Chapter 50
Silver light spilled out, the moonlight was like a ribbon, and a crescent moon, like a scimitar, hung above the maple tree outside the window, casting a cool and bright glow that blended with the candlelight inside, creating a strange color that was both warm and cold, reflected on Yin Qiu's serene sleeping face.
This is a long-awaited winter moonlit night.
The sound of rushing water came from somewhere. Yin Qiu heard the noise in her drowsy state and became slightly more awake. She struggled to lift her eyelids, her vision filled with a hazy red blush, making it difficult to see her surroundings clearly.
The pain lingered on the side of her neck, and her chest ached slightly. Yin Qiu had a splitting headache and lay motionless for a long time before her mind gradually cleared and her vision slowly became clear.
It wasn't like an ordinary room, but more like a spacious palace. She lay on a soft, warm couch, and all she could see were delicate, crimson gauze curtains that fluttered in the evening breeze like drifting clouds, which reddened Yin Qiu's eyes.
Where is this?
Yin Qiu's whole body ached, and she struggled to sit up, rubbing her eyes and looking around blankly.
She stared blankly at the place, her mind still a bit muddled. For a moment, she couldn't remember what had happened. After a long time, she recalled some fragmented images: first, Ding Lianzhen's face; then, a cliff shrouded in mist and clouds; next, Wen Chaoyu's hand reaching out to her; and after that, she couldn't remember anything at all.
Could this be the Ziwei Sect?
Once Yin Qiu fully regained consciousness, a deep sense of unease and fear welled up within her.
The sound of flowing water still echoed in her ears, seemingly accompanied by the laughter of many women. Yin Qiu swallowed hard, carefully jumped off the couch, and stepped outside, lifting the heavy gauze curtains.
A strong, pungent incense scent filled the air. Yin Qiu's legs felt weak and her breath was shallow. She stopped after only a few steps, leaning against a wooden table.
She raised her eyelashes and looked around, only to find that there were many figures swaying outside the gauze curtain diagonally in front of her. Upon closer inspection, she saw that the place was a hot spring pool, with steam rising from it like clouds and mist. Several young women, barely clothed, were frolicking and playing in the pool, their laughter echoing.
The women were all beautiful and graceful, wearing only a gauze dress that was practically useless. When the dress got wet, it clung tightly to their skin, outlining their beautiful curves. It didn't cover up anything that should have been covered. At a glance, their white arms and bare chests were even more blush-inducing than the scenes Yin Qiu had seen in the brothel.
Upon seeing this scene, Yin Qiu was stunned.
Is this the Ziwei Sect? Or... did Wen Chaoyu not bring her to the Ziwei Sect at all, but instead threw her into some brothel?
As she pondered, the sounds in her ears changed again. The laughter continued, but suddenly there were some low gasps and indescribable moans. Yin Qiu looked again and saw the women embracing each other, huddled together, each with their necks tilted back, lips slightly parted, and expressions of intoxication and enjoyment.
Yin Qiu instantly realized that they weren't playing in the water, but doing something else. Her expression changed, and she hurriedly looked away.
Oh no, it really is a brothel.
Why did Wen Chaoyu bring her to a brothel?
Wen Chaoyu...Where is Wen Chaoyu? Where is she?
Yin Qiu subconsciously took a step, wanting to escape this place immediately, but when she turned around, she saw a smiling woman in red standing in front of her.
This person arrived without a sound, her expression serene. She stood in the moonlight by the window, her red dress as soft and alluring as a pool of spring water. Her face, without any makeup, was fair and clear, yet her eyes and brows seemed to have been touched with rouge, tinged with a captivating peach-red hue. Her eyes were full of affection and tenderness, her beauty breathtaking.
Yin Qiu was startled and reflexively took two steps back.
"Is it pretty?" The woman looked at her for a while, then suddenly asked softly.
Yin Qiu's eyes were filled with panic, and she remained silent.
"Don't be afraid," the woman's voice was low as she took a few steps closer to Yin Qiu, pointing to the hot spring pool and saying, "You've been looking at it for a long time, isn't it beautiful?"
Her eyes still darted around those shifting figures, and Yin Qiu's face flushed as she shrank back, asking, "Who are you?"
The woman laughed: "Why don't you take a guess?"
Yin Qiu scrutinized her for a few moments, then, with her hands behind her back clutching her sleeves, asked, "Where is this place?"
The woman countered, "What kind of place do you think this is?"
Yin Qiu frowned and asked uncertainly, "Is it... the Ziwei Sect?"
The woman nodded.
Although she had suspected it, she was still shocked when it was confirmed. Yin Qiu looked surprised and asked with difficulty, "Then you are...?"
The woman smiled warmly and said, "Your father is my sworn brother. According to seniority, you should call me aunt."
She is Nangong Min, the leader of the Ziwei Sect?!
Shocked by the series of events, Yin Qiu was speechless.
What's meant to happen can't be avoided. The Ziwei Sect has been searching for her for so long, and they've finally succeeded.
"What do you want with me?" After a long while, Yin Qiu finally found her voice and asked the person opposite her.
Nangong Min looked at her meaningfully and said, "That's not right. What do you mean by 'bringing you here'? I am your aunt, and the Ziwei Sect is your home. It is only natural to bring you back."
Having learned her identity and where she was, perhaps because of the many unexpected events she had experienced these days, Yin Qiu quickly calmed down. Moreover, she found that Nangong Min's words were relatively gentle and he was not a scary person, so she calmly said, "I have no home for a long time, don't lie to me."
