Chapter 62: Past Will Not Hurt Me Anymore

Standing behind the colossal boulder, watching Master cleanly bisect that kingdom-shattering Tier 3 predator without ruffling his clean white sleeves, I felt my heart beating like a war drum in my throat.

The sheer, breathtaking elegance of his movements was something I had never seen, not even from the most celebrated martial masters of our imperial army. The way the emerald sword-light flowed, shifting from gentle, weeping willow curves to a razor-sharp, void-splitting line, was pure poetry.

As he flicked the stray drop of blood from his blade and turned toward me with that easy, handsome smile, I couldn’t help but step forward, clutching my hands tightly against my chest.

"Master..." I asked, my voice barely louder than the breeze rustling the pine needles. "Is it possible for me to learn that sword art?"

Master let out a warm chuckle, sliding the blade back into its scabbard with a crisp metallic chime. "Of course you can learn it, Qingxue. But right now, you are still too weak. The Gale-Severing Willow Sword Art demands that you cycle sharp, rotational wind qi through specialized apertures that mortal flesh cannot endure. If you tried to force it with your current cultivation base, your meridians would simply snap under the pressure."

He walked over, tapping the tip of my nose affectionately. "Build your vessel first. When you reach Foundation Establishment, I will personally guide your hand through every form."

His words didn’t discourage me in the slightest, instead, they ignited an unquenchable fire within my bones.

This was the very technique Master used in combat! If I wanted to stand beside him without being a useless burden, I simply had to double my efforts, swallow the pain, and grind until my foundation was as indestructible as ancient mountain stone.

Master then drew a slender utility blade and motioned for me to approach the fallen tiger. Crouching beside the massive beast, he carefully cut through the bone and muscle to extract a glowing, thunder-crackling crystal sphere, a Tier 3 Beast Core.

He handed the warm stone to me, using the moment to impart another invaluable lesson.

He explained that while Beast Cores were prized across the continent for powering sect arrays, crafting talismans, or brewing aggressive alchemical concoctions, an orthodox cultivator should rely on them as little as possible for personal progression.

Beast cores contained the primal, chaotic essence of wild beasts, saturated with stubborn elemental impurities. While a negligible amount could be purged during regular meditation, consuming them frequently or using them as a shortcut to force realm breakthroughs would permanently contaminate one’s spiritual channels, creating invisible energetic scars that would turn into lethal bottlenecks in the higher realms.

"The path to immortality has no shortcuts, little wildcat," Master had smiled, his eyes solemn yet gentle. "A true peak is built brick by brick. Let the fools drink poison to quench their thirst, your Master will ensure you have pure heavenly springs."

I committed every single word to my soul. I was his disciple, and his wisdom was absolute, if Master told me to avoid shortcuts and rely solely on honest tempering and pure medicines, I would follow his doctrine to the letter.

As we pressed deeper into the untamed wilderness toward the border, our journey turned into an endless, brutal crucible of combat.

Whenever we crossed paths with wild magical beasts, Master would rein in his stallion and order me to draw steel, while he stepped in only to handle the terrifying predators that exceeded my limits.

It was my very first time fighting magical beasts with wild elemental claws and hardened scales, but it was certainly not my first time fighting for my life.

During those agonizing months when imperial bounty hunters pursued me through mud and briars, I had traded blows with cutthroats and wild hounds using broken ceramic shards and rusted daggers. I knew the stench of blood, and I knew the terror of death.

Because Master was watching from horseback, his calm, expectant gaze fixed upon my back, I poured every ounce of my will, strength, and Asura Dao Heart into every single clash.

I fought like a woman possessed. I dodged venomous fangs, rolled through jagged shale, and drove my steel blade into the vulnerable eye sockets and joints of savage predators.

Every time a beast fell, Master would dismount, wipe the sweat and blood from my brow, and calmly point out my flaws, where my hips had overextended, where my breathing had stuttered, or how half a second’s hesitation had exposed my ribs.

With every single battle, I felt the clumsy rust of mortal desperation falling away from my limbs. My strikes grew cleaner, my instincts grew fiercer, and my movements transformed from crude survival thrashing into lethal, disciplined martial precision.

