Lou Yue couldn't help but shiver slightly.
Xiao Rangchen's gaze turned dark and deep in an instant, great surging waves roiling beneath the surface, all of which he forced down to hold back with every ounce of his strength.
Seeing how he was clearly struggling to rein himself in, the corners of Lou Yue's eyes lifted. Her glistening, peach-blossom shaped eyes regarded him with a hint of provocation.
Xiao Rangchen's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, his gaze locked on the upturned curve of her eyes, not shifting away for even a moment.
He set down the hand that had been about to draw a secret rune, and instead pressed it to her waist. The other hand, which had been resting over the back of hers, guided her palm to press against the faint outline of her abdomen, applying gentle, firm pressure.
Pale, cold flames burned silently beside them, wrapping the image-forming square in a tight, airless shroud. Alongside the increasingly rapid, soft sounds, the liquid starstone merged more and more thoroughly with the image-forming square.
Lou Yue's hands fumbled repeatedly, failing to grasp the cushion beneath her, until she finally curled her fingers around the arm he had pressed to her waist.
"Who was it that was playing the prude yesterday..." Lou Yue did her best to steady her wandering, unfocused gaze, fixing it on his face.
"Times have changed."
Xiao Rangchen's tone was unsteady, and Lou Yue's vision swam several times before she caught his next words: "Circumstances are different now."
Lou Yue huffed, and seized the chance to press her foot against his firm abdomen.
Xiao Rangchen paused, forced to a halt.
"Who said your 'different circumstances' get to decide things?" Lou Yue looked down at him. "I'm taking it back now. Leave."
She tried to twist upward to break free of his hold.
Xiao Rangchen held her steadily in place with one hand, while his other hand lifted her fair, slender ankle to press against his lips. Soft, delicate kisses trailed from her toes, over the top of her foot, and kept moving upward.
"Mm, it's my fault," a muffled, low hum slipped from between his lips.
Lou Yue's eyes fluttered shut, half-lidded.
But in the split second her attention slipped, her leg was secured firmly in the crook of his arm, and he leaned down over her.
"You—you brute!" Lou Yue drew in a sharp breath, hissing the words through gritted teeth.
Xiao Rangchen only grew more relentless. The sharp insults were gradually forced out of her mouth, shifting into a different, trembling tone.
Xiao Rangchen's long ink-black hair swept over the blushing person beneath him as he spoke. "I read... the dual cultivation arts of the Lou clan."
Lou Yue's nails dug into his flesh. It took her a long, dazed moment to process the meaning of his words, and she mumbled a half-distracted reply.
"Mm... you were picking up tips?"
Xiao Rangchen's movements paused for a beat, then he nipped gently at her skin. "Not quite..."
He felt her light shiver, and grew even bolder.
Lou Yue's gaze drifted repeatedly to the pale, eerie flames at the edge of the bed. In a disjointed, almost delirious voice, she asked, "...Then... what... is it..."
All that reached her ears was a rising, tangled mess of sounds, no answer coming.
She felt as if she was perched right on the tip of that pale white flame, her feet dangling over empty air, unsteady and swaying, unable to pull away, unable to escape that scorching, all-encompassing hold.
But she was unwilling to be the only one trapped, burning in these flames with no release. She was going to drag him down with her.
She looped her arms around his neck, channeling a burst of spiritual energy to roll them over, pressing him down beneath her.
Xiao Rangchen was only stunned for a brief moment, before he wrapped his arms around her to keep the flow going.
Lou Yue held herself up over him, her long, curling hair spilling over her shoulders to sway gently. The pale white flames cast a soft, golden glow over her skin. Xiao Rangchen's gaze deepened further.
Lou Yue did not need to exert much effort to pull him fully into the fire with her. They both fought to make the other reach their limit first, trying every way they could think of. With the experience from before, Lou Yue managed to balance on the tip of the flame far longer this time.
But it could only last so long. In the end, she bit down on his shoulder, trembling all over.
And the man beneath her, following the moment she fell over the edge, let himself go completely in the flames, and tumbled down right after her.
The cave was utterly silent, only the intertwined breaths of the two people tangling through the air.
Xiao Rangchen stroked Lou Yue's hair slowly, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
Lou Yue lay draped over his body, calming her racing heartbeat, until her face was gently lifted up.
Soft kisses wandered across her face, lingering with particular tenderness on the tiny mole by her eyelid.
"Lou Yue..." The man's low, cool voice drifted slowly through the stillness.
He seemed to love calling her name, as if he could never say it enough.
Lou Yue lifted her eyes to look at him.
The light in the man's eyes beneath his long lashes swelled with heavy, surging tides, brimming over with thick possession and unshakable obsession.
He gave her lip a light peck, held her gaze deep in her eyes, and spoke slowly, every word heavy with meaning, "Lou Yue, don't ever forget me."
His expression was earnest, hiding a hint of solemnity so faint it was barely noticeable.
