Since Mo Yixuan was standing over Nan Wuyue, all he could see was his master glowering down at him. Although it was half-hidden by long strands of black hair, the expression he saw...

...was filled with anger mixed with hatred!

Very good, Mo Yixuan. Even when showing your true colors to me, you still try to hide it from the rest of the world!

Hypocrite!

“S-shizun, I—”

“Quiet.” Mo Yixuan silenced him, eyes still fixated on the pale white band around his index finger. What kind of spellcraft was this? He was certain he had tossed the thing outside as soon as he woke up. That aside, had Qing’er really said six days?

If Nan Wuyue really had waited that long, then it meant that Mo Yixuan had slept for at least six days himself!

But right now, that was the least of his concerns. Once again, he slipped off the ring. Having no pockets to put it in and not used to sticking things in his sleeves, Mo Yixuan ended up cradling the object in his palm while he studied his disciple. At the age of seven, Nan Wuyue had been picked up by the sect, then selected formally by Mo Yixuan two years later to be his core disciple. Back then, no one had been surprised: the boy had been measured to have immense potential for cultivation. And yet everything went downhill from here.

Mo Yixuan had personally taught Nan Wuyue all he knew, but none of his techniques or skills stuck. Even the basics learned by all Mt. Jingting disciples were hopeless on the body of the boy. For years, he struggled to make progress while embarrassing his master and his fellow disciples at the same time. Nan Wuyue had always been an obedient, quiet boy, so the constant failures only turned him more uncertain and insecure. He would have withdrawn into himself entirely if not for the consistent, patient guidance of his master, who persisted in defending, teaching, and supporting him. Because of this, no one dared to disparage Nan Wuyue out loud, but plenty talked about him behind his back.

More telling than that, Ouyang Che had noted, was the fact that Mo Yixuan never bothered to stop them—and the insinuation that the man was quite different from how he appeared on the surface.

Then three months ago, things had shifted again. Nan Wuyue suddenly started making progress in his cultivation, while Mo Yixuan grew stricter and more prone to voicing his displeasure. Outwardly, they were still the meek disciple and his serious master, but the dynamics had shifted: it felt like Nan Wuyue had somehow gotten the upper hand by taking control of his own improvement. Add that to the mysterious “injuries” Mo Yixuan kept suffering, and he could guess that waters were stormy between the two.

He took a deep breath.

“You—” Mo Yixuan began.

“Shizun knows my wrongs!” Nan Wuyue said immediately as he kowtowed towards the ground. “May shizun mete punishment!”

Qing’er shook her head furiously. “Peak Lord Mo, please show clemency! Senior Brother Nan didn’t eat or drink anything for a week. He hasn’t cultivated to a point where his body can take such abuse!” Now that she had time to calm down, she’d fallen back to referring to Nan Wuyue by his title.

“I thought I told you to stay at Mt. Luojia,” Mo Yixuan frowned at his disciple.

Nan Wuyue visibly wavered, but boldly forged on. “I couldn’t rest easy knowing that I still deserved to be punished.”

“...why do you insist on making things harder for yourself?” Mo Yixuan asked after a pause.

“Shizun once said that there was no progress without pain. For this disciple to suffer is only natural.”

“So you’re suffering,” Mo Yixuan echoed dully.

Nan Wuyue shook his head. “Disciple can take much more than this!” Because I’ll pay you back the pain tenfold. No, a hundredfold!

Masochist. Mo Yixuan’s expression grew strange for a second before he stepped back. “Do as you wish.”

“Peak Lord Mo!” Qing’er’s head snapped up in alarm. “He can’t—”

“Is this your mountain or mine?” Mo Yixuan interrupted. Qing’er froze, then bowed her head to the ground.

“Qing’er was careless with her words, may Peak Lord Mo forgive me!”

Mo Yixuan only sighed. “Leave us. I’ll be hard pressed to explain things to Peak Lord Mu if you catch cold.”