By the time our horses neared the border lands, my confidence had reached unprecedented heights. Against enemies of my own realm, I could sever their breath in two moves.

In fact, when an aggressive Tier 2 Earth-Plow Boar ambushed our path, I didn’t retreat, I utilized the eighteen forms Master taught me, using environmental rocks and fluid pivots to shatter its skull with my own hands.

As the bruised twilight began painting the sky in deep shades of purple and slate-grey, Master called a halt near the outskirts of a mortal settlement named Autumn Wind Town.

He turned in his saddle, looking at the gathering storm clouds, and told me that we would stop in the town for the night to rest and recuperate.

In truth, thanks to my Peak Body Strengthening physique and the potent Dragon-Tiger Vitality Pills he had given me, the long hours in the saddle hadn’t exhausted me at all. I felt entirely capable of galloping through the night straight into the heart of the Dayun Kingdom.

Yet, Master had decreed it, and if Master said we must rest, there had to be a profound, overarching reason behind his command. An immortal never acted without purpose.

Before we approached the wooden town gates, Master pulled our horses into a secluded pine thicket and instructed us both to change our clothing.

I obediently shed the luxurious, embroidered moonlight-silk robes he had borrowed from the Sect Master, swapping them for a simple, high-grade dark-green traveling tunic, while securing a sheer black silk veil over the lower half of my face. Master did the same, donning a relaxed, dark traveling scholar’s tunic.

Even as I tied my sash, I couldn’t entirely grasp the logic behind his caution.

Back in the borderlands, status was an absolute weapon. An imperial seal or an officer’s banner was enough to make local magistrates tremble and commoners drop to their knees.

Master was an exalted, untouchable Peak Master of the grand Mystic Cloud Sect. Wouldn’t it be infinitely simpler to ride into town wearing our celestial robes, brandishing his jade token, and letting his terrifying immortal aura scare away every cutthroat and greedy merchant for ten miles around?

Yet, who was I to question the unfathomable depth of an immortal grandmaster? Master had lived through decades of cultivation trials, if he deemed anonymity necessary, then my limited mortal understanding simply hadn’t grasped the traps hidden in the shadows.

We entered Autumn Wind Town just as a violent, torrential storm broke over the roofs. Leading our steaming warhorses to the stables of the Drunken Pine Inn, we stepped into the crowded, boisterous common hall.

We approached the front counter, where a harried, sweating innkeeper was flipping through his ledger. Master casually asked for two upper-class private rooms, only for the innkeeper to apologize profusely, explaining that the sudden deluge had forced dozens of traveling caravans inside, leaving only a single luxury suite available on the top floor.

Before I could even process the words, Master let out a warm, relaxed chuckle.

Reaching out with effortless familiarity, he wrapped a strong, possessive arm around my slender waist, pulling my body firmly against his ribs.

"One room is more than enough," he said smoothly, tossing down a heavy chunk of pure silver onto the ledger. "Why would I need two when I can simply share a warm bed with my lovely wife?"

My entire world ground to a screeching, paralyzed halt.

W-Wife?!

Beneath the sheer silk of my veil, my breath caught in a sharp, strangled gasp. A wave of burning heat exploded across my neck, scorching my cheeks and rushing straight to the tips of my ears. My heart hammered so violently against my ribs that I was terrified the innkeeper would hear it over the thunderstorm.

It was the very first time Master had ever uttered that word aloud in front of the outside world.

On our peak, he had made his intentions clear, but within the grand halls of the sect, we were strictly master and disciple. Out here, beneath the common gaze of mortal men, he had cast the pretense aside without a shred of shame, declaring to heaven and earth that I belonged to him.

I didn’t know how to breathe. I didn’t know how to move. Yet, beneath the paralyzing embarrassment, an intoxicating, overwhelming surge of pure happiness bloomed in the deepest corners of my chest.

Before the entire world, I am his wife. Was there any sweeter, more miraculous title under heaven?

Feeling his large, warm hand resting securely against the curve of my waist, my rigid posture softened. I lowered my head, hiding my burning blush against the fabric of his dark tunic, allowing his comforting warmth to envelop my senses completely as he led me up the wooden stairs.

