The silence of the night in the Cloud-Peak Pavilion was heavy, laden with the scent of musk and the electric tension of forbidden desire. Inside the meditation chamber, the amber light flickered across the skin of the Young Sect Mistress, casting the hollow of her throat and the valley of her cleavage in sharp, tantalizing relief.
Outside, hidden in the shadows of the spirit-willow tree, Sect Leader Hua Yimei felt as though her heart was being squeezed by a cold, iron hand. Her cultivation base, usually a roaring river of power, felt stagnant, choked by the sheer horror of what she was witnessing through the gap in the curtains.
