Chapter 247 | First Night in the Snow Pavilion

Chapter 247: 247 | First Night in the Snow Pavilion

By the time night arrived, a thick blanket of silver mist had settled over the rear chasms of the Crimson Nimbus Sect.

Rather than approaching the front suspension bridge where two of the First Elder’s patrol deacons were stationed on distant watch, Lin Tian glided silently across the shadowy rock face of the rear cliff behind the Main Peak.

Stopping before a sheer wall of frost-covered halfway up the back of Bamboo-Mist Peak, he took the crescent-shaped Frost-Bamboo Sub-Token from his ring and pressed it against a natural seam in the rock.

A silent ripple of cyan light parted the stone illusion, revealing a narrow, winding stair cut directly into the mountain’s spine.

Ascending the hidden steps without making a sound, Lin Tian emerged behind the ancestral shrine and walked toward the Snow Pavilion.

Lin Tian stepped lightly onto the porch and knocked twice against the wooden doorframe.

"Come in," a cool, clear voice sounded from inside.

Lin Tian pushed the door open and closed it softly behind him.

Inside the austere seclusion chamber, a single warm-jade lantern glowed on the low table, casting a pale silver light across the Thousand-Year Cold Jade platform.

Chu Qingyi sat cross-legged at the center of the couch.

Unlike last night, when she had been caught off guard with blood on her collar, tonight she wore a clean, snow-white cultivation robe, her long black hair neatly pinned with a simple jade hairpin.

Her posture was straight and composed, carrying the natural, distant dignity of a woman who had grown up as the eldest daughter of the Main Peak and spent a century at the summit of the sect.

Yet as Lin Tian walked closer, he noticed that her pale fingers resting on her knees tightened slightly betraying the quiet tension of someone welcoming a man into her private chamber in the dead of night for the first time in her life.

"You came right on the hour, Junior Brother Lin," Chu Qingyi said.

Her voice was calm and even, choosing the form of address used between fellow Core Formation cultivators of the same generation while preserving her seniority in years.

"With Ash wrapped around Senior Sister’s Golden Core, delaying even a a bit would allow the cold settle back into your channels," Lin Tian replied smoothly, stepping up to the side of the Cold Jade couch. "Did anyone from the Main Peak try to probe the barrier today?"

"Hong Xuan swept his Divine Sense across the outer bamboo grove twice—once at noon and once at sunset," Chu Qingyi said, a flash of cold frost passing through her phoenix eyes. "I kept my Golden Core suppressed to a flickering thread just as we agreed. After sunset, he stopped probing."

She paused for a breath.

"How do we proceed tonight, Junior Brother?"

"Last night I only pushed the surface frost away from your heart meridian through your palm," Lin Tian said calmly, gesturing toward the space on the wide Cold Jade platform directly behind her back. "Tonight, I need to send my Primordial Yang and Core Origin Fire straight down your back meridian to loosen the outer crust of ash clinging to your Dantian. Sit facing inward i will place my palms against your upper back."

Hearing that he needed to sit right behind her on the and press both hands against her back, a faint, barely perceptible stiffness crossed Chu Qingyi’s snowy cheeks.

For her entire life had been devoted to the sword and the ice path; even before her father’s death, no man had ever held her hand, let alone touched her back through a single layer of thin silk.

Still, she did not hesitate for more than two breaths.

Turning smoothly so that her back faced him, Chu Qingyi crossed her legs and rested her hands calmly in her lap.

"My Frost-Jade Profound Physique reacts instinctively to foreign heat," Chu Qingyi said softly, staring straight ahead at the bamboo screen wall while her slender neck looked remarkably pale beneath her pinned black hair. "If my defensive frost react against your hands, do not hesitate to suppress it, Junior Brother Lin."

"Your physique won’t reject my Yang essence," Lin Tian said quietly, and sitting down cross-legged behind her slender back.

Even before his hands touched her, the close proximity of his body right behind her shoulders surrounded Chu Qingyi in the warm, subtle aura of his Primordial Yang Qi.

The sudden, Yang warmth radiating against the back of her neck made Chu Qingyi’s eyelashes flutter.

Lin Tian raised both hands and placed his warm palms squarely against the two primary meridian between her shoulder, separated only by the thin white silk of her inner robe.

Hss...!

The instant his palms pressed against her back, Chu Qingyi’s shoulders gave a tiny, involuntary jolt.

Through the thin silk, his hands felt as warm as two blocks of sun-baked jade firm, steady, and radiating a deep, magnetic heat that seemed to sink straight through her skin into her frozen bones.

"Steady your breath, Senior Sister," Lin Tian murmured calmly behind her. "I am sending the Core Origin Fire in now."

HUMMMMM—!

Inside Lin Tian’s Dantian, his Nine-Cloud Supreme Dark-Gold Core revolved gently, sending two refined streams of golden Primordial Yang Qi wrapped around a hair-thin thread of Core Origin Fire straight through his palms into Chu Qingyi’s back.

If any other fire-attributed Core Elder in the sect had tried to push their Core fire into Chu Qingyi’s meridians, her Single Ice Spiritual Root and Frost-Jade Profound Physique would have clashed with the foreign fire like boiling oil meeting ice water, tearing her channels apart.

Yet Lin Tian’s Primordial Yang was the source of all warmth under heaven.

As the golden stream flowed through her meridians toward her lower abdomen, her freezing Frost-Jade meridians did not resist. After ten years of cold and poison, her damaged meridians absorbed the pure Yang essence eagerly.

Deep within her Dantian, where the thick grey crust of Ash was locked around her ice-blue Golden Core, the thread of Core Origin Fire touched the outer edge of the ash.

Tsssss—!

The outer layer of demonic ash began to hiss and dissolve into grey vapor as the Yang Qi burned through it.

However, removing the ash that had spread through her meridians over ten years caused waves of heat and numbness to spread from her Dantian throughout her body.

"Mmmph..."

A low, muffled sound slipped past Chu Qingyi’s tightly pressed lips before she could bite it back.

Sitting in front of Lin Tian, her snow-white face slowly flushed a delicate, rosy pink from her cheekbones all the way to the tips of her ears.

Her breathing grew deeper and uneven, and beads of sweat formed along her neck and collarbone.

Every time Lin Tian’s warm palms shifted slightly down her back to guide the Primordial Yang closer to her waist, a strange, melting heat spread through her lower abdomen making her legs feel unnaturally heavy and soft.

What kind of Yang cultivation art is he practicing...? Chu Qingyi thought in quiet shock, her fingers gripping the folds of her white silk skirt tightly to keep her posture from swaying backward against his chest. Not only is it melting the demonic ash without hurting my meridian... why does it make my entire body feel so hot and weak?

For a full watch, neither of them spoke a word as the silent room filled with the soft sound of her uneven breathing and the steady warmth of his palms moving across her back.

When the first fifth of the outer ash crust finally burned away and vented out through her pores as a faint grey mist, Lin Tian slowly withdrew his Core flame and lifted his hands from her back.

As soon as his palms left her back, Chu Qingyi let out a shaky breath. Her shoulders relaxed slightly before she straightened herself.

Turning her head halfway without fully facing him, Chu Qingyi tried to hide the remaining blush on her cheeks. She reached for the side table, picked up a clean white silk handkerchief, and gently wiped the sweat from her temple.

"The cracks on the outer layer of my Golden Core have stopped leaking Qi, and two-tenths of the ash on its surface has dissolved," Chu Qingyi said softly. Her voice still carried a slight huskiness. "After just one night of treatment, my Dantian feels lighter than it has in three years. Thank you, Junior Brother Lin."

"The outer layers were formed by the ash from the past two years, so they were easier to remove," Lin Tian said as he stood up from the Cold Jade couch and adjusted his cuffs. "But the deeper we go, the closer we get to the ash that has been fused with your Core for ten years. Removing it will require my Yang essence to reach deeper into your Dantian. Rest well today, Senior Sister. I will return tomorrow night."

Watching his figure walk silently to the door and slip out into the bamboo mist, Chu Qingyi sat alone on the Cold Jade couch for a long time.

Looking down at the spot behind her where he had been sitting—where a lingering trace of his warm Irresistible Yang Scent still hung in the cold air—the solitary ice beauty of Bamboo-Mist Peak realized for the first time in ten years that the chamber no longer felt quite so cold.

[Ding! Target 7 (Chu Qingyi) Obsession Level: 15% → 18% (Physical Relief, Deepening Comfort in Host’s Yang Presence & Quiet Anticipation)]