Shen Nanyin looked quietly at the hand forced into his, clasped with Cheng Xueyi’s.
Her hand was small and very soft. Ordinarily, a hand like that would be fragile and weak, something he could crush with the slightest effort.
But Cheng Xueyi’s strength was nothing to underestimate. He hadn’t even exerted himself yet, and she’d nearly crushed his hand instead.
It was as if, should he dare pull away, or so much as say the word “no,” she would break his hand for it.
Perhaps the night was too beautiful.
Or perhaps he really was too tired, his mind briefly dazzled by her radiant smile under the moonlight.
He failed to withdraw his hand in time.
Shen Nanyin paused a moment, then, with a deft twist, drew his hand back—slowly, but firmly—and said, “It’s warm.”
“Junior Sister’s hand is warm. You’re much better now.”
Cheng Xueyi looked at her hand, freed from his grip. Shen Nanyin’s spiritual energy was gentle as water, just like his cultivation root, and without her even realizing it, it had “washed” her away.
“Thanks to Eldest Senior Brother’s blessing.”
Cheng Xueyi answered without much sincerity, lowering her head to stare at her own hand, touching her fingers now and then, wearing a thoughtful expression that suddenly made the hand Shen Nanyin had just had grasped feel unaccountably uneasy.
He took the opportunity to pick up the carrying case beside him. It had considerable weight, and its length and width were not small either—meant to pull the immortal herb up by the roots and take the whole plant away intact.
The case had a special spirit array built into it, one that could preserve the spiritual energy of the herb at the exact moment it was uprooted.
Shen Nanyin’s movements in retrieving the herb were quick and precise. In the blink of an eye, it was placed inside the case and sealed shut, ensuring the herb wouldn’t lose too much of its medicinal potency to the outside air.
Once this was done, he found Cheng Xueyi crouched nearby, chin propped on her hand, watching him.
He held the case out to her. She didn’t reach to take it—instead, her smile bloomed like a flower.
“Eldest Senior Brother, in such a hurry to leave?”
She reached out and caught his sleeve, saying softly, “Won’t you sit with me a little longer?”
Shen Nanyin took her hand and placed it on the case’s handle instead, saying calmly, “No.”
“It’s late. I still have matters to attend to, and you should go back and rest too.”
He had already delayed too long over her affairs; he couldn’t afford to stay any longer.
Even if he weren’t busy, he shouldn’t have agreed to stay with her in the first place—this kind of closeness fell outside the bounds of a senior-junior relationship between martial siblings.
He rarely refused people. When others asked something of him, he helped if he could—open-minded, generous.
Which meant that whenever he did refuse someone, it came across as especially severe, and that person would never dare say another word.
Unfortunately, Cheng Xueyi never took his words to heart, and cared even less for his refusals.
She set the case down beside her and simply began chatting. “Eldest Senior Brother, did you punish Senior Brother Shoudao?” Black Lotus novel Translation · Black Lotus
That question truly brought Shen Nanyin to a halt.
“Junior Sister Cheng, if you’re going to call me Eldest Senior Brother, then you shouldn’t be calling Nephew-Disciple Li ‘Senior Brother.’ The generations don’t match.”
Cheng Xueyi looked at him in surprise, and meeting his utterly serious gaze, she couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
The night scenery behind Bishui Palace was exquisite, fireflies flickering in the dark, and Cheng Xueyi’s smile was lovelier than any flower a spirit plant could bloom.
Shen Nanyin suddenly felt unwell—a bitter tightness in his chest, numbness spreading through his limbs.
He frowned and made to leave, only to be stopped again by Cheng Xueyi.
“Why does Eldest Senior Brother mind so much? Doesn’t everyone else call you that too? That title, to you, isn’t really about generational rank anymore—it’s about status and recognition, isn’t it?”
That was how Cheng Xueyi understood it, and Shen Nanyin didn’t dispute it.
“You’re not wrong. But you still need to correct how you address him.”
Cheng Xueyi nodded and asked, “I can change how I address him. But if Eldest Senior Brother really minds this, I’m afraid you’ll need to send out a sect-wide transmission announcing it—otherwise everyone else will keep calling you Eldest Senior Brother too.”
Shen Nanyin fell silent.
He had neither the time nor the intention to send out a transmission, and he didn’t particularly care what others called him, or whether the generational order was correct.
He had only corrected Cheng Xueyi—her alone.
“So, Eldest Senior Brother, you still haven’t answered me. Did you punish Li Shoudao?”
