Chapter 57: Chapter 56
The warm jade bed in the master courtyard was usually a place of absolute, soothing comfort. But as Yan Shuo slowly drifted awake from his healing nap, the first thing he noticed was that the air in the room felt incredibly thick.
It wasn’t the usual, refreshing mountain breeze. The air was heavy, warm, and practically buzzing with trapped spiritual energy.
Yan Shuo slowly opened his eyes.
The heavy silk curtains surrounding the bed were drawn tightly shut. The windows were sealed. Glowing along the baseboards of the room were three newly activated, supreme-tier isolation arrays. And burning in a small bronze censer by the door was a stick of deep red incense that smelled distinctly of sweet lotus and... Dragon-Blood Passion Root?
Yan Shuo’s pragmatic mind instantly snapped to full attention. Why in the Heavens is someone burning dual-cultivation incense in my bedroom?
Before he could even sit up, the heavy oak doors of the chamber slowly clicked open, and then immediately locked shut with a definitive, heavy thud.
Tantai Zhi stood by the door.
Yan Shuo took one look at his wife and felt a cold bead of sweat form on the back of his neck.
She was not wearing her majestic crimson robes. She was wearing only her pristine, snow-white silk inner garments, which clung to her flawless figure in a way that left very little to the imagination. But it wasn’t her clothing that sent warning bells ringing through Yan Shuo’s strategic brain.
It was her face.
The terrifying Saintess, the Goddess of Slaughter who could look a Late Nascent Soul Grandmaster in the eye without blinking, was currently blushing so fiercely that her neck and collarbones were stained a brilliant, catastrophic red. She was trembling slightly, her hands clutching the fabric of her skirt, and her golden eyes were swimming with a mixture of overwhelming maidenly panic and absolute, martyr-like determination.
She looked like a soldier preparing to march directly into a volcano.
"Zhi’er?" Yan Shuo asked carefully, pushing himself up against the mountain of pillows. His ribs still ached from the Heavenly Dao curse, but his self-preservation instincts entirely overrode the pain. "What are you doing? Why is the room locked?"
Tantai Zhi didn’t look him in the eye. She stared fiercely at his blanket.
"I spoke with the fox," Tantai Zhi said, her voice shaking into a high-pitched, breathless squeak. She took a slow, stiff step toward the bed. "She checked the ancient texts. She told me why your meridians are not healing. The Heavenly Dao curse is isolating my Yin Qi. It is rejecting the medicine."
Yan Shuo’s dark eyes narrowed. Su Mei, you useless furball, what exactly did you tell her?
"It is a stubborn curse, yes," Yan Shuo replied smoothly, maintaining his calm facade. "But as I said, I just need a few months of rest to—"
"I will not let you suffer for a few months!" Tantai Zhi interrupted, her voice suddenly spiking with fierce, desperate protectiveness. She took another step, reaching the edge of the jade bed. "The text said there is only one way to bypass the curse. The healing energy must originate from within your own foundation. We must... we must achieve Supreme Unification."
Yan Shuo’s brain completely flatlined.
Supreme Unification.
In the cultivation world, that wasn’t just holding hands. That wasn’t just pressing foreheads together to share a bit of aura. That was the absolute, physical, and soul-deep joining of Yin and Yang. It was the most primal, intimate act two cultivators could share, completely shedding all physical and spiritual barriers to merge their vital essences.
He looked at the deeply flushed, trembling woman standing by his bed. She reached up with shaking fingers and slowly untied the silk ribbon holding her inner robe closed.
"W-Wife. Zhi’er. Stop," Yan Shuo said.
His voice didn’t carry his usual lazy warmth. It carried the sharp, panicked authority of a general watching his army walk directly off a cliff.
Tantai Zhi froze, her hands hovering over her silk collar. She finally looked up at him, her golden eyes flashing with a sudden, devastating hurt.
"Husband?" she whispered, her lower lip trembling slightly. "Do you... do you find me unappealing? I know I am clumsy with romance, but I swear I will be gentle! I just want to cure your pain!"
Yan Shuo mentally cursed the Heavens, the Righteous Alliance, and especially that stupid fox maid. He had to defuse this situation flawlessly, or he was going to break her heart.
"Zhi’er, listen to me very carefully," Yan Shuo said, making sure his voice was incredibly gentle but entirely firm. He reached out and caught her trembling hands, pulling them away from her collar. "You are the most beautiful woman in the mortal realm. I am not rejecting you. But if you try to achieve Supreme Unification with me right now, you will kill me."
Tantai Zhi’s breath hitched. The blush on her face instantly vanished, replaced by a horrified, bone-chilling pale.
"K-Kill you?!" she gasped, her eyes widening in absolute terror. She instinctively scrambled backward, pulling her hands out of his grip as if she had just realized she was made of poison. "No! How?! The manual said it heals!"
"The manual assumes both cultivators have mature vessels, Wife," Yan Shuo sighed, running a hand through his dark hair.
He pointed to his own chest.
"Look at this body, Zhi’er. I may have managed to condense a Nascent Soul, but my physical vessel is still only fifteen years old. My meridians, while reinforced by Qi, are physically narrow. They are the pathways of a youth."
He looked her directly in the eyes, his expression completely serious.
"You cultivate the absolute peak of the Ice-Heart Jade Maiden Art," Yan Shuo continued. "You have a century of accumulated, pure, primal Yin Qi. Your vital essence is as massive and heavy as a frozen ocean. If we unite completely right now, and you pour that ocean into my fifteen-year-old meridians... my vessel will not heal. It will literally, instantly explode from the sheer pressure."
Tantai Zhi stared at him, her mind rapidly calculating the spiritual physics he just described.
An ocean trying to flow through a teacup.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. She had almost let her desperate panic blind her to the most basic laws of bodily cultivation. She had almost forced a supreme-tier energy transfer onto a juvenile physical vessel. She had almost killed the only person she cared about.
"I... I didn’t think..." Tantai Zhi stammered, tears instantly welling up in her golden eyes. She frantically pulled her white silk robes tightly around herself, completely ashamed. "I am so stupid! I almost shattered your meridians! I am a terrible wife!"
"Hey. Look at me," Yan Shuo ordered softly.
He ignored the sharp ache in his chest and leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her gently onto the edge of the bed. He didn’t let her pull away. He held her securely, letting his chin rest on her shoulder.
"You are a wonderful wife," Yan Shuo murmured, his breath warm against her ear. "You were willing to do anything to stop my pain. That makes you the best protector I could ever ask for. You just forgot that your husband is currently a bit fragile."
Tantai Zhi sniffled, burying her face into his shoulder, her hands gripping his white robes tightly.
"But... but you are still hurting," she cried softly. "If I can’t give you my vital essence, how do we wash away the curse? The pain will just keep eating at your spiritual sea."
Yan Shuo closed his eyes, his calculating mind running through a thousand different ancient arrays and forbidden arts.
"We don’t wash it away," Yan Shuo finally said. "We freeze it."
Tantai Zhi looked up, her tear-stained face filled with confusion. "Freeze it?"
"A deep spiritual alignment," Yan Shuo explained, his voice low and steady. "We won’t cross the physical threshold. We won’t merge our vital essences. But we can link our spiritual seas deeper than we ever have. If you channel your absolute coldest Yin Qi directly into the fractures of my foundation, you can freeze the Heavenly Dao curse in place. It won’t cure me, but it will completely numb the pain and stop the curse from spreading."
Tantai Zhi wiped her eyes, her expression hardening with fierce determination. She understood immediately. It was a temporary seal. A band-aid over a fatal wound.
"How long will the seal last?" she asked, her voice dropping into her professional, serious tone.
Yan Shuo calculated the density of the curse against the raw power of her Yin Qi.
"Five years," Yan Shuo answered honestly. "In five years, my physical vessel will reach twenty years of age. My meridians will naturally expand and mature into adulthood. By then, the seal will break, but my body will finally be strong enough to withstand the curse... and endure the cure."
Tantai Zhi’s cheeks flushed a brilliant pink at his words, but she didn’t look away.
"Five years," she repeated softly, engraving the timeline into her very soul. "I will seal it for you, Husband. I won’t let you feel a single drop of pain for the next five years."
She quickly kicked off her shoes and climbed fully onto the center of the jade bed, sitting cross-legged directly in front of him. She took a deep breath, calming her wildly beating heart, and extended her pale hands toward him.
Yan Shuo matched her posture, wincing slightly as his ribs protested the movement. He reached out and intertwining his fingers perfectly with hers.
"Ready, Zhi’er?" Yan Shuo asked softly.
"I am ready, Husband," she whispered, leaning forward.
They gently pressed their foreheads together.
The moment their spiritual centers touched, the heavy, incense-filled air in the bedroom instantly crystallized. Tantai Zhi opened her spiritual sea entirely, but instead of a gentle, soothing warmth, she unleashed the absolute, terrifying zero-degree cold of her pure Yin foundation.
The freezing energy rushed up Yan Shuo’s arms and slammed directly into his chest.
It was agonizing for exactly half a second, like plunging into a frozen lake. But then, the jagged, burning pain of the Heavenly Dao curse simply stopped. The pure ice wrapped around the micro-fractures in his meridians, locking the destructive heavenly energy in a state of absolute stasis.
Yan Shuo let out a long, heavy exhale. For the first time in three days, he felt completely, genuinely pain-free.
They sat together in the quiet, mist-filled room, their auras cycling in perfect harmony.
The curse is asleep, Yan Shuo thought silently, the dark gravity of his Nascent Soul slowly rotating within its new icy cage.
He looked at the beautiful, devoted woman sitting in front of him, her eyes closed in deep concentration as she exhausted her own energy to keep him safe. The pain was gone, replaced by the profound, freezing comfort of her Yin Qi.
He gently squeezed her fingers, pulling her just a fraction closer.
