Jade Heng was steeped in indigo night.
Palaces carved from luminous jade glowed with pale moonlit blue.
The seven stars of the Big Dipper hung inverted in the sky, casting light over the eternal snows that covered Jade Heng.
At the hour of the Rat, mist carried a faint cold fragrance across the ridges.
Silence reigned everywhere.
Yu Xuanhe’s footsteps were soft and almost undetectable yet they startled the black birds roosting in the treetops.
He drew near the base of the Demon Sealing Pagoda.
A strange restless anticipation settled over him.
Something was wrong with his spiritual roots.
Whenever he thought of that woman heat rose within him like a great tree bursting with life.
This was not how it should be.
His crane spirit arts demanded purity of heart and freedom from desire.
They required stillness like unmoving water yet this heat grew stronger and harder to control.
It stirred something wild and bloodthirsty within him.
It felt like the beginning of a demonic influence.
Yu Xuanhe took a deep breath and forced the restlessness down drawing cold air deep into his core to steady himself.
He told himself there was no demon inside him.
This was the work of that sorceress and her bewitching arts.
He would know the truth tonight.
He would find out why it was her who took his first time.
He stood before the pagoda.
It was sealed with no doors or paths visible.
He knew the barrier would suppress spiritual power.
Once inside he would be as any mortal though he could still wield the seal to leave when he chose.
That did not trouble him.
If his magic failed him his peerless swordsmanship would serve him well enough.
He had never stepped foot inside before and did not know what prisoners were kept there.
His father had told him only that the seal was laid by the will of heaven itself and that the Yu family was entrusted to watch over it.
Breaking through was simple for him.
He was the master of Jade Heng now.
As he stepped forward doubt crept in.
Was he losing his mind?
On his wedding night he was slipping away from his bride to meet another woman.
This was not the upright principled man he had always striven to be.
It was the first time he had acted so contrary to all he claimed to uphold.
Yet men are ever quick to excuse themselves.
He told himself this was duty.
He came to interrogate an evil cultivator.
The wedding was merely coincidence.
I will not listen.
Ji Youyou turned away from Fan Moxi.
She had no wish to speak with the leader of these so called evil practitioners.
She had been rescued by Pei Yun only to be brought straight to this den of wickedness and then confined by her former husband.
She had no fondness left for any of them.
Fan Moxi heard her sharp refusal and took the hint.
He rolled his eyes and stood watching her with hands clasped behind his back.
Very well little one.
I shall not press you.
If you do not wish to speak then I shall leave you be.
I will go see the little dragon instead.
With that he cast her one last disdainful glance and snapped his fingers.
Darkness swallowed the place and he vanished into it.
When he was gone Ji Youyou breathed more easily.
She curled into herself in the corner near the window and closed her eyes seeking rest.
Then she heard it.
The voice she had longed for and dreaded in equal measure.
Evil cultivator.
It was Yu Xuanhe.
His voice was cold and clear like ice falling from mountain peaks beautiful yet biting enough to make one shiver.
Ji Youyou’s eyes flew open.
She scrambled to her feet pressing her back against the wall.
There was nowhere left to retreat.
Yu Xuanhe was different from Fan Moxi.
He was an immortal though not yet fully ascended in flesh.
The pagoda’s barrier suppressed his magic yet he did not need fire to see as Fan Moxi did.
He glowed with a soft radiance that filled the space with light.
Ji Youyou saw him clearly then.
What are you doing here?
She stammered.
She was the prisoner yet she found herself questioning him instead.
His gaze fell upon her sharp and piercing as a blade.
The moment he looked at her and heard her speak desire flared within him unbidden and unmanageable.
Her bewitching arts were stronger than he had imagined.
He could not resist them.
He burned to take her there and then.
He looked at her lips and the slender line of her neck and knew he could not hold back.
Shame and anger mingled with his longing.
He had never been so ruled by another.
That his first time should have been stolen by one such as her an evil cultivator filled him with humiliation.
Yu Xuanhe gave her no answer.
He had never spared mercy for evil ones or fiends.
He looked down upon her as one born to rule.
He found his powers less restrained than he expected.
He glanced upward and a chair of jade appeared.
He sat as if it had always been there.
At the same time Ji Youyou felt invisible hands pressing down upon her forcing her to kneel before him in a posture of utter subjugation.
She could not even draw breath to scream.
Was he going to kill her now?
Speak.
His voice was cold and hard as ancient iron the tone of one judging a condemned soul.
What is it you wish me to say?
Ji Youyou kept her head bowed unable to meet his eyes.
Tell me how you stole my first time.
What?
She stared at him stung by the insult and struck by its absurdity.
While she stood bewildered he lifted her chin with the tip of his shoe looking down from above.
Answer me evil one.
I do not know.
She said.
She burned with shame and anger.
He looked exactly like her Yu Nu yet where was the gentle man who had cherished her?
How could he ask such things when it was she who had been robbed?
She remembered how he had asked her to keep that night between them.
Was this some kind of test?
You do not know?
Yu Xuanhe scoffed convinced of her stubborn deceitfulness.
He leaned forward and closed his hand about her throat.
His face was cold yet his eyes held a hungry light.
You are stubborn.
Your words may deny it but your body and your arts remember.
Show me then.
Show me exactly how you took what was mine.