This time she was obedient enough to change her address immediately, and Shen Nanyin actually found himself feeling something like “flattered.”
His head ached even more, and his voice came out slightly hoarse. “He violated sect rules. He deserved to be punished.”
“What rule did he violate, Eldest Senior Brother?” Cheng Xueyi asked, though she clearly already knew.
Shen Nanyin looked at her quietly and said nothing.
Cheng Xueyi rose and walked up in front of him, tilting her head back to look up at him.
His eyes were truly beautiful—they reminded her of a line from those old-fashioned scriptures Qiantian Sect disciples always liked to recite: “Know the white, yet hold to the black, and be a model for all under heaven.” That was the feeling his eyes gave her, and he really was exactly that kind of person.
He was a type she’d never encountered before, not once, in her whole life. There were plenty of disciples in Qiantian Sect who tried to imitate him, but painting a face is easy—painting bones is not. Even a thousand-year demon that had stolen his appearance couldn’t steal his gaze, or the bearing behind it.
He was simply different.
“By rights, I broke the rules too.” In the quiet of the deep night, Cheng Xueyi asked him softly, “Why doesn’t Eldest Senior Brother punish me?”
She suddenly leaned in close, her hand pressing against his chest, slipping little by little beneath his outer robe. Rising on her toes toward his ear, before Shen Nanyin could react, she glanced downward at him and said, pointedly, “Give me thirty lashes too, Eldest Senior Brother~”
“Cheng Xueyi.”
Shen Nanyin finally snapped.
He yanked her away, addressing her by her full name, and said, word by word, “I will consider that tonight I never saw you, and never heard you say any of this.”
Cheng Xueyi watched his agitated reaction and flicked the little bell at her waist. As the bell rang, a breeze stirred through the spirit garden. Shen Nanyin had long since guarded against it, so the sound couldn’t cloud his mind—but he still couldn’t help a shiver running through him.
“Did I say something so outrageous? Why is Eldest Senior Brother so worked up? Haven’t I done wrong? Shouldn’t I be punished?”
Shen Nanyin shut his eyes hard.
Cheng Xueyi still wasn’t satisfied. “Shouldn’t Eldest Senior Brother be whipping me, then? Or did you misunderstand what I said, and think of something else?”
“Eldest Senior Brother, I don’t understand—what did you think of, to get so worked up? Explain it to me?”
As if she didn’t know.
The look she’d given him right before she spoke had made her meaning more than clear enough.
And now, all innocent and pure, claiming she’d been misunderstood—always managing to hold the advantageous position, never taking so much as a scrap of loss.
Utterly unreasonable.
“How could I possibly be disrespectful to a fellow disciple—I even ‘struck’ one, drugged and tormented them, cultivated through heterodox methods. Shouldn’t Eldest Senior Brother properly ‘deal with’ me?”
Cheng Xueyi’s words were, without question, a double meaning—but taken literally, there was truly nothing in them one could fault her for.
The sky was beginning to whiten at the edges. Shen Nanyin no longer wished to stay a moment longer and turned to leave. Cheng Xueyi couldn’t stop him, and had no intention of trying. — black lotus novel Novel Archive — Black Lotus
Tonight the fire had built up enough. Any more, and afterward he’d probably start taking the long way around just to avoid her from a distance.
Might as well leave him with one more parting line to remember her by.
Cheng Xueyi picked up the case and said, offhandedly, “Eldest Senior Brother showed me favoritism, didn’t he?”
Shen Nanyin stopped where he stood, not taking another step forward.
Cheng Xueyi walked up, case in hand, meaning to simply pass him and leave—when she suddenly saw Shen Nanyin raise his hand and undo his waist sash.
Even she was stunned by the sight, standing frozen in place, eyes wide, staring at him in disbelief.
What did that mean??
Suddenly taking off his clothes, what was he—
Before the shock inside her had even finished, a fresh wave of shock swallowed her words entirely.
Shen Nanyin’s robes half-slipped from his shoulders. He turned his back to her and said, “I have never shown favoritism to anyone.”
“The mistake you made wasn’t yours alone. Counting it properly, my own negligence bears no small blame. Before Nephew-Disciple Li was punished, I had already taken punishment myself.”
He said calmly, “There was no need to tell you this, but since Junior Sister Cheng has seen it today, let it serve as a warning going forward. Don’t ever again—”
Shen Nanyin’s voice cut off abruptly, because a cold hand had pressed against his warm back.
