Seven nights had passed since the spirit spring.
Seven nights of secret meetings, stolen touches, and qi circulation that grew deeper, longer, and far more dangerous with each encounter.
Su Qingxue's cave mansion invitation finally came on the eighth night.
A single jade slip delivered by a silent spirit crane at dusk:
"Jade Phoenix Peak. Midnight. Use the eastern path. No one will see."
Xiao Yang's heart thundered as he climbed the winding stone steps carved into the mountain. The higher he rose, the thicker the spiritual energy became—rich with ice and phoenix attributes, a testament to the woman who resided here.
A concealment formation parted silently at his touch, recognizing the trace of yin qi she had left on him as a key.
The cave mansion entrance was elegant rather than ostentatious: twin jade doors carved with soaring phoenixes, flanked by glowing ice-lotus lanterns. They opened on silent hinges as he approached.
She was waiting inside.
Su Qingxue stood in the center of the main chamber, illuminated by soft moonlight streaming through a crystal skylight. She wore a single layer of snow-white silk tonight—almost translucent, falling loosely over her mature, perfect body. Her silver-white hair was unbound, cascading like a river of starlight down to her waist.
She looked like a goddess who had stepped down from the heavens.
And she looked terrified.
"Close the doors," she whispered.
He did.
The chamber sealed with a soft hum of formations. Complete privacy. No sound would escape. No divine sense below Nascent Soul could penetrate.
They stood ten paces apart, staring at each other in charged silence.
Finally, she spoke, voice trembling.
"I told myself I would end this tonight. I meditated for hours. I burned incense to calm my heart. I even wrote a letter to leave for my husband when he emerges from seclusion—confessing everything, accepting whatever punishment the sect decrees."
She took one step toward him.
"But the moment your qi signature approached the peak… my resolve shattered."
Another step.
"I am a faithless woman," she said, tears gathering in her phoenix eyes. "Three hundred years of loyalty, and I fall in eight nights."
Xiao Yang crossed the distance in three strides.
He cupped her face gently, thumbs brushing away the tears that spilled over.
"You are not faithless," he said quietly. "You are human. You have given everything to him—your youth, your talent, your heart—and asked for nothing but his presence in return. He chose seclusion over you for decades. Again and again."
His voice dropped.
"I am not asking you to stop loving him. I am only asking… to love you too."
Su Qingxue's sob broke free.
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him desperately, as though drowning and he was air.
The kiss was fierce, messy, full of guilt and longing and centuries of suppressed desire.
Robes fell away like autumn leaves.
Her snow-white silk slipped from her shoulders, pooling at her feet.
Xiao Yang's breath caught.
She was perfection incarnate—mature, soft curves glowing in the moonlight. Full breasts with pale pink peaks already hardened. Narrow waist flaring into wide, fertile hips. Long, elegant legs. Skin like polished jade, flawless and warm to the touch.
She stood bare before him, trembling, arms half-covering herself in instinctive modesty.
He shed his own robes quickly, revealing the lean, powerful body forged by rapid cultivation leaps. His yang essence made his skin radiate faint golden light, and his arousal—thick, proud, pulsing with pure yang qi—was impossible to hide.
Su Qingxue's eyes widened at the sight, a flush spreading from her cheeks down her chest.
"So much yang…" she whispered in awe. "It's beautiful."
They came together again, skin to skin this time.
Hands explored with reverent hunger.
He traced every curve he had only glimpsed before—the weight of her breasts in his palms, the way her nipples pebbled under his thumbs, the soft give of her waist, the silky heat between her thighs already slick with need.
She mapped his chest, his abdomen, then lower—fingers wrapping tentatively around his hardness, gasping at the heat and vitality that pulsed against her palm.
They sank slowly to the prepared bed—a wide, cloud-soft spirit mattress draped in phoenix silk.
Xiao Yang laid her down gently, kissing a trail from her lips to her throat to her breasts.
She arched with a cry when his mouth closed over one nipple, suckling gently while his hand slid between her legs.
