Even though Mingming understood very little about human emotions, as she watched Lu Xuan at this moment, she could still see that the light in his eyes was incomparably gentle.
It was like the only ray of warmth in the bitter depths of winter, ethereal and delicate, cautious and restrained, as though it carried every ounce of his love.
This kind of radiance did not match Lu Xuan’s usual demeanor. It was as though the person he admired was a blazing fire, melting this block of ice into water and mist.
And yet, despite Lu Xuan clearly possessing such passionate and sincere feelings, why did he still seem so bland and flavorless in Mingming’s eyes?
Wasn’t the deliciousness of humans, and of human food, found precisely in the depth of those overflowing emotions?
He looked deeply in love, but Mingming’s keen sense of smell told her that, at this very moment, there was not the slightest fluctuation in his emotions.
This was the first time Mingming had encountered such a peculiar phenomenon, so she watched him for a long while.
In the distance, the evening light gradually dimmed. Lu Xuan asked Mingming, “After looking for so long, are you disappointed?”
Mingming shook her head and withdrew her gaze from him.
She did not ask who the person he admired was, nor did she continue expressing her intentions toward him.
For countless years, she had always been this quiet.
It was not that she buried everything in her heart. Rather, information that could stir one’s emotions simply could not remain in her heart at all.
She was indifferent to everything around her. Lu Xuan was no exception. Besides, he was not even tasty, so Mingming had not the slightest interest in him.
“Night has fallen. Are you going home?” Mingming asked.
Lu Xuan let out a faint chuckle and came to a stop atop the city wall. Before Mingming, he pressed a hand against his chest.
A mechanical heart, steadily beating, was slowly drawn out from within him. After Lu Wei’s modifications last time, it had gained an additional function.
Now, if Lu Xuan’s own heart was capable of beating on its own, the mechanical heart would temporarily remain dormant.
Only after sensing that Lu Xuan no longer had a heartbeat of his own would it reactivate.
The next instant, right before Mingming’s eyes, Lu Xuan pressed his fingers together and crushed the mechanical heart, a treasure that could be called unparalleled beneath the heavens.
This simple yet insane act plainly told Mingming that he intended to remain by her side from now on.
If he were ever too far away from her, the only thing awaiting him would be death.
“It’s a little cold,” Lu Xuan murmured as he leaned closer, his voice low by Mingming’s ear.
His breath was cold as well, but Mingming was not sensitive to low temperatures. Even after witnessing such a mad act from Lu Xuan, she merely blinked.
“Second Miss Shen, not even this can earn a little more expression from you?” Lu Xuan asked.
Mingming said to him, “The Family Head will gladly welcome the Young City Lord of Wentian City as a guest of the Shen Clan.”
With that brief sentence, she made it clear that she fully understood what Lu Xuan meant and accepted his decision to stay by her side.
But Lu Xuan said, “There’s no need to make a spectacle of it.”
“Why?” Mingming felt that sneaking around like this was too much trouble.
“The old man would think I’d brought shame to Wentian City,” Lu Xuan said. Only when he mentioned Lu Wei did he seem a little more like an ordinary person.
“Keeping it hidden like this is rather interesting.” The Young City Lord of Wentian City had apparently come in search of excitement.
“Oh.” Mingming turned around, and a snake quickly slithered up along her arm.
“So you prefer me in this form?” Lu Xuan said.
Mingming turned her head and saw that he had transformed into a black snake marked with azure patterns. This appearance was quite similar to her true form, though there were subtle differences.
Her true snake form was entirely black, with only her head being azure. It was rather troublesome to describe, so whenever anyone asked, she simply said that her coloring was black with a hint of azure.
Mingming let out a sigh of relief. It seemed Lu Xuan’s transformation was merely a coincidence.
From the fragments of conversation she had overheard between him and Lu Wei earlier, Lu Wei had apparently been blind back when they were in the Wilderness of Eternal Night.
After hearing her describe her true form, Lu Wei had mistakenly assumed that she was a black snake with azure markings. Later, he drew her appearance, and Lu Xuan happened to see the drawing.
“There’s no such thing as liking or disliking it,” Mingming said as she lowered her sleeve, concealing the snake that Lu Xuan had transformed into.
“What do you like, then?” Lu Xuan asked.
“I like you,” Mingming replied.
A low chuckle drifted from Lu Xuan.
