Side story

Mu Hanyuan spoke without any pretense of concealment. His cold, magnetic voice carried clearly, sending another jolt of shock through the disciples kneeling in the grotto who had yet to recover their wits.

Several of them, who were still bowing low to offer tea, looked up in a panic toward the huanghuali wood chair.

By now, everyone in Qianmen and the entire Qianyuan Realm knew that Yun Yao and Mu Hanyuan were the immortal realm’s recognized divine couple. But… what was this “Master” business?

“You… don’t just call me that randomly.” Yun Yao’s voice was light and airy; she clearly hadn’t expected Mu Hanyuan to use that title in public so suddenly, and she instinctively moved to deny it.

However, what started as a firm rebuttal softened unconsciously by the end, carrying a hint of coaxing.

Unfortunately, someone wasn’t buying it.

Upon hearing this, Mu Hanyuan went silent for a moment. When he spoke again, even his features seemed to sink into a dejected gloom. “Is Master perhaps tired of the old and enamored with the new? Now that you are focused on selecting new disciples for the grotto, do you no longer want me?”

Yun Yao: “…”

“?”

The reality was starkly different from his self-deprecating tone.

The pads of his fingers, which were lightly holding her wrist, brushed against her inner pulse. Then, pushing his luck, they slithered up beneath her thin silken sleeve like a climbing serpent.

Yun Yao raised her eyes in startled annoyance, only to meet Mu Hanyuan’s dark eyes as he knelt before her chair, lazily looking up.

This intimate familiarity, hidden from outsiders, was shielded between the two of them by his broad back, tucked away in the ambiguous shadows where their figures intertwined. No matter how curious the kneeling disciples behind them were, they couldn’t see a thing.

The tension in Yun Yao’s heart eased, and she followed up by feigning a serious expression. She reached out to take the tea Mu Hanyuan offered, using the momentum to dodge his “harassment.” “The disciples are still here. Don’t make such wild jokes; you’ll scare them.”

Setting the teacup aside, she rose and bypassed Mu Hanyuan, standing before the bewildered disciples. “Stop kneeling; all of you, get up. I’m not the type whose heart is softened into taking disciples just by someone kneeling. Since I promised the Grand Elder, I will fulfill the three-month teaching period, starting tomorrow. But as for taking disciples…”

Yun Yao paused, an inexplicable touch of mischief rising within her.

She quickly suppressed the smile reaching the corners of her lips and cleared her throat. “We shall discuss that… in three months.”

“Thank you, Senior Grandmaster…”

The disciples were naturally overjoyed and took their leave after offering salutes.

Yun Yao could sense it clearly: from the moment her words fell, the presence of the gaze behind her grew sharply more intense, nearly burning in its heat.

Suppressing a laugh, she mischievously watched the crowd of disciples leave the grotto.

Once the grotto door closed.

She turned around beaming. “Mu—?”

Her smile froze.

Mu Hanyuan was no longer by the chair.

Yun Yao was momentarily dazed. She turned her head blankly, her eyes following his receding back as he walked toward the inner chambers. “Where are you going?”

“The Blazing Grass on the back mountain has matured. I’m brewing it into medicinal tea today to keep ready for when your cold affliction flares up.”

“Eh?” Yun Yao instinctively took two steps after him. “Aren’t you going to ask me—”

The figure stopped abruptly and looked back. “Ask what?”

The shadows in the grotto masked his profile in gloom. Yun Yao couldn’t clearly discern the emotions in Mu Hanyuan’s eyes.

But judging by his voice, there seemed to be… no reaction?

…Has he changed his nature?

But if he had, why was he so out of line just now?

Pondering this, Yun Yao withdrew her step and smiled innocently. “Nothing. You’re busy; go ahead.”

“Alright.”

After Yun Yao spoke, Mu Hanyuan truly had nothing else to say. He turned and his silhouette vanished from her sight.

Unsettled, Yun Yao waited a while before releasing her divine sense to probe the back mountain.

Contrary to her expectations, Mu Hanyuan wasn’t hiding somewhere to trap her. He was indeed in the spiritual herb garden on the back mountain of Tianshan Peak, harvesting the Blazing Grass he had specifically planted for her cold affliction.

His mood seemed perfectly calm, showing no intent whatsoever to argue about the matter of taking disciples she had just mentioned.

