In the Eastern Courtyard study, Bai Yao kept kneading her throbbing temples.
She watched the complicated kowtows and gaits that Lady Li demonstrated, feeling nothing but a creeping headache.
“Young Madam, once you marry into the Prince’s manor, you are no longer a cultivator up on the mountain. Your waist needs to be three parts softer. When performing the salute, your gaze must not meet the master’s eyes directly. You must lower your eyes and still your breath.”
“I know… I know.”
Bai Yao waved her hand dismissively.
This old matron was nothing if not dutiful, and neither soft persuasion nor hard pressure would sway her.
On top of that, the [Violet Yang Grand Harmony Art] she now cultivated demanded not only “nothing outside the mind, unity of knowledge and action,” but also “proper standing, accordance with heaven’s way.”
Having become the lawful principal consort of the Xia Manor, she had to act in a manner befitting her current station.
It was just that Bai Yao had never learned any royal etiquette across two lifetimes combined, and it was tormenting her thoroughly.
At dusk, the manor’s dining hall was brightly lit.
At opposite ends of the long table sat Bai Yao and Xiao Yi.
As for the old prince Xiao Yunshan and Xiao Yi’s birth mother, the old lady Wang, they, as always, had not appeared within the Xia Manor.
Why say “as always”?
According to what Bai Yao had learned, less than a hundred days after Xiao Yi’s birth, Wang had gone to the Western Mountain Buddhist Temple to worship Buddha.
In all these decades, Xiao Yi had never even laid eyes on his mother, let alone spoken a word to her.
The old Xia King Xiao Yunshan was even more absurd—aside from subjecting his son to iron-fisted education since childhood, he permanently resided in the Northern City military camp…
Loneliness, willfulness, and spiritual emptiness had tormented this young prince, clad in silk and jade yet with nothing to anchor his soul, for over a decade without change.
Meanwhile, Bai Yao sat in the side seat, unhurriedly picking at the rice in her bowl without so much as lifting her eyelids.
Xiao Yi had been driven home by the old Xia King and was now sitting with a wooden face, having no idea how to converse with his overly young new bride.
The serving attendants had never witnessed such a scene, afraid that even breathing might startle the two before them.
“I’m done eating.”
Bai Yao put down her chopsticks, employing the royal etiquette she had just learned.
Before rising, she glanced at the stiff man across from her, that rigid face as cold as an ice sculpture:
“Find yourself somewhere to sleep tonight. Don’t come into my room. I still need to cultivate and practice breathing techniques.”
Xiao Yi’s hand gripping the chopsticks suddenly tightened.
He opened his mouth as if to retort…
But in the end, he said not a single word, flicking his sleeve and leaving the table.
The next morning.
Bai Yao had just pushed open the courtyard gate when she saw Xiao Yi standing beneath the eaves.
He held a sandalwood chessboard in his arms, dark circles faintly visible under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept well all night.
“You… do you know how to play chess?”
Xiao Yi’s voice faded from loud to soft.
He seemed to think that voluntarily addressing Bai Yao was something shameful, so much so that he unconsciously avoided her gaze and stared at the blue bricks on the ground.
Bai Yao raised an eyebrow, suspicion stirring in her heart: ‘Why has this soft-spined young prince suddenly taken an interest in me?’
She leaned against the doorframe, a rogueish smile curling at the corners of her lips: “I do. But just so you know, my company comes with a hefty price.”
“What do you want?”
Xiao Yi’s brow furrowed slightly.
Bai Yao leaned half a step closer, even the corners of her eyes carrying the teasing of a little devil:
“Call me mama. Call me mama once, and I’ll play with you.”
Xiao Yi’s head snapped up, his pupils contracting sharply, his handsome face instantly flushing crimson.
Have him call a fourteen-year-old girl “mama”?
What an utter humiliation!
He was the heir of the Xia Manor—even if he leapt from the top of the Western Mountain Buddhist Temple’s pagoda and died out there, he would absolutely never call this wretched-tempered little girl “mama”!
Xiao Yi closed his eyes.
“…Mama.”
The voice was extremely low, tinged with a tremor and a resolve born of throwing all caution to the wind.
The smile on Bai Yao’s face froze instantly…
‘Bro, not for real… you actually said it?!’
She kept muttering inwardly, and this time it was her turn to be startled.
She had only said it offhandedly, just wanting to see this soft-spined young prince turn red in the face for a laugh…
Who could have guessed that this young prince, as if starved for affection to the bone, would actually call Bai Yao “mama” for real?!
What Bai Yao naturally didn’t know was what those decades of living alone in this cold, empty Xia Manor truly meant to Xiao Yi.
Since childhood, his mother had been worshiping Buddha at the Western Mountain, praying for blessings and warding off calamities.
She had never once looked him in the eye in ten years, never even spoken a single word to him.
Only because his two elder brothers had died young due to Xiao Yunshan’s early-life slaughter and bloodlust had Xiao Yi, the sole surviving sprout, become the heir of the Xia Manor.
His father Xiao Yunshan was away at war all year round, and the manor was filled with nothing but cold rules and probing tests.