That hand—which had grown a little warmer earlier from the spirit pill’s fusion—had suddenly turned cold again. Cheng Xueyi had, at some point, moved behind him, and now gently traced the scabbed-over whip marks on his back, murmuring, “Does it hurt?”
Shen Nanyin immediately pulled his robes back on, fastened his sash, and stepped forward to leave, only to be embraced from behind, arms circling his waist.
“Eldest Senior Brother, does it hurt or not?”
Shen Nanyin drew a deep breath, pried her arms apart from around his waist, and said seriously, “Junior Sister Cheng. Do not cross this line again.”
“This is the last time.”
He would not give her another chance like this.
Shen Nanyin strode away quickly. Cheng Xueyi watched the spot where his figure had vanished, then looked down at the veins bulging faintly on the back of her hand, demonic energy clamoring to return to her body. Fortunate that he hadn’t looked back, or she would have been exposed.
A red light rose and quickly faded in the depths of her eyes. Cheng Xueyi paid no mind at all to his talk of a “last time.” There was only one thing she regretted.
Why hadn’t he let her be the one to wield that whip.
Marks like those should have been left by her hand.
So infuriating.
True Martial Training Ground.
Shen Nanyin returned to his meditation chamber, but found no stillness there.
He sat cross-legged on the cushion, gazing at the portrait of the sect’s founding ancestors before him, yet his mind held nothing but that figure who should never have appeared in it.
Before meeting Cheng Xueyi, he had truly never once thought about matters between men and women. He had truly vowed, since childhood, to be like his Master—devoting everything to Qiantian Sect, never asking after worldly affairs, never marrying, cultivating the Dao with single-minded focus.
Even after meeting Cheng Xueyi, right up until the moment before he stepped into this chamber, that resolve had never wavered.
So—had it changed now?
He didn’t know. He didn’t understand.
He was versed in all manner of things, but on this one subject—matters of the heart—he understood nothing at all.
Reality gave him no time to dwell on it either. Less than a quarter hour after returning, he received a transmission from Ye Ruobing of Yujing Shenzong, and hurried off from the sect once more.
Back in Bishui Palace, someone was remarking on how he’d been running himself ragged these past few days.
“Eldest Senior Brother seems like he doesn’t even know what tiredness is—off to Yujing again so early. If you ask me, Yujing’s really useless. It’s just one rebel water sprite—how has it still not been sorted out after all this time?”
Cheng Xueyi was grinding medicine nearby. She glanced at Zhang Yi, who’d spoken, thinking to herself that Senior Sister still didn’t know about the water sprite falling to demonic corruption. If she knew it had gotten tangled up with the demonic race, she’d understand things were about to get a lot more complicated, and much harder to resolve.
Their demonic race really was troublesome, wasn’t it. Xueyi’s lips curved slightly.
“If only Daoist Lord Guangwen would hurry up and say something. At least then there’d be some answer about the Heart-Devouring Valley business, and Eldest Senior Brother could get some rest.”
Everyone’s eyes turned toward Yu Buran. Yu Buran kept his eyes shut tight—even if he was awake, this was one of those times it was best to play dead.
Once everyone had dispersed and only Cheng Xueyi remained, Yu Buran finally cracked his eyes open a sliver—only to find her standing there, arms crossed, watching him with an expression halfway between a smile and something else entirely.
“…” Terrifying.
If Yu Buran were honest with himself, aside from Eldest Senior Brother and Master, he feared nothing under heaven.
But right now, he was a little afraid of Cheng Xueyi.
“Daoist Lord, time to change and wash up.” She curled her lips wickedly. “I know your cultivation’s high enough that you abstain from grain and don’t carry filth on you, but a garment worn too long still isn’t quite clean. And that spot from yesterday’s medicine dressing—the spell couldn’t quite scrub it out. Now that the senior sisters have all left, I’ll come help you get changed.” B L A C K L O T U S Reading | BlackLotusNovel
Yu Buran’s eyes went wide in fierce protest, but no one paid his protest any mind.
Elder Su returned to find him spotlessly clean in fresh robes, and praised Cheng Xueyi for it. “Impressive—handled it all by yourself. Well done.”
Cheng Xueyi smiled like a blooming flower. “Elder, you flatter me.”
Yu Buran lay there pale-faced, eyes shut, with only one thought in his head: he should have just died in Heart-Devouring Valley.
Then he wouldn’t have to be handled however some young woman pleased, stripped bare of every last shred of privacy.