“Could it be… he’s so angry he’s gone past the point of showing it?”

Yun Yao felt a bit guilty. After a moment’s thought, she puffed out her chest with more bravado than logic, emboldening herself: “I’m the Master, he’s the disciple. I don’t need his permission to take disciples… Besides, I only said ‘discuss later’ to stop them from staying here forever. It’s not like I’m really going to take any.”

After this bit of self-soothing, Yun Yao managed to put the matter aside.

For the next few hours, the two interacted as usual. After observing Mu Hanyuan and finding no abnormalities, Yun Yao finally relaxed. She assumed Mu Hanyuan’s temperament was no longer like it used to be and that he truly didn’t care.

It wasn’t until night fell that Yun Yao realized how naively mistaken she was.

To cure Yun Yao’s cold affliction, Mu Hanyuan had scoured the Qianyuan Realm for heavenly treasures and built a warm spring pool on the back mountain entirely paved with fire-attribute spiritual stones. Every ten days, he would help Yun Yao dispel the cold in the hot spring.

The round trip for this Immortal Sect Tournament had been controlled by him to be within ten days. And as luck would have it, the Blazing Grass had matured; tonight’s dispelling of the cold was meant to be swifter than usual.

With this in mind, Yun Yao fell asleep at some point, surrounded by the hot spring and the infusion of warm spiritual energy.

When she woke, the mist was hazy, a light medicinal fragrance lingered in the night air, and the candles had been extinguished at some point.

“Mu Hanyuan?”

Yun Yao called out instinctively. Just as she was about to rise from the fire-attribute boulder she had been leaning on, she felt the water behind her ripple outward.

Someone held her waist from behind, pinning her against the boulder and leaning over her.

A damp, slightly burning kiss brushed aside the thin silken shirt on Yun Yao’s shoulder—already loose and turned semi-transparent by the water.

The tenderness didn’t last. The pressure of the man’s kisses grew heavier. Finally, at a certain moment, he was like a beast beneath the moon, revealing sharp, menacing fangs.

“Mm. It hurts.”

Still sleepy, Yun Yao frowned in pain. She turned to push him, her attempt at a fierce voice softened by the hot spring, sounding more like a coyness she had never shown before. “Don’t bite.”

Dull-witted in her drowsiness, her only sensation was that Mu Hanyuan’s hand, which was holding her waist, suddenly tightened.

She was nearly lifted from the boulder whose warmth she was loath to leave, pulled back tightly against his abdomen.

Then, she was jolted awake by a searing temperature.

Yun Yao instinctively dodged forward, her sleepiness mostly gone. “You… you… you wouldn’t do it here, would you?”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?” Mu Hanyuan whispered by her ear, his tone tender and lingering. “Does Master not like it?”

“I—no, it’s you,” Yun Yao stammered for a long time before finding her wits, searching for Mu Hanyuan’s features in the night. “Are you sure you want to be here?”

Despite having merged all the memories of his malevolent aspect, the Mu Hanyuan who returned still mostly adhered to his usual habits and behavior. Even in these matters, he rarely did anything excessively out of line. For instance, he would never do such an unseemly private thing in such an open, almost completely exposed mountain setting.

“I don’t mind, as long as Master likes it,” Mu Hanyuan whispered like a bewitching spell.

Yun Yao clung to her wavering logic, trying to defend herself amidst his lingering kisses. “Don’t slander me; when did I ever say I liked it here?”

“Hmm… could I have remembered wrongly?”

Mu Hanyuan suddenly stopped. Water dripped onto the flame-colored stone. He chuckled by her ear, his words sounding inexplicably dangerous. “In our previous life, wasn’t it in a spring just like this on the back mountain that Master… forcibly took me—”

Yun Yao turned around and immediately covered his mouth with her hand.

Once the splashing water settled, Yun Yao looked up with a flushed face, meeting Mu Hanyuan’s dark, smiling eyes above her fingers. Only then did she realize she had fallen into his trap again.

She gritted her teeth in embarrassed annoyance. “Don’t mention that again. That was a deviation in my cultivation.”

“After a deviation, logic vanishes, and one acts on instinct,” Mu Hanyuan laughed and pulled her wrist down. “Doesn’t that prove Master likes it here?”

