Hot...
So hot...
Luo Luo unconsciously raised her hand, trying to loosen the stifling collar of her clothes.
Her fingers suddenly paused.
An overwhelming wave of rich fragrance engulfed her. Dazed, she opened her eyes to a scene of debauched extravagance—flamboyant men and women clamored noisily around her.
What was happening?
Luo Luo scanned her surroundings, focusing her gaze.
She stood in a gilded pavilion, surrounded by a sea of people, all flushed and frenzied, waving their arms wildly in a feverish atmosphere.
Everywhere she looked, there were carved beams and painted rafters, golden railings and jade pillars. Streamers of silk cascaded from above, while waves of floral, fruity, and perfumed scents assaulted her senses, dizzying her mind.
So hot... It felt as if ants were crawling beneath her skin, a scorching tide of heat trapped inside her body, thrashing and surging with no escape.
"This is unbearable," Luo Luo staggered forward, gripping the railing before her.
It was cold and smooth, lacquered with jade, its core solid wood.
Solid wood... hard and unyielding, heavy in her grasp... Her thoughts wandered uncontrollably.
Another wave of cheers erupted around her.
Luo Luo was swept up in the frenzy, her body and mind floating weightlessly.
She wanted to surrender to instinct, to indulge recklessly.
No, that wasn’t right. She was here for something important—something crucial.
She needed to find someone. Who?
Another roar of excitement nearly knocked her off her feet.
Ahead, an exquisitely crafted jade platform slowly rose, draped with four sheer white curtains.
A sultry melody drifted from nowhere as the curtains lifted halfway before suddenly billowing down like a delicate hand brushing against the crowd’s faces.
For a moment, even breathing seemed to stop.
At the center of the platform knelt a figure.
A mist, tinted peach-blossom pink, swirled around them, seeping into their white gauze robes and coiling upward toward their pale, delicate face.
Their jawline was elegant, lips thin and tender, colored like spring blossoms, their complexion as flawless as polished jade.
They were young—perhaps only twelve or thirteen.
A thick white silk ribbon bound their eyes, obscuring the upper half of their face.
Yet even so, it was clear they were a breathtakingly beautiful youth.
After a dreadful silence, the crowd below erupted in a deafening uproar.
Luo Luo, her head spinning, caught fragments of conversation and pieced together the scene—this was a male brothel, and the crowd was bidding for the boy’s "first night."
Luo Luo pressed a hand to her forehead.
Her mind buzzed.
The boy’s face was obscured, but something about him felt faintly familiar.
Countless peach petals rained onto the jade platform—first scattered, then in handfuls, until a dreamlike blizzard of them swirled through the air.
The petals were no ordinary blossoms.
Silver wires formed their skeletons, shaped into petals and draped with peach-hued gossamer, dusted with gold powder. When tossed, they shimmered like illusions.
Custom-made for the brothel, each petal cost ten gold pieces. The number thrown determined the bid for the night.
In a den of pleasure, extravagance was commonplace, and the boy’s price soared.
The crowd grew feverish, voices rising in excitement.
"The tricks of this house are unmatched. These boys are blindfolded from childhood, their senses heightened—every touch sends them reeling. The pleasure is beyond words!"
"The silk is embedded with a secret technique—if you yank it hard enough, it’ll take the eyes with it. Imagine the thrill of that in the heat of passion!"
"What? That’s monstrous!"
"Bah! With the plague demon at our heels, who knows how long any of us will live? Why spare pity for some ? If I had the coin, I’d buy that little , first him, then , and finally !"
Luo Luo’s eyes turned cold.
She abruptly seized a burly man by the arm and demanded, "What kind of place is this? How can such cruelty go unchecked?"
The man struggled but couldn’t break free. Cowed, he shouted over the noise, "This is Dongyu Prefecture, Guangling City! No one rules here—not the cultivators, not the court, not even the gods!"
Luo Luo’s mind struggled to process this.
Dongyu Prefecture—she knew of it. It was a tale from history books. Long ago, the Chongxing Sect, misled by false intelligence, believed the Heavenly Dao Sect’s leader had perished during a breakthrough. They struck without mercy, aiming to wipe them out.
But the leader had still been alive.
The two ancient masters clashed in a cataclysmic battle, reducing a once-fertile land to ruin. Spirit veins shattered, life withered, and the land could never recover.
Now, any cultivator who entered Dongyu Prefecture would find not only that they couldn’t absorb spiritual energy—their own power would leak away uncontrollably.
Thus, the region became a no-man’s-land for immortals.
Luo Luo knew this story because of one minor Golden Core cultivator who had once ventured into Dongyu and slaughtered every demon and monster left unchecked.
