After realising a new found purpose for the wealth he’d just acquired through his system, Lu Feng was determined to push even further.
"Ye Chenxue," he said, his voice dropping into a calm, commanding tone that cut through the sound of Han Lin’s hushed comforts.
The girl looked up from Han Lin’s shoulder, her expression guarded. She somewhat expected pity from him. She expected more questions. She perhaps even expected him to tell her that his offer of partnership was now void because of the danger her master posed.
Instead, Lu Feng looked at her with a wide, confident smile that reached his eyes. It was the smile of a man who had already won.
"Your master thought she could ruin your destiny," Lu Feng said, his gaze locked onto hers. "She thought a broken dantian was the end of your story. But she doesn’t know what I know. She doesn’t see what I see. Actually, I think she just helped you fulfil your destiny without actually knowing."
He reached out, his hand hovering near hers but not touching, offering a choice rather than an order.
"Tell me, Chenxue. If the path were opened... If the ice in your veins could be turned back into a sea of power, and you only had one chance at it, would you capture it? Would you like to resume your cultivation path?"
The question hung in the air like a lightning bolt, threatening to shatter the very foundation of her reality. Ye Chenxue’s breath hitched, her heart skipping a beat as she stared at the mad young master who spoke of miracles if they were things that happened as long as he wanted.
For a moment, Ye Chenxue sat entirely frozen, her jaw slightly slack, her swollen, red-rimmed eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and utter shock. For a second, the phantom ache in her lower abdomen seemed to vanish, replaced by a sudden rush of blood to her ears. She stared at Lu Feng as if he had just spoken in an ancient, forgotten language that she somehow understood.
Even Han Lin, who had spent nearly her entire life adjusting to Lu Feng’s crazy behavior, was utterly left unable to move.
She had stood by him through the whispering, the mocking, and the dark days in the broken courtyard where he had been abandoned by even his parents. She had heard and seen him mutter about an invisible box time and time again and yet she remained by his side.
However, even for her, this time was different as she had never heard him utter something so completely defying that it went against even the laws of the cultivation world.
For a long, agonizing moment, neither of the women could find their voices but when they finally did, the words tore from their throats simultaneously, shattering the heavy atmosphere that had piled up in the carriage’s cabin.
"PARDON?!"
Their exclamation rang through the wooden walls of the carriage. Han Lin’s voice was high-pitched, filled with a frantic concern that her master’s madness had finally reached a point of no return. Afraid that it has upgraded.
Ye Chenxue’s voice, however, was laced with something far sharper. Her tone has a dangerous, jagged edge of repressed trauma and sudden defense to it.
Ye Chenxue pulled herself away from Han Lin’s comforting embrace, her spine straightening until it was as straight as an iron rod. The vulnerable part that had made her look so young just a moment ago was gone in seconds, replaced by the fury of the proud, fiercely disciplined genius of the Frost Heart Pavilion.
Her gaze latched onto Lu Feng’s two colored eyes, her lips pressing into a thin, tight line as though she was about to verbally attack him. She indeed was about to.
"Young Master Lu," she said, her voice dropping into a cold, dangerous tone that made one forget about her physically weakened state. "I am eternally grateful to you. You pulled me from the deepest, filthiest pit of the Black Market. I don’t know how much but you did pay the keeper for a broken shell like me, and you gave me back my dignity by telling me I am not your slave."
She paused and stared even deeper into his eyes. "I respect you for that. But do not joke about such matters that concern my cultivation path as it is not so simple. I will not accept such a joke a second time."
Lu Feng remained perfectly still, his hands resting casually on his knees, his expression unreadable to both women.
"A shattered dantian is not a scraped knee," Ye Chenxue continued, her fingers clenching into fists against her lap, the skin turning white over her knuckles betraying her fury against his statement.
She didn’t end there though. "My spiritual sea was completely frozen and my dantian shattered to bits and pieces by the hands of a very powerful expert. The law of the heavens themselves dictates that once the core is broken, the mortal path is all that remains as one cannot cultivate without a core. To mock a fallen cultivator with the prospect of return... it is a cruelty I did not expect from someone who claims to be my ally."
She leaned forward slightly, her dark eyes flashing with danger for someone as frail as her. "You stated yourself that you do not own me. I am not leashed to you by a slave contract, which means I have the right to express my dissatisfaction. Do not cross that line again."
Han Lin looked back and forth between them, her heart pounding wildly against her ribs. She wanted to pull Ye Chenxue back, to explain that her young master wasn’t trying to be cruel, but she was equally left stunned by Lu Feng’s claim.
Rebuild a dantian? Even the great and old pill sects charging thousands of spirit stones couldn’t guarantee such a miracle.
Lu Feng did not flinch under Ye Chenxue’s furious glare. Instead, he slowly shook his head, a look of genuine regret softening his sharp, handsome features. He raised his hands in an appeasing gesture, acknowledging her anger and his statement being the cause without being intimidated by the anger itself.
"I apologize," Lu Feng said softly, his voice calm, steady, and devoid of any defensive pride she felt would’ve come from him. "I did not mean to trivialize your pain, nor did I mean to make a mockery of what you have suffered at the hands of your own master. I spoke abruptly, and for that, I am sorry."
He lowered his hands, but his eyes remained locked onto hers, burning with an intense stare just as hers were burning into his.
"But I am not joking." He continued, shaking his head like an all knowing cultivator with thousands of years of experience. "I am completely, absolutely serious."
Ye Chenxue’s breath got stuck in her throat. She searched his face, looking for the twitch of a liar, the cruel smirk of a noble young master playing a game, or the glazed look of a lunatic. But she found none of it.
Lu Feng’s face was the face of a man filled with absolute, unbothered certainty. It was the face of a man who knew exactly what card he held in his hand.
"Are you... truly serious?" she asked, her voice cracking slightly, the wall of her defense beginning to fracture under the sheer weight of his unshakable confidence.
She couldn’t sense a single drop of Qi flowing through Lu Feng’s body which meant that he was undeniably a mortal, and yet, there was something about him that shrouded him in a dense, impenetrable mystery.
No ordinary mortal could look upon a disgraced disciple and speak of defying the heavens.
Han Lin shrugged her shoulders nervously, trying to ease the tension that was starting to grow again in the cabin while validating also her master. "Sister Chenxue... my young master has many quirks, and for that, everyone calls him mad... but I don’t think he has ever joked about important matters. When he says he will do something, he means it."
Han Lin almost let it slip. She almost blurted out that he had been ranting and raving about a floating blue panel for months, which was the only time he ever seemed truly crazy but she caught herself just in time, clamping her mouth shut.
Bringing up the magic window right now would surely make Ye Chenxue think they were both completely insane.
Ye Chenxue looked at Han Lin, then back to Lu Feng. The silence stretched again, but this time, it was filled with a desperate, blooming hope that she tried desperately to drown before it could completely bloom.
Hope was a dangerous thing for a cripple because it could destroy whatever sanity she had left. But looking at Lu Feng, she felt a strange, primal instinct telling her to trust the man with the two-colored eyes.
Slowly, Ye Chenxue nodded her head, still trying to maintain a straight face. "If you are truly serious... if there is even a fraction of a chance... I am ready. I would walk through the fires of the netherworld if it meant I could stand on the cultivation path again. I will bear any pain, endure any trial."