Lou Yue's gaze lingered on his sharp, striking brows for a long moment, then she lowered her head and took the initiative to press her lips to his, answering, "I will never forget you."
Xiao Rangchen curled his fingers around the back of her neck, deepening the kiss.
Something slipped out of control once more.
Xiao Rangchen pressed her firmly against him, his voice rough and thrumming with unspent heat as he said, "I spent the past few days studying your clan's secret patterns."
Lou Yue hummed lazily, drawing out the sound, waiting for him to go on.
Xiao Rangchen helped her sit up, his gaze fixed intently on her eyes. "Lou Yue, trust me."
Lou Yue looked back at him, and in the end, did not turn away.
Xiao Rangchen's fingers began to glide over her body, wholly focused on drawing the secret pattern.
Lou Yue's mind drifted unbidden back to that time she had saved him when his spiritual power had run wild, the scene of them cultivating together.
She shifted a little, and said half-jokingly, "Drawing it on my body, you aren't planning to be my spirit cauldron, are you?"
Xiao Rangchen froze abruptly.
Lou Yue assumed he had paused because of her movement. She bit back the disarray in her breath and said, "Go on, tell me, why are you drawing it on me?"
Xiao Rangchen said not a single word, only frowned slightly as he quickly traced the lines of the pattern.
If he wouldn't talk, she had ways to make him unable to finish drawing.
But it was clear his self-control was extraordinary.
Every muscle in his body was tensed sharp and tight, the fingers gripping her waist pressing hard enough to make her ache, yet his other hand remained steady, wholly focused on finishing the pattern.
Lou Yue stopped trying to tease him, and diverted her attention to look down at the faint red lines he was tracing.
It looked like the Lou clan's spirit cauldron secret pattern, flipped over, but with many extra strokes, far more complex and profound than the original.
"You read the jade slip," Lou Yue said, her fingertips brushing lightly over his abdominal muscles, "so you saw the information about the Zhuoxi physique too. Isn't there anything you want to ask me?"
Xiao Rangchen didn't even lift his eyes as he replied, "I already guessed."
"Aren't you going to do something about it? If I draw the secret pattern to activate the Golden Lotus, you might just reach the legendary Divine Realm," Lou Yue said, her tone laced with meaningful implication.
Xiao Rangchen finished the last stroke, finally lifting his eyes to meet hers. His thin lips parted, his voice low and thrumming with quiet danger, "Then you'd better be ready to hold on tight for what comes next."
Lou Yue didn't understand what he meant.
Before she could ask, the secret pattern he had finished drawing glowed with a faint red shimmer.
At the same time, the secret pattern she had drawn on his chest and abdomen last time began to appear too.
The two faint red secret patterns seemed to echo each other, flickering in tandem. After the pattern on Xiao Rangchen's body shifted to golden, the one on her body changed right along with it.
Surprise flashed in Lou Yue's eyes. "What did you do?"
Xiao Rangchen sat up, pulling her into his embrace. "If there's any way, what I want even more is for you to reach the Divine Realm."
"How is that poss—"
Xiao Rangchen kissed her, cutting off her words.
Lou Yue felt as if she had turned into a bluestone half-submerged in a mountain stream.
The current was swift and fierce, crashing against the stone and bursting into sprays of water that scattered like sky-filling blossoms. The flow showed no restraint at all, washing over the bluestone again and again, surging wildly toward the angle the stone could least bear. At the peak of the rush, the bluestone, no longer able to hold out against the overwhelming force of the stream, was swept off its footing and dragged into a spiraling, out-of-control vortex.
In that instant, the resplendent, golden lotus bloom burst open right beneath Lou Yue.
Golden light spilled everywhere, draping the entire cave in a soft, sacred glow.
Xiao Rangchen set Lou Yue down on the cushioned mat, then took her hand and pressed it to the gilded, secret inscription on his own chest and abdomen. Guiding her fingers, he began to retrace the pattern starting from its very center.
The moment the first stroke was drawn, the petals of the golden lotus trembled faintly.
Deep in their souls, a fine, delicate tremor rippled forth.
No one had expected that activating the golden lotus would be far more than a simple matter of redrawing a pattern. The Lou clan's secret inscriptions were originally designed to connect two people's souls and enhance the effects of dual cultivation, but that level of connection was nothing short of worlds apart from what the golden lotus was bringing about right now.
Blue veins bulged on the back of Xiao Rangchen's hand. He held fast to Lou Yue's hand, which was trying to pull back, and continued drawing stroke by stroke.
He had to wait until Lou Yue's golden lotus was fully activated before he could trigger the effect of the inscription he had etched, to achieve his true goal.
The astrolabe array on the bedside had fully fused with the starstone, wrapped still in pale, ghostly white flames. Lou Yue's dazed gaze swept over it, and she could have sworn the array wrapped in the flames had grown noticeably larger, as if it was about to throw all caution to the wind and burst free of the fire's enclosure. The white flames rustled and trembled, their leaping flames dancing so wildly they looked as if they would shatter apart the very next second.
