Throughout the rest of that winter, Tushan Jingci went to Xiao Mo’s courtyard more and more often.
As long as classes were over and she had nothing else to do, then no matter how fierce the wind or snow, she would appear in the depths of the bamboo grove right on time, stepping through the snow to his side.
The snowy days in the bamboo grove were beautiful, truly beautiful.
But every single day, Tushan Jingci was longing for winter to end.
Because Xiao Mo had once said it himself.
When he woke up, he would give her a mountain full of peach blossoms.
And at Cold Mountain Academy, the peach blossoms only bloomed in spring.
Which meant Xiao Mo would wake up in spring.
So Tushan Jingci counted off the days one by one, waiting in hope for that spring that belonged to her and Xiao Mo.
And then, amid the girl’s daily anticipation, winter finally passed.
That morning, the mountain mist had not yet fully dispersed. It floated thinly through the woods like a layer of half-transparent gauze.
Drops of dew clung to the pine needles and now and then fell onto the dead leaves below with a soft rustle.
A stream ran shallow over the stones, clear enough to show the sand and pebbles at the bottom, while a few tiny fish hovered against the rocks, their tails swaying lightly.
On the sunlit slope, fresh green grass was just starting to emerge in clusters, tender and new.
The mountain flowers too were in perfect bloom, their pink-white petals scattered damply across the stone steps.
A passing breeze carried with it the raw sweetness of earth and the faint fragrance of mountain flowers, drifting softly through the air.
Spring had come.
After that, every day for Tushan Jingci was filled with nervousness and expectation.
To her, it felt as though Xiao Mo might wake the very next morning.
But early spring passed, and Xiao Mo still did not wake.
In fact, peach blossoms had already opened on quite a few of the academy’s peaks, yet not on Elementary Learning Peak, where Xiao Mo was in seclusion.
Tushan Jingci, who had once loved spring most of all, looked at this tardy season that had arrived only to bring her no joy at all.
And suddenly, she felt that perhaps she did not like this season so much after all.
Within the academy, some students even began quietly wondering among themselves why the peach blossoms on Elementary Learning Peak had still not bloomed this year.
But after a few days, no one cared anymore.
Compared to that, those classmates and close friends who knew Tushan Jingci well gradually began to notice something else.
Compared with before, Jingci seemed steadier now. More mature.
They did not quite know how to describe it.
It was just that...
As she grew older, Jingci had once changed only in appearance. She had become more beautiful, more captivating, more naturally enchanting.
But during this stretch of time, she no longer seemed like a little girl whose appearance had grown up while her heart remained young.
That trace of worry between her brows made many people feel, for the first time, the flavor of a woman’s maturity.
Yueshi noticed this change in her young lady as well.
In the past, whenever her young lady studied or practiced calligraphy, someone always had to stay by her side and urge her on, remind her, keep her settled.
But ever since Xiao Mo entered seclusion, although her young lady still ran to the bamboo grove every day and still went daily to see that man sitting there in silence, somewhere along the way she had become remarkably self-disciplined.
Whether it was reading, cultivation, or the lessons assigned by her teachers, no one needed to say a single extra word anymore. She would quietly go and finish everything on her own.
And soon, a few more months passed. Summer, autumn, and winter slipped away one after another.
A full two years had now passed since the day Xiao Mo first entered seclusion.
The resonance of the Way around him had grown deeper and heavier.
That faintly visible river of dao resonance kept circling around him, winding endlessly at his side, until at last it wrapped his entire body within it, like the silver threads spun by a spring silkworm, layer upon layer, weaving a vast and mysterious cocoon.
And it was also in that year that the girl turned eighteen.
If a girl of sixteen was like a flower bud not yet open, delicate and faintly green—
then the Tushan Jingci of this moment had fully come into bloom, her figure now entirely grown into itself, ever more graceful and elegant.
She could simply stand there in silence, brows and eyes like a painting, her bearing cool and distant, with just enough remoteness about her to keep others from daring to approach too easily.
And yet, the moment her lips curved and she smiled—
everything else in the world seemed to lose its color in that instant.
It was almost as if the girl did not belong to the mortal world at all, but had descended from the clouds.
Chen Jue, the First Prince of the Heavenly Demon Kingdom, and the others became even more captivated by Tushan Jingci.
When they were children, they had only thought her cute, and because of the power of the Tushan clan, they had wanted to get close to her.
But now that they too had grown older, the more they looked at her, the more beautiful they found her.