Xiao Yi didn’t even have a single person he could speak to as an equal.
And precisely because of this, the Hehuan Sect had been able to slip in through the cracks.
“Cough…”
Bai Yao quickly schooled her smile away, masking her astonishment.
She turned and walked into the room, though her voice still drifted with a somewhat unreal lightness: “Bring the board inside.”
Stones fell upon the board, black and white interweaving, from dawn to dusk.
Neither of them mentioned sharing a bed; they simply played chess by day and slept in separate rooms by night.
At first, Xiao Yi had only sought Bai Yao for chess to pass the time and try to connect with this ill-tempered girl.
But after a few games, he gradually discovered that Bai Yao’s playing style was nothing like a young girl’s.
Her moves were sharp and meticulous, decisive in attack, and always concealing a killing counterplay within desperate straits.
And Bai Yao, in turn, came to know Xiao Yi anew within those square inches.
Strip away that layer of pampered weakness, and he was actually quite simple.
When this young prince won a game, he’d secretly let out a breath of relief; when he lost, he’d stubbornly fight to the bitter end until he’d reviewed and understood every move.
His eyes were as clear as a greenhorn’s, untainted by the mundane world…
The two started from silent play, gradually exchanging occasional responses, until finally they were chatting about household affairs and childhood tales.
On the seventh day, the slanting light of dusk spilled into the Eastern Courtyard, and the game on the board had come down to a half-point difference.
Xiao Yi pinched a white stone but hesitated to place it.
He looked up at the girl across from him, watching the sunset drape a soft, warm glow over her.
The cold loneliness that had long taken root in his heart had, over these few days of black-and-white battle, quietly melted away.
He suddenly felt that spending the rest of his life with this girl he had once so disliked, his lawful principal consort, might not be so bad after all.
At least, this manor would no longer hold only his solitude.
“I…”
Xiao Yi’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his voice somewhat parched.
“Your turn.”
Bai Yao placed a stone, cutting him off.
Xiao Yi glanced up at Bai Yao’s clear, untainted eyes, opened his mouth, and in the end only gave a wry smile as he set down his stone.
“You win.”
Those three words were perhaps the gentlest Xiao Yi had ever spoken in his life, even if Bai Yao remained completely unaware.
In the dead of night, Bai Yao dismissed her attendants and sat alone on the bed.
These seven days of chess had not been mere play with Xiao Yi, but a refinement of her own state of mind.
At this moment, her mind was clearer than ever, truly achieving single-minded focus and unity of knowledge and action.
At this moment, the true qi in Bai Yao’s dantian had long since built to a critical threshold.
Boom.
It was as if some barrier had been gently pushed open once more—the fourth layer of the Ten Qi Realm, achieved just like that, flowing naturally into place.
Unlike the breakthroughs of the first three layers, this time the true qi in Bai Yao’s dantian underwent a qualitative transformation.
It was no longer merely a warm stream, but had condensed into a supremely pure righteous qi!
The commotion of this qualitative breakthrough caused the righteous qi to manifest externally for the first time.
Outside the Eastern Courtyard’s side chamber, an extremely faint golden glow rippled, carrying an indescribable solemnity and purity through the night.
That night, Xiao Yi was still not in the manor.
He had planned to head out at midnight to deliver a military report from the border at Jidi to the camp, so he could join Xiao Yunshan in coordinating grain and supplies onto the great ships for support.
But just as he stepped outside, a faint plum blossom fragrance drifted toward him along with a thin pink mist.
“Wrong! Poison?! Liu Linglin, you—!”
Xiao Yi was startled and immediately covered his nose, but it was already too late.
Before losing consciousness, he turned back in shock, and even as he fell to the ground, he instinctively tried to crawl toward the Eastern Courtyard where Bai Yao was…
“Dear husband… don’t blame me. It’s all because Xiao Yunshan insisted you marry that Bai Yao… Now, the time left for Senior Sister and me is running short.”
Liu Linglin, dressed in red palace attire, appeared from the night.
She gently stroked the back of Xiao Yi’s head, pulling the now-unconscious Xiao Yi into her embrace.
“If you must blame someone, blame yourself for never being willing to love me… But you are far too important. For the sake of the sect’s great plan, all of this is worth it!”
Liu Linglin’s words no longer carried the coquettish charm they once had, but rather a bitter tenderness.
Yet that tenderness, by the end, slowly hardened into a merciless cruelty.
Generations of scheming, and the sacrificial devotion of Senior Sister and herself—how could it all be allowed to come to nothing?
“Take him back to the tower.”
“Yes, Saintess.”
Liu Linglin gave the cold order, and several Hehuan Sect disciples silently appeared, supporting the unconscious Xiao Yi toward the vermilion tower not far away.
On the bed within the three-story tower, Xiao Yi remained unconscious.
Liu Linglin gazed at the man lying there, perhaps the only one she would ever truly love in this life, and within her iron-hard resolve, an inexplicable trace of reluctance faintly seeped through.
Not until dawn the next day, when Liu Linglin once more donned her thin, translucent red gauze robe, did a faint trace of righteous qi already emanate from behind her.