Chapter 121: Cangfeng Mystic Palace
The same tactic had succeeded with Xia Qingyue back then only because Yun Che had been performing Xuan-opening on her for several consecutive days, and in the middle of the night he was exhausted and weak from physical depletion. Moreover, with the real marital status between them, no matter how cold-hearted and chaste Xia Qingyue was, she couldn’t bear to let Yun Che sleep on the floor again… And Yun Che was clamoring that he would rather die than take the bed himself and let a woman sleep on the floor, which led to them sharing the bed… though nothing happened.
But with Lan Xueruo, the same tactic was obviously much easier to pull off.
After all, Lan Xueruo was two years older than Yun Che, and subconsciously she always had the mindset of taking care of a little brother. Additionally, unlike Xia Qingyue’s cold and aloof nature, Lan Xueruo was gentle and soft-hearted. How could she bear to let Yun Che, who had repeatedly risked his life to save her, sleep on the cold floor…
So the outcome followed naturally.
Lan Xueruo slept on the inside, Yun Che on the outside, with a long rolled-up blanket between them that Lan Xueruo had made.
“Your body must not cross this blanket, otherwise… otherwise…” Lan Xueruo put on a stern expression, but her warning look carried no deterrent power and instead was quite pleasing to the eye.
“Senior Sister, don’t you trust me?” Yun Che said with a smile, then lay flat on his back and muttered to himself, “But… what if Senior Sister secretly comes over to my side… what should I do? Should I run away, or pretend I didn’t notice…”
Lan Xueruo was momentarily speechless and pretended not to hear, turning inward to lie on the bed.
The lamp went out, and the room was pitch black. In the silence, although Lan Xueruo closed her eyes, she couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. Her heart beat uncontrollably fast, to the point where she could almost hear it.
Recalling her meeting and time spent with Yun Che, she couldn’t deny that all along she had been attracted and moved by him. And tonight she was even sleeping in the same bed with him… sharing a bed. She found that she only felt nervous and uneasy, but not a trace of fear or resistance. This gave her a vague sense of danger, yet she couldn’t resist or dispel it.
She had actually slept in the same bed with a man… and it was she who had proposed it. It felt utterly incredible to her, because such a scene was something she had never imagined possible. She began to wonder: If it were the same circumstances, but Yun Che were replaced by someone else, would she still do this out of soft-heartedness and concern?
She thought for a while, swapping in many different people, and the answer she got each time was: Absolutely not!
Could it be that I trust him too much… Probably. After all, he didn’t hesitate to risk his life to protect me, and he’s so straightforward and courageous. Surely he wouldn’t do anything offensive in this situation…
Amidst Lan Xueruo’s restless thoughts, she heard Yun Che’s even breathing, as if he had already fallen asleep peacefully.
The tension in her heart immediately eased. But inexplicably, she felt a faint, indescribable sense of emptiness. Once her heart had calmed, drowsiness washed over her, and before long she sank into a deep sleep.
That night, Lan Xueruo had thought she would lie awake all night, but she didn’t expect to fall asleep so quickly and sleep so soundly. In her dream, she vaguely felt herself gradually sinking into a warm embrace. This warmth made her heart feel settled and peaceful, and she longed to draw closer and hold onto it. Only when she firmly grasped that warmth did she contentedly fall into a deeper sleep, not waking once during the night and having no more nightmares.
The next day.
When Lan Xueruo woke up, the light hitting her eyes was already bright. As her vision cleared from its blurriness, her gaze instinctively went upward, and she immediately saw Yun Che’s eyes, which held a hint of a smile.
“Senior Sister, good morning.”
Lan Xueruo subconsciously prepared to respond, but as soon as she opened her mouth, what came out was a scream.
Her arms were tightly wrapped around his upper body, even her full chest pressed against his, and her long left leg was entangled around his waist. Her entire body was clinging to him without a single gap.
Lan Xueruo sprang away from Yun Che as if electrocuted, frantically tidying her disheveled hair and the corners of her clothes. Her heart pounded like a deer, and her face was flushed crimson.
“Senior Sister, you seem to have little sense of security when you sleep. Is there something you’re afraid of?” Yun Che asked, looking into her eyes.
“I… No… It’s nothing…” Lan Xueruo answered at a loss. She vaguely recalled the inexplicably reassuring warmth in her dream and fully understood that it had come from Yun Che. And because she subconsciously craved that feeling, she had been actively moving closer and holding him tight.
Yun Che had woken up very early but had remained still, maintaining his original posture until Lan Xueruo woke. Lan Xueruo’s tight embrace didn’t make him feel amorous; instead, it evoked a faint pity and heartache, because her sleeping position revealed that beneath her calm and gentle exterior lay countless uncertainties and even fears—though he didn’t know what they were.
