NOVEL NEXT Chapter 69: Steel and Toxin
She had changed much since he last saw her.
Feng's last memory of Yunjin was not kind. Pale, sickly, with her skin bulging, and her torso bloated by moving grubs. Hair thin and torn off in clumps, their original dark colours turned white at the roots due to stress. One eye milk-pale with blindness, the other crusted with dried pus and weeping endless tears.
Feng would always remember the terror and helplessness he saw the first time he met those eyes.
She looked completely different now. While her mortal life had seen her suffer some of the worst abuse a human body could endure, cultivation had been kind to her, removing her deformities and turning her form into one of beautiful, lethal grace.
"I see the years have not changed you," she addressed him coldly. Her grey eyes were glacial steel. "Barging into places without an ounce of thought. You have not matured one bit."
"That's because you… You're here," the Young Master stammered, unsure. "You're here. You're alright."
The woman's steely gaze faltered. She soon regained her poise, her expression turning almost pitying.
"Neither have the years made you any more intelligent, it seems. I worry about the future of the Beheaded Phoenix Sect if this is the state of their Young Master." Yunjin scoffed, looking away. "Of course, I would be alright. You did not think Patriarch Ru would throw his Heiress back into a cage to suffer after she had awakened into a cultivator, did you? Strong as he is, the man still has a need for pawns, especially ones of my talents."
Feng didn't say anything. He simply stared.
She looked… good. Healthy. The Young Master wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but the sickly girl he had last seen nearly half a decade ago had transformed into a confident woman.
Words could not describe how happy that made him. Her subsequent condition and treatment under the Decaying Greyroots Sect after they had separated had been obscured from him over the years. To see her flourish in both body and soul…
It was as if a horrid weight had been lifted off his Heart.
Her skin — what little of it was visible at least, for her entire body was tightly clad in inscription-etched robes save for her face — was still dreadfully pale, but it now shone with the lustre of fine snow rather than the sweat sheen of sickness. Her hair — regrown to fullness and flowing freely to her shoulders — had gone completely white from the trauma that she suffered in her youth, but they were well cared for, possessing a quality akin to creamy silk rather than the mad touch of stress.
The shadows under her eyes were as present as ever, but the lines were not nearly as deep, and the dark colours somehow added to the attractiveness of her steel grey eyes rather than detracted from them.
Her eyes… both of them were fine now. No pus, no milk-jelly blindness, no tears. They were fearless. They were perfectly beautiful.
More than anything else, it was that feature that brought him the most joy.
"It appears you have grown quite lecherous as well." The coldness of her voice broke him out of her reverie. So fascinated and relieved he was at this healthier version of her, Feng had not realised he had been staring. "Has your sense of etiquette left you completely? Even children know that it is rude to stare."
"What?" He asked dumbly.
She gave him a withering gaze. Her fists were clenched.
Within the dim light of the room, Feng thought he saw Yunjin's eyes shimmer.
"It. Is rude. To stare." She spoke the words through half-gritted teeth. "Stop looking at me like that. Like I'm some… Like I'm your…"
She could not bring herself to finish. Feng flushed and looked away. "Sorry," he mumbled.
She had grown strong over the years. Gone were the emaciated limbs and her unnatural bulging torso. Lean muscle now filled her petite body, visible even beneath the conservative black robes she wore. She was taller, healthier, but it was her qi that spoke the most of her transformation and source of confidence.
Shaping Realm, Seventh Step.
A moment of silence passed. He heard Yunjin sigh shakily to compose herself. "Perhaps it is not you whom I should worry for, but Lady Lianshi instead. She should invest in a tighter leash for her husband once the two of you are married."
At Lianshi's name, Feng finally snapped out of his stupor. He did not come here to stare and make her uncomfortable. He was here to ascertain her health, to answer the questions that were left unresolved for too many years.
The woman was only here because of his wedding. He might not get another chance to see her again for decades.
"Yunjin, I—," he began.
Something flashed towards him. His martial instincts screamed at him to move. He did not.
A sword — burnishing a very familiar purplish hue, and burning with God runes — was poised at his throat, the touch of the toxic metal freezing against his skin.
The poisonous grey-blue in its wielder's steel eyes was even colder.
"Do not," she warned softly. "Call me by my name. You will refer to me as 'Young Miss', and nothing more. We are no longer so familiar that such things are permissible."
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The first time he had met her four years ago, Yunjin had not even broken into the Foundation Realm. The Young Miss had been completely mortal, void of spiritual enlightenment or standing.
At Yunjin's present age, her current standing would not be too bad for a cultivator of the Outer Provinces. A less generous individual, however, might say that her progress leaves much to be desired instead, for her status as an heiress should have seen her develop to far greater heights by now.
Those individuals would be utter fools. Discounting the Patriarchs and Elders, Feng could safely say the woman before him was the most dangerous and lethal of all cultivators within the Province.
It was no exaggeration, no falsehood. Feng could feel it.
Nestled within her burned a toxin carrying the promised end of Divines.
If it came to a fight to the death, the Young Master would rather fight any Core Disciple a dozen times over than Yunjin once.
Even so — with her poisonous blade poised at his throat — Feng remained unfazed. For several heartbeats, he did nothing but look into her eyes. The Young Miss did not waver an inch, neither in blade nor resolve. The floating sword remained a hairbreath away from slicing open his neck.
