In the hours that followed, I found myself immersed in kitchen chores—scrubbing pots, washing dishes, and tidying up under the soft glow of kitchen lights—while Ling Xi remained absorbed in the television's flickering glow from the living room.
By the time the clock passed ten in the evening, drowsiness began weighing my eyelids.
After bidding her goodnight, I trudged upstairs to wash up and collapse into bed.
The day's relentless rhythm - from the pre-dawn Ghost Market to afternoon shopping and evening culinary efforts - left my aching legs throbbing against the mattress. Sleep claimed me almost instantly.
Unbeknownst to me, an unexpected visitor had materialized in the moonlit living room below.
A Taoist nun in flowing emerald-green robes settled gracefully across from Ling Xi, her horsehair whisk resting against the armchair like a silver comet's tail. Though her delicate features suggested middle age, an ageless serenity radiated from her serene composure.
With a smile playing at her lips and eyes brimming with maternal warmth, she said, "Your master has been worried about you. He sent me to check on you."
Ling Xi's eyes glistened with unshed tears, her usual composure crumbling like autumn leaves. "What difference does it make?He's already abandoned me to face this trial alone."
The Taoist nun's voice softened like silk unfurling in a moonlit courtyard. "Your master's tongue may be a whetted blade, but his heart holds the tenderness of lotus-seed paste. These five winters since you descended the mountain, his hands have known no rest from dusting your chambers. Each afternoon finds him lingering among your annotated scrolls and ink-stained brushes, guarding your tea set like sacred relics."
Her laughter carried the chime of temple wind-bells. "Though Qinghe bears the title 'Kunlun's Princess', it's your name that's carved deepest in our sect leader's jade."
"We Tianling practitioners walk divergent paths through heaven's wrath. My own journey began when winter claimed my parents at eleven, left me widowed at twenty-seven, then stole my child's laughter two years later." Moonlight crystallized the tear clinging to her whisk. My celestial trial is solitude - this endless autumn of unattended shrines."
"Consider your Martial Uncle,He ascended Kunlun's mist-veiled peaks at five winters old, treading celestial paths unscathed for decades. Yet on the dawn-breath of his twenty-sixth year, the heavens claimed his left arm. When autumn gilded his temples at fifty-six summers, the earth demanded his right leg. His celestial trial wears the mask of broken flesh."
"But yours, child, dances with Crimson Luan's flame—a fate measured not in severed limbs, but in the silken snares of entwined hearts."
The Taoist nun shook her head and sighed, "You possess a woman's appearance but a man's fate. Your Eight Characters are yang-aligned, with destiny surging to the highest heavens - this is the true Dragon's Mandate. Yet you were born female, yin opposing yang. While yang-aligned birth charts can be suppressed with external means, the Dragon's Mandate cannot be contained. Nothing in this world can restrain draconic yang energy."
"Before your twenty-fifth year," she continued earnestly, "if you fail to find your destined husband, the emergence of the Red Phoenix Star will awaken your Dragon's Mandate, causing yang energy to hemorrhage from your body. Your life will be forfeit." Her voice softened with compassion,
"When the sect leader expelled you from the mountain, it wasn't punishment for wrongdoing. You simply had to descend - your fate demands it."
"The Kunlun Mountains hold no man with True Phoenix Destiny who can aid you. Staying there is but a waste of time, gambling with your very life."
"The reason we kept you in the Jingdu is that our sect leader sacrificed ten years of his lifespan to divine that celestial revelation for you."
"The revelation showed the wellspring of survival for your mortal peril lies precisely in the Jingdu."
"After tonight, you'll be twenty-four years old, with but one year remaining before the Red Phoenix Star emerges."
"You may treat this lightly, yet we've all been losing sleep over it."
The Taoist nun said with a worried expression, "That woman from the Chen family does possess the True Phoenix Destiny, but unfortunately she's female and thus useless to you. Moreover, her True Phoenix Destiny was compromised when she lost her virginity to an ordinary man before encountering the True Dragon's Mandate. The True Phoenix transformed into a False Phoenix, squandering her destined prosperous fortune. Otherwise, with her extraordinarily noble destiny, how could she have ended up as just a wealthy matron in the Chen family?"
Ling Xi seemed intrigued: "Martial Aunt, are you speaking of Tong Yuan's mother?"
