The eastern bamboo grove had become a suffocating labyrinth.
"How does a useless forest like this never end?" Jun grumbled, his shrill voice cutting through the thick humidity. The slender man struck a green stalk with the back of his hand, trying to force a path through sheer brute strength. Sweat stained his worn silk tunic. "We've been marching north for weeks, brother! That old bastard's map said the ruins were only a few kilometers south. We're heading straight for the border of the mortal kingdoms. We'll be stoned like rabid dogs if we cross those village lines!"
The taller man, walking just ahead, swallowed his reply. His breathing was loud, heavy boots crushing dry leaves in an aggressive rhythm. The failed journey boiled beneath his ribs, yet he was a hunter accustomed to squeezing water from stones.
"The old man got the map wrong," the rough voice sounded, scarred face turned forward. "But my perception works, Jun. Qi flows in this direction. There's something buried in the middle of this weed plague that the mortal rats of this region don't know about."
Jun snorted, adjusting the sword sheath at his waist.
"A nest of filthy, stinking peasants. That's what we'll find. Let's turn back!"
The older man planted his boots in the earth. His broad, muscular shoulders tensed beneath his clothes.
"I need one more single resource," he sentenced, turning his brutal face. "My organs have already been tempered. My bones have gained the weight of steel. I only lack a pure catalyst for my foundation to overflow and my flesh to reach the Refined Body. With it, the Single Path Sect will have to kiss the dust where I walk. I refuse to return home empty-handed."
Jun fell silent in the same instant. The bitter warning suffocated the young man's exhaustion.
They resumed marching. The musty smell of the forest and physical exhaustion left both men's blood throbbing at their temples, nerves stretched like cords ready to snap at the first throat that crossed their path.
Then the suffocating density of the sea of stalks gave way.
The green and dark columns opened space. The weak light of the waning moon bathed a wide clearing, revealing the descent of a swift stream. And on the bank of smooth stones stood a small rustic bamboo cabin, isolated and silent.
Upon confronting the straw shack, Jun's mouth opened to spit a curse against the misery of the find.
The offense died choked at the base of his throat.
On the back veranda of the cabin, a woman was bent over a large bucket of raw wood. Her hands plunged into the cold water, wringing a thick linen sheet. She wore a simple faded blue cotton tunic, the wet fabric clinging to her slight silhouette. Her black and incredibly long hair cascaded down her bare back like a silk waterfall, the tips brushing the foam in the bucket.
The sound of boots crushing dead leaves at the edge of the clearing made the woman's hands stop. She straightened her torso and turned her face toward the forest.
Jun's heart missed a beat. The air emptied from the man's lungs with the brutality of a blow to the sternum.
The young woman's flesh gleamed beneath the faint silver glow of the moon with a translucent pallor, polished and immaculate like solid white jade under the moonlight. The fine neck, the vivid hot flush of her lips, and the abyssal, predatory darkness of her eyes tore through the miserable scene of the cabin with overwhelming symmetry. The inebriating, sweet odor of physical purity emanated from her, asphyxiating the musty smell of the forest and flooding the nostrils of both outsiders.
Jun's hands trembled. The outsider's legs locked, sinking into the earth, knees weakening before the anatomical and lethal weight of the perfection they faced.
Ahead of him, the older brother's breath cut the silence. The breath, previously controlled and rhythmic, became hissing, dragged, and heavy. The upright posture of a treasure hunter collapsed all at once, giving way to an animalistic lethargy. The man's chest rose and fell out of sync. The hungry gaze swept the girl's pale neck, the clear mark of breasts pressed beneath the damp cotton, rising to nail itself on the immaculate face.
The forager's calloused hands gripped his own thighs with brutality, knuckles paling against the worn silk. The warrior's teeth ground, mouth salivating in instant delirium. The murderous tension of the failed journey was entirely carbonized by the heat that boiled in the invader's groin upon discovering the flesh he would claim for himself.
He filled his lungs, forcing his broad shoulders to straighten and pushing the lethargy downward. The scarred face assumed a mask of rehearsed cordiality.
