Qīng Yì marched through the white stone corridors. His fingers clenched the hilt of his sword so tightly that his knuckles ached.
Imperial offense. Stripped of his title. Lín Jié's words were nothing but noise now. The secretary was a coward. Old Yáo, a useless relic. Yǔ was far too pure to lie with an unknown outsider; she could only be kept inside under threat, and he was the only man in the clan willing to dirty his hands for her.
He crossed the entrance arch of the Autumn Wind Pavilion.
The inner courtyard was perfectly normal. The late-afternoon wind swayed the willow leaves in a lazy motion. The water of the artificial lake flowed quietly. There were no activated matrices, no strange smells, no murderous aura.
At the top of the small staircase, in front of the double cedar doors, the two elite guards of the Qīngluán clan maintained impeccable posture. Their hands rested on the hilts of their long swords.
Qīng Yì climbed the steps with hard footsteps.
"Stand aside," he ordered, stopping three steps away. "I need to speak with Master Yǔ."
The two women did not blink. The guard on the left took a step forward, blocking access to the doors.
"Young Master," the warrior's voice sounded polite but inflexible. "Master Qīng Yǔ has issued strict orders. Absolute isolation. No one is to approach these doors."
"This is an internal emergency of my faction," he lied, his voice rising in pitch. He thrust his left hand into the sleeve of his tunic and pulled out two jade flasks, holding them out. "Thirty Qi Condensation pills and an entire month of my faction's spiritual stone quota for each of you. Take them. Just turn your backs for ten seconds and let me knock on the door."
The guards looked at the jade flasks and then at the Young Master's sweaty face. Neither of them moved a muscle to take the bribe.
"Our loyalty does not belong to your faction, Young Master," the second guard answered, her right hand now gripping the sword hilt firmly. "And it is not for sale. Please step back. If you take one more step, we will be forced to sound the intrusion alarm."
Qīng Yì's face twisted. The humiliation of being blocked and rejected by two mere guards was the spark that detonated the last drop of his sanity.
"You ungrateful bitches."
Qīng Yì did not draw the sword from its scabbard. As a cultivator of the 3rd Transcendent Stage, he was far faster than they were.
He advanced in a blur. Before the first guard could draw her blade or shout, the heavy base of Qīng Yì's Deep Silver scabbard struck her temple with a dry crack. She collapsed limp onto the stone floor.
The second guard's eyes widened and she opened her mouth to sound the alarm, but Qīng Yì spun and drove his knee into her stomach, cutting off her breath instantly. With a quick strike to the nape of her neck, the second woman crumpled onto the steps, unconscious.
The courtyard returned to its normal silence. The wind continued swaying the willows, indifferent to the crime he had just committed against his own clan.
Qīng Yì took a deep breath, stepping over the body of the unconscious guard, and stopped in front of the heavy cedar door. Sanity had already abandoned him completely.
He raised his fist and pounded the wood three times, the hollow sound echoing loudly in the evening silence.
"Yǔ! It's me!" he shouted, his voice tearing his throat, his chest inflated by the illusion of bravery. "Get away from the door! I'm going to break the locks and get you out of there!"
The heavy cedar panel slid slowly along the stone track.
The air that leaked from inside the room struck Qīng Yì's face before he could even see the interior. It was a wave of dense, stifling heat, loaded with a heavy scent of sandalwood and the musky, sweet, unmistakable odor of recent sweat and sex.
Qīng Yǔ stopped on the threshold.
The Saint Healer of the Twin-Faced Empire was not wearing the impeccable, starched blue silks the clan was accustomed to revering. She wore only a loose robe, the collar carelessly open down to the curve of her breasts. Her pale neck, collarbone, and the upper swell of her chest were covered in purple marks and fresh love bites. Her black hair, always pinned up with expensive pins, hung disheveled over her shoulders, stuck to her damp skin.
The shock was so brutal that Qīng Yì's hand froze on the hilt of his sword.
