When Snow Ends, Green Returns - Chapter 6

Year after year, the cycle repeated.

Many test subjects failed to endure. They died twisted and grotesquely deformed.

The survivors could neither die nor escape the hell of living.

Now, the pain, exhaustion, and extreme physical suffering of cultivation followed me like breathing.

Habit made it easy to bear.

…

Across the decades on Clear Snow Peak,

I sat beneath the courtyard’s peach tree, chin in hand, watching Yu Xuejin’s sword light illuminate the moon.

Petals whirled around movements of flawless, cutting precision.

His sword fell; flowers drifted like snow. Moonlight touched him; he gleamed like frost.

During one expedition, when I was still at Golden Core, a Nascent Soul yao beast chased me relentlessly.

My spiritual power exhausted and my body badly wounded,

I was about to swallow a cultivation-boosting pill that would severely damage me when Yu Xuejin descended like a savior and drew me into his arms.

The beast exploded into blood mist.

His snow-lotus scent mingled with the smell of my blood. “Huiqing, don’t be afraid,” he murmured.

My heart ached with worship.

Shizun was so powerful…

In winter, I loathed the cold.

Often I grew listless while meditating and fell asleep, only to wake beneath blankets on a bed carved from ten-thousand-year warm jade.

Yu Xuejin would sit beside me reading, candlelight playing over half his gentle, immortal-beautiful face.

I could not bear to blink. I would watch him for ages.

When the drugs lingering in my body flared and left me in unbearable agony,

I feared letting Yu Xuejin see my wretched state.

I found a cave somewhere on Clear Snow Peak and hid there to endure it alone.

Curled in a haze of pain, I saw a snow-white figure cover me. After a sigh, the agony slowly ebbed…

It was Shizun.

…

…

Love at first sight gradually deepened into reverence for his strength, love, and absolute obsession.

Yet I knew my cultivation was too low then.

I was not good enough.

I did not deserve so powerful and wonderful a shizun.

I could only gaze up at him in silence.

And work harder, then harder still.

Climb high enough.

Hope that one day I could stand beside that bright moon.

And gently gather it into my arms.

…

At least Great Ascension, perhaps?

“What are you thinking about?” Yu Xuejin’s voice drew me back.

A smile touched my eyes. “Remembering the years after I became your disciple…”

Whatever he recalled made his arm tighten sharply around my waist.

His chin rested in the hollow of my neck. His voice was thick with guilt and grief, even a hint of choking.

I had lost count of his apologies over the past ten years.

“Huiqing, I’m sorry…”

“It was all my fault.”

“If I’d been firmer then, followed my heart instead of letting the outside world burden me, would you never have…”

“Xuejin, you did nothing wrong,” I said seriously.

How could Shizun ever be wrong?

The moon could never be wrong.

I had never resented him.

The fault was mine. Back then, I had simply been… in too much pain.

My mental state in my original world had been terrible.

I knew I would not live long.

When I entered this cultivation world and met Yu Xuejin, I thought heaven had granted me a gift.

But through a cruel misunderstanding,

I believed he truly no longer wanted me and meant to form a Dao partnership with someone else.

Only then did I understand.

He had never belonged to me.

I loved him.

But he was free.

The moon never waited, and never fell.

For me, however, the final beam of light went out.

My inner world collapsed.

I wanted only death.

Only release.

Only destruction.

…

I kissed his lips with devotion and dependence. “Xuejin, as long as you don’t stop wanting me, don’t abandon me, and still need me,

I’ll stay beside you forever…”

Yu Xuejin silently held me tighter. “I will never abandon you.”

Several days later, my wounds had healed.

Warm and well-fed, lust returned.

I embraced Yu Xuejin’s neck, showered his face with kisses, brushed my nose against his chin, and caught his earlobe between my lips to nibble gently.

Previously, after I hurt myself and recovered, he would already have pressed me into bed until I lost all sense of time—bodies first, then spirits, then bodies again—for a week at the shortest and a month at the longest.

Now, no matter how I tempted him, he acted impotent.

Not that he was. I clearly saw him react, only for him to suppress it with a Heart-Clearing Art.

“???”

Aggrieved, I whined, “Xuejin, I want to dual-cultivate,

I want to dual-cultivate, I want to dual-cultivate…

Shizun… Shizun… Shizun…”

Yu Xuejin pulled me into his arms and calmly said, “Huiqing, excess harms the body.

Cultivate restraint with me.”