The hunter took the first step out of the tree line. The weak light of the waning moon could barely penetrate the dense canopy, leaving the yard in tones of silver and shadow. The boots dirty with mud and rotten dust crushed the damp earth, advancing toward the cabin.
"Madam," the rough voice sounded controlled, disguising the heat boiling in his veins. "Forgive our intrusion. We have been lost for weeks. We came seeking water and rest."
Yù Qíng sustained the gaze. The young woman's black irises descended from the imposing face of the forager directly to the filthy boots dirtying the soil a few steps from the veranda she had just purified with boiling water and ash soap. Disgust twisted the girl's stomach.
"The stream descends to your left," the velvety voice floated, sharp as mountain wind. "Wash your mouths and return to the brush."
The warrior's smile widened, stoked by the resistance of one accustomed to tearing treasures from smaller villages by pure sectarian force. He advanced two more steps, stopping at the edge of the bamboo veranda. The predatory gaze descended openly down the woman's pale neck, lingering on the curves beneath the wet cotton.
"The lady is severe with exhausted outsiders," he murmured, tone thickening into pure hunger. "The bamboo grove is treacherous. We can enter and wait a little. Is your husband in the cabin to receive us?"
Yù Qíng's fingers tightened on the twisted sheet over the washing stone. The foamy water ran between her pale knuckles, dripping into the wooden bucket.
The man interpreted her silence and the curving of her shoulders as the blind submission of the weak. He raised his calloused hand, stretching thick fingers toward the young woman's immaculate face, the intention of touching that jade skin overflowing in a torn, sadistic smile.
Yù Qíng's left hand abandoned the sheet and whipped through the air. The rapid movement was driven by the raw density of bones newly vitrified by the friction of Primordial Qi. The girl's cold, pale palm struck directly against the side of the invader's face.
Crack.
The dry, loud, hollow snap echoed above the noise of the stream.
The physical impact launched against the warrior was of disproportionate violence. The forager's broad body was thrown backward. His boots left the ground, and the man tumbled heavily, dragging his back across the beaten earth and raising a cloud of yellowish dust and dead leaves.
At the edge of the clearing, Jun's brain locked. He choked on his own breath, legs leaden on the soil, wide eyes following the flight and fall of his sworn brother.
The invader rolled on the ground, a strangled, wet groan bubbling from the bottom of his throat. He brought both trembling hands to his own face. The jaw was completely crushed. The lower bone had been torn from its axis, hanging loose and tearing the skin from within at a grotesque angle. Thick, dark blood gushed from split lips, soaking the collar of the worn silk tunic.
The aversion on Yù Qíng's face only increased at the sight of the blood pool beginning to stain the yard's earth.
"Filthy animals," she whispered, crimson lip tugging in revulsion as she plunged her palm into the icy water of the bucket to wash the skin that had touched the forager.
The fallen warrior growled. Pain tore the mask of cordiality, revealing burst blood vessels and eyes injected with vivid red. Thick blood boiled in his dilated veins against his neck, and his right hand descended instinctively toward the sword hilt.
At the entrance to the clearing, Jun's instincts screamed. A cutting cold rose up the slender young man's spine. The pressure in the bamboo grove's air changed suddenly, pushing dry leaves in a dense vortex.
Jun turned his face toward the trees to his right. Saliva dried in his mouth.
The wind in the bamboo grove died. The dry leaves stopped spinning, flattened against the earth by a sudden and brutal drop in atmospheric pressure.
The air of the clearing became asphyxiating, crushed by the implacable laws of ambient energy being violently dragged. Zhì Yuǎn's pores, breached dry hours earlier, acted as thousands of microscopic, famished fissures, sucking the world's Qi in a continuous flow and exhausting the space around.
The distance between the forest threshold and the veranda vanished.
Zhì Yuǎn crossed the ground. The newly refined body, linked to the infinite fuel his own skin now devoured from the wind, pulled the beaten earth with predatory weight.
The man with the broken jaw failed to grip the sword hilt. Zhì Yuǎn's immense, dark silhouette blocked the sunlight, completely swallowing the invader's horizon.
