He wanted to ask more, but upon probing, he found these stones truly just stones—unopened intelligence, muddled and ignorant, only slightly better than cats or dogs.
Once washed clean, Mu Daoying was pushed into a warming room and made to change into prepared clothes.
His black hair was patiently dried with jasmine-infused incense, his nails carefully trimmed, his entire body coated with a fine, creamy balm scented like orchid and musk.
His brows finely drawn, lips tinted.
Mu Daoying pressed his lips, his face coldly stern and flushed—not from shyness, but anger.
When had he ever suffered such humiliating treatment?
Finally, everything was prepared. The stones pushed and shoved Mu Daoying around the deep corridor. A headwind of night rain pelted them.
They arrived before a warming room, lit with cozy glow.
The stones shoved him through the door and scattered chittering.
Mu Daoying focused intently on the woman in the candlelight.
Liu Qiao’e wore white robes, hair loose, holding a volume of Buddhist scripture, reading under the lamp.
The misty, warm lamplight illuminated her face.
Only then did Mu Daoying notice that the real Liu Qiao’e actually had a short, round face, with a slightly upturned nose tip and plump lips. The lamplight adorned her ink-black temple hair, softening her gaunt, stern chill, adding a touch of endearing simplicity.
The night rain rustled irritably, and the Buddhist scripture was obtuse and incomprehensible.
It spoke of something like “From love arises worry, from love arises fear…” All nonsense—the Buddha was truly absurd and unromantic!
She wasn’t very literate—just enough to get by. For rare characters, she stared blankly, seeing them as blocky squares with extra limbs, mutually unrecognizable.
Irritated in her heart, Liu Qiao’e tossed the scripture aside casually—and met Mu Daoying’s gaze head-on.
Mu Daoying pressed his lips, suddenly realizing he had stared at Liu Qiao’e for far too long—truly improper.
But anyone who had gone through his ordeal would be curious about the relation between Liu Qiao’e and the Immaculate Old Mother.
Real? Illusion? Under the candlelight, Liu Qiao’e’s expression was hazy, giving Mu Daoying a sense of falling into a dream.
Even at this point, he was still distracted.
Liu Qiao’e’s face darkened at once. She said coldly, “Didn’t they teach you manners?”
Mu Daoying snapped back to attention, unable to suppress the disgust toward her that welled up again in his heart.
“Youngster is ugly and crude, temperament foolish, oblivious to romance. In terms of cultivation, he is far inferior to Old Mother. A nameless nobody, a criminal under punishment—how dare he offend a senior expert.” Mu Daoying lowered his eyes, unwilling to look at her anymore. “Grateful for Old Mother’s favor, yet he hopes Old Mother will retract the order.”
“Ugly?” Liu Qiao’e sneered, walking barefoot up to him. “When did Daoist Mu learn to lie, holding so firmly to purity and truth?”
Her stature was short, reaching only to Mu Daoying’s chest.
The youth’s black hair hung loose, his eyelashes drooping. They had not given him shoes; a pair of snow-white feet lay bare.
His waist was extremely slender, the heavy gauze sleeves veiling wrists as white as fresh snow.
As she drew close to Mu Daoying, a burst of jasmine fragrance suddenly assaulted Liu Qiao’e’s nose and mouth. Who knew how much thick perfume those stone servants had slathered on him? The rich aroma nearly gave her the illusion of suffocation.
Yet when it entered her nostrils, she sensed a chill of desolation, like sharply inhaling winter wind laced with fine snow.
That was Mu Daoying’s natural scent, snapping her awake in an instant.
Liu Qiao’e’s gaze traced inch by inch over his skin, admiring him bit by bit, as if appraising a porcelain beauty.
Under the lamplight, his skin gleamed with a luster like polished jade and bone. Due to his injuries and illness, he carried even more of a frail, delicate charm reminiscent of misty riverside willows.
Her memories rewound rapidly over those few short steps.
As if retreating to that spring day of petals flying in the vast sky, the youth in snow-white robes wielding his sword with elegant flair.
The girl, just awakening to love, offered him a bowl of water.
