Elder Cao Chang was a family elder.
He stood in the same realm as the clan head, Spirit Realm power held in a body that looked thirty and had lived close to sixty, with a smooth unlined face, dark hair without a thread of grey, and eyes that missed nothing. By demonic-sect rules he could have challenged her father for the leadership on strength alone. He never had. He remained an elder. He had been her master for four years, since she was fourteen and still learning how to circulate qi without scorching her meridians, and she had once respected him without any complication at all. Lately the respect had grown thorns.
She had started to notice him staring at her cleavage and her backside while he taught. There were touches that weren't necessary: a correction to her stance that lingered too long on her waist, a brush of fingers when he adjusted her arm, a palm at the small of her back that stayed a heartbeat past what a teacher needed. She ignored the strangeness because of his status and because of the respect she still owed the man who had guided her qi when she was smaller. He had never done anything large enough to justify a scene, only small things, and she didn't want to trouble her father over small things while her mother was away and the entrance exam loomed on the horizon like a storm.
She was not as happy walking to training as she had been in older days.
The path from her rooms to the training hall ran along a covered corridor that smelled of old lacquer and the green of the herb garden beyond the lattice. She walked it with her hands clasped in front of her, the blue robe whispering against her thighs, and tried to put Yan Chi out of her mind the way a cultivator puts out a stray spark, with focus and circulation and a deliberate refusal to feed it qi. It didn't work. Every time the corridor's draft pressed the silk against her breasts she felt his palms again. Every time the wet cloth shifted between her legs she remembered her own fingers there, slick and circling, and the knock that had stopped her one breath short. By the time she reached the hall doors her ears were still hot and her jaw was set, and she told herself that training would burn the rest of it out of her body the way hard work always had.
He was already waiting in the big hall, seated in a chair at its centre with one ankle crossed over the other knee and a cup of cooling tea on the small table at his elbow.
He was sinister, and he was clever. He knew that even if he took the family headship, the Yan family's shadow would still fall across him. He knew that Cao Ning's potential meant she would likely become a disciple of the demonic sect at the coming exam, and that moving openly now would not serve him. But her body had grown too well, and temptation kept its own schedule. For a long time he had thought about taming her patiently, piece by piece, for the sake of a better future, while knowing that she had feelings for young master Yan Chi, and a father to protect her, and an exam that could carry her beyond his easy reach. Four years of teaching had meant four years of watching those silver-haired curves ripen under blue silk, until looking without touching had become a daily exercise in restraint that he was beginning to resent.
The afternoon light through the high windows caught the silver of her hair and turned it nearly white. He watched her breasts bounce as she walked toward him, and for a moment the careful mask of a patient teacher slipped so far that anyone looking would have seen a man hungry enough to ruin a plan four years in the making.
It was a blessing of the demonic sect that most of its female cultivators wore nothing beneath their robes on top; attraction was policy here. Her body was flawless in every respect: silver hair falling loose around her shoulders, a goddess's face with those clear eyes and that full mouth, a waist a man could span with two hands, long legs flashing through the high side cuts with every step, and those breasts moving under the blue silk, her nipples still peaked from whatever had happened to her that day. He wanted. He waited. His cock stirred at the sight of her alone, and he shifted in the chair so she wouldn't see.
Cao Ning felt his eyes on her breasts the way women always feel such eyes. She stopped in front of him with her spine straight and her hands at her sides, and waited for him to speak.
"Now," Elder Cao Chang said, calm and instructional, "we begin with the basics. Horse stance, one hour."
She moved a little farther into the hall and settled into the pose as she had a thousand times: feet planted wide on the cold stone, thighs sinking until they shook, hips held as if she were sitting on invisible air, arms stretched straight out in front of her, balance kept by qi and stubbornness. It was a common exercise for stamina that every demonic disciple knew. On her body it looked like something else entirely.
Within the first few minutes the front panel of her robe began to shrink into her crotch. The tension of the wide stance pulled the silk taut and then sucked it inward, into the cleft between her thighs, until it covered little more than a narrow strip. The long lines of her inner thighs showed through the fabric on either side.
Then the cloth found her pussy and sank into it.
She was still wet from her room, and the silk drank the dampness and clung, and the shape of her mound pressed through it in plain relief: the plump curve, the two swollen lips, the deep groove between them where the cloth had wedged itself. A narrow dark line spread down the centre of the blue as the wetness soaked through. She could feel it happening. She could feel the silk pressed into her folds and the cool air of the hall on the damp patch, and she could do nothing about it without breaking the stance.
Behind her, though there was no one there to see, the stretched side cuts had pulled wide open, baring the outer halves of her buttocks as pale half-moons of flesh. Her black underwear had ridden deep into the cleft of her ass and sat pressed hard against her pussy lips from the pull, a dark line wedged between her cheeks and vanishing under her. She faced Elder Chang, so he couldn't see her back. He could see the front of her, though, the printed shape between her legs, and her cleavage deepening as she leaned slightly forward to hold her balance, her breasts squeezed between her outstretched arms and pushed up and together until the valley between them looked bottomless.