Zhì Yuǎn's right fist advanced.
The impact struck directly against the already disfigured center of the warrior's face. The frontal bone yielded beneath the massive density of that blow. The warm, calloused hand tore the skin, sinking into the forager's face until the knuckles. Dark blood sprayed into the air, mixing with warm pulp and shattered fragments of skull that moistened Yù Qíng's husband's palm.
The furious light in the forager's red eyes extinguished in the same thousandth of a second.
Zhì Yuǎn yanked his arm back with a short jolt. The sticky, hollow sound of suction echoed in the rustic yard. The hunter's broad body swayed, knees lost their base of support, and the carcass collapsed. Yellowish dust rose, absorbing the red, viscous pool that rapidly drained from the ruined head.
A few steps away, Jun's spine froze.
The slender young man dropped seated on the ground. The air emptied from his lungs in a suffocated gasp before the ambient vacuum. Trembling hands scratched the soil, pushing the thin body backward in desperate jolts, nails digging and groping the dirt without finding purchase.
"What kind of aberration…" the strangled hiss leaked from his throat. Wide eyes jumped from the ruined corpse of his sect brother to Zhì Yuǎn's hands dripping blood.
The hiss ceased abruptly.
Zhì Yuǎn hovered over him. The abyssal, unshakeable gaze bored into the huddled boy.
The man's left hand descended in a straight arc. Rigid fingers plunged into the center of Jun's abdomen, perforating the worn silk and musculature with the ease of solid iron piercing wet mud. Flesh yielded. Zhì Yuǎn sank his hand into the entrails, gripping the hot, throbbing root of the invader's vital organs with the cold precision of a slaughterhouse.
A foamy gurgle rose through Jun's throat. Dark blood gushed from half-open lips, staining his own chin and running down the silk.
Zhì Yuǎn twisted his wrist inside him.
The thin body stretched in a single violent spasm, irises rolling in their sockets before the entire structure softened and collapsed to the side over dead leaves, joining the definitive quiet of his brother.
Dense lethargy filled the space. Zhì Yuǎn straightened his torso. Both hands were stained with vivid, steaming red. Thick blood dripped from the tips of his calloused fingers, dirtying the stones Yù Qíng had purified earlier. His broad breathing maintained a calm, cadenced rhythm, chest rising and falling with the absolute tranquility of one who had just uprooted two weeds from the ground.
Yù Qíng remained where she was on the veranda, bare feet resting on the bamboo wood.
The girl's black gaze crossed the thick pool staining the clean earth of the yard, rising along her husband's dark tunic until it met the dripping hands and the face splattered with red. The young woman's expression cemented into a lake of static, indifferent ice.
She walked out from the protection of the shack.
Small steps crushed dead leaves, skirting the carcass with the torn abdomen. Yù Qíng stopped a palm's breadth from Zhì Yuǎn's chest. Her pale hands rose, icy fingers touching the man's jaw, sliding over the massacre-stained skin.
"A-Yuǎn," the velvety voice floated in the clearing's static, gentle and unperturbed. "You got dirty."
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his face. The dark gaze met hers. For a long second, the silence between them was absolute. Blood still dripped from his fingers, staining the faded blue of her dress. Yù Qíng welcomed the massacre's filth, tilting her face to press her cheek against her husband's rigid chest, inhaling the rusted-iron smell that permeated the air.
He passed an arm around her waist, squeezing her once — a short, almost automatic gesture from one confirming the root was still exactly where it should be.
The somber complicity silenced any words between them. Zhì Yuǎn crouched and grabbed the taller forager by the limp wrists. Yù Qíng turned to the second carcass, thin fingers closing around the heavy ankles of the thin man.
They marched in unison toward the depths of the eastern bamboo grove…
Where the forest closed in absolute darkness, iron shovels cut the soil. The earth yielded easily to the massive density of the man's musculature and the woman's resilience. The dull thud of flesh striking the bottom of the hole was quickly asphyxiated by the heavy sound of earth collapsing. The forest moisture sealed the grave, swallowing the existence of both invaders.
