Chapter 245 | A Thread of Warmth in Ten Years of Cold

Chapter 245: 245 | A Thread of Warmth in Ten Years of Cold

Inside the Snow Pavilion, the biting draft blowing through the shattered eastern window seemed to die down the instant Lin Tian’s palm closed around Chu Qingyi’s hand.

"Don’t pull back yet, Senior Sister," Lin Tian said softly near her ear. His left arm remained steady behind her shoulders, supporting her without holding her too tightly. "The Corpse-Marrow Stagnation Ash has spread through your upper meridian. If I withdraw my Yang Qi now, the cold backlash will rush straight back into your chest."

"Take these Heart-Guarding Lotus Pills first, Senior Sister Chu," Elder Liu said softly. Her eyes were still red with anger over what they had discovered. "They won’t remove the demonic ash, but they will keep your meridian from freezing while Lin Tian guides the cold Qi away."

Chu Qingyi looked at Elder Liu, then she glance at Lin Tian’s calm face.

Chu Qingyi swallowed the two pills Elder Liu offered.

"You said... forty caskets over ten years," Chu Qingyi whispered, her voice still hoarse and trembling as the golden warmth slowly pushed the grey frost line back down from her collarbone. "When my father entered closed-door seclusion to breakthrough ten years ago... it was Hong Xuan who guarded the hall ."

"Hong Xuan didn’t suddenly turn traitor recently. He sold the Crimson Nimbus Sect to the Blood-Bone Cult before your father even closed the seclusion gate." Lin Tian replied in a low, even voice as faint crimson runes revolved within his Insight Eye, tracking grey ash inside her meridians.

Chu Qingyi’s free hand gripped the edge of the Cold Jade platform so hard that her nails cracked against the stone.

A tear rolled down her pale cheek and disappeared into the collar of her gown. She had held back her tears through ten years of grief and guilt.

"For ten years... I blamed myself," Chu Qingyi breathed out, each word heavy with a decade of suffocating grief. "I thought that if I had reached the Peak Core Formation Realm earlier and shared the burden of the sect, my father wouldn’t have needed to force his breakthrough so soon... And all this time, I was taking the pills handed to me by his murderer"

"He wanted you to live with that guilt, Senior Sister," Elder Liu said, wiping the corner of her eye while keeping her spiritual sense alert to the courtyard outside. "As long as you blamed yourself and stayed locked inside this peak, taking his elixirs, you would never think to investigate. And in the end, Ash would have destroyed your Golden Core for him."

"How much of the ash can be cleared tonight?" Chu Qingyi asked, forcing her breathing to steady as the cold pride of the Previous Sect Master’s daughter returned to her clear phoenix eyes.

Lin Tian guided a condensed thread of his Core Origin Fire wrapped in pure Primordial Yang down through her meridian.

Hss—!

A thin trail of foul grey-black smoke escaped from Chu Qingyi’s fingertips and faded into the cold air.

The pressure on her chest eased at once, and a little color returned to her pale cheeks.

"The Corpse-Marrow Stagnation Ash has accumulated over ten full years and is fused directly onto the surface of your Late Stage Golden Core. Right now, Hong Xuan is standing just outside the mountain gate." Lin Tian said honestly.

"If we spend time burning the deep ash off your Golden Core tonight," Elder Liu added quietly, "not only will the spiritual fluctuations alert him that we know about the poison, he will realize that you aren’t dying—and he may take desperate action before we have the proof to bring him down."

Chu Qingyi’s eyes narrowed coldly.

Having grown up beside her father at the summit of the sect’s politics, she understood.

"Right now, Hong Xuan let the two of you enter because he believes the demonic ash are beyond even Junior Sister Liu’s alchemy to cure," Chu Qingyi said softly, her mind sharpening through the lingering ache in her Dantian. "He is waiting outside to hear that my Golden Core has cracked and that I have only days or weeks left to live."

Chu Qingyi looked into Lin Tian’s golden eyes.

Even though he was over a century younger than her and had only just stepped into the Core Formation Realm, there was a calm, commanding steadiness in his voice.

"How long will it take to burn the ash off my Golden Core completely?" she asked quietly.

"Five nights," Lin Tian answered calmly. "Because the ash is fused with the deep Yin essence of your Frost-Jade Profound Physique, stripping it forcefully all at once would injure your Core."

He would have to come into her private seclusion chamber alone in night and channel his pure Yang directly into, a subtle, unfamiliar ripple passed through Chu Qingyi’s chest.

For ten years, this pavilion had been a tomb of ice where no man’s shadow had ever fallen.

Yet as Lin Tian slowly released her hand so she could sit up on the Cold Jade couch, the instant his warm fingers left her skin.

Unconsciously, her pale fingers curled slightly over the warmth he had left behind.

"There is a hidden passage through the array on the back cliff. It bypasses the main bridge entirely. Only someone carrying this Frost-Bamboo Sub-Token can pass through without triggering the ancestral barrier," Chu Qingyi said quietly. She reached for her waist and took out a small, crescent-shaped token made of pale cyan jade.

She held the cyan jade token out toward Lin Tian.

As Lin Tian reached out to take it, her cool fingertips brushed briefly against his knuckles.

"My father left me these words as a warning for a time of crisis. He said that if the Main Peak ever fell into corruption, only the elders loyal to the sect’s true bloodline could be trusted," Chu Qingyi said softly. "Before tonight, I didn’t even know your name, Elder Lin. Yet you risked your life to bring the truth here and save me."

"Hong Xuan wants to turn the Crimson Nimbus Sect into an altar for the Blood-Bone Cult," Lin Tian said evenly, slipping the Frost-Bamboo Sub-Token into his spatial ring. "Everyone standing on our side has a debt to settle with him. Clearing your Golden Core isn’t a favor, Senior Sister—it is sharpening the sharpest sword of our sect."

Hearing him call her—a woman who had just failed her breakthrough and believed herself crippled—the sharpest sword of the sect, a warm current stirred deep beneath in Chu Qingyi’s heart.

[Ding! Target 7 (Chu Qingyi) Obsession Level: 8% → 15% (Deep Gratitude, Trust in Host’s Resolve & Reliance on His Nightly Treatment)]

"Then to satisfy the jackal waiting outside the gate," Chu Qingyi said calmly, raising her pale right hand and pressing two fingers lightly against her own chest meridian, "let us give him the exact news he stayed up all night to hear."

"Cough—!"

Deliberately agitating a trace of stagnant surface blood in her throat, Chu Qingyi coughed another bright crimson stain onto the front of her white silk sleeve while allowing the surface aura of her Late Stage Golden Core to dim into a weak.

Outside the crack array at the foot of Bamboo-Mist Peak.

The moment that weak, flickering ripple of a dimmed, failing Golden Core drifted down from the upper summit, Sect Master Hong’s Peak Core Divine Sense caught it instantly.

Beside him, the First Elder exchanged a quick, triumphant glance with Hong Xuan.

A few breaths later, Elder Liu and Lin Tian walked back down path and stepped out through the gap in the array, where Elder Bai and Elder Qing immediately withdrew their array needles to let the ancestral formation seal itself shut again.

Elder Liu’s face was heavy and grim as she shook her head before the waiting council elders.

"The frost from the failed impact was too severe," Elder Liu announced with a heavy sigh that echoed across the cliff. "With Elder Lin’s Yang Qi and my Heart-Guarding Lotus Pills, we barely managed to stop the frost from piercing Senior Sister Chu’s heart meridian tonight. However... her Golden Core suffered damage. Even if she survives the next month, without a miracle, she will not be able to leave or wield a sword for years."

Several old elders let out heavy sighs of grief, shaking their heads at the tragedy of the Previous Sect Master’s daughter.

Sect Master Hong lowered his head and let out a long, sorrowful breath.

Just as expected, Hong Xuan thought with total satisfaction. Now I don’t even need to force. Once the next shipment from the Blood-Bone Cult arrives, she won’t even have the strength to lift the Ancestral Seal.

"Junior Sister Liu and Elder Lin have worked," Sect Master Hong said in a warm, grateful tone as he raised his head. "Since Senior Sister Qingyi’s life is temporarily stabilized and the ancestral array is closed again, let no one disturb her rest. Everyone return to your peaks!"

As the crowd of deacons and council elders dispersed into the fading darkness before dawn, Lin Tian walked calmly down the mountain path between Elder Liu, Elder Bai, and Elder Qing.

Hong Xuan thought he would finally have some peaceful days.

He had no idea that, when he reached out to claim his prize, a newly awakened Peak Core Formation swordswoman and four Core Formation Elders would be waiting to shut the coffin lid over his head.

***

A crippled Golden Core is just the beginning. The Sovereign’s fire is about to forge a sword that will pierce the Main Peak. Drop your Power Stones and Golden Tickets.