Lin Yuan gripped the handles of Bai Qingyue’s wheelchair, slowly pushing her deeper into the house. And outside, the rain raged on, but inside, a profound silence had settled. The adrenaline of the life-and-death encounter was rapidly fading.
Bai Qingyue let out a soft sigh. Her delicate hands released their death grip on the armrests, her pale fingers aching from the tension. She looked up at the water-stained ceiling, the events of the day playing over in her mind. From being discarded by her clan as a useless cripple, to marrying an outer-city debtor, to witnessing that same debtor ascend to the heavens and slaughter someone with a mere glance.
It was simply too much for her to process in a single evening.
"Lin Yuan," she spoke softly. "Today... today has been a lot. The heavens have flipped and the earth has overturned more times than I can count. I am incredibly weary. I wish to rest."
Lin Yuan stopped the wheelchair and walked around to face her. Looking down into her exhausted eyes, his heart softened.
"Of course," Lin Yuan agreed, his voice a soothing balm. "The storm outside has passed for us. You need to recover your spirit."
He gently pushed her wheelchair toward the bedroom. The room was sparse, containing little more than a wooden wardrobe and a simple bed.
Lin Yuan positioned the wheelchair beside the bed. Bai Qingyue instinctively reached for the wooden frame, preparing to go through the arduous, humiliating process of dragging her paralyzed lower half onto the mattress using only her upper body strength. It was a painful reality she had been forced to learn since the secret realm expedition that shattered her meridians.
But before her fingers could even graze the wooden bedframe, the world suddenly tilted.
Without a single word of warning, Lin Yuan bent down. He slipped one strong arm beneath the crook of her knees and the other around her slender back, effortlessly lifting her into the air.
"Ah!" Bai Qingyue let out a tiny, involuntary gasp of surprise, her hands instinctively flying up.
She was impossibly light. To Lin Yuan, who now possessed the physical strength of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, holding her felt no different than holding a delicate feather. Yet, the proximity was electrifying. He could smell the faint, natural scent of lotus blossoms that clung to her skin, a stark contrast to the smell of their surroundings.
A furious crimson flush instantly painted Bai Qingyue’s pale cheeks, spreading all the way down to her delicate neck. Since her crippling injury, she had been treated like a contagious disease by her family, shunned and avoided. No one had held her with such gentle care. Furthermore, she was acutely aware of the vast, insurmountable chasm between them now.
She was a mortal. A fragile shell whose meridians were dead wood. She required the mundane necessities of life—food to sustain her body, and sleep to repair her mind.
Lin Yuan, however, had crossed the mortal boundary. By reaching the Foundation Establishment realm, his body was constantly nourished by the boundless spiritual qi of heaven and earth. He no longer required sleep; a few hours of light meditation could replace a month of slumber. He was a true immortal, holding a mortal woman in his arms.
Lin Yuan gently laid her down onto the center of the mattress, his movements as careful as if he were handling a priceless artifact. He reached for the blanket at the foot of the bed and pulled it up, wrapping it snugly around her shoulders.
"Sleep," Lin Yuan said softly, brushing a stray lock of hair from her flushed face. "I will be just outside."
Bai Qingyue nodded, pulling the blanket a little higher to hide her burning cheeks.
Leaving the bedroom door slightly ajar, Lin Yuan walked back through the main hall and stepped out onto the sheltered wooden porch.
It was already late into the night. The drizzling rain of had intensified into a downpour, the heavy droplets crashing against the courtyard.
Lin Yuan leaned against the railing, tilting his head back to gaze up at the night sky. The stars were entirely obscured by thick thunderclouds, yet he loved doing this. In his past life on Earth, watching the rain had been his only solace. Now, in this world of cultivation, the rain felt profoundly different.
He slowly stretched his right hand out beyond the shelter of the porch, allowing the heavy raindrops to strike his palm.
With his Foundation Establishment cultivation, he wasn’t just feeling the water; he was attempting to comprehend its very essence. He watched the water gather, observing the cycle of the heavens.
The rain is born in the heavens, woven from the clouds and the sky. Yet, its only destiny is to fall. It plummets through the air, losing its heavenly grace, only to violently shatter and die upon the muddy earth.
"Is this the bridge between heaven and earth?" Lin Yuan murmured to himself, his eyes reflecting a deep light.
What an unfortunate, tragic life one must have to be a drop of rain. To start so incredibly great, born in the highest reaches of the world, only to end so small, trampled into the dirt and forgotten.
A wry smile touched Lin Yuan’s lips as he closed his hand into a fist, crushing the accumulated water.
His path was the exact opposite of the rain. He had started incredibly small—a debt-ridden, outer-city cultivator. But through a twist of fate and the binding of the Millionfold Return System, his trajectory had reversed. He started in the mud, but he was about to soar into the heavens and become unthinkably great. He was the carp leaping over the dragon gate, defying fate itself.
As he stood there, immersed in his thoughts, he caught a faint sound coming from inside the house.
Ch-ch-ch.
It was the unmistakable sound of teeth chattering.
Lin Yuan turned on his heel and moved with the speed of a phantom, arriving at the bedroom doorway in the blink of an eye.
In the dim light, he saw Bai Qingyue curled into a tight ball beneath the thin blanket. She was shivering violently, her skin having taken on a faint, unhealthy look. The intense rain had drastically dropped the temperature in the room. For a mortal with no internal qi to regulate her body temperature, this kind of cold was agonizingly painful, seeping directly into her body.
Lin Yuan frowned, a sharp pang of guilt hitting his chest.
He raised his hand, his fingertips instantly glowing with spiritual energy. As a Foundation Establishment expert, it would require barely a thought to cast a ’Fire-Warming Barrier’ over the bed. He could effortlessly regulate the temperature of the entire room to a perfect spring climate for the next decade without breaking a sweat.
But as the spiritual qi gathered in his palm, he paused.
No, Lin Yuan thought, slowly extinguishing the light at his fingertips.
Throwing a magical spell over her while he stood outside... that was the behavior of a cold partner.
The duty of a husband, the essence of being a true Dao companion, was intimacy. It was sharing the warmth of life. If his wife was cold, the solution wasn’t a spell. The solution was to cuddle, and cuddling he would.
Without a second thought, Lin Yuan shed his damp outer robe. He lifted the edge of the thin blanket and slid into the bed beside her.
Bai Qingyue gasped as the mattress dipped. Before she could even process what was happening, a pair of strong, incredibly warm arms wrapped securely around her waist. Lin Yuan pulled her shivering form back against his broad chest, enveloping her entirely in his embrace. His body was like a hearth, radiating a deep, comforting heat that instantly began to chase the biting chill from her body.
Bai Qingyue completely froze, her mind short-circuiting. The proximity was overwhelming. She could feel the thumping of his heart against her back, and his warm breath lightly brushing the top of her hair.
"W-what are you doing?" she asked, her voice impossibly small and incredibly cute as she peered over her shoulder, her eyes wide like a startled deer.
Lin Yuan rested his chin lightly on the crown of her head, his arms tightening protectively around her waist. He offered a soft smile.
"I am warming you," Lin Yuan replied simply, his tone leaving no room for argument. "The blanket is too thin, and my wife is cold. Sleep now. I am right here."
The sheer sincerity of his words melted the last remnants of her anxiety, as she stopped resisting, allowing her exhausted body to relax fully into his warm embrace.