She felt his gaze like heat on her skin. She endured it.
The minutes crawled. Her thighs began to scream. Qi circulated in stubborn loops to keep her from collapsing, cycling through her legs and up into her core in the pattern Elder Chang had drilled into her since she was fourteen, a pattern that now felt strangely intimate in a way she had never noticed when she was younger and less aware of her own body. Read this novel at NovelPing for the best experience.
Halfway through, the sweat came in earnest. It gathered first in the hollow of her throat, then along her spine, then under her breasts where the silk was already darkening, and every time she corrected the depth of her stance the wet cloth dragged across her nipples and made her bite the inside of her cheek. They were still swollen from her own fingers. Each drag of the silk sent the same thread of heat down into her pussy that her pinching had, and each time it arrived she felt herself clench around nothing and the dark line on the silk spread a little wider.
The silk darkened to a deeper blue along her back and under her arms. Her skin shone across her collarbones and her belly and along the inner edges of her thighs, where the side cuts flashed open with every small adjustment. A bead of sweat ran down between her breasts and disappeared into the cloth, and another followed the same path, and she felt both of them crawl all the way down to her navel.
By the last quarter of the hour she felt filthy inside her own clothes. Her underwear was soaked with sweat and with the arousal she had never been allowed to finish, and her pussy lips slid against the wet fabric every time her thighs trembled. The smell of her own heat rose under the herb-and-dust smell of the hall, sweet and unmistakable, and she prayed that the incense was strong enough to hide it.
When the hour ended she was exhausted. Her muscles twitched and her breath came short. She released the pose with a small gasp, her legs shaking so hard that she nearly went down on one knee, her silver hair stuck to her damp temples and the back of her neck. The silk peeled slowly out of her crotch as she straightened, and she felt the cool air touch the wet place it left behind.
Elder Chang came near. He studied her body for a while — too long, his eyes travelling over the sweat-shine and the cleavage and the dark line at her crotch — and then spoke with a serious face that didn't match the hunger in his gaze.
"I've prepared a special herb bath for your training. It will help your cultivation. Get ready for it. I'll perform qi guidance during the bath to make it more effective. You have the entrance exam ahead of you, and you can't afford to slack off at such a crucial time."
A bath, with her teacher present, which meant naked.
Embarrassment hit her so hard her ears rang. She would have to be naked in front of him. She had never shown her naked body to any man. In another world that might have been unthinkable. In the demonic sect it was common enough to be almost boring: there was little shame between master and disciple, there were well-known cases of masters using their female disciples for dual cultivation, and the gap between her eighteen years and Elder Chang's sixty was the kind of thing people waved away with a shrug. She still looked down with a red face. Knowing the culture did not put her clothes back on.
Elder Chang looked at her. "What is there to be embarrassed about? If you get shy over such little things, how will you survive in the demonic sect?"
He was right, and she knew he was right. If she wasn't strong enough, she couldn't decide her own destiny; she would become a plaything for some man to warm his bed, and the stares on the road would become a permanent sentence. She set her jaw, made up her mind, and went to prepare for the medicine bath.
***
He led her into a large room off the main hall.
A square bathtub sat in its centre, large enough for one person and filled with hot water steeped in medicine. Herbs floated in slow circles across the surface, and the steam that rose from it was bitter-sweet and green and clung to the lungs with every breath. The walls were dark wood. A low shelf held towels and a clean cloth folded square. The stone floor was cool under her sandals and already beaded with condensation from the steam, and the smell was thick with crushed mint and something sharper underneath, a medicinal bite that made her eyes water.
Elder Chang looked back at her and waited.
She started to undress.
Her fingers were clumsy on the ties. The sash came loose, and the one-piece blue robe slid off her shoulders in a rush of silk that whispered over her skin and pooled at her feet. The air of the bath room touched her everywhere at once, warm and wet with steam, and goosebumps rose along her arms.
Only the black underwear remained, a small dark strip against pale skin, the fabric visibly darker at the crotch from the afternoon's shame, her own fingers, and the hour of horse stance. Without the robe her breasts hung free, full and round, swaying gently when she straightened, the nipples drawn up pink and tight from the air and the arousal that still hadn't left her. She wanted to cover them. She kept her hands at her sides. Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her underwear, bent, and pushed it down.
As she bent, her ass rose and the cheeks parted slightly with the motion, and the wet cloth peeled away from her pussy with a faint sticky reluctance. A thin thread of clear slick stretched between the fabric and her folds as it came away and then broke. She was smooth and hairless there, the lips still faintly swollen from the touch she had never finished, untouched in every way that counted. The black cloth slid down her legs and clung for a moment at her ankles before she stepped free of it, and the steam kissed every newly bare inch of her: the undersides of her breasts, the slick folds between her legs, the tight clean ring of her asshole that flashed for a heartbeat as she straightened.
