Chapter 25: Steps Taken Side by Side [4]

He found her later in the east garden.

The Lin clan’s gardens were quieter than most other parts of the compound. This one held a small pavilion beside a curved stone bridge, with a pond choked with lilies beneath. The air was cooler here, the noise of training grounds and inner halls muted.

Bai Xueya sat alone at the stone table inside the pavilion.

A teapot and two cups had been arranged neatly before her. Only one of them had been used. Steam had long since stopped rising from the spout.

She looked up when his steps touched the edge of the pavilion.

Some of the composed Ice Fairy exterior had returned. Her posture straight, hands folded lightly in her lap, expression calm. But her eyes softened when they met his, the way they hadn’t softened for anyone else.

“Finished being examined?” Lin Tian asked gently, stopping just outside the pavilion.

Her lips twitched. “Elder Mei is very thorough,” she said. “She has every right to be.”

He stepped inside and sat opposite her, leaving the table between them.

“How are you?” he asked.

Bai Xueya glanced down at her hands, then back up.

“Strange,” she said.

“For as long as I can remember, cultivating meant pain,” she continued quietly. “It meant counting my breaths between each wave of cold, measuring how far I could go before something tore. I prepared myself to live like that for decades, if I lived that long at all.”

Her fingers brushed the rim of the nearest cup.

“Today, when Elder Mei guided her qi through my meridians… it was cold and sharp. But it did not hurt.”

The wonder in her voice was more fragile than anything else he’d heard from her.

“She said what happened last night reset the balance,” Xueya murmured. “Not just a temporary suppression, but a change in how the Yin Qi sits in my core.”

Lin Tian tightened his hand in his lap.

“That’s good,” he said. The words felt too small.

“Yes,” she agreed softly. “It is.”

He hesitated.

“Did they ask… how?” he said. “In detail.”

“Of course.” A faint, tired smile touched her mouth. “Elder Mei is a healer. She wants to understand. The Bai clan attendants simply want something they can report to the sect without being accused of negligence.”

“And what did you tell them?” Lin Tian asked.

Her eyes met his.

“That while meditating last night, I experienced a sudden realization,” she said. “That the environment of the Lin clan’s grounds, the support of your elders, and the treatments Elder Mei prepared created conditions for a breakthrough. That my condition was forced to reconcile with my core in a way it had been refusing to for years.”

It was not a lie, exactly.

Simply missing the part where their bodies had pressed together in the dark and a forbidden system had rewritten the script.

Lin Tian’s jaw tightened.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to—”

“Lie?” she interrupted.

He swallowed and nodded.

Bai Xueya’s fingers moved away from the cup and rested on the stone instead.

“I did not lie for your sake alone,” she said. “What happened between us is ours. If I choose not to place it on a table for elders to dissect, that is my decision.”

He looked up at her sharply.

Her gaze was steady.

“They are my sect, my elders,” she continued. “They have the right to worry about my condition. They do not have the right to demand every breath of my private life as payment for their concern.”

Lin Tian stared at her for a moment, then slowly exhaled.

The tension in his shoulders eased, replaced by something warmer.

“Still,” he said. “If anyone should stand between questions and you, it should be me.”

She snorted, very softly.

“You can stand there when they question you,” she said. “They will. You broke through too quickly for them to ignore. Elder Mei will report that my condition changed in one night. The Lin clan elders spoke highly of you already. Azure Snow Sect is not deaf.”

He couldn’t argue.

She was right.

“What did Elder Mei tell you?” she asked.

“That your condition has improved,” he said. “That the cracks aren’t deepening anymore. That I’m at Elementary Spirit Realm Fifth Level, and that I shouldn’t be reckless.”

“Wise advice,” Xueya said.

“You agree with her?” he asked.

“I agree that I don’t want to see you cripple yourself trying to keep up with me.”

His hand shifted on the table.

Hers was resting near the edge. For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then he set his fingers down next to hers.

Just placing his hand where she could easily pull away if she wanted to.

She didn’t.

Her fingers slid sideways, just enough that they overlapped with his.

Her skin was cool to the touch, but not icy. The cold felt alive, steady. It grounded him more than any amount of meditation had.

“Elder Mei will send her reports to the sect,” Xueya said, eyes dropping briefly to their joined hands. “They will be pleased I did not hurt. They will be… suspicious that I did it here.”

“And they’ll look at me,” Lin Tian said.

“Yes.” She met his gaze again. “Some will say you are leeching my cultivation. Some will fear you will drag me down. Others will see you as an opportunity.”

He thought of Azure Snow’s elders, of the way great sects were rumored to treat talents like weapons on a rack. Sharpened, measured, weighed down with expectations.

“I can’t control how they see me,” he said. “But I can control who I choose to be when they are watching.”

“And who is that?” she asked softly.

“The same person I promised to be for you last night,” he said. “Someone who doesn’t let fear make his decisions. Someone who will stand beside you without being dead weight, whether Azure Snow approves or not.”

Her fingers tightened briefly around his.

“Good,” she said.

They sat in silence for a while.

The garden around them breathed. A breeze stirred the leaves overhead; a few petals drifted from a nearby tree, landing in the pond with soft plinks. Somewhere farther off, a disciple shouted a kiai from the training grounds, the sound distant and faint.

“How do you feel?” he asked eventually. “When you cultivate now.”

Bai Xueya thought for a moment.

“Less like I am being carved apart,” she said. “More like I am walking on thin ice.”

He frowned. “That doesn’t sound very safe.”

Her lips curved faintly.

“It is safer than falling through,” she said. “I will take it.”

He wanted to argue, to demand more. For her to have a cultivation path that didn’t involve cracks or risk at all.

The world did not care what he wanted.

What it gave her now was… better.

For the first time, he allowed himself to believe that her future might be measured in more than the years it would take for her condition to consume her.

Before he could find words for that, footsteps sounded at the edge of the garden.

A Lin clan servant stood just beyond the pavilion, hesitating as if he’d walked into something too heavy for him.

Lin Tian and Xueya separated their hands reflexively, though not with the frantic guilt of earlier. Their fingers lingered a moment longer before parting.

“You can come closer,” Lin Tian said.

The servant bowed, walking up to the pavilion’s edge but not stepping onto it.

“Young Master Tian, Miss Bai,” he said. “The Patriarch has requested your presence in the main hall.”

“Now?” Lin Tian asked.

“Yes, Young Master. He… also mentioned that Elder Mei will attend, as well as representatives from the Bai clan who are staying as guests.”

Xueya’s gaze sharpened at that.

Of course.

Her sudden breakthrough, her stabilized condition, his miraculous recovery and leap to Fifth Level—none of that could be kept confined to side halls and quiet gardens.

Sooner or later, the weight of it all had to land in the center of the clan.

“Understood,” she said.

The servant bowed again and hurried away, clearly relieved to be dismissed.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then Bai Xueya rose to her feet, movements smooth despite the heaviness of the day.

Her robe’s sleeves trembled slightly as she adjusted them.

“Ready?” Lin Tian asked.

“No, but I will still go.”

He pushed himself up as well.

As they stepped out of the pavilion side by side, their shoulders lined up naturally.

He glanced at her.

Bai Xueya was looking straight ahead, expression composed. But the line of her jaw had softened by a fraction.

They walked toward the main hall together.

Whatever waited for them there—questions, suspicion, promises dressed as opportunities—they would face it standing side by side.

End of Chapter 25

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