"So wet for me already, Qingxue," he murmured against her skin.
She whimpered, hips bucking.
"I've been wet every night thinking of you," she confessed in a broken voice. "Even when I hated myself for it."
He moved lower, parting her thighs with reverence.
The first slow lick drew a keening moan from her throat.
Centuries without touch had left her exquisitely sensitive. He took his time—tongue tracing every fold, circling her pearl, drinking in her taste like sacred nectar.
Su Qingxue's hands fisted in his hair. Her legs trembled around his shoulders.
"Xiao Yang… please… I can't…"
Her first climax hit like a breakthrough tribulation—body bowing off the bed, yin essence flooding his mouth in sweet, powerful waves.
He drank it all, feeling his own cultivation surge in response.
When she finally collapsed, panting, he crawled up her body and kissed her deeply, letting her taste herself on his tongue.
"Now," she whispered against his lips, eyes glazed with need and love and fear. "I need you inside me. All of you."
He positioned himself at her entrance, the head of his yang root pressing against slick, welcoming heat.
They locked eyes.
"I love him," she said one last time, tears streaming. "But right now… I love you more."
The words broke something in him.
He pushed in slowly—inch by thick inch—watching her face transform from slight discomfort to wonder to pure bliss.
She was impossibly tight, incredibly hot, her inner walls fluttering around him like silk gripping jade.
When he bottomed out, their lower dantians pressed together perfectly.
The Yin-Yang Harmony Scripture activated at full power.
Golden yang qi flooded her sacred valley.
Cool yin essence surged back into his dragon root.
Both cried out as meridians lit up like star rivers, qi cycling in perfect, ecstatic harmony.
He began to move—slow, deep thrusts at first, letting her adjust.
Soon her legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into his back, urging him faster.
The chamber filled with the sounds of flesh meeting flesh, wet and rhythmic, mingled with her escalating moans.
"Xiao Yang… ah… deeper… yes… there…"
Her nails raked his back.
He angled his hips to hit that perfect spot inside her, grinding against her pearl with every thrust.
Another climax built rapidly.
This time when she came, her yin essence exploded outward in a visible wave of ice-blue light—her cultivation breaking through again, stepping firmly into half-Nascent Soul.
The surge pulled him over the edge.
With a guttural groan he buried himself to the hilt and released—thick ropes of pure yang essence flooding her womb, marking her from within.
The pleasure was transcendent.
For long moments they floated in white-hot bliss, bodies locked, qi entwined, souls brushing dangerously close.
When awareness returned, he was still inside her, softening slowly.
She clung to him, face buried in his neck, silent tears wetting his skin.
He held her tightly, stroking her hair.
Minutes passed.
Eventually she whispered, voice raw:
"I have never… not even with him… felt anything like that."
He kissed her temple.
"I know."
Another long silence.
Then, so quietly he almost missed it:
"Stay until dawn."
He tightened his arms around her.
"I'm not going anywhere."
They made love twice more that night—once slow and tender, face to face, whispering affections they both knew were treason; once from behind, her cries muffled in the pillows as he took her with raw, possessive need.
Between rounds they talked—about her childhood with Zhao Wuji, about Xiao Yang's mortal life before cultivation, about dreams and fears and the terrifying depth of what was growing between them.
When pale dawn light finally filtered through the skylight, Su Qingxue lay curled against his chest, fingers tracing idle patterns over his heart.
"I will send you away today," she murmured, voice thick with tears. "I will try to forget."
He pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"And tonight?"
A broken laugh escaped her.
"Tonight I will summon you again."
She looked up at him, phoenix eyes shining with love and torment.
"I am lost, Xiao Yang. And I do not want to be found."
In his mind, the system spoke one final time that night.
But Xiao Yang ignored it completely.
Because as the woman in his arms drifted into exhausted sleep—face peaceful for the first time in centuries, body marked inside and out with his essence—he knew the truth.
The system might have started this hunt.
But his heart had already surrendered to the prey.