The quietest place in the Shen Clan’s main residence was Lan Pavilion. The courtyard was usually looked after by the two sisters, Qingsong and Qingzhu.
After Mingming returned, Madam Lan did not ask about Ji Chen at all. It seemed the people on the other side had wisely said something to smooth things over.
After all, no matter how great his ambitions and ideals were, he would never dare oppose the Young City Lord of Wentian City.
Even so, Madam Lan still pulled Mingming aside and gave her a lecture.
“You child, why did you go and bully your Ninth Sister for no reason?”
Mingming recalled how Shen Ji had been frightened into falling into the water yesterday. She shook her head in denial.
“Madam Lan, she fell in by herself.”
“The main family has already sent word. Ninth Miss said you used some sort of evil technique to bewilder her mind.” Madam Lan gently patted the back of Mingming’s hand.
“Don’t worry. I’ve already dealt with the main family on your behalf. In a few days, I’ll prepare some gifts of apology for you. Take them to Ninth Miss, and this matter will be settled.”
Naturally, Mingming said nothing about how Shen Ji had deliberately tried to make things difficult for her. Instead, she simply told Madam Lan about her plans.
“I’m going to the Changxiao Palace.”
“With your level of cultivation? How could you possibly go? The Shen Clan only has three places. It won’t be your turn.”
“I can go as an independent cultivator,” Mingming replied.
Madam Lan frowned.
“Only disciples of cultivation clans can enter the third round directly.”
“An independent cultivator? Do you know how difficult it is to pass the first two rounds of the Changxiao Palace Ascension Gathering? Those are trials where life and death are of no consequence!”
Mingming lowered her head and slowly rolled up her sleeves. She was about to prepare dinner.
Hidden inside her sleeve, the snake that Lu Xuan had transformed into shifted farther up to hide.
“Madam Lan.”
Before she stepped into the kitchen, Mingming’s soft and gentle voice drifted over slowly.
“You also entered as an independent cultivator back then. You emerged from all three rounds of the trials and ranked first in the Ascension Gathering.”
A burst of flame suddenly flared to life inside the kitchen as Mingming lit the stove. She had very high standards when it came to food, so whenever circumstances allowed, she preferred to cook for herself.
Madam Lan’s raised voice came from outside. It was impossible to tell exactly what had angered her so much.
“Shen Ming! Who gave you permission to investigate my past? I’m your mother. You… What gives you the right?!”
Mingming closed the kitchen door and even set up a restriction.
Lu Xuan transformed back into his human form and remarked with amused interest, “It’s the same whenever I argue with the old man.”
“I wasn’t arguing with her.” Mingming gripped the mandarin fish by its gills with her fingers and deftly slapped it onto the chopping board.
Bang!
The wooden mallet came down mercilessly on the fish’s head. After struggling for quite some time, the mandarin fish still could not escape death.
What followed was the bloody process of removing the gills, scraping off the scales, and cleaning out the entrails. Mingming performed the entire sequence with smooth, flowing movements, finishing it all in only a few breaths. This preserved the fish’s freshness to the greatest extent possible.
With a swift motion of her knife, Mingming made several cuts along the body of the fish, placed it neatly on a white porcelain plate, sprinkled it with the prepared shredded scallions, and set it into the steamer.
Even as she prepared the ingredients, she did not forget to devote part of her attention to controlling the heat.
No one knew just how exquisite Mingming’s fire control technique had become. Standing to one side and watching, even Lu Xuan could sense that the flames seemed to have developed a rhythm of their own, as though they were breathing.
When it came to cooking, Mingming had truly reached the pinnacle. Her knife skills, seasoning, control of the heat… Every aspect was executed with flawless precision and elegance, allowing each ingredient to release its finest flavor.
Much as he hated to admit it, the only reason Lu Xuan had encountered Mingming that night was because the venison she had been roasting smelled so irresistibly delicious that he had unconsciously drifted toward her.
“I thought my uncle’s cooking was already excellent,” Lu Xuan said.
Mingming: “…”
‘He was the one who cooked for me back in the Wilderness of Eternal Night. Of course it was good.’
She said nothing. Her delicate, tranquil face was veiled behind the billowing steam.
“Wentian City has the finest spirit chefs in the entire cultivation world. Yet not a single one of them can make food as delicious as yours.”
This was not flattery on Lu Xuan’s part. He was merely stating the truth.
Mingming placed the lid back on the pot. Separated by the stove, she met Lu Xuan’s gaze. Soft mist still lingered within her eyes.
“I never fail the food,” she said as she lifted a strand of crystal clear shredded radish with her chopsticks and tasted it.
But Mingming thought that, to her, the emotions poured into cooking were far more precious than flawless technique.
Humans were truly remarkable beings. The food they cooked sometimes carried immense emotion within it, and that kind of deliciousness was something no amount of masterful technique could ever surpass.
That was also why, back in the Wilderness of Eternal Night, she had loved the food Lu Wei cooked.
From a human’s perspective, he truly cared for her. So every dish he made for her, even something as simple as a roasted sweet potato, could temporarily satisfy her insatiable appetite.
Mingming, too, longed for food. Staring at Lu Xuan’s face, she caught traces of Lu Wei in his features, and that finally made him seem a little less bland.
Lu Xuan caught the fleeting flash of greed in Mingming’s eyes and curled his lips into a smile. He said nothing, though who knew how he had interpreted that trace of desire.
That night, in Mingming’s study, Lu Xuan held a scroll in his hand and asked her, “Have you finished reading The Ten Classics of Body Tempering?”
Mingming leaned back in her chair. The moment she saw the pages packed with dense rows of text, she grew so sleepy she could barely keep her eyes open.
“No.”
“Introduction to Drawing Qi into the Body, The Six Precepts of Cultivation, Fundamentals of Immortal Arts…” Lu Xuan dropped a stack of books onto the table in front of Mingming. “Do you really think you can simply decide to go to Changxiao Palace and just go?”
Mingming had never imagined that one day she would be forced to study. She scratched her head, then put on a show of picking up Fundamentals of Immortal Arts.
Not a single word entered her mind. Her eyelids drooped, and every word in the book transformed into the names of dishes on a menu. She had only eaten not long ago, yet she was already hungry again.
“You like me and want to stay by my side? It won’t be that easy.” Lu Xuan curled a finger and tapped lightly on the table.
Mingming pursed her lips, turned another page after waiting an appropriate amount of time, and pretended she was reading.
Lu Xuan remained by her side just like that, listening to the vibrant heartbeat echoing within his body.
This heartbeat had not been created by cold machinery. It was warm and gentle, filled with the vigorous vitality unique to living beings.
Having tasted the sensation of true life, how could he ever tolerate that cold mechanical heart again?
This was precisely why Lu Xuan had come to find Mingming of his own accord. He wanted her to become his possession, to remain by his side for the rest of her life, for this lifetime and every day within it.
In Lu Xuan’s eyes, Mingming was not a lover, but merely an organ. He enjoyed the way she willingly devoted herself to him.
‘She fell for me…’ Lu Xuan thought to himself. ‘Second Miss Shen really is out of luck.’
That same night, in Wentian City, Lu Wei received a report from one of the cultivators of the sect.
“Lord Wuya, the Young City Lord has sent word. He asked us to prepare some of the things he uses in his daily life and secretly deliver them to the Shen Clan.”
Lu Wei stood within the great hall. The white silk covering his eyes was as pure as snow, and his voice was as cold as ice.
“Tell him to come back and get them himself. His residence belongs to him. I’ve never been there.”
As an elder, he understood where the boundaries lay. He never interfered in Lu Xuan’s personal affairs, allowing him to keep his privacy.
“The Young City Lord also sent back the key to his residence.” The cultivator delivering the message respectfully presented an exquisite silver key with both hands.
“If he’s leaving, he takes his belongings. He even crushed his mechanical heart. What kind of love spell did that Second Miss Shen cast on him?”
Although Lu Wei said this, he still accepted the key and went to retrieve Lu Xuan’s belongings for him.
The Lu family had only Lu Xuan’s branch of the bloodline left. Lu Wei could not very well pry too deeply into his affairs.
The spring night was still chilly. Lu Wei took out the silver key to Lu Xuan’s residence and unlocked the restriction protecting it. Everything here bore traces of Lu Xuan’s daily life.
Lu Wei had no interest whatsoever in his nephew’s private life. But when he pushed open the door to retrieve some books for him, a few of Lu Xuan’s secrets were inevitably revealed.
As Lu Wei pushed the door open, a gust of wind swept through the courtyard and into the room.
The wind rustled the pages of books and the hanging scrolls in the study. One scroll hanging behind the writing desk was blown loose and drifted before Lu Wei.
Lu Wei bent down to pick it up. His eyes remained covered, and he could not see what the study actually looked like.
Behind the door, behind the writing desk, on the antique display shelves, beside the windows, beside the bookcases… Every wall visible at a glance was covered with the very same painting.
Even the decorative patterns painted on the porcelain vases, the carvings on the inkstone, the casual doodles sketched onto sheets of xuan paper… Every one of them depicted the same figure.
It was a woman.
Lu Wei smoothed out the portrait that had been wrinkled by the wind. His fingers traced gently across the surface of the scroll.
The faintest traces of pigment revealed the painting’s colors, as well as the direction and flow of its brushstrokes.
Though his eyes were covered, his other senses had become astonishingly acute. With a single light touch, he knew exactly who the person in the painting was.
Lu Wei’s thin lips pressed into a harsh, straight line. Having uncovered this secret, he found Lu Xuan both ridiculous and childish. He offered only a single comment.
“He’s sick.”
He casually packed up some of Lu Xuan’s belongings and instructed someone to deliver them.
When he returned to his room to rest, Lu Wei raised a hand and lightly touched the white silk covering his eyes. Beneath that soft strip of cloth lay a pair of eyes that could see perfectly well.
His blindness had, in fact, been cured long ago.
That night, Lu Wei lay down to sleep without even changing his clothes. After being occupied for so many days, this was the first night he had finally found the time to close his eyes.
Meanwhile, Mingming had finally managed to deal with Lu Xuan.
“I’ll read them tomorrow! Definitely tomorrow. Just let me sleep.” Rubbing her eyes, Mingming walked toward her room.
In her hurry to go to sleep, Mingming took a slightly larger stride than usual without noticing, moving just beyond the distance that would cause Lu Xuan’s heart to stop beating.
Both of them noticed the oversight. Although Mingming immediately stepped back toward Lu Xuan, he had already sensed a subtle change.
After crushing the mechanical heart with his own hands, his heart did not stop beating simply because he had moved farther away from Mingming.
“Don’t move,” Lu Xuan said, signaling for Mingming to stay where she was while he stepped backward.
Only after retreating more than ten zhang[1]Zhang (丈): A traditional Chinese unit of length. One zhang is approximately 3.3 meters (10.8 feet), so ten zhang is roughly 33 meters (108 feet). jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3200126_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3200126_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); did Lu Xuan begin to feel signs that his heartbeat was about to cease.
He was somewhat surprised.
“The distance has increased,” Mingming said to him. “Then you can sleep in the room next to mine tonight.”
Lu Xuan: “?”
Such a tremendous change had just occurred, and that was all she cared about?
As he silently pondered the reason why the distance before his heartbeat stopped had increased, he said nothing more. The two parted outside their respective rooms.
After returning to her room, Mingming let out a huge yawn. Without enough sleep, she would not be able to suppress her ever-expanding appetite.
She lazily threw herself onto the bed, pulled the quilt over herself, and promptly fell asleep.
For Mingming, sleep was a temporary form of death.
Until the moment she awoke, she would have no dreams, no thoughts, and no consciousness. Deep within her mind there was only emptiness and darkness.
Snakes do not dream.
Yet that night, for the very first time, she became conscious while asleep. She arrived in a barren land. Before her stretched a black desert, where a nameless wind howled through the wasteland, sweeping up sand and withered grass.
She was dreaming.
And she had returned to the familiar Wilderness of Eternal Night.
Mingming stood before a cave high upon the mountainside. It was the first time anything like this had happened after she fell asleep, so she cautiously tried to take a step forward.
But her feet did not move.
Hanging beneath her was a long snake’s tail.
The Wilderness of Eternal Night was the only absolute forbidden land in the Immortal Realm. All spells became chaotic there, and she could not maintain her human form.
Suddenly, movement came from behind her.
It sounded as though someone was running toward her.
Mingming sniffed lightly. Just as she was about to turn around, someone pulled her into an embrace from behind.
His embrace was warm, his heartbeat vigorous, his scent irresistibly enticing. The breath that brushed against her ear was scorching and alluring.
“Mingming.” He buried his face against the hollow of her neck and called her name in a low voice.
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