When You Li entered carrying a tray, Su Yu was leaning against the stone bed’s headboard, wrapped in that deep cyan outer robe. In her hand, she held the withered flower branch You Li had left behind days ago, her fingertips unconsciously rubbing the now brittle and hardened stem.
On the tray was not the usual plain rice porridge, but an exquisite white jade stewing pot steaming with heat. Though the lid remained unopened, a rich aroma of meat broth infused with the fresh scent of medicinal herbs wafted out, instantly cutting through the stale mildew and bloody odors of the dungeon.
Su Yu looked up at You Li, a flicker of confusion passing through her eyes. She had grown terribly thin, her cheekbones protruding and eye sockets sunken. Her body, wrapped in the oversized robe, was as frail as a sheet of paper. Only her eyes, though still weary, were no longer completely lifeless.
You Li placed the tray on the small table and lifted the lid of the stewing pot. Steam rose, revealing a clear broth inside. A few pieces of tender, unknown pale pink meat lay at the bottom, accompanied by several emerald-green medicinal herb leaves and two plump red dates floating nearby.
“Drink it,” You Li said succinctly. She stirred the soup with a white jade spoon, scooped up a spoonful, blew on it gently, and brought it to Su Yu’s lips.
Su Yu stared at the spoonful of soup. The broth was clear and bright, its fragrance overwhelming—a scent she hadn’t encountered in a long, long time, one that spoke of “nourishment” and “care.” Hesitantly, she parted her lips, and the warm soup slid into her mouth—sweet, rich, with just the right amount of saltiness and the lingering sweetness of herbs. The temperature was perfect, warm but not scalding, flowing down her throat and instantly bringing a comforting warmth to her icy stomach.
Unconsciously, she took another sip, then another.
You Li fed her spoonful by spoonful, and Su Yu drank sip by sip. Neither spoke, the only sound the faint clinking of spoon against bowl. Su Yu drank slowly but earnestly, as if savoring something precious that had been lost and regained. Under the steam of the hot soup, a faint hint of color finally returned to her cheeks.
After finishing the soup, You Li wiped the corners of Su Yu’s mouth with a silk handkerchief. Then, from her sleeve, she retrieved a small jade box and opened it, revealing several thumb-sized, translucent pale golden pills.
“Take one with warm water half an hour after the meal,” You Li said, placing the jade box on the small table. “One pill per day.”
Su Yu’s gaze fell on the pills. With her past knowledge, she recognized them as the extremely precious “Jade Marrow Nourishing Pills.” Their main ingredients were thousand-year jade marrow and dozens of rare Spirit Grasses, renowned for their miraculous effects in repairing meridians and nourishing the spirit. Even in Xuan Yu Zong, only severely injured elders were entitled to consume them.
“…Why?”
You Li’s hands, busy tidying the stewing pot, paused briefly. Without looking at Su Yu, she replied, “You’re too thin.”
The reason was simple, almost blunt. But as Su Yu observed You Li’s lowered profile, her tightly pressed lips, and the barely perceptible hint of… awkwardness? in the depths of her crimson eyes, she didn’t press further.
She merely gave a soft “Mm” in acknowledgment.
That afternoon, You Li didn’t leave as quickly as she usually did. Instead, she sat down by the small table and retrieved another item from her sleeve—a thin, plainly bound book, which she placed on the table.
“If you’re bored, you can read this,” she said, her tone still flat but carrying a little less command.
Su Yu’s gaze fell upon the book cover. It bore no title, just a plain blue-green binding. She reached out, took it, and opened to the first page—then froze.
It was not a demonic path cultivation manual, nor some eerie secret account, nor even anything related to cultivation at all.
It was a handwritten miscellany about the local customs and natural features of the Demon Realm. The handwriting was neat and elegant, with occasional annotations in a different, sharper script. The pages had yellowed with age, clearly quite old. Inside were records of various peculiar plants, minerals, landscapes of the Demon Realm, and even some harmless folk tales circulating among the common folk.
For example, the page she had just turned to depicted a strangely shaped vine with pale purple flowers. A note beside it read: “‘Night-Weeping Vine,’ commonly found in the secluded valleys of the southeast Demon Realm. On nights of the full moon, it emits sounds resembling a baby’s cry. Its sap can relieve pain, but excessive use causes hallucinations.”
She looked up at You Li. You Li was turned sideways, gazing at a patch of shadow on the dungeon wall as if the book had nothing to do with her.
Su Yu lowered her head and continued flipping through. Occasionally, dried leaves or petals were pressed between the pages. Though long faded and desiccated, their original shapes were still discernible. One page held a deep red leaf with serrated edges, beside which was written: “‘Flame Maple,’ grows only by lava rivers. Leaves like fire, falling once every hundred years, igniting upon touching the ground. The ashes can be used medicinally to treat cold poison.”
She became engrossed, momentarily forgetting where she was, forgetting the chains and the Warm Jade Silk binding her, forgetting the Gu poison and the Blood Mark Pact. Those unfamiliar sights belonging to another world captured her attention in a peculiar way.
At some point, You Li turned her head and watched her quietly. She watched Su Yu’s lowered brows and eyes, her lips slightly pursed in concentration, her pale fingers carefully turning the pages as if afraid of damaging the fragile paper and pressed specimens.
For a moment, the dim light in the dungeon seemed to soften.
From that day on, what You Li brought began to follow a regular pattern.
Every morning, there was a carefully simmered soup—sometimes a light mushroom and chicken broth, sometimes a nourishing Medicinal Cuisine pork rib soup, sometimes a mildly sweet white fungus and lotus seed soup. The ingredients were clearly selected with care, prepared meticulously, and cooked to perfection. Each time, Su Yu would slowly finish it. Though she ate little, she at least no longer refused food.
Half an hour after the soup, came a Jade Marrow Nourishing Pill. Su Yu would take it herself with the warm water You Li left. As the pill entered her stomach, it transformed into a gentle, warm current that slowly nourished her battered body and nearly depleted meridians. She could feel that the faint, almost extinguished glimmer deep within her dantian seemed… a tiny bit more stable under this nourishment. Though still weak, it no longer felt like a candle flame in the wind, ready to die out at any moment.
In the afternoon, You Li sometimes brought new books. Besides that miscellany of local features, there were scattered records of Demon Realm history, some inconsequential poetry collections, and once, even a tattered book of simple illustrated chess strategies.
She never explained the origins of these books, simply setting them down before sitting nearby, either reviewing documents she had brought herself or quietly watching Su Yu read. The two still rarely conversed, but the silence was no longer filled with hostility and fear; it had transformed into a kind of… coexistent quiet.
Su Yu’s body began to show faint signs of improvement, albeit at an extremely slow pace.
The most noticeable change was that she was no longer as weak as before, nearly unable to sit up on her own. Though still alarmingly thin, she at least had some strength now, able to move slightly within the confines of the stone bed and even attempt to stand for brief moments.
Her cheeks remained pale, but the ashen pallor of death had faded somewhat, and the terrifying dark circles beneath her eyes had lightened slightly. Her fingers, though still slender, no longer looked as brittle as dried twigs, ready to snap at the slightest pressure.
As for You Li…
You Li’s changes were even more elusive.
She still appeared punctually at midnight when the Gu poison flared up, holding Su Yu in her arms, but her movements grew increasingly natural. At times when Su Yu was in severe pain, she would even instinctively warm Su Yu’s icy hands and feet with her palms.
She began to notice some of Su Yu’s subtle habits—for instance, when reading, Su Yu preferred to lay the book flat on her knees rather than holding it in her hands; when drinking soup, she would gently blow away the steam on the surface first; and when she occasionally curled up unconsciously, her left hand would always instinctively press against the location of the Blood Mark Pact over her heart.
Once, while flipping through the book of chess strategies, Su Yu became lost in thought over a particular endgame, unconsciously tracing the placement of chess pieces on the stone bed with her fingertips. Watching from the side, You Li suddenly reached out, retrieved a box of white jade chess pieces and a thin piece of parchment with a grid drawn on it from her sleeve, and placed them on the small table.
“Use these,” she said, then turned away to continue reviewing her documents as if it had been nothing more than a casual gesture.
Su Yu stared at the box of warm, smooth white jade pieces, each polished to a glossy roundness that felt warm to the touch. The grid lines on the parchment chessboard were embroidered with silver thread, shimmering faintly in the dim light.
She remained silent for a long time before finally reaching out, picking up a white piece, and placing it on the board according to the move she had envisioned earlier.
You Li did not look up, but Su Yu could sense that her attention was not truly on the documents in her hands.
That afternoon, in addition to the sound of pages turning, the dungeon was occasionally punctuated by the faint, muffled sound of a chess piece landing on the parchment.
A few days later, You Li added something extra to the morning stew—a few slices of pale golden mushrooms, thin as cicada wings and nearly translucent. The soup’s flavor became even more delicious, and after drinking it, a gentle yet persistent warmth spread from her stomach to her limbs, dispelling much of the bone-chilling cold that seeped into the dungeon.
“These are ‘Warm Sun Mushrooms,’ which grow near hot springs in the far north of the Demon Realm. It takes a century for a single patch to mature,” You Li explained abruptly as Su Yu drank the soup, her tone as casual as if she were discussing the weather. “They’re good for the cold dampness in your body.”
Su Yu cradled the soup bowl, taking small sips, and responded with a soft “Mm.” After a moment, she asked quietly, “…Are they rare?”
You Li, who was peeling an unnamed dark red fruit with a small knife, paused her fingers at the question. “Not particularly.”
Su Yu did not ask further. But she knew that the far north of the Demon Realm was a forbidden land even Demonic Cultivators regarded with dread—a place of perpetual blizzards and all manner of ferocious ice-attributed demonic creatures. How could a mushroom that grew in such a place and required a century to mature possibly be “just fine”?
She lowered her head to look at the few pale golden slices floating in the soup and suddenly felt her throat tighten.
That night, the Gu poison flared up more violently than usual. Perhaps because her body was beginning to recover, her perception of pain had also become clearer. Su Yu trembled fiercely in You Li’s embrace, her inner clothes soaked through with cold sweat, her teeth chattering audibly.
You Li held her, one hand gently patting her back, the other pressed against her lower abdomen—the location of the dantian, and also where the Gu poison was most deeply entrenched. Her palm was icy, but when pressed against her, it strangely alleviated a trace of the searing pain deep within.
“Endure it,” You Li whispered in her ear, her voice somewhat strained. “Once you get through this… it will be much better next time.”
Her palm pressed slightly harder, and an extremely fine, icy yet gentle stream of spiritual power seeped through the Warm Jade Silk and skin into Su Yu’s body. It was not an attack, nor an exploration, but a kind of… guidance, attempting to gently channel the raging heat of the Gu poison, keeping it from rampaging so wildly.
Su Yu felt it. She opened her sweat-blurred eyes and looked at You Li’s face, so close to hers. You Li’s complexion was also somewhat pale, with fine beads of sweat at her temples. Clearly, this was not easy for her either.
“You…” Su Yu wanted to say something, but was cut off by another wave of intense pain, and could only clutch desperately at You Li’s lapel.
You Li said nothing, only continued to channel that icy, gentle spiritual power until Su Yu’s trembling gradually subsided, until her breathing shifted from rapid and broken to slow and deep, until she collapsed from exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep.
That night, You Li held the sleeping Su Yu and sat in the dungeon for a long time.
She looked down at the face in her arms—still thin but no longer so gaunt—at the undried tear tracks on her lashes, at the faint frown that remained even in sleep.
Then, very lightly, she used her fingertip to wipe away the dampness at the corner of Su Yu’s eye.
Su Yu’s path to recovery was still long.
But at least, it had begun.