The youth nodded slightly, his tone cool yet gentle, polite but distant.
How could a mere rat covet the moon in the sky?
If she wished, he was nothing more than an object in her palm to grind at will!
Her gaze involuntarily fell to his hands—men’s hands, long and broad, bearing thin sword calluses.
Liu Qiao’e liked to judge people by their hands. Mu Daoying’s were distinctly jointed, refined like plum branches, faint blue veins like slender dragons crouching beneath thin skin, exuding restraint and forbearance.
Sometimes, staring at the finest details could induce a dizziness, a swelling in the head, a trance of the eyes and spirit.
Liu Qiao’e felt her steps grow unsteady, as if she had drunk much wine, the fumes heating her cheeks till they burned, her vision darkening, her limbs softening.
“Ning Xia.” She breathed the two words softly.
The night rain moistened the green mountains, soaked the eaves, dimmed the candle flames.
The candle flames rippled faintly.
Those two short words twisted with a hundred shades of tenderness from her lips.
Mu Daoying saw her cheeks flushed crimson, as if deeply drunk on fine wine, revealing a dazed, shy, girlish demeanor.
Hearing his own courtesy name again, he was secretly alarmed.
Liu Qiao’e’s heart pounded. With those words on her tongue, she grew dizzy and swollen-headed for a moment.
Liu Qiao’e rose on tiptoe, reached out, and lightly stroked his temple, murmuring lowly, “Your courtesy name is Ning Xia, isn’t it?”
Mu Daoying’s hair stood on end; he steadily retreated half a step. “Ying failed to recognize Mount Tai. The day before yesterday, he offended Old Mother greatly—please,Old Mother, do not hold this humble one’s faults against him, show great tolerance.”
Liu Qiao’e’s face stiffened; her whole body froze in place.
The youth was silent for a beat, then closed his eyes in humiliated endurance. “Even if Old Mother harbors resentment, why humiliate the youngster like this?”
Liu Qiao’e dropped her hand, as if startled awake, looking left and right. “You think I’m humiliating you?”
Mu Daoying pressed his lips shut, refusing to answer.
Liu Qiao’e’s face paled and flushed by turns, like a massive storm descending upon her. Her eyes flickered with shock and pain, her complexion ashen as a corpse, as if she had never suffered such shame.
Mu Daoying opened his eyes, startled. He had never expected Liu Qiao’e’s reaction to be so intense.
“A dog slave who refuses a toast only to drink a forfeit.” Liu Qiao’e flew into a rage, flipping her wrist to deliver a slap that split Mu Daoying’s lip and swelled his cheek high.
Yet Mu Daoying swiftly lowered his gaze and retreated another step.
Liu Qiao’e eyed him coldly. “Joyous Union Palace never keeps idlers. Either become my plaything, or die.”
Mu Daoying gathered his tattered sleeves, saying with humiliated forbearance, “Please, Old Mother, grant a quick end.”
Liu Qiao’e’s fury exploded; the girlish shyness and tender affection vanished from her face.
To be her favored pet was more intolerable than death?
She glared at him with hatred. Mu Daoying had always known how to insult a person’s body and soul with his aloof, indifferent air, oblivious and detached.
“I won’t kill you.” Liu Qiao’e spat in utmost hatred, flicking her sleeve. The blood snake within seemed to sense its master’s rage and shot out like lightning.
Mu Daoying twisted aside, dodging the first strike with startling speed.
But he evaded the first lash, not the second.
The Blood Rakshasa flashed like lightning—first flash still several zhang away, second right before him.
A Cave Nether Realm cultivator’s divine soul communed with all things; the Blood Rakshasa’s motion matched the swift, brutal changes of thunder, impossible for the naked eye to track clearly.
In truth, Mu Daoying had clashed with the Blood Rakshasa only twice and dodged the first strike, already mildly surprising Liu Qiao’e.
The second lash came; Mu Daoying vaguely glimpsed its path.
But it was too fast.
So fast that though he slightly discerned it, his body could not react. The next instant, pain stabbed his knee as the blood snake bit both knees.