Qing’er bit her lip. The next second, she resolved herself firmly and rose to her feet. “Disciple Qing’er begs pardon for her transgressions. I’ve neglected my duty and still have tasks to do for my master, so I must return. May Peak Lord Mo show clemency!” She ended her spiel by holding out the cloth bundle she’d been cradling in her lap. Mo Yixuan grudgingly reached out and took it, but did nothing else with the bag.

“Th..there are medicines and things inside. Food too, in case Senior Brother Nan is willing to eat,” Qing’er stammered.

Mo Yixuan had the sudden feeling that this wasn’t the first time Qing’er had tried to convince Nan Wuyue to take the items. If this disciple was as stubborn as he looked, he probably rejected her every time. He looked curiously towards Nan Wuyue, but the boy seemed intent on staring a hole into the ground. He was about to accept the bundle when Ouyang Che’s words rang out in his head.

“If there’s one thing you need to remember, it’s that Mo Yixuan prizes his pride above all else. He’d never be the type to willingly accept help from others. Nan Wuyue knows this well from first-hand experience. ”

What a headache. But Mo Yixuan set the bag aside and ordered, “Wait here.”

The startled girl could only do as she was told while Mo Yixuan went back inside. A few minutes later, he emerged with one of the pretty ornamental bottles lining his shelves. It was empty inside, but made of a crystalline stone that shimmered even in the drab afternoon light. A faint presence of qi around its surface convinced Mo Yixuan that it was a valuable item.

“Mt. Jingting needs no charity,” Mo Yixuan muttered as he shoved the object into Qing’er’s hands. “This is payment for the items. Now go.”

Qing’er was so surprised that she nearly dropped the bottle. Alarmed by the close call, she turned and fled down the mountain without another word. Mo Yixuan watched her figure disappear into the snowy distance before resting his eyes on Nan Wuyue.

“How long are you planning to stay here?” he asked.

There was an obstinate set to Nan Wuyue’s jaw. “Until shizun tells me to get up!” Despite the power behind his words, his voice was noticeably raspy.

I’m not your shizun, Mo Yixuan almost wanted to say again, but that hadn’t done any wonders the first two times. “I never forced you into this,” he stated instead.

Then he turned around and stepped into the house, letting the door shut softly behind him. He left the bag of medicine and food beneath the covered walkway framing the door, safely out of the sleet; Nan Wuyue was thus abandoned to the unforgiving cold outside. His last sight of his master was the fluttering hems of his robes, stark white against the gray. It was transient and ephemeral, an elevated sight distanced from human realms. But it only elicited another sneer from the youth.

Once upon a time, he had been tricked into thinking that the man with gentle eyes and a soft voice had been an immortal descended from the Heavens, choosing him to be his disciple because he was special. Although he’d failed and failed again, his master had never abandoned him, but even encouraged him to keep trying as he shared in his failures and triumphs.

Who knew that his master was nothing but a liar?

Who expected him to be the source of all his torments?

Nan Wuyue had denied it every step of the way, but when he finally found out the truth, it chilled his bones and froze his heart until the thing shattered into pieces inside him. Even then, the fragments tore at his insides, drawing blood whenever he thought of their past and all the promise it once held.

He could serve him, obey him, and pretend to admire him, but he would never trust Mo Yixuan again!

—

Inside the building, Mo Yixuan finally relaxed his fingers and unfurled them to reveal the white jade ring resting in the palm of his hand. Despite his glare, it yielded no answers. He thought it over before throwing it to the ground, where it laid motionless. Then he slowly began to back out of the room while keeping his eye on the object. The jade ring didn’t budge, but the second he ducked behind a wall, he felt a familiar coolness around his finger and looked down to see it back on his hand again.

Unsatisfied with the result, Mo Yixuan pulled it off and threw it clear across the rooms, where it disappeared behind a folding screen in the study. This time he stared at his finger. Once again, nothing happened until the moment he looked away—when the ring returned again!

