My Wife Aman: Beautiful and Coldhearted - Chapter 2

Song Wenyan was very good at caring for others.

He was an excellent cook. At dawn, he would gather peach blossoms jeweled with dew, bring them home, and brew them into wine, which he buried beneath the old peach tree behind our bamboo cottage.

He would set a bamboo chair in the courtyard for me to lounge in the shade, then sit nearby with a palm-leaf fan and cool me at an unhurried pace.

He loved rising early to comb my hair. The wooden comb would glide from my crown to the ends, while he called my name again and again.

“Aman.”

I yawned and answered lazily.

“What is it?”

“I only wanted to say your name.”

“Oh.”

What a strange thing to do.

At dusk, he sat with me outside the cottage to watch the sunset.

The evening glow covered half the sky. I reclined in the bamboo chair while he sat on the stone step beside me.

He hummed a lilting, lovely melody. When it ended, he turned to me with laughter in his eyes. “Did you like it?”

“Mm.”

I gave a languid murmur.

His smile grew brighter.

“As long as Aman is happy.”

My Daoist name in the Xiaoyao Sect was Wuman—Without Fulfillment.

Master said the Great Way had no end, and one must never grow complacent.

Song Wenyan disagreed.

Aman, Aman, he would say. The *man* in her name meant fulfillment.

Gentleness was carved into that young man’s bones.

I think I did love him once.

At least, back then, I believed that was love.

Song Wenyan and I spent three years together.

It was neither a long time nor a short one.

Our days were leisurely, but a sword cultivator who yearned for freedom and a life spent wandering would inevitably tire of them.

I began to spend more and more time alone.

He must have noticed. He said nothing, though whenever I returned, he still greeted me with a smile and a meal kept warm.

“Aman, you’re back.

“Are you hungry? I made your favorite—”

“I’m not hungry today,” I cut in.

The young man froze where he stood.

I suppose this was simply the sort of person I was.

Coldhearted to the bone.

Nothing held my interest for long. Once the first flare of excitement passed, everything became dull.

I was a disciple of the Xiaoyao Sect. After cultivating for three hundred years, I had long since shed the body of a mortal.

He was a low-cultivation spirit whose lifespan would barely reach a century.

A mortal lifetime was no more than a firework in my eyes: brilliant for an instant, then swallowed by silence.

I did not want to be swallowed by silence.

I wanted to become an immortal. I wanted eternal life.

Yet the final barrier would not yield to me.

Master said my Dao heart was not pure enough. An attachment burdened my heart, so the gate would not open.

“There is something you cannot let go.”

“There is nothing.”

Master smiled.

“You know whether that is true.”

My heart jolted. For a long time, I could not collect myself.

Someone once told me that a love tribulation was the hardest tribulation of all to survive.

Then I heard rumors of a method by which one might prove the Way.

**Kill your husband to prove the Way.**

**Sever all mortal ties and prove the truth of your heart.**

I had cultivated for centuries. I was reluctant to part with Song Wenyan, yes—but what was that small reluctance beside eternal life?

I made my decision.

When the peach blossoms were at their fullest, I said to Song Wenyan, “Let’s get married.”

He went still beneath the peach tree and stared at me, eyes wide, unable to recover for a long while.

“You don’t want to marry me?” I asked.

“N-no. Of course I want to be with you.

“But why, all of a sudden…

“Aman, I’m so happy.”

He stammered as he reached for my face, only to stop halfway, afraid this might be nothing but a joke.

I tipped my head, my smile radiant.

“When someone saves your life, you repay them with your hand in marriage.

“Isn’t that how mortals do it?

“Are you unwilling?”

Song Wenyan stared at me.

“I’m willing, Aman,” he said. “Even if it costs me my life.”

Something pricked my heart like a needle. I told him to think it through, then fled without looking back.