He widened his eyes, his mind short-circuiting, desperately struggling to deny the image. He searched for marks of chains, for containment seals, for any sign that she was injured or fighting for her life.
There was nothing. There was only the heavy exhaustion of a sated woman.
Qīng Yǔ's blue eyes, cloudy with lethargy, lowered from his face to the stone steps.
When she saw the bodies of her two guards lying unconscious on the ground, the laziness on the fairy's face vanished. The air around her dropped ten degrees in a fraction of a second. Irritation transformed into a murderous intent so cold it cut through the heat of the courtyard.
Qīng Yì took half a step back, his voice failing in his throat.
"Yǔ…" he stammered, his chin trembling. "What… what kind of poison did he use on you? That guy… he drugged you, didn't he? Say he forced you! I'll go in there, Yǔ, I'll kill—"
"Shut up." Qīng Yǔ's voice came out hoarse and low, cutting off his outburst like a blade of ice.
She neither retreated nor tried to cover her marked chest. The fairy took a step out of the threshold, her eyes gleaming with a dangerous, ancient blue he had never seen in her before.
"You assault my guards on my doorstep," she stated, her flat tone vibrating with the pressure of a cultivation suddenly far denser and more terrifying than what she had possessed three days ago. "You shout in my courtyard. And worse than that… you woke my Lord."
The ground under Qīng Yì's boots seemed to vanish.
"Your… Lord?" he whispered, his face losing all color. The words shattered the last protective barrier of his ego.
Qīng Yǔ did not bother to answer. Her gaze fell on him with the same contempt reserved for an insect that lands on food.
The fairy raised her hand and gave a light flick in the air with the sleeve of her robe.
There was no illusory technique, only a detonation of brute force. The air exploded against Qīng Yì's chest.
The Young Master of the 3rd Transcendent Stage was hurled backward like a straw doll, the sword slipping from his fingers. He flew down the steps and collided violently against the stone garden wall more than ten meters away.
Crack.
The sound of three ribs breaking echoed loudly. Qīng Yì spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the white marble, falling to his knees, unable to draw air into his crushed lungs.
When he raised his eyes, trembling and crying from pain and disbelief, Qīng Yǔ was already pulling the heavy cedar door shut again.
"If you take one more step into this pavilion," her voice sounded one last time, cold and absolute, through the cracks in the wood, "I will tear your head off myself."
Bang.
The celestial locks sealed the pavilion once more, leaving the ruined hero bleeding alone in the courtyard.
Qīng Yì remained collapsed against the wall. Every gasp tore at his chest, the fractured ribs grating against flesh. He braced his hands on the cold ground, fingers dirty with blood, struggling to stand.
The physical pain faded before the collapse in his mind.
He was nearly forty years old. He had spent decades leeching the faction's resources to sustain the 3rd Transcendent Stage. Qīng Yǔ was much younger. Three days ago she had been stuck at the 2nd Stage. He was superior. He was supposed to protect her.
But the blow that had thrown him had not come from a deep martial technique or an offensive matrix. It had been a casual flick. A blast of raw Qi that tore through his defense like paper.
Her words echoed, colder than the stone under his body: "You woke my Lord."
Qīng Yì let out a choked laugh, staining his chin with blood, his mind finally cleared by the pain. There was no poison. There was no coercion. He was no hero at all. He was only a fool, swept aside like an insect by the woman he had come to "save."
At the top of the staircase, one of the guards let out a weak moan on the marble.
Qīng Yì did not wait. Holding the left side of his ribs, he clenched his teeth to hold back the cry of pain and forced his boots against the ground until he stood.
Stumbling, leaning on the corridor columns so he would not collapse, he left the courtyard of the Autumn Wind Pavilion behind. The Deep Silver saber, an artifact that had cost years of his faction's resources, remained lying in the garden dust, forgotten, while the ruined figure disappeared into the gloom.