The Taoist nun nodded: "Who else could it be but her?"
Ling Xi recalled: "My master said those with True Phoenix Destiny are born with the White Tiger. Though their nobility is beyond measure, such fortune cannot be sustained by ordinary men. Her first husband was a farmer - their union left him chronically ill, defying all medical treatment. Yet now that she's married to Chen Xuanjun, the fourth son of the Chen family, how is it that he not only remains unharmed but has actually enhanced the Chen family's fortune?"
The Taoist nun lifted her Destiny teacup and took a delicate sip, moistening her throat- Translated before continuing earnestly.
She elaborated: "The True Phoenix paired with the True Dragon follows celestial decree, maximizing the prosperous fortune of both. Yet fate plays cruel tricks—the True Phoenix rarely encounters the True Dragon, and the True Dragon scarcely finds its True Phoenix."
"The Chen family woman's True Phoenix Destiny degraded into a False Phoenix Destiny, squandering two-thirds of her noble fortune. Chen Xuanjun, born with an Innate Serpent Destiny, precisely requires the support of this False Phoenix Destiny. Their union thrives on mutual benefit and reciprocal needs, thus maintaining harmony and amplifying their destinies."
The Taoist nun sighed regretfully, "Their destinies pale in comparison to yours. Now everything depends on whether you can find a man bearing the True Phoenix Destiny."
Ling Xi lowered her gaze: "If none can be found, such is my ordained fate. Heaven's will is not to be defied."
"Abandonment is forbidden!" the Taoist nun admonished sternly. "Your master has declared that Kunlun's future still rests upon you."
Ling Xi was about Phoenix Destiny to speak when the Taoist nun facing the villa's second-floor staircase abruptly changed expression.
She sprang to her feet, exclaiming in alarm, "Phoenix Yin energy! How... how is this possible?"
Turning to look, Ling Xi saw the villa's second floor enveloped in radiant auroras that pierced the heavens. The bizarre spectacle of multicolored lights left her stunned into speechless silence.
The Taoist nun's initial shock transformed into urgent excitement.
"Ling Xi! Quickly!" she urgently instructed. "Seal the Phoenix Yin energy with the Nine Trigrams Spirit-Locking Formation! We must prevent those scheming to deduce celestial secrets from disrupting your destined tribulation!"
Ling Xi remained paralyzed in lingering astonishment.
She knew full well who lay sleeping on the villa's second floor - Su Ning, the nominal apprentice she'd fortuitously rescued. An ordinary youth who had arrived in the capital less than two years prior.
Yet this very youth now stood revealed as both her long-awaited destined partner and the True Phoenix Destiny holder who could help her break through the Red Luan Tribulation.
She couldn't believe it, even harboring a peculiar thought. Because she suddenly recalled the joke her close friend Lu Zhixia had made earlier that day: "Why not try a master-disciple romance?"
Ling Xi's heart fluttered like a startled deer, her thoughts in disarray.
"Have you lost your mind?" the Taoist nun scolded angrily. "Do you not realize how many covet the True Phoenix Destiny? Delay another moment, and you'll never protect him in the future!"
"Understood." Ling Xi forcibly suppressed her tangled emotions.
From the hall drawer, she retrieved nine white banners. She placed one each in the five cardinal directions—east, south, west, north, and center—then positioned the remaining four in the intermediate directions: southeast, southwest, northeast, and northwest.
Simultaneously, the Taoist nun withdrew nine candles from her sleeve, placing them beside the nine ritual banners.
"Light the lamps. Activate the formation." She flicked her horsetail whisk.
"Snap. Snap. Snap."
The banners billowed without wind as the candles ignited spontaneously. "Infuse blood into the spiritual matrix," the nun commanded, settling into a meditative posture with a brush now in hand.
Ling Xi bit her index finger, saturating the brush's bristles with crimson vitality.
The Taoist nun's brush swirled like a dancing serpent, tracing arcane sigils.
"Seal."
With the final stroke, the Taoist nun anchored it at the central position. Instantly, the five-colored auroras surging skyward were forcibly constrained by an invisible white radiance.
The celestial light recoiled, dimming layer by layer as if retreating. Sweat drenched the nun's forehead, her teeth clenched as she commanded, "Seal it again."
"Boom."
Energy waves erupted within the villa, churning like surging tides.