Li Lingfeng watched Sun Xiaolan execute the Nine-Petal Sword Form with bittersweet pride. Her movements held the fluid grace of mountain streams—instinctive, unstudied. Such wasted genius, the Sword Sage mourned silently. Even the Body Reformation Elixir couldn't reshape cosmic indifference; her spiritual veins remained narrow tributaries where oceans should flow.
When disciples began gathering like starlings at Golden Lotus Hall's gates, Li Lingfeng summoned his heir. "Jingyan," he commanded, "guide Xiaolan through the Celestial Steps sequence."
The disciple bowed, jade-green robes sweeping stone tiles. "This unworthy one lives to serve Shushan's honor." His eyes remained lowered, hiding the triumph blazing within.
Alone with Sun Xiaolan on the training plateau, Li Jingyan's discipline unraveled thread by thread. Morning sun gilded her sweat-damp neck as she pivoted through sword forms—a crane dancing among cherry blossoms. His knuckles whitened around his scabbard. Zhao Rui doesn't deserve such jade.
"Your stance falters here, Junior Sister." The lie slipped smoothly as silk. When his fingers brushed her wrist, he felt her pulse leap like a caged sparrow.
Sun Xiaolan recoiled as if scalded. Six years of fending off wealthy suitors in Dong'an hospitals had honed her instincts. "I'll practice alone, Senior Brother."
Desperation cracked his cultured facade. "But the subtleties require—"
"Does Senior Brother wish me to recount this lesson to Master Lingfeng?" Her voice could have frozen magma.
The Sword Sage's name struck like divine thunder. Li Jingyan stumbled back, cheeks aflame with mingled shame and fury. He watched her retreating figure—every sway of her hips a fresh torment. When I rule Shushan, he vowed silently, you'll beg for my touch.
Golden Lotus Hall's silence had teeth. Li Lingfeng's presence filled the cavernous space like pressurized water—invisible, crushing.
"Kneel."
Li Jingyan's knees struck marble before conscious thought. Cold seeped through silk trousers.
"Your eyes," the Sword Sage's voice echoed from shadowed eaves, "pollute Shushan's purity." A tear of blood welled in Li Jingyan's left eye—punishment manifesting. "She is Zhao Rui's heart. Harm her, and you ignite war with a coming titan."
He saw. He always sees. Terror liquefied Li Jingyan's bones. He prostrated himself, forehead pressed to freezing stone. "This disciple was bewitched! Her beauty—"
"Beauty?" Li Lingfeng's laughter held no mirth. "I spared you from Zhao Rui's wrath. Pray that mercy was not a mistake."
The sentence fell like an executioner's blade: "Penitence Peak. One century."
Winds howled through Penitence Peak's bone-white crags. No birds sang here; even lichens shunned the barren rock. Li Jingyan's silk robes flapped like tattered flags as he surveyed his cell—a damp hollow stinking of bat guano and despair.
One hundred years. The arithmetic of madness. He traced rotting wooden bowls left by predecessors. One bore a suicide's final poem carved with fingernails.
"Enjoying the view?"
The voice slithered from nowhere. A talisman spun mid-air, shedding golden dust that coalesced into a masked figure. Its shifting visage mirrored Peking opera's bian lian artistry—crimson wrath melting into jade deceit.
Li Jingyan's sword leapt to hand. "Reveal yourself, demon!"
The specter chuckled, a sound like coins dropping on corpses. "We share masters, you and I. Li Lingfeng broke me here centuries before you were whelped." A phantom finger pointed northeast where Zhao Rui's residence glittered like an insult. "Shall we discuss... mutual interests?"
Far below in the valley, Zhao Rui paused mid-sword stroke. "Dun Che?"
The demon sniffed westward gales. "Tastes like lightning and rotten eggs. Trouble brewing?"
On Penitence Peak, Li Jingyan's fingers closed around the offered talisman. Its heat seared his palm—a contract signed in pain. The masked figure whispered promises: power to humble Zhao Rui, spells to bend Sun Xiaolan's will, secrets stolen from Shushan's forbidden archives.
"Your price?" Li Jingyan rasped.
The specter's face settled on funeral white. "A single hair from Li Lingfeng's head. Delivered before next moonrise."
As the apparition dissolved, Li Jingyan stared at his reflection in an ice puddle—eyes now twin voids where ambition once burned.
In her courtyard, Sun Xiaolan shuddered mid-meditation. The jade pendant Zhao Rui gifted her had turned glacier-cold. When she touched it, phantom screams echoed from the western peaks.
Far above, Penitence Peak vanished behind sudden thunderheads.