On the return to the cabin, the stream bank received them.
Zhì Yuǎn sank his hands into the icy current. The thick threads of blood and gray matter dissolved in the dark water. Yù Qíng knelt beside him on the smooth stones. She moistened a piece of cotton and scrubbed her husband's face, neck, and broad arms, methodically scraping every remnant of the carnage until his skin gleamed clean beneath the waning moon.
The cleaning ended. Zhì Yuǎn pulled his wife by the waist, lifting her slight body against his flank, and the two crossed the cabin threshold. The heavy wooden bar dropped against the door with a dry snap, locking the slats.
The world of sects, martial pride, and blood in the forest remained outside.
The darkness of the room exhaled the smell of damp wood and the burning sweat that began to break out on the man's skin again. Heavy, wet clothes fell to the floor. Zhì Yuǎn threw Yù Qíng onto her back against the clean straw of the bed, the weight of his broad musculature crushing the mattress and the girl's body all at once.
Zhì Yuǎn's thick, burning shaft aligned and drove into his wife's icy entrance in a single dry thrust, sinking the invasion to the root's limit.
Yù Qíng arched her spine, short nails tearing his broad back, lips releasing a strangled gasp. The brutal friction resumed in the penumbra. Hips collided with an implacable cadence, the density of the Refined Body making the bed planks creak with every thrust.
The millions of open pores on Zhì Yuǎn's skin acted as famished fissures, sucking the nocturnal air of the room, strangling the ambient pressure.
"Mine…" Yù Qíng gasped, voice faltering, thin thighs crushing the man's waist to keep him nailed to the bottom. "Only mine…"
Zhì Yuǎn's large, warm hand rose, calloused fingers threading through his wife's black hair, pulling Yù Qíng's nape to raise her pale face to meet his.
"Only yours," his grave, lethargic voice vibrated against her lips, heavy as the lead of his bones. The young man's dark gaze dissected the woman's dilated irises. "And you have no escape route to try to flee this, Qíng. Your flesh is locked to mine forever. The only woman I will breach and empty for all eternity is you."
The intoxicated, devoted smile bloomed on the young woman's face before the absolute command, and her teeth bit her own lip as he drove his hips with even more violence.
The heat exhaled by the effort injected his incandescent Yang directly into the girl's icy entrails. Days earlier, that torrent of purest fire would have fried the woman's mortal channels, forcing the man to assume the work of cooling.
The scenario now operated beneath the mature foundation. The invisible Mill at the center of Yù Qíng's sternum withstood the incandescent impact in absolute form. The Primordial Qi that had cemented the girl's body in previous nights had made the metaphysical iron structure permanent. When Zhì Yuǎn's invasive Yang collided against his wife's walls, Yù Qíng locked her own jaw, swallowed the burning load autonomously, and forced the rotation on her own.
She crushed his fire nine times inside herself. The brutal friction shattered the husband's aggressive matter, generating in the woman's veins a golden, sparse, purest flow. Primordial Qi. Yù Qíng absorbed it into her own marrow, feeding her own strength from carnal aggression.
Simultaneously, the physical limit of friction forced Yù Qíng's interior to convulse, milking from the girl's hollow depths the original, thick torrent of her lethargic Yin.
Zhì Yuǎn pulled his pelvis and sucked his wife's icy mass. The black ice flooded the man's channels. Rustic will activated the central axle of his own mental Mill, drove the energy teeth against the newly swallowed Yin, and turned the nine inversions. The cold was crushed until the structure shattered, gushing golden Primordial Qi directly into the young man's massive bones.
The gear now turned perfect, closed, and unbreakable. He fed her Mill with the invasive presence; she fed his Mill with the opposite receptivity. Each ground the other's sacrifice to cement their own advancement.
Dawn devoured the hours. The bamboo cabin creaked, sustaining the wet echo of colliding bodies. Shielded by the locked door and blood buried in the grove, the mutual possession spun and molded flesh, grinding the immensity of the exterior universe into an impenetrable rhythm of two.