Sweat beaded on Xiao Rangchen's forehead, dripped down his jaw, and fell drop by drop onto her skin.
The moment the final stroke was completed, pure, surging spiritual energy flowed nonstop from the heart of the golden lotus into the secret inscription on Xiao Rangchen's body.
He leaned down and laced his fingers tightly through Lou Yue's.
The bluestone that had just barely settled from being battered by the rushing current was swept up again. This time, the raging waves of the stream carried the bluestone all the way up to the highest crest of the tide.
The secret inscription on Lou Yue's body lit up the instant it was drawn to the energy, and a second golden lotus, identical to the one beneath her though glowing slightly softer, floated into the air above them, blooming gently just for the two of them.
The next moment, the massive surging spiritual energy Xiao Rangchen had been building up in the inscription surged toward the golden lotus floating in mid-air, then was channeled through the lotus and into the secret pattern on Lou Yue's body, redirecting the energy right back into her.
The white haze before Lou Yue's eyes had just cleared when she caught sight of the golden lotus hovering above. The warm sensation brought on by the surging spiritual energy could not hold a candle to the scorching heat that Xiao Rangchen himself radiated.
"This... is the... fruit of your labor..." The final part of the word "of" was so soft with breath that it dissolved right into the air.
Xiao Rangchen pressed himself over her and dropped a light kiss on the flushed side of her neck.
"Mm... but it can't be perfectly replicated," he said. The effect could not compare to what he had aimed for, and in the end, he had failed to help Lou Yue break through to the Divine Lord realm. She had stopped just short, at the peak of the Nascent Soul Great Completion realm.
He leaned in close to her ear and asked in a low, hoarse voice, "Are you tired?"
Lou Yue did not answer. Compared to exhaustion, what she felt far more was a heavy, full strength thrumming through her.
The two golden lotuses, now drained of their power, slowly folded their petals and faded away, one after another, in the cave.
Lou Yue raised her hand to brush against his sweat-damp jaw and murmured softly, "Why?"
If he had not redirected the spiritual energy back to her, that immense power would have been more than enough to carry him straight into the Divine Lord realm. It was the ultimate temptation that nearly every cultivator would spend their entire lives pining for, never daring to hope they might attain it.
Xiao Rangchen rolled onto his side and pulled her tight into his embrace. "To me, you are the most important thing of all."
He paused for a moment, then let out a low, hoarse chuckle. "Speaking of which, I still owe your father a thank you. He's the one who stopped me from swearing a soul oath back then."
Lou Yue tilted her head up to look at his faint smile, one that never quite reached the depths of his eyes.
Her intuition was telling her she had overlooked something, but right at this moment, she had no spare thoughts to spare to figure out what it was.
Xiao Rangchen lowered his head to kiss her slowly and gently, brushing softly against her lip line again and again.
When the kiss ended, neither of them could bear to pull their gaze away. Their eyes tangled, and they leaned in toward each other unconsciously, meeting in another kiss.
Their jet-black long hair tangled messily together. For a fleeting moment, Lou Yue caught a glimpse of a jarring patch of glaring white, but when she focused her eyes to look again, all she saw was still dark ink-black hair.
"Lou Yue," he murmured against her lips, "I want to hear you say my name."
"Xiao Rangchen."
Lou Yue's eyelids hung half-lowered, and she called his name softly a second time, "Xiao Rangchen."
Xiao Rangchen kneaded the back of her neck in slow, idle motions, a trace of obscure darkness hidden in the depths of his pitch-black eyes.
"Xiao Rangchen."
He looked at her, so close that she was nearly within his reach, and said in a low, heavy voice once more, "Lou Yue, don't ever forget me."
That way, even if... perhaps he... he would at least have a little less unwillingness lingering in his heart.
Lou Yue reached up to brush her fingers over his dark, heavy eyes, and suddenly spoke softly, "Xiao Rangchen, let's get married."
She added, "Right here."
Xiao Rangchen froze completely, stunned.
Lou Yue's eyebrows curved upward, and she couldn't help but let out a soft little laugh, "Even I find it a bit unexpected that I said that."
But she had blurted the words out on impulse, and she did not regret them at all right now.
Xiao Rangchen bowed his head and buried his face deep in the crook of her neck, the strength of his arms tightening abruptly around her.
After a long moment, Lou Yue heard his hoarse voice, which seemed to be wrapped in a faint tremor.
"There's nothing here... wait... wait until we get out, okay?"
Lou Yue wanted to say that she did not care at all, but in the end she did not press the matter further, only uttering a soft "mm-hmm" in agreement.
Xiao Rangchen still did not loosen his hold on her.
"Lou Yue..."
His voice was so soft that it trembled, his speech slow and heavy.
"Meeting you... is the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me in my whole life."
Lou Yue was just about to lift the corners of her mouth into a smile, when the back of her neck was suddenly pressed down hard.
Her pupils widened sharply, and her long eyelashes, as if beyond her control, slowly fluttered down and closed.