Yet, as the heavy brass key clicked in the lock of the Pine Pavilion suite, my overwhelming joy collided head-on with a cold, rising tide of absolute panic.

The room was spacious and clean, warmed by a crackling cedar brazier, with a private bathing screen in the corner. But dominating the center of the chamber was a colossal, plush bed draped in rich crimson silk.

Standing by the hearth with my fingers trembling against the cuffs of my sleeves, my thoughts spiraled into frantic, terrified chaos.

Master had declared us a married couple before the entire inn. He had booked a single room with a single bed. The implication was as vast and undeniable as the heavens, he was asking for my body tonight.

Logically, my mind screamed at me that there was nothing wrong with it. I had accepted his proposal. I was his disciple, his indebted servant, and his betrothed. To share his bed and offer him the pleasures of the flesh was the natural, fundamental duty of a wife. It was the least a ruined, penniless girl could offer the man who had pulled her from the gates of hell.

And yet... I was utterly, paralyzingly terrified.

My knuckles were white, my throat was dry as dust, and a suffocating, nauseating dread clawed at my stomach. I was not ready. I was so dreadfully, pathetically far from ready.

And as usual, Master saw straight through me. Master always knew everything.

Before I could humiliate myself with stuttering excuses, he leaned against the bedside table and spoke in that calm, teasing, effortless voice of his, telling me that we were not going to have sex tonight unless I was entirely, genuinely comfortable with it.

When I panicked, babbling about duty and debt, he simply stepped forward and flicked my forehead, scolding my foolishness with a wry, affectionate smile, declaring that forcing things out of repayment held zero meaning.

In that single, quiet heartbeat, my soul shattered, and I fell for this man ten times harder than I ever thought possible.

How can someone be this good?

How could a powerful, immortal cultivator who held absolute dominion over my life treat a broken mortal with such tender, saintly reverence? Looking at his warm, handsome face, a deep, bitter wave of self-hatred washed over me.

Was I truly worthy of him?

I had pledged my life, my soul, and my eternal loyalty to this man, yet when the moment came, I couldn’t even fulfill the most basic, fundamental duty a woman owed to her husband.

The fault did not lie with him. The fault lay entirely with the pathetic, cowardly weakness rotting inside my own chest.

During those agonizing, bloody months when I was crawling through the mortal dregs, starving in back alleys and fleeing through desolate forests, there had been men, vile, predatory beasts with rotting teeth and reeking breath, who had tried to corner me in the dark.

Traveling mercenaries, corrupt garrison guards, and lawless bandits who looked at a starving, dirt-caked girl and saw only helpless meat to be violated.

None of them had ever succeeded.

Every single time a filthy hand had reached for my clothes, the ferocious, feral will of my Asura Dao Heart had taken over. I had bitten through their fingers, smashed their eyes with jagged river stones, and driven rusted iron blades into their groins and throats, leaving them bleeding in the mud while I fled into the night.

My flesh had remained pristine, pure, and untouched by their filth.

Yet, even though I had won every single one of those desperate, bloody struggles, the terror of those moments had left deep, festering scars across my soul. The suffocating weight of being pinned down, the repulsive sound of tearing cloth, and the vile lust in their eyes had become an invisible poison sleeping in my marrow.

To my irrational, scarred heart, the act of physical surrender, even to the man I loved with every drop of my blood, felt like a terrifying abyss.

I knew it was foolish. I knew Master was an untouchable celestial who would sooner cut off his own hand than cause me a single drop of pain. The terror was completely irrational, completely unfair to him, yet my trembling hands refused to obey my mind.

Standing before the crimson bed, I clenched my teeth so hard that a faint trace of copper flooded my tongue, swearing a solemn, silent vow to the heavens.

I would tear this cowardice from my heart. I would confront these lingering nightmares, shatter the trauma of my past, and heal my soul until I could stand before him without fear.

One day, I would gladly shed my robes and give Master the boundless, intoxicating pleasure that a devoted woman should grant her husband.

And deep within the quiet, yearning embers of my awakening heart, I secretly looked forward to the day when I could surrender completely, melting into his arms to receive the overwhelming warmth and love that only he could give me.