She looked the other way, toward the steam, with her cheeks burning so hot she thought they might catch fire. She didn't see Elder Chang's face. She didn't see his cock hardening in his trousers or the way his jaw tightened as he looked at her.
Naked, she walked to the bathtub. Each step made her breasts bounce and sway, and she felt his eyes follow the movement of her ass as she went. She climbed in and sat down with a hiss of breath as the heat closed around her. The water rose along her thighs and over her hips to her waist in a green-tinted flood that made her gasp and arch before she settled.
The hot medicine-water wrapped around her hips and waist like a living thing, heat sinking into her aching thighs and steam rising to dampen her lashes and the silver strands at her temples. Her lower half sank beneath the surface; her upper half stayed exposed. Her breasts floated on the water, the surface lapping at their undersides and lower curves without hiding anything, bobbing slightly with each breath, the nipples standing clear above the waterline. The heat flushed them a darker pink. She covered them with her hands by instinct, and the pressure of her own palms on flesh that still remembered Yan Chi's squeeze, and her own fingers after it, sent another unwanted pulse of heat into her pussy under the water.
Elder Chang came near, and his shadow fell across the steam. "Sit in the meditation position. Close your eyes."
Nervous and red-faced, her throat tight, she lowered her hands and exposed herself fully to his view. She folded her legs under the water, straightened her back, rested her open palms on her knees, and closed her eyes. Her silver hair was half soaked and half dry, sticking in shining strands to her shoulders and the upper curves of her breasts. Her wet skin gleamed in the room's light. A drop of bath water slid from her collarbone down between her breasts and rejoined the tub with a tiny sound, and another drop followed the same path. She felt both of them, and the air on her nipples, and her master's presence behind her like a weight, and she told herself for the hundredth time that this was normal, that disciples bathed and masters guided, that the demonic sect didn't wrap bodies in shame the way mortal cities did.
It didn't stop her face from burning.
He looked at her breasts from an arm's length away and wanted to grab them, to hold that flesh and suck those pointed nipples until she woke gasping his name or cursing it. He held himself back by a thread.
This girl has grown too perfectly. Four years of patience. Today the bath will do what my hands have waited to do.
He moved behind her for the qi guidance, sat on the stone lip of the tub, and laid both hands on her bare back, his palms spanning the wet skin between her shoulder blades, his thumbs near her spine and his fingers spreading toward her ribs. The contact was warm. Her breath hitched once, and then she forced it steady.
She felt the touch like a brand, intimate in a way the sect called normal and her body called wrong. She stayed calm, or performed calm, breathing in counted cycles and absorbing the energy of the medicated water while he guided her qi into the right channels with slow presses and directional pushes. On the surface it was professional, and it was fruitful. His breath was too close to her wet hair, though, and under the herb steam she could smell his cultivation oils, sandalwood and something sharper, a man's scent beneath the green bite of the bath. She tried not to think about it.
The guidance worked. She could feel the medicine soaking into her meridians, a slow green warmth climbing her spine and pooling in her dantian, and for a while the shame of her nakedness faded behind the focus of cultivation. He pressed at points along her back with practiced precision and redirected a loop of qi that had always run slightly crooked, and she felt the correction settle into place with a quiet click of energy that made her inhale sharply. He was a good teacher, a patient one. He was also the same teacher whose eyes had been on her cleavage for months, whose hands lingered on her waist, and whose presence in this room made her want to cover herself even while the sect's customs told her that covering was weakness.
An hour passed like that, and then another. The water stayed hot, from some formation under the tub, she supposed, and the herbs went on releasing their force into her skin. Her breathing deepened. The ache of the horse stance in her thighs dissolved into a heavy, pleasant numbness. She was cultivating well. She was also growing tired in a way that felt wrong for how carefully the bath had been prepared, a dragging sleepiness at the edges of her focus that she blamed on the day's embarrassment and the long stance and the heat.
As she absorbed the medicine, the water grew clearer, the green cloud of herbs thinning as the bath poured its force into her meridians. Beneath the surface her lower body became visible in a rippling blur: the pale shape of her buttocks against the floor of the tub, the slim waist above them, the dark suggestion of her pussy between her closed thighs. Elder Chang's focus frayed. His cock ached against his clothes, thick and hard and leaking. A man would have had to be a saint to resist such a body, and he was no saint. He was a patient predator counting hours, watching her eyelids, waiting for exhaustion to finish what the medicine had started.
She was already worn out from the stance and the long practice. Her senses thinned. The heat became a cradle, and time stretched into a blur of breath and qi and the distant awareness of hands on her back. An hour, then two, then three. Her head nodded once and she jerked it upright. Four hours of continuous work, and the medicine that had been helping her cultivate had also been working on her body in ways she didn't understand, a slow, heavy pull toward sleep that she mistook for ordinary fatigue.
At last she fainted from exhaustion and slumped backward in the tub. Her head tipped against the rim, her chest arched up out of the water and lifted her breasts with it, her nipples pointing at the ceiling, and her lips parted on an empty breath that misted in the steam.