Someone, save him.
No one was going to save him.
Cheng Xueyi had taken full charge of his daily care and medication.
As it turned out, she had quite a gift for it—flip through a pharmacopeia once, and she’d have all manner of herb names and traits memorized, never once mixing them up.
She handled the decoctions with skill too, her control over heat and timing flawless.
Every dose Yu Buran drank, aside from the bitterness, genuinely worked better than before. He could feel his body recovering, which only made his feelings more complicated.
Such was the case now, another day passing, as Cheng Xueyi sat beside him and said with a smile, “Daoist Lord, lying down to drink medicinal soup can’t be very comfortable. I made you some pills instead—try them and see how the taste is.”
Looking at the little black pills, Yu Buran felt something close to utter despair.
He couldn’t refuse, so he could only swallow it, resigning himself to open his mouth. The moment the pill touched his tongue, Yu Buran froze.
It wasn’t bitter.
There was still some tartness to the taste, but mostly, it was sweet.
Yu Buran looked at her, stunned. Cheng Xueyi raised a finger to her lips.
“Shh.” she said quietly. “Don’t go telling anyone. If people find out, they’ll say I’ve gone soft.”
“And I really don’t want anyone thinking less of me.”
She turned and rose, hands clasped behind her back, drifting off lightly, while Yu Buran—his long-suffering tongue rarely graced with sweetness—stared after her, unable to pull his thoughts back together.
Cheng Xueyi could feel that gaze on her, and knew her purpose had been achieved.
That day she’d heard from Shen Nanyin that Yu Buran was in charge of the inner-sect disciple selection, and she’d known then that she couldn’t afford to offend this particular person too badly—it would be bad for her later, when it came to entering the inner sect.
Unfortunately, by that point she’d already thoroughly offended and tormented him, so she couldn’t very well play the meek little junior sister from the start. She’d just have to try a different approach.
As things stood, a slap followed by a sweet date seemed to be working out rather well—Yu Buran seemed to be quite susceptible to that particular trick.
“I need to head back to Taixuan Palace today, get some fresh clothes, and check in on my good friend while I’m at it.”
She slung a cloth bag over her shoulder and instructed Yu Buran, “I won’t be back too late. If Daoist Lord feels unwell or needs anything, just ring this little bell, and I’ll know.”
She tied a cord in front of Yu Buran, a small bell hanging from its end—when it rang, the one at her waist would ring along with it.
The only thing Yu Buran could do right now was breathe hard on purpose. That she’d even thought of this trick at all was no small feat.
“Try it and see if it works.” she said eagerly.
Yu Buran was silent a moment, then genuinely did breathe forcefully. The little bell shook, and the silver bell at Cheng Xueyi’s waist rang out in response.
“Perfect!” she said happily. “Alright, I’m off. Rest well, Daoist Lord. Wait for me.”
It wasn’t as though no one had looked after him before she came.
The others, when they left, would at least say something—but they never told him where they were going, and there had certainly never been any bell arrangement like this.
Day after day he lay here alone, turning over everything that had happened in Heart-Devouring Valley in his mind, unable to tell anyone, unable to do anything about it. Left too long like this, a person grew weary and numb, and something like anxiety and dread crept in besides.
When Cheng Xueyi first appeared, he’d assumed she’d be an even bigger nightmare. He hadn’t expected— · B L A C K L O T U S Translations
Yu Buran couldn’t move his head, so of course he couldn’t watch her leave.
Once he could no longer hear the particular sound of her footsteps, he knew she was gone.
For a fleeting moment, he found himself thinking that Pucao Pavilion had somehow become a little lonely.
Outside Pucao Pavilion, Cheng Xueyi raised a hand to shield her eyes from the blazing, glaring sun, and glanced once more at the sickbed inside the pavilion, hoping he really would make good use of that bell—that the moment he could move again, he’d be the first to tell her what had really happened inside Heart-Devouring Valley.
She had no intention of feeding false reports up to the sect’s higher-ups—she just wanted to know what had happened in the valley ahead of everyone else, wanted to know what had truly become of Fuguang.
Whoever had hurt Yu Buran, it was certainly not Fuguang alone. Who else had been involved, and how had they possessed such power?
She only hoped it wasn’t that one—the one who’d never once shown his face, roughly her own age, the little demon lord.