“I don’t! You—”

That snow-white hair, carrying the cold moonlight, descended before Yun Yao, and he kissed the words from her mouth.

This kiss was different from before—more out of control, more frenzied, more like the raw instinct of absolute acquisition.

The moonlight and the night intertwined, shattered into drowning, fragmented light by the ripples of the water. Those points of light enveloped Yun Yao’s consciousness. His features blurred before her eyes. In those moments when it was hard to tell if it was pleasure or pain that held the high ground, Yun Yao could hardly distinguish whether the person before her was more the benevolent aspect or the malevolent one.

The moonlight billowed in the misty night.

The wind stirred the leaves of the entire Tianshan Peak. Hanging over the green stones by the hot spring, the willow branches were pushed to their highest point again and again by the surging waves, as if wanting to embrace the moonlight high in the nine heavens.

But tonight’s wind was exceptionally wicked—wanton and surging. Every time the willow branch was tossed to the peak of the tide, just a hair’s breadth from the moonlight, it would be let go without warning, as if cast from the heavens into a moonless abyss.

The resentful willow branch, carrying a whimper shattered by the water’s ripples, tightened against the night wind.

The dappled shadows of the forest fell upon the water’s surface, which had suddenly grown quiet after the storm, tenderly drowning out a muffled groan accompanied by a husky laugh.

Yun Yao nearly dug her nails into Mu Hanyuan’s shoulder and neck. Hearing him laugh only made her more bashful and indignant. She bit his well-defined shoulder without letting go, grinding her teeth like a forest animal that had been bullied, letting out a fierce whimper.

“Mu Hanyuan.”

Even as she bit him, Mu Hanyuan was finding it difficult to restrain himself. Despite this, he remained unhurried, using his fingers with utmost tenderness to tidy her ink-black hair—which flowed like silk from her shoulders—watching it pass through his pale knuckles in the water.

Yun Yao, caught in a state of suspension, was nearly dying of anger. “You—”

“Master, I suddenly remembered an extremely important matter.”

“How important?” Yun Yao wished she could bite him to death. She squeezed his neck, forcing out every word with a slight tremor. “Must you talk about it now?”

Mu Hanyuan acted as if he hadn’t heard. “Early this evening, I made a special trip to Fengtian Peak.”

He seemed to lean down unconsciously.

The silk-like hair in his hand suddenly shuddered, nearly falling from his palm.

Mu Hanyuan was naturally affected as well; his brow furrowed almost instantly, and the fingers gripping her waist sank in. Yet, as if in an act of self-torture, he forcibly restrained that strength.

Mu Hanyuan’s Adam’s apple rolled, his laugh growing even huskier, as if it were about to sink into the water. “Master, is something uncomfortable?”

“?”

Yun Yao, who had curled herself up like a half-cooked shrimp, looked up and glared at him fiercely with eyes moist from the water and flushed at the corners. “Speak. Now.”

Mu Hanyuan gazed deeply at her. There was a dark mist in his eyes, as if wanting to envelop her, swallow her, and tear her apart—as if he didn’t want to leave even a single trace behind.

But as that dark mist rose, it was gradually retracted and suppressed by him.

Mu Hanyuan leaned close to Yun Yao’s ear, unhurriedly reciting a list of names that were completely unfamiliar to her.

With every name he spoke, the silk in his hand shuddered, and the intensity of the tremors grew more obvious with each passing moment.

Until he finished.

“These are the disciples selected from Fengtian Peak who entered the grotto today.”

Mu Hanyuan leaned into Yun Yao’s ear with a smile. Likely because he was restraining himself so severely, the corners of his jade-cold eyes were stained with a vivid, blood-like red.

“Before nightfall today, this disciple reflected seriously. It must be because I have been too busy with sect affairs lately and neglected my service to Master… Is that why Master has the intent to seek out new favorites?”

The smile sank into his eyes, darkening into an inseparable ink.

Yun Yao tried to defend herself: “When did I ever seek out new favor—”

Her words were shattered into the moonlight by the willow branches.

One final lean-in.

The moonlight between them vanished; there was no longer a gap.

Mu Hanyuan, having long anticipated it, leaned down with a kiss, swallowing Yun Yao’s difficult, sobbing cry:

“Has Master made up her mind?”

“Which one are you choosing to be my junior brother… to serve you alongside me?”