Slowly, deliberately, Feng's fingers reached for the blade and lightly pushed it away from his throat, ignoring the toxic chill that pervaded his hands when they grazed the steel. The woman did not resist.
"Yunjin", he said again. He spoke it carefully. Purposefully. There was something terribly vulnerable between them. He did not want to break it, but neither would he pretend it did not exist.
Her name… It tasted foreign in his mouth, but he savoured saying it all the same. The smile on his face — relieved and tearful — was impossible to deny.
"Yunjin, I am happy to see you well."
Her eyes finally wavered, unable to keep meeting his. She looked away, saying nothing.
When she was young, her father, Patriarch Ru, had force-fed her the Divine Viands of her Sect's Corpus: the Decaying Greyroots. The process was almost assuredly fatal, and Yunjin had been on the brink of death when he first found her.
The events that followed after… It nearly killed them both. But they survived. More importantly, Yunjin had done the impossible and ascended during that time, suppressing the mass of Divinity into her core and producing a Dantian most poisonous.
The potency of the toxins she now brought to bear in her martial techniques was the fruit of that breakthrough. Concentrated beyond reason, even at her lesser standing, a single touch from her could prove lethal to Feng.
Not even the famed resurrection technique of his Sect would save him if an ounce of her venom so much as touched his brain.
The Young Master took a breath to compose himself. When he was calmed again, he looked behind her. "Senior Brother Dai, I would like you to leave. And please, put your weapon down. You are being terribly rude to our guests."
Yunjin blinked and turned slightly. An imposing male disciple stood behind her. The man had his glaive in hand, the blade raised to her neck, an inch from her skin.
She had not even noticed or heard him move. The Young Miss stared wonderingly at him, before bowing her head a little.
"You are quiet, for a man of your size," she praised.
"And you are far too dangerous, for a cultivator of your standing," Dai stated plainly. "I don't think I have ever felt this uneasy around anyone but the Sect Masters before. You are a singularly lethal individual, Lady Ru. The stench of a painful death clings to you like a lover."
The Young Miss merely smiled.
"Dai," Feng said, dropping the respectful title as he addressed him pointedly. "I will be alright. You can leave us."
"With all due respect, Young Master, that is a terrible idea, for several significant reasons. She's not safe to be around, regardless of what you believe. And besides, word will spread of this if I leave you alone and… Well, if anything improper happens so close to your wedding. This isn't like with Jin. Lady Ru's political position is of significant importance."
"'Jin?'" Yunjin echoed the name. Feng winced, as did Dai. "I see you have picked up another one."
The Young Master tried to protest. "That really isn't—"
"Spare me," Yunjin cut him off before he could continue. "I have no interest in learning of your conquest. Or how utterly poorly you have handled them. The current rumours spreading around of your engagement are enough to fulfil what little curiosity I have for your love life."
She turned to Dai. "As for you, Core Disciple, I promise I have no intention of taking the Young Master's life. Or his chastity. Allow me to satisfy whatever inane question your Lord has for the Heiress of the Ru Clan. We both know he won't leave otherwise."
Senior Brother Dai looked unsure. At Feng's insistent glare, the man finally relented his glaive.
"Your familiarity with my Young Master's nature is rather worrying, Lady Ru," Dai tentatively said. "Should I be concerned? I was led to understand that the two of you have not met in years."
"We maintained some contact through letters. You did always say you wanted me to be more popular with women," Feng half-joked.
"I mean this with only the greatest — and most sincere — of respect for the Ru Heiress," Dai began carefully, still looking at Feng. "But you would have a better chance of surviving by sleeping with the entire sisterhood of the Split-Headed Carnivores Sect than one night with Lady Ru."
"My thanks for the compliment," Yunjin said dryly.
"Your concern is duly noted," Feng stated. He took a breath. "But still, I must insist that you leave. I ask of this both as a request from a friend and an order from your Young Master."
Dai grimaced. After yet another few seconds of deliberation, he finally nodded wordlessly. There was a brief surge of qi as the man flash-stepped out of the room.
Leaving the two young scions alone — together at last, after nearly half a decade of separation...
Their enduring questions for each other soon to reach their long-overdue conclusions.
The Goldworm Ritual, Part 1
The Goldworm Ritual is a well-known alchemical procedure for producing concentrated toxins from venomous creatures.
Rather than through the use of chemical distillation or an alchemical furnace, the toxin is refined through the unorthodox method of trapping dozens, if not hundreds, of the same venomous creature within an enclosed area, where they are then forced to devour each other until only one remains.
The last surviving creature would contain the collective potency of the ritual's poison. It would then be harvested of its lethal treasure for the alchemist's use.
No one knows where the idea came from, but the procedure has been found to be detailed across countless records by royal alchemists and village herbalists alike, some dating back millennia to the Age of the Gods. Whoever was the architect of this mad design, their true name has been lost to history, even as their legacy lives on in endless deviations.
One notable variation of the Goldworm Ritual involves the use of human bodies — or even cultivated bodies — as the container for the venomous creatures. Insects are the most common, although tales of snakes, centipedes, or scorpions being stuffed into a person are also heard of in whispers.
— Extract from An Introduction to the Imperial Pharmacopoeia