“Why would I lie to you?” Nangong Min looked at Yin Qiu with affection and beckoned her, “Come here, come to your aunt.”
Yin Qiu remained motionless.
Nangong Min then walked up to Yin Qiu, took her hand and said, "Your old home is gone, but you have a new one now. Now that you're back, your aunt will treat you well, so don't be nervous."
Her palm was icy cold, without a trace of warmth. Although Yin Qiu tried her best to calm herself down, she was still young and her mind was not stable enough. When Nangong Min touched her like that, she couldn't help but get goosebumps all over her body.
"Don't touch me," Yin Qiu quickly pulled her hand back, her expression wary. "I don't know you."
"Then who are you close to?" Nangong Min gently scolded, "I'm your aunt, how can you be rude to your aunt?"
Yin Qiu appeared calm on the surface, but inwardly she felt a sense of disgust.
This is the person in front of me who wiped out the entire Ruyi Sect, killed her family, and turned Liucang Mountain into ruins.
A murderer who committed such heinous crimes can now act as if nothing happened and pretend to be friendly with her, calling her "aunt" at every turn.
Yin Qiu turned her face away from Nangong Min and said with her eyes lowered, "My mother is already dead. Even if she were still alive, she wouldn't care about me. It's no use for you to bring me here."
Seemingly surprised by Yin Qiu's reaction, Nangong Min looked at her with a deeper gaze and laughed, "What does it matter to me whether your mother is dead or not? The people looking for her are Yunhua Palace, not my Ziwei Sect."
Yin Qiu said, "Stop pretending. I heard from my martial uncle that you thought the Holy Sword was in my mother's hands, so you wanted to use me to force her to reveal it."
Nangong Min raised an eyebrow and laughed loudly: "Man Jiangxue?" Her tone was playful, "You think everything she says is true?"
When Yin Qiu heard that she was about to start talking badly about Man Jiangxue, her face darkened: "Uncle-Master wouldn't lie to me."
“Then you are wrong,” Nangong Min said. “It is true that I want to find the Holy Sword, but I never said that the Holy Sword must be in your mother’s hands. On the contrary, Man Jiangxue pretended to be Shen Mandong and put on a show, and then spread the word that the Holy Sword was in her hands. Why should Yunhua Palace keep what my Ziwei Sect has to do with me?”
Yin Qiu suddenly remembered that afternoon when Man Jiangxue disguised herself as her mother and waited for her in the room.
"So what?" Yin Qiu said, "Even if my martial uncle disguised himself as my mother, he didn't do anything bad, nor did he lie to me about anything."
“But she ruined my plans and deceived me,” Nangong Min said. “Since she said the Holy Sword was in her hands, then hand it over. You seem to understand things, so you should know what it means to return something to its rightful owner.”
Yin Qiu glanced at her: "Then what does this have to do with you capturing me and bringing me to the Ziwei Sect?"
Nangong Min smiled and glanced at her: "Trading a sword for a person? It's so obvious, why even ask?"
Yin Qiu immediately said, "Then why did you say you weren't lying to me? You clearly had ulterior motives, but you lied to me and said you would take me home."
Unexpectedly, Yin Qiu was so perceptive. Nangong Min was tricked by her and couldn't help but laugh: "I didn't know you were so smart." After saying that, she lifted her leg and walked towards the hot spring. "Then I'll stop pretending. You can leave whenever your martial aunt brings her sword. Let's see if she's willing to come and save you."
·
Yin Qiu leaned against the edge of the table and turned to look at the sky outside the window. The night was deep and quiet, and even the sound of the wind had subsided.
Only the commotion in the hot spring pool did not lessen at all; on the contrary, it became even noisier.
Yin Qiu didn't know which prefecture the Ziwei Sect was in, nor how long she had been unconscious. She guessed it would have been a day or two, and Man Jiangxue must have noticed that she was missing. She just didn't know if Man Jiangxue knew that she had arrived at the Ziwei Sect.
Will my uncle be very anxious?
Is that holy sword really in Yunhua Palace? And will her martial uncle really come with the sword to rescue her?
If Yunhua Palace doesn't have the Holy Sword, what will my uncle offer in exchange for her?
Furthermore, if the Holy Sword is truly in Yunhua Palace, even if my uncle is willing, would the sect leader be willing to exchange the sword for the person?
Thinking about all this made Yin Qiu feel even more dizzy.
She couldn't escape on her own, and now she could only wait for Man Jiangxue to come to her rescue. But seeing that Nangong Min didn't seem to want to make things difficult for her, Yin Qiu thought to herself that her current situation was still quite good, at least there was no danger. So the only thing she could do was to stay put and not cause any trouble for herself.
With her stomach empty, Yin Qiu was so hungry that her vision was blurry and her mouth was dry. She looked up and saw Nangong Min standing outside the gauze curtain, quietly watching the scene in the pool, his face expressionless.
I noticed that she was watching very intently, and her aura was different from before. The smile was gone from her eyes, and she looked cold and aloof, as if she had suddenly become a different person.
Yin Qiu couldn't understand what was so interesting about it, and why she could watch it so intently. She was thinking about how to call out to Nangong Min when she saw Nangong Min turn his head as if sensing something and cast his gaze at her.
Are you hungry?
The moment he said this, Nangong Min regained his previous kindness and amiability, and a smile returned to his face.
Aside from Wen Chaoyu, Yin Qiu had never seen anyone change their expression so quickly. It seemed that the people in the Ziwei Cult were not very normal.
Yin Qiu nodded: "Yeah