He had emerged battered, his face scarred, gasping for breath but still bragging that he was fine.
"Just Dongyu!"
Her heart burned with urgency—who was that man?
The bidding on the platform concluded.
A hulking brute clad in half-purple, half-red armor, his nose split by an old blade wound, had two chests of petals hauled out and dumped from the second-floor balcony, burying the boy in a glittering avalanche.
The boy’s slender neck bent like a swan’s. Throughout, he remained silent, resigned to his fate.
The madam cackled with glee, fawning over the armored man as attendants bundled the boy and petals together, carrying him upstairs to the customer’s chamber.
The boy was slung over a servant’s shoulder like a sack of grain.
Luo Luo moved to follow, but an invisible force barred her path. She couldn’t climb the stairs, and when she tried to leap up, she collided with an unseen barrier just three feet off the ground.
Like the others, she hadn’t spent enough to gain access.
"Show’s over! Clear out!"
The crowd dispersed with a mix of excitement and disappointment, filing out of the building.
"Hey! The immortal! It’s him!" someone suddenly shouted. "He’s back! He must have slain the plague demon—he promised he’d save us all!"
An immortal?
Luo Luo’s heart skipped a beat. She followed the crowd outside, stepping over the threshold unhindered.
The street was packed, people crowding in layers.
Luo Luo kicked over a bench outside the brothel and climbed atop it. From her vantage, she saw a man standing with his head slightly bowed, leaning on a sword planted in the ground, breathing heavily.
Blood stained his blade and clothes.
From where he stood, he must have seen the boy being sold.
The crowd swarmed him, firing questions.
"Immortal, is the plague demon dead? Are we saved?"
"Can you heal the infected? Just save my wife—the neighbors are rotten, let them die!"
"Did the demon’s lair have treasure? You don’t need mortal wealth, right? Can I have it?"
Luo Luo’s heart pounded, her mind roaring.
Her very soul screamed—this was the one! Him!
A terrifying heat and itching sensation surged from deep within her bones, spreading through her entire body, making her sway unsteadily as she struggled to stand on the long bench.
Her mind flooded with vivid words—jade, burning, spring, pleasure, allure, decadence… She desperately wanted to sleep with him.
The man let out a weak, hoarse voice: "My strength is insufficient… Once I return to my sect…"
His injuries were too severe; he needed to rest and recover in the city.
The crowd fell silent.
Then, the cultivator’s voice was drowned out by a wave of disappointed jeers.
"Tch—useless! Useless!"
"Can’t win a fight and runs away again! Always the same!"
"Once they leave, they never come back! Of course they don’t—what do we have to offer them?"
Luo Luo’s breathing grew rapid, her heart pounding as if about to explode.
Her body burned hotter, yet her mind abruptly cooled.
No. No.
The man she wanted would never show weakness in public—he was the type who would laugh wildly even with broken bones.
A sour ache filled her chest, and her left wrist throbbed with pain.
"Li… Li…" A name lingered on the tip of her tongue.
This wasn’t the person she wanted!
But this man before her was important too—who was he?
Luo Luo suppressed her impulsive heart and stood still, watching intently.
"The immortal was injured fighting for us!" a woman cried. "Where are the healers? Someone tend to his wounds!"
Someone immediately retorted, "The clinics are packed with plague victims! If the plague demon isn’t eradicated, we’ll all be doomed sooner or later!"
A brief silence fell.
Then, from somewhere, a thin, insidious voice slithered out: "Eat the flesh of an immortal, and you’ll prolong your life, free from all illness."
Like the most virulent plague, the words spread through the crowd with terrifying speed.
"Eat the flesh of an immortal, prolong your life, free from all illness?"
"Eat the flesh of an immortal, prolong your life, free from all illness!"
"Eat the flesh…"
"Eat…"
The severely wounded cultivator looked up in horror!
He was a handsome young man, his features carrying the arrogance typical of heaven’s favored. But his injuries had left him visibly shaken.
The words around him only deepened his shock and disbelief.
"You people…?" His hand trembled where it gripped his sword.
The crowd encircled him, yet none dared make the first move—like wolves thirsting for blood.
The tense air shattered when a gaunt man, his face and hands covered in festering red sores, lunged forward with a small curved knife used for cutting away infected flesh. He sliced a piece of skin from the cultivator’s arm before anyone could react—and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing greedily.
"Since you’re already half-dead," the man mumbled, "this bit of loose flesh won’t hurt you. Let me have it—it’ll save my life. A small mercy, really."
Gasps rippled through the crowd. "He’s right! Even wounded, he hasn’t caught the plague. Immortal flesh really is different…"
One pair of eyes after another began to gleam with hunger.
