eyes.
Wu Qin found it amusing. Xiao Yue Liang's tiny expressions—those secret flashes of delight mixed with fear—were almost hilarious to watch. No matter how hard she trained, as long as her great blood-feud remained unresolved and her Dao-heart stayed unsettled, she would remain stuck at the Golden Core Stage forever. A Dao-heart in turmoil could never form a Nascent Soul. That was the simple truth.
"I'm entering seclusion for a while," he told her calmly. "You may move about the mountain freely."
Xiao Qingyue hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Wu Qin reached out and patted her head gently. "Be good, and cheer up a little."
"Mm…" She watched him walk into the cave-dwelling and close the stone door behind him. Unease settled in her chest, but she did not dare act rashly or try anything foolish.
For seven full days she stayed obediently inside the mountain, focusing on cultivating the Frost-Phoenix Winter Canon. At its highest level, one could manifest a ten-thousand-zhang frost-phoenix dharma-form, freeze a hundred thousand li of land in an instant, and create a domain of absolute winter that nothing could break. It was extremely powerful. The art included a fist technique, a seal method, a movement skill, and two lethal finishing moves. It was far superior to her old Earth-grade Heart-of-Ice Art, with a ceiling so much higher that it almost felt unreal.
The Demon Lord truly was a Soul-Formation great cultivator. Only someone like him could obtain such peerless arts and then actually gift them away without hesitation. She kept wondering why he was not afraid of nurturing a tiger that would one day turn around and bite him. Still, she practiced every day without fail, letting the cold energy flow through her meridians and slowly strengthen her body.
One morning, while she was sitting quietly in the courtyard, a beautiful woman in green robes appeared on the mountain path. She looked to be in her thirties and carried herself with quiet grace. It was Bamboo Qing, the East Guardian among the Four Cardinal Guardians who served under Wu Qin.
"Madam, is the Lord in seclusion?" she asked respectfully.
"Mm," Xiao Qingyue replied softly.
Before she could say more, Wu Qin opened the cave door and stepped out. "What is it?" he asked.
"My lord, the Blood Sea Sect patriarch seeks an audience," Bamboo Qing answered. "He says there is urgent business that cannot wait."
"Old Blood-Drinker wants me?" Wu Qin muttered. "Doubt it's anything good." That power was one of the four great demon sects of the Southern Border, boasting half a million disciples. At its peak it had numbered close to a million. The entry threshold was low, so there were fewer mid- to high-tier experts, but their founder, Old Ancestor Blood-Sea, had been a Great-Tribulation demon titan. He once said that while humanity endured, so would the blood path. It was proof that the path had a truly lofty ceiling.
Wu Qin naturally cultivated a blood-path art himself, which was why the invitation made sense. Xiao Qingyue kept her head lowered as she watched him seize Bamboo Qing by the arm and vanish in a black streak across the sky.
They arrived at a pavilion where two Soul-Formation experts and seven Nascent-Soul cultivators had already gathered. The air felt heavy with demonic energy.
"Rakshasa Forest, the ancient Green-Emperor's legacy—an immortal art?" Wu Qin laughed, clearly disbelieving what he had just heard. At most it could add a century of life. Before reaching true immortality, what real longevity was there? As for wondrous treasures and rainbow lights appearing, that was ridiculous. Within the Qian Kingdom, so-called miracles had appeared many times over the years, and nine out of ten had turned out to be man-made traps set by demon or evil cultivators. They used arrays for blood-sacrificing the living, designed to lure naïve dreamers who hoped for great fortune and instant destiny. It was just like the scams he had seen in his past life back on Earth, the ones that tricked people into traveling to faraway places. They would refine victims into pills and seize all their resources. If a beauty appeared, they captured her alive. He had seen it all before.
Blood-Drinking Old Demon leaned forward and explained, "The center holds a dead-spirit zone. We suspect the legacy lies there. We found the entrance, but the restriction will likely target us demon cultivators."
"Indeed," another elder added. "We wait in ambush. Word has already spread, so righteous cultivators won't be able to resist coming. If they find the gate, we slip in and seize the chance. If not—we wipe them out."
Wu Qin remained calm the whole time. He glanced at the silver-templed yet spirited old man sitting nearby. "Ji Yan, your Yin Yang Sect is interested too?"
"Senior Wu, I'm interested in fairies," Ji Yan grinned lewdly. "These years the righteous fairies have grown cautious, yet I hear the Jade-Spectrum Fairy is striving for Nascent Soul. The Sun-Moon Fruit in Rakshasa Forest entices her. And Lingyun Sect's Dream-Cloud Fairy will likely come as well. I've coveted them for ages, heh…"
The Yin Yang Sect abounded in beauties. Its basic tenet was that lone yang cannot live and lone yin cannot grow—mutual aid and shared progress. Wu Qin had little interest in other women. Xiao Qingyue was hailed as the Southern Border's top beauty, and he had kept her at his side for two full years without rushing anything. It would happen eventually. In his past life, he had only claimed her first blood after ten long years, when she no longer resisted at all.
Ji Yan sighed dramatically. "Pity Fairy Qingyue is imprisoned by Lingyun Sect. If she went to Rakshasa Forest I'd snatch her back and keep her day and…"
The temperature in the room plummeted in an instant.
Bang—
Everyone stared in shock as Wu Qin slammed out a palm. Demonic flames surged wildly, sending Ji Yan crashing straight through the barrier and flying out of the pavilion.