Mu Daoying staggered and knelt to the ground.
Liu Qiao’e said, “You’ve resolved not to yield to me.”
Mu Daoying still said, “This humble one vowed long ago to unite this body with the Great Dao, far from the sufferings of love and desire. He hopes Old Mother retracts the order.”
“Fine.” Liu Qiao’e trembled with humiliated fury, sneering coldly. “Then kneel here. I want to see how long you can hold out.”
Mu Daoying fell utterly silent and truly knelt without rising.
For three straight days, he neither ate nor drank, neither spoke nor moved, like a frozen ice sculpture.
Days of torment made him wither rapidly; his back sharpened like a honed bamboo shoot, straight and keen, nearly piercing through the loose black Daoist robes.
After that night, Liu Qiao’e had flung those words and turned to leave the Warm Pavilion.
This Warm Pavilion lay within Approaching Fragrance Hall, the former palace lord’s gathering place for favored pets.
When Liu Qiao’e took over the palace lord position, she naturally inherited this den of pleasure-seeking.
Climbing from rural village wife to Joyous Union Palace lord had not been easy; she had once yielded against her will to roles she truly loathed.
Thus, after reaching the pinnacle of power, she grew indifferent to male-female passions, even somewhat repulsed by sexual matters.
Yet she was no transcendent pure being untouched by mortal desires. Approaching Fragrance Hall still housed over a dozen male favorites, each handsome as heavenly immortals or jade figures.
Liu Qiao’e’s hot-and-cold whims left them limp and entranced, souls overturned, pining day and night in resentment and longing.
Everyone awaited Old Mother’s scraps of affection; Mu Daoying’s arrival stood like a lone peak, ringing alarm bells for the other male lords.
Women were said to love vying for favor out of jealousy.
But men—especially those immersed in Old Mother’s power—their scheming against each other, their sharp confrontations, were far more ruthless than women’s by a hundredfold.
The crowd of male lords refrained from rash action, merely watching the shifting tides silently.
Yet though Mu Daoying was forced to kneel long in the Warm Pavilion, he never truly bent the knee.
His spot was poorly chosen, by the window where night winds blew in, bone-chilling.
Fortunately, a white magnolia branch stretched slantwise into the pavilion, its pale jade petals brimming with rainwater, drooping heavily. Parched to extremity, Mu Daoying chewed magnolia petals to swallow a bit of rain.
On the third day, Liu Qiao’e finally appeared, asking him, “Thought it over?”
Mu Daoying’s wrists were slender and frail, black hair draping obediently down his back. He bowed with hands clasped. “Ying has thought it through very clearly, very thoroughly. He earnestly begs Old Mother to retract the order.”
Liu Qiao’e flew into a rage and kicked at his chest.
Mu Daoying’s hand shot out like lightning, seizing her ankle.
Liu Qiao’e never anticipated that, so frail, he had secretly gathered such strength!
From the moment her ankle lay gripped in his palm, it was as if a thunderbolt struck her body and soul; she went limp all over.
But Mu Daoying merely glanced calmly at her and released his grip.
Liu Qiao’e recovered, lashing out left and right with over a dozen slaps. “Insolent! I see you’ve knelt yourself stupid.”
She glared with bulging eyes, fury blazing, water shimmering unclearly within—whether from humiliated rage or something else.
Mu Daoying saw her almond eyes, black and gleaming, radiant with sidelong glances rippling like waves. A untimely, hidden embarrassment stirred in his heart, like stumbling upon a stranger’s secret affair.
Yet he had no intention—or rather, deliberately avoided probing—her current state of mind.
Her shrill voice exploded by his ear; Mu Daoying found it noisy.
Days of torment left him utterly weary.
Seeing she still refused, he simply closed his eyes to rest.
Liu Qiao’e had been cursing fiercely, but the more she cursed, the more hollow she felt inside. Mu Daoying gave no response.
Her voice softened involuntarily as she looked at him.
A magnolia petal had fallen to his collar.
His black hair draped softly; unknowingly, he had closed his eyes and fallen into deep sleep amid the flowers.