More people gathered courage, stepping forward—second, third, fourth.
They moved with silent coordination, targeting non-lethal areas.
Shoulders, back, calves…
Blood splattered as the cultivator writhed in pain and shock. He tried to resist, but children clung to his legs, dragging him down. His sword clattered to the ground.
"No…" His voice was ragged. "This isn’t… This isn’t right…"
He struggled violently, his gaze flickering as if remembering something. "No… This shouldn’t be happening…"
A stifled groan escaped him.
It wasn’t just the pain—even now, heat and desire surged through his body. Facing death, he was consumed by a maddening craving for a woman.
A thunderous crash came from the brothel as a burly man leaped down, shirtless, wielding a blade. He wore only loose trousers, barely concealing his bulging form.
It was the patron who had bought the blindfolded boy.
"Quit dawdling!" He shoved through the crowd. "Watch me gut him!"
Every face was twisted with malice. Though her thoughts were muddled, Luo Luo could endure no more.
She kicked the wooden bench aside, ready to dash forward and save the man who stirred such fierce desire in her—when her wrist flared with pain again.
"Li… Zhaoye…"
She clutched her temple.
She had come here for someone important, for a crucial purpose.
A buzzing filled her ears. She was so close to remembering…
Luo Luo forced her eyes open. The scene before her wavered, distant one moment, unbearably close the next.
The crowd was too dense; she couldn’t see inside, couldn’t smell the blood.
But her imagination painted a far more chilling picture.
The blade rose, sunlight glinting off its edge—blindingly bright.
The crowd stilled for an instant.
Then the light slid down the blade toward the hilt—and the brute swung down.
Luo Luo gritted her teeth, stomped the ground, and launched herself forward. She twisted midair, drawing her sword’s scabbard—Qiushui—and hurled it at the descending blade.
But something was faster.
Time seemed to slow.
Petals drifted down in a shimmering rain—silver and gold, misty as gossamer, suffusing the air with spring’s decadence.
A breathtaking, lurid, intoxicating storm of peach blossoms.
The cultivator’s pupils reflected the falling petals, his mind dazed.
A clear, slightly husky voice rang from above:
"Did your sect never teach you? Those who feast on human flesh are demons! And you—a cultivator, blind to the monsters around you! What demons have you slain? What evil have you purged? What truth have you even sought?"
Luo Luo looked up sharply.
There, perched on the brothel’s windowsill, stood the blindfolded boy—barefoot, his white robes disheveled, dotted with stains that could be blood or petals.
Peach blossoms swirled around him. Every petal was the price of his body.
He pressed on, voice sharp: "You see demons and do nothing! What kind of mercy is that? What false path do you walk?"
Clad in white, riding the storm of petals, the boy looked like a bodhisattva delivering enlightenment.
Luo Luo summoned Qiushui back to her hand.
She watched coldly.
The cultivator understood. So did she.
The brute’s blade fell—only to meet a soft ding.
A hairline crack split the steel, cleaving the reflected sunlight in two.
Then an identical red line appeared on the man’s torso. He stared dumbly as his body split neatly apart.
The cultivator’s hand now held an unsheathed sword.
It danced with the petals, lifting his wounded body effortlessly.
The blade moved like a flower, like a dragon.
It pierced mouths, tore through throats. Flesh bloomed like peach blossoms—no one escaped its judgment.
Blood and petals spiraled together in a macabre waltz.
When the wind stilled, only corpses remained.
The young cultivator, who had nearly met his end in his first trial, slowly raised his eyes to the boy in the brothel window.
"My name is Chen Xuanyi," he said. "I owe you my life. How do I repay it?"
The boy didn’t answer. He only smiled—
like a butterfly ready to plummet to its death.
The boy didn’t leave with Chen Xuanyi.
Luo Luo knew why.
"Eating the flesh of an immortal grants longevity, wards off all ailments, and bestows eternal health."
The first voice came from that side chamber—it belonged to the young man.
He set others against each other to save himself.
Luo Luo clutched her throbbing wrist, her back pressed against the dust-covered wall of the alley, her heart chilled to the core.
"Li Zhaoye," she murmured, the memory flooding back. "I've found the one who harmed you."
Legend has it that when Daoist Chen Xuanyi stepped into the realm of Harmony with the Dao, the thirteen peaks of the Tai Xuan Sect and the lands for a thousand miles around were bathed in radiant clouds, fragrant with spiritual energy, as countless blossoms burst into bloom—a scene straight out of celestial folklore.
Yet none could compare to the beauty of these peach blossoms before her eyes.