The beauty Tushan Jingci possessed was no longer merely sweetness or charm. It was the kind of breathtaking beauty that could truly move a person’s heart.
And so, in private, they all began expressing their wishes to their sects and families, hoping to marry Tushan Jingci.
It was not as though those sects and royal houses had never approached the Tushan clan with marriage proposals.
They had.
But Madam Tushan refused each one politely, saying only that her daughter’s future would be decided by her daughter herself.
That left Chen Jue, the First Prince of the Heavenly Demon Kingdom, Lou Huo, the First Prince of the Fire Demon Kingdom, Lei Qiu, the final disciple personally taken by the sect master of the Thunder Roar Sect, and the other young masters of great families feeling thoroughly stymied.
If they had possessed the ability to win Tushan Jingci’s favor on their own, they would have done it long ago. Why would they have needed to rely on the power of their families?
But the problem was precisely that they could not.
It was because they could not that they had no choice but to turn back and seek help from the great houses and clans behind them.
Now, Tushan Jingci was polite to everyone.
But beneath that politeness, there was clearly an invisible distance.
She maintained just the right amount of remoteness from every person.
Not a single man could truly come close to her heart, much less win it.
Another spring came.
In the spring of the year Tushan Jingci turned eighteen, the peach blossoms on the other peaks had already burst into bloom, filling the hills with dazzling color.
Only the peach grove behind Elementary Learning Peak remained bare, not a single blossom opening there.
And in that spring, the girl still did not like the season.
Then, one evening in that spring, Tushan Jingci was at home reading when one of her classmates and close friends came running to her courtyard with tears streaming down her face.
“Bei’er? Why are you here? What happened?”
At the sight of her closest friend crying like that, Tushan Jingci gave a start and hurriedly opened the courtyard gate to greet her.
“Jingci...”
Xu Bei’er’s eyes were red, and the moment she saw Tushan Jingci, she threw herself into her arms, tears falling like broken strings of pearls.
“It’s all right. It’s all right. Tell me slowly. I’m here.”
Tushan Jingci gently patted her on the back, one stroke after another, her voice soft and steady.
She led Xu Bei’er into her room and helped her sit down.
Only after Xu Bei’er had gradually calmed down did Tushan Jingci ask carefully what had happened.
As it turned out, Xu Bei’er had previously fallen for a young man at the academy.
His name was Xu Chu, the son of the sect master of the Moonless Sect.
The two of them had loved each other deeply, and both their families had thought the match well suited and were happy to let it proceed.
But no one had expected a sudden conflict to erupt between the Moonless Sect and the Kuangbai Sect, plunging both sides into a battle for life and death.
In the end, the Moonless Sect was defeated. The entire sect collapsed, and its disciples scattered in flight.
The only reason Xu Chu was still safe now was that he was still studying at Cold Mountain Academy and was under the academy’s protection.
No matter how arrogant and overbearing the Kuangbai Sect might be, it still did not dare come openly to Cold Mountain Academy to seize someone.
But regardless, the Moonless Sect in its current state was no longer remotely comparable to the Sea Moon Sect behind Xu Bei’er.
Once Xu Bei’er’s father—the sect master of the Sea Moon Sect—learned of the situation, he began thinking of breaking off the engagement and cutting ties with the Moonless Sect altogether.
And on Xu Chu’s side, he too felt that he was only dragging Xu Bei’er down. He was even less willing to let the woman he loved carry the stain of being called someone who abandoned others when fortune turned, and so he took the initiative and proposed dissolving the engagement.
Xu Bei’er had only learned of all this today.
Full of grievance and misery, with nowhere else to pour it out, she had come crying to find her closest sister and confide in her.
Tushan Jingci listened quietly from beginning to end. A complicated look flickered through her eyes. She gently took Xu Bei’er’s hand, but for a moment, she did not know what to say.
“I’ve decided!”
After crying herself out, Xu Bei’er suddenly sprang to her feet and wiped the tears off her face with force. Her eyes were still red, but her gaze was already beginning to grow firm.
“This engagement is not being broken off. Why should it be? I’m not letting him do it. He thinks he can just break it off because he wants to? Then what does that make me? Jingci, don’t you agree?”
Seeing that her friend had come around, Tushan Jingci curved her lips into a smile and nodded softly.
“Of course I do. If he’s someone you like, then what do outsiders matter?”
“Exactly! That’s exactly it!”
With Jingci’s approval, Xu Bei’er seemed even more energized. She waved her neat little fist.
“I’ll make preparations first and write a letter home. This engagement is absolutely not being called off.”
