Chapter 233 | The Sect’s Dark Secret

Chapter 233: 233 | The Sect’s Dark Secret

Lin Tian walked down the quiet, secluded stone path toward his courtyard.

Before parting ways at the foot of the Main Peak after the welcoming ceremony, he had exchanged a brief, silent glance with Elder Liu and Elder Bai.

Elder Liu had calmly headed toward the Inner Sect Resource Hall to register the northern boundary deeds, while Instructor Qing returned to the Martial Arts Peak to prepare her equipment for tomorrow’s seclusion chamber.

Lin Tian stopped before the carved wooden gates of the Cloud-Sea Pavilion.

Even from outside the protective barrier, his spiritual sense picked up the gentle warmth of the hot spring pool and two familiar, restless heartbeats pacing back and forth inside the courtyard.

With a flick of his wrist, he pressed his residential token against the defensive formation.

Hum—click.

Before Lin Tian could even push the double doors open himself.

The gates swung wide, and two women standing side by side on the stone threshold froze as they looked up at him.

On the left stood Madam Shen, dressed in a soft, flowing gown of pale violet silk that accentuated her slender waist and dignified bearing as the Deputy Hall Master of the Resource Hall.

Beside her stood Aunt Lin, wearing a fitted azure-green dress that hugged the lush, mature curves of her figure, a light apron still tied loosely around her waist from working in the Artifact Pavilion.

Ever since the first frantic rumor had reached the sect’s flying ship had been ambushed by a Core Formation demonic cultivator neither of them had slept a single peaceful night. Even when the victory message had arrived yesterday afternoon, the fear of whether he had been secretly injured in the tournament ring had kept them waiting by the courtyard gate since sunrise.

Now, seeing him standing whole and unharmed before them in his robe, the color rushed back into their faces at once.

"Tian-er!"

Aunt Lin’s dark eyes immediately misted over. Forgetting all reserve, she stepped across the threshold, caught him by the forearms with both hands, and pulled him straight inside the courtyard before the gates shut behind him.

"Let me look at you!" Aunt Lin said, her voice trembling slightly as her warm, soft hands patted urgently down his shoulders, his chest, and his ribs. "A few days ago, the outer deacons were saying the ship’s arrays were torn open by blood-cultivators! Did those bastards hurt you? Did you take any internal wounds in the arena?"

Beside her, Madam Shen activated the courtyard’s spiritual barrier and isolation array with a flick of her sleeve. Though she did not rush forward as impulsively as Aunt Lin, her soft eyes were shining with the exact same wetness as she stepped close.

"Come inside the hall first, Aunt Lin," Madam Shen said softly, her gentle fingers brushing tenderly against the side of Lin Tian’s cheek as she took his heavy weapon and outer cloak. "You’ll keep him standing in the cold wind all afternoon if you check every inch of him at the entrance."

Looking at the two women fussing over him without asking a single word about tournament rankings or prizes, the cold killing intent that had lingered in Lin Tian’s chest since Sky-Pillar City melted away completely.

He reached out and slid one arm around Aunt Lin’s lush waist and the other around Madam Shen’s soft shoulders, drawing both of them against his chest at the same time.

"Not a single scratch," Lin Tian said warmly, lowering his head to kiss Aunt Lin’s forehead before pressing his lips softly against Madam Shen’s temple. "If a few northern disciples could leave a mark on me, how would I dare come back through this door?"

Feeling the solid, immovable heat of his Body pressing against them, the last trace of anxiety in both women’s hearts finally dissolved. Aunt Lin let out a shaky breath and buried her face against his collarbone for a long moment, her arms tightening around his waist.

Inside the main hall of the Cloud-Sea Pavilion, the low spirit-wood table was already laid with steaming dishes of spirit-fowl, mountain shoots, and a jar of aged spirit-plum wine.

Yet before letting him sit at the table, Madam Shen and Aunt Lin insisted on leading him straight into the hot spring pool, which was already filled with soothing medicinal herbs.

Behind the frosted glass screen, the two mature beauties did not leave the room. With their cheeks flushing a soft, delicate pink in the rising steam, Madam Shen knelt beside the rim of the jade pool while Aunt Lin sat on the low wooden stool at his side.

As Lin Tian sank into the hot water and rested his arms along the stone edge, four soft, practiced hands began washing the dust of the journey from his broad shoulders, chest, and back.

Unlike the fierce, life-and-death urgency of the colosseum or the high-strung pride of the sect elders, the atmosphere inside the steam-filled bath chamber was pure, unhurried tenderness. Whenever Madam Shen’s slender fingers glided down his chest, her soft violet silk sleeves grew soaked against the water, clinging transparently to her full breasts. Seeing the way Lin Tian’s golden eyes darkened as he looked at her wet silk, Madam Shen’s eyelashes fluttered shyly.

"The water is splashing everywhere anyway..." Aunt Lin whispered beside them, her own face warm and rosy as she reached behind her back and untied the sash of her azure dress.

The damp silk gowns slipped to the warm stone. Both women stepped gracefully into the jade pool, the warm herbal water rising as their soft, fragrant bodies pressed against him from both sides.

"Mmm..."

A quiet sigh of pleasure escaped Madam Shen’s lips as Lin Tian’s strong right arm slid around her bare waist, pulling her soft back flush against the right side of his chest while his mouth found Aunt Lin’s eager, parted lips on his left.

For the next two hours, the steaming water rippled continuously across the white jade rim. First in the warm bath, and then carried dry and breathless onto the wide, beast-fur rug of the inner meditation chamber, Lin Tian gave both women the full measure of the warmth they had missed over the past ten days. Wrapped in the familiar, intoxicating embrace of his Primordial Yang, Madam Shen’s gentle cries and Aunt Lin’s deeper, unrestrained moans wove together inside the sealed room until dusk painted the paper windows in shades of deep orange.

When the storm finally subsided, the two women lay curled on either side of his bare chest beneath the silk quilt, their skin glowing with a radiant, rosy vitality.

Resting her chin lightly on Lin Tian’s shoulder while her fingers traced slow circles over his heart, Madam Shen let out a soft, contented breath.

"Before you left for the tournament, my meridian felt slightly stiff whenever it rained," Madam Shen murmured quietly. "After today... it feels as if the old root from those defective recovery pills years ago has completely vanished."

Lying on his other side with her thigh draped warmly over his hip, Aunt Lin nodded sleepily.

"Mine too," Aunt Lin said softly. "Back when we were still taking the standard Spirit-Nourishing Pills from the Inner Sect Dispensary three years ago, half the female cultivators in our compound developed cold blockages in their lower channels. Everyone thought it was just the damp mountain air... until Tian-er started clearing our meridians."

In the dim warmth of the bedroom, Lin Tian’s hand stroking Madam Shen’s smooth back paused for a second.

His golden eyes narrowed quietly as he stared up at the wooden rafters.

Elder Liu’s alchemical toxicity.

Instructor Qing’s five-year Fire-Poison that had refused to heal with sect medicine.

Elder Bai’s worsening Soul Fragility.

And even the mild, chronic meridian blockages that had quietly stunted talented inner disciples and women like Madam Shen and Aunt Lin through the sect dispensary’s standard pills over the past decade.

None of those afflictions were sudden, lethal poisons that would trigger an investigation by the Grand Elders. Every single one of them was a slow, creeping flaw designed to quietly rot the foundation of the Crimson Nimbus Sect from top to bottom—just like the Demonic Marrow-Stagnation Ash currently sitting inside the crimson jade box in his spatial ring!

Poisoning the sect’s lifeblood, Lin Tian thought coldly, and no one inside the mountain gates ever traced where the ash entered the supply.

Wait—if the poison came from the Blood-Bone Demonic Cult, even Sect Master Hong could not refine it inside the Main Peak without risking the scent leaking out to the Alchemy Peak. Someone had to be smuggling that demonic ash from the northern wastes straight to the foot of the Crimson Nimbus Mountains!

Lin Tian kissed Madam Shen’s soft hair and gently tucked the silk quilt over both women’s shoulders as their breathing slowed into deep, peaceful sleep.

Once they were fast asleep, he slipped silently out of bed, pulled on a plain black night-robe, and stepped out into the moonlit garden of the Cloud-Sea Pavilion.

Inside the sect, every official record hall and deacon patrol ultimately answered to Sect Master Hong. If he wanted to trace the smuggling line that fed the Sect Master’s throne without alerting the snake in the grass, there was only one person outside the sect gates whose eyes and ears reached into every dark alley of the region.?