He’d read about his share of magical objects in cultivation novels: things like sentient weapons or rare treasures that could recognize owners and stick to them. But what was this ring supposed to be? He tried poking and prodding it, both with his fingers and his qi, but the item insisted on remaining as an innocent piece of jewelry. In the end, Mo Yixuan finally gave up. If it turned out to be something strange, he could always ask Ouyang Che about it later.

Instead, he turned his steps towards the shelf of broken porcelain, careful not to step on the pieces littering the ground. After surveying the mess, Mo Yixuan determined that it’d take ages to pick it all up by hand. Well, now that he was a cultivator…

He narrowed his eyes in concentration, then focused on a single fragment on the ground. Slowly, it began to tremble before rising with a tiny shudder into the air. Pleased with the results, Mo Yixuan mentally kept it there while picking up more pieces around it. Step by step, piece by piece, he eventually ended up levitating all of the vase fragments into the air. This wasn’t telekinesis, but simply manipulation of his qi, using the invisible currents of energy to sustain and float the bits in the air. At least six days had passed since his dip into the qi refining pool, far more than the few days Ouyang Che had advised him to rest. It felt more natural to use and circulate his qi now, almost as an extension of himself.

Of course, if Ouyang Che himself were here to witness the scene, he would be stunned at Mo Yixuan’s exquisite control. There were at least 50 separate pieces scattered about the ground, with more spread out over the shelves, yet Mo Yixuan had grasped them all perfectly and had swirled them into a gentle whirlwind in the center of the room. He left them hovering while he pondered what the ancients did for trash cans. When nothing immediately came to mind, he decided to save himself the trouble and crush all of the porcelain pieces instead. As soon as the thought entered his mind, the fragments popped one after another into fine clouds of glittering dust. They circled each other lazily in the air, giving Mo Yixuan the impression of an indoor Milky Way. Satisfied with his progress, he mentally gathered all the dust into a shimmering ball, then deposited it the lot in one of the larger empty vases next door.

After that, he made another round of the rooms he’d only glanced at six days ago, picking up tidbits here and there. Apparently, Mo Yixuan was also a fan of fine landscape paintings and possessed a vast collection of wall scrolls in his study. Beyond that, there was a beautiful guqin resting in the center of one room that overlooked the best of the mountain views. If there was a chess set and calligraphy table nearby, Mo Yixuan would pen him as a typical scholarly gentleman—odd that, for a man supposedly cultivating towards immortality. And of course, there was the strange overpopulation of bottles and vases all over the rooms. They came in all sizes and shapes, and were made of either porcelain, jade, or ivory divided by shelf and room. By the end of his tour, Mo Yixuan estimated that the things numbered in the hundreds without including the shelf he’d broken and the one he gave away to Qing’er, vastly more than anything else in the residence.

He couldn’t fathom why or when a single man would need so many containers, but neither could he be bothered to find out. For now, he decided to keep them as they were, because finding a place to store or sell them would take vast effort atop a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

As day turned into dusk and then night, Mo Yixuan finished his exploration and settled down on a brush mat by his bed. Ouyang Che had advised him to meditate daily when possible, so now was a good time to start. His thoughts flickered briefly to the boy still kneeling outside the door, but quickly pushed him to the back of his mind. Before he left, he’d already made his stance clear. If Nan Wuyue was going to stubbornly turn himself into a human popsicle, then that was his choice alone. And so, Mo Yixuan sent his consciousness into a deep state of tranquility and left the world behind.

Like that, the seventh day passed.

—

Meditating brought Mo Yixuan an inner peace he’d sorely missed in his life. It was a mix between feeling everything and nothing all at once, as if he was resting in a floating bubble in oblivion, shut off from everything else, even his own thoughts. His soul hungered for it, and settled into a stillness so deep that it was already noon the next day by the time he woke up.

Once again, it was the sound he noticed first. The sleet had melted into heavy rain that fell like bullets against the earth, fast and cold and cruel. He remained sitting with crossed legs, eyes closed as he felt with his senses for that familiar presence last kneeling outside the door. Nan Wuyue was still there, though he felt weaker than before.

Without a word, Mo Yixuan rose to his feet and glided out of the room.