Back when Mother was still alive, she used to say that fellow was born a demon, with no father and no mother, brought forth within Heart-Devouring Valley itself, evil to the utmost extreme, not someone to provoke. If it turned out he’d taken the chance, while she was away, to stir up trouble—then Fuguang, and Mother’s soul, would both be in danger.
No, she still needed to keep Shen Nanyin tethered close. He’d been to Heart-Devouring Valley not long ago; finding a way to draw information out of him directly would be faster.
And if she could tag along back there with him in a proper, legitimate way, that would be even better.
No sooner had Cheng Xueyi thought this than the opportunity presented itself.
Except the opportunity that arrived was not one that made her particularly happy.
“Something’s happened!”
On her way to Taixuan Palace, Cheng Xueyi ran into an uproar in front of the sect’s main Training Ground.
People from Yujing and Desireless Heavenly Palace had gathered, talking anxiously among themselves.
Shen Nanyin, Ye Ruobing, and Fu Xiaoran were all there, the three of them facing off—or, more precisely, it was Fu Xiaoran squared off against both Shen Nanyin and Ye Ruobing.
“Is the Saint Son saying that the Saintess went missing not long after she and I parted ways?”
Shen Nanyin was confirming the news with Fu Xiaoran. “Then why is this only being reported to me today?”
Fu Xiaoran said coldly, “Jinghua’s gone missing—naturally I had to search for her myself first, before I could come demand an explanation from you!”
“Now that I can’t find her, I have no other choice but to come to Qiantian Sect and find you.” Fu Xiaoran’s expression was thunderous, his tone urgent and anguished. “Shen Nanyin, I entrusted my sister into your hands, and you left her with Ye Ruobing and went off on your own. If anything at all has happened to her, I will make you pay the price for it even if it costs me my life!”
Ye Ruobing’s expression was no better. She’d gone missing right beside him, yet he also felt he bore no blame. “Saint Son, I watched over the Saintess every single moment, never once letting my eyes stray. The Saintess was within Nanyin’s barrier, and I was guarding her too—how could anything have happened? I truly can’t understand how she could have vanished into thin air. I’m not a statue—I’m a person too, I have to blink, I have to breathe—and in the time it took to blink, she was gone. I’d say that even if Nanyin himself had been present, there’d have been nothing else to be done.”
“Ye Ruobing, don’t make excuses for your own incompetence!” Fu Xiaoran wasn’t in any mood to listen.
Shen Nanyin caught the crucial detail: “Gone in the blink of an eye—she disappeared from within my barrier?”
Ye Ruobing paused. “The Saintess said she wanted to come out and help. I tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted.”
“So there was still a lapse on your part—how could you have let her step outside??”
Fu Xiaoran moved to attack Ye Ruobing outright. Ye Ruobing, as Yujing’s favored son, had a temper of his own, and immediately drew his sword in response.
A clash was about to break out when Shen Nanyin stepped between the two of them, giving the Red Dust sword’s sheath a slight shake. Sword intent poured forth, and in an instant the fighting will drained from both their blades, the confrontation deflating at once.
“Saint Son.” Shen Nanyin said. “Finding her comes first.”
No wonder he hadn’t run into Ye Ruobing on his last few trips to Yujing—turned out he’d lost track of Fu Jinghua and gone off searching with Fu Xiaoran instead.
Vanishing in the blink of an eye, right outside his own barrier—that shouldn’t have been possible either. Whatever one said of Ye Ruobing, he was already in the late Nascent Soul stage. For someone to snatch a person away so casually right in front of him, with no trace beforehand, meant the opponent could not possibly be weak. | BLACK LOTUS Novel Site · Black Lotus
“Did the Saint Son find any leads at all, on this search?”
Fu Xiaoran had gone searching that quickly—it wasn’t likely he’d found nothing at all. And indeed, he had found some trace of something.
“I found a torn sleeve of Jinghua’s.”
Fu Xiaoran’s eyes were bloodshot. “Shen Nanyin, I don’t care to deal with Ye Ruobing. The one I entrusted my sister to was you. You left, and so you bear responsibility for whatever’s happened to my sister.”
Hearing this, Cheng Xueyi couldn’t help but think back to where Shen Nanyin had gone off to, that day, and what he’d been doing.
He must have been headed to Ghost Market, passing through Water Cloud Expanse—where he’d happened to run into her, hadn’t he?
Just as this thought crossed her mind, she heard Shen Nanyin, looking at the torn sleeve, say, “Demonic energy.”
Fu Xiaoran said, “That’s right. This was the demonic race’s doing!”