Yun Che sat up, then suddenly reached out his hands, gently held Lan Xueruo’s snow-white, tender right hand in his, and said earnestly, “Senior Sister, although I don’t know your identity, your family background, or what you’ve been through… I said that as long as I am by your side, I will do my utmost to protect you and never let you suffer any harm again.”
Her hand suddenly held so intimately by a man, and his tender words reaching her ears—Lan Xueruo, who had never experienced anything like this, was completely stunned. Her mind went blank. She let him hold her hand for a while before snapping back to reality, hastily pulling her hand from his grasp, and jumped off the bed in a flustered state.
“You… you already have a wife…”
Throwing out a sentence she didn’t even know how she came up with, Lan Xueruo quickly ran away. That beautiful figure clearly carried a sense of fleeing in defeat.
After Lan Xueruo fled, Yun Che shook his head with a smile, then tapped his chin and muttered to himself, “It seems I was mistaken. Her behavior definitely isn’t deep affection for me—just a kind of liking she herself isn’t quite clear about. But then why did she treat me like this before… even risking great danger to go alone to the Xiao Sect branch to save me?”
In the suddenly awkward and ambiguous atmosphere, the two continued their journey toward the Cang Feng Empire.
When night fell and they looked for an inn for the second time, this inn also had only one room left. And like the previous one, the innkeeper claimed that for a hundred miles around, there was only this single inn—stay here or sleep on the streets.
Yun Che and Lan Xueruo had no choice but to “helplessly” take a guest room again.
And after the first time, the second time was much simpler and more natural. They slept in the same bed again, with the same rolled blanket between them.
But when they woke up the next day, Lan Xueruo found the same situation as yesterday: the blanket had been tossed aside somewhere, and she was clinging to Yun Che like an octopus, holding him very, very tightly.
The third day, the fourth day, the fifth day…
Every inn they arrived at seemed to have been pre-arranged—not a single extra room, exactly one left, no more. Some inns were the only ones around; others had multiple choices, but every single one only had one room. Lan Xueruo felt it was really strange every time. After the second and third times, the fourth and fifth came even more naturally. And every morning, Lan Xueruo woke to find herself holding Yun Che tightly, no matter how hard she reminded herself before sleeping. And she seemed to be holding him a little tighter each time.
Because after these nights of sharing a bed, the last trace of subconscious resistance to this level of physical contact with Yun Che had quietly vanished.
On the sixth day, when they found an inn, Yun Che directly slapped his hand on the counter and declared without hesitation, “Innkeeper, one room.”
Lan Xueruo only parted her lips slightly, then lowered her head without saying a word of objection.
If Lan Xueruo had been traveling with any other man, not to mention sharing a bed, she wouldn’t even have let him touch a fingertip. But encountering Yun Che—a veteran with two lifetimes of experience and a youthful appearance—even if she were only eighteen now, even if she were twenty-eight, she would still fall silently like this… without even realizing it herself.
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Cangfeng Imperial City, the capital of the Cang Feng Empire, is located in the northern region of the empire’s territory. It is also the empire’s largest city, more than thirty times the size of New Moon City. At the very center of the imperial city lies the highest power center of the Cang Feng Empire—the Imperial Palace. Forty miles directly north of the palace is the location of the empire’s highest mystic palace—the Cangfeng Mystic Palace.
The Cangfeng Mystic Palace has a history of a thousand years. It was established by the Cangfeng Imperial Clan as a place to cultivate high-level Xuan practitioners for the imperial family, and it is the dream holy land of countless young Xuan practitioners throughout the Cang Feng Empire. The Cangfeng Mystic Palace is divided into three levels: the Outer Palace, the Middle Palace, and the Inner Palace. Those who enter the Middle Palace, if they are willing to serve the imperial clan in the future, will surely be heavily relied upon. If they join the military, they will be at the rank of centurion. And if a Xuan practitioner can enter the Inner Palace, then he will receive the highest regard from the imperial clan. While in the Cangfeng Mystic Palace, he will be provided with excellent resources and the best conditions, and any growth during his time there will be closely watched by the imperial family. Before leaving the Cangfeng Mystic Palace, he will receive an enthusiastic invitation from the imperial clan. Once he joins the imperial clan, enfeoffment and ennoblement are secondary; his entire family will become wealthy and honored, with dogs and chickens ascending to heaven (rising in status).
Therefore, entering the Inner Palace of the Cangfeng Mystic Palace is the dream of countless young Xuan practitioners… perhaps even an extravagant hope.
But after all, the Cangfeng Mystic Palace is the highest mystic palace of the Cang Feng Empire. Not to mention entering the Inner Palace; even entering the Outer Palace, which has the lowest standards, requires extremely harsh conditions. These conditions are enough to extinguish the hopes of over ninety percent of Xuan practitioners who long to join, forcing them to settle for second best by joining the imperial-established mystic palaces in smaller cities.
[There is another chapter coming later.]