Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 1114: A Young Woman’s Heart

Linghu Chong held the swordtip against Song Qingshu’s throat and laughed coldly. “So, Surnamed Song — did you ever imagine you’d find yourself here?”

Ding Dian and the others had stayed behind in Yangzhou to cover the retreat, trusting him to get Song Qingshu out of the city. What none of them knew was that the man they called Wu Tiande, garrison commander of Quanzhou, was Linghu Chong — and that Song Qingshu’s political marriage to Miss Ren of the Sun Moon Holy Cult was, to Linghu Chong, nothing less than the theft of the woman he loved.

“I genuinely didn’t.” Song Qingshu let out a quiet sigh. He had been too careless — Wan Qili’s trap had caught him when it shouldn’t have. At his level of cultivation he was near-immune to most poisons, but the Heavenly Devil Flower was simply too absolute, and its method of delivery impossible to guard against. He had capsized in a ditch.

If I somehow survive this, he thought grimly, I need to find some means of protection against legendary toxins. The Seven-Heart Sea Crabapple is colorless and odorless — if an enemy deployed that against me, I wouldn’t even smell it coming. He made himself a private promise — and then caught sight of Linghu Chong’s face and almost laughed. I can’t even get through the next five minutes. What future am I planning for?

“Any last words?” Linghu Chong watched him smile on the edge of death and felt, in spite of himself, something like respect.

“Dying by your hand is rather better than dying by the hands of lesser men,” Song Qingshu answered mildly.

Linghu Chong felt a small jolt. “You know who I am?”

“A man like you can’t be disguised away entirely.” Song Qingshu’s tone was entirely easy. “I recognized you the moment I saw you.”

Linghu Chong let out a cold grunt. “Flattery won’t help you now. I’m going to kill you.”

Song Qingshu would have shrugged, but the toxin had spread to his muscles and the motion was beyond him. “Even so, you might at least tell me why. Let me die understanding it.”

“Why?” Something dark flashed across Linghu Chong’s face. “You took Yingying by force. You used your position to claim her. Is that reason enough?”

“‘Took by force’ is rather a strong way of putting it,” Song Qingshu said with a rueful smile. “The marriage arrangement was proposed by Cult Leader Ren himself — and given the Golden Serpent Camp’s future, refusing wasn’t really an option. If you want to be angry at someone, Young Master Linghu, your anger belongs with Ren Woxing. He made you certain promises, and he’s the one who broke them.”

Something uncertain moved through Linghu Chong’s expression. 

Song Qingshu pressed on quietly: “And let me ask you this — in your heart of hearts, is Yingying truly the person you love most?”

“Of course she is—” The words came out immediately — and then stopped. Because what rose in Linghu Chong’s mind, unbidden, in that pause, was a memory of practicing the Chong-Ling Swordplay alongside Yue Lingshan.

Song Qingshu smiled. “You hesitated. Follow what your heart is actually telling you. Go find your little martial sister.”

A long silence followed. “Little Martial Sister’s heart belongs to Martial Brother Lin,” Linghu Chong said at last. “Why should I torment myself?”

“I have considerably more experience in this area than you do.” Song Qingshu gestured to the ground beside him. 

Linghu Chong hesitated, then sat.

“More than a thousand years ago,” Song Qingshu continued, “a great romantic sage named Xiang Shaolong once observed: a young woman’s heart is the most changeable thing in the world—” [G: Xiang Shaolong is the fictional time-travelling protagonist of the novel A Step Into the Past by Huang Yi, celebrated for his extraordinary success with women. In fact, this is the first CN I ever read, and then it all began.] 

“Who is Xiang Shaolong?” Linghu Chong asked, puzzled.

“A man of extraordinary… vitality,” Song Qingshu replied with a faint, private smile, remembering the blushes his teenage self had sustained reading that novel. “You’ve experienced it firsthand, Young Master Linghu. At the beginning, Yue Lingshan’s heart was entirely yours — every martial brother and sister, even your shifu and shishi, all took it for granted you two would be together. Then Lin Pingzhi arrived, and everything changed.”

Linghu Chong let out a heavy sigh. “She always thought of me as an older brother, nothing more. She grew up admiring Sect Lead— admiring Sect Master Yue, so the kind of man she’s drawn to is dignified, reserved, serious. Someone like me — a loose-tongued, dissolute drunk — why would she ever—”

“You’re wrong about that,” Song Qingshu said. “You think she chose Lin Pingzhi because of your manner. I don’t believe that was the real reason.”

Linghu Chong’s eyes sharpened. “Then what was?”

“Women need presence,” Song Qingshu said quietly. “Real love grows from time spent together. You spent a full year alone on the Cogitation Cliff, and after that you were always wandering the wulin. During all that time, the person at Yue Lingshan’s side every day was Lin Pingzhi. W0men are creatures of feeling — even a cat or dog that stays close enough will eventually find its way into your heart. How much more so a person.”

“How do you know all these details about us?” Linghu Chong looked at him with suspicion — then shook his head. “Even so, that can’t be the whole explanation. We grew up together from childhood. Surely I spent more time with her than anyone.”

“And that brings us to the second thing you did wrong.” Song Qingshu’s voice remained unhurried. “Suppose Yue Lingshan had once asked you to help her build a snowman. What would you have said?”

Linghu Chong answered without thinking: “I’d have said something like ‘it could only ever be as lovely as you’ — or ‘to build one as beautiful as you, now that would be a challenge.'” As he said it his face softened, as though remembering some long-ago afternoon with his little martial sister.

Song Qingshu shook his head slowly. “And there is precisely where you lost to Lin Pingzhi. If she had asked him, he would have looked at her quietly and said ‘there are more important things to attend to.'”

Linghu Chong’s brow creased in genuine bewilderment. “She wouldn’t have been angry?”

“You still don’t understand how a w0man’s heart works.” Song Qingshu’s tone was almost compassionate. “Because you cared so deeply about Yue Lingshan, the moment she opened her mouth, everything else ceased to matter — you would set aside any obligation for her sake. But endless accommodation only makes a w0man take you for granted. It is the occasional, well-placed refusal that makes her feel uncertainty, that keeps her thinking of you when she closes her eyes at night.”

Something lit in Linghu Chong’s eyes. The words had clearly found their mark.

Song Qingshu smiled inwardly. There was another reason he had chosen not to mention — one he understood too well. In the eyes of readers and observers, Yue Lingshan appeared to be a willful and unreasonable young woman. But underneath that exterior she was, in fact, deeply sensible. She understood the difference between what mattered and what was mere amusement. She took the Mount Hua Sect’s responsibilities more seriously than Linghu Chong ever had — the original story mentioned her frustration with his careless ways more than once. At first his gifts had been enough to make those flaws bearable. But as his behavior grew steadily further beyond what she could comprehend, and as someone equally talented but more reliably serious appeared at her side — Yue Lingshan’s change of heart had been, in the end, as much inevitable as it was circumstantial.

Song Qingshu understood this too clearly to say it aloud. Telling Linghu Chong would change nothing — the man’s soul reached toward freedom and open skies, and that would not change. At a moment this delicate, there was no need to draw the blade across that particular wound.

“You’ve said all of this to me,” Linghu Chong said finally, “because you’re asking me not to kill you?”

Song Qingshu smiled. “Not asking. I’m simply certain that you won’t.”