“And first thing tomorrow morning, I’m going to find him and make everything clear.”
“If he dares write another one of those ridiculous letters breaking off the engagement, I’ll break his legs!”
“Heh, that’s right! I’ll break his legs, then carry him off on my back and elope!”
By the time she finished saying that, Xu Bei’er herself had already begun laughing through her tears. The knot in her heart seemed to have loosened all at once.
“Do you need me to go with you tomorrow?” Tushan Jingci asked, holding her hand, her voice gentle and sincere.
“No, no. If you come with me, I’ll only feel even more awkward. I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of my own sister.” Xu Bei’er wiped away the last traces of tears at the corners of her eyes, then clasped Tushan Jingci’s slender, soft hand in return. The gloom on her face had finally lifted by more than half.
“Hm? Oh, right.”
Now that she had settled her own matter, Xu Bei’er seemed to think of something. Her curiosity immediately turned toward her friend, and she blinked as she studied Tushan Jingci.
“Come to think of it, Jingci, do you really not have anyone you like?”
Tilting her head, Xu Bei’er spoke with clear interest in her voice. “You’re this beautiful. At least half the young men in all of Cold Mountain Academy admire you. All those talented young masters keep finding ways to show you how they feel. Hasn’t there really been a single one who moved your heart?”
In Xu Bei’er’s view, there were quite a few young demons in Cold Mountain Academy with good backgrounds, good looks, and exceptional talent.
And among them, eight out of ten were secretly carrying a torch for Jingci, fawning over her one way or another, openly or in private.
But Jingci? From beginning to end, she had not taken a fancy to a single one of them.
Xu Bei’er truly could not understand it.
What was more, Jingci carried the bloodline of the Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox clan. By all logic, a Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox ought to be even more sensitive to matters of love than ordinary demons.
“Well...”
Hearing that string of questions, Tushan Jingci’s eyes wavered slightly. She lowered them, then raised her head again and blinked at her friend.
“Bei’er, I don’t even know what the person I’d like is supposed to be like... let alone what it feels like to have my heart stirred. Maybe... maybe it’s just that I haven’t really met someone I like yet?”
“I see...” Xu Bei’er let out a small sigh, sounding a little disappointed.
But soon she leaned closer again, her eyes bright with irrepressible curiosity.
“But Jingci, there isn’t even one man you care about? Not even a tiny little bit?”
Xu Bei’er still felt unwilling to give up.
To be honest, she really was curious. What kind of person would a girl like Jingci ever fall for?
“It’s not that there isn’t one, I guess?”
Tushan Jingci thought for a moment and spoke softly, her small hands unconsciously clutching her sleeves as Xiao Mo’s face slowly surfaced in her mind.
“There is someone I’m close to... Usually, when I’m with him, I don’t feel anything especially unusual. I’m almost used to it, really.”
“But when he isn’t there—whether I’m reading, writing, eating, or sleeping, no matter what I’m doing, I always end up thinking of him without meaning to.”
“Sometimes I get angry at him too, but the moment I see him, it feels like nothing matters anymore, and all my anger is gone...”
Tushan Jingci lowered her eyes. In those beautiful fox eyes, there quietly flickered the confusion and faint hurt unique to a young girl.
“These past days, he’s been in seclusion, and I’ve been able to go see him often. I talk to myself beside him all the time.”
“Even though when he’s in seclusion, he can’t say a single word back to me, I don’t even know why, but I never feel bored.”
“It feels like... as long as he’s by my side, everything in the world becomes different...”
Listening to all this, Xu Bei’er stared at her in wide-eyed shock, mouth slightly open, unable to speak for quite some time.
“Bei’er...” Tushan Jingci turned her head and looked at her friend in confusion, her eyes full of earnest curiosity. “What does it feel like to like someone, exactly?”
“Hehe...”
After a long moment of stunned silence, Xu Bei’er finally came back to herself. Raising a hand to cover her lips, she could not help laughing softly, her eyes curved with teasing delight.
“You’re laughing at me again...”
Tushan Jingci’s cheeks flushed at once. She grabbed her friend’s arm and shook it, sounding more than a little spoiled.
“I really don’t understand what it feels like to like someone... Tell me, all right? What does liking someone actually feel like?”
“Oh, my dear girl...”
Xu Bei’er took Tushan Jingci’s little hand and held it in her palms, looking at her with a mixture of amusement and tenderness. The smile on her face was impossible to hide.
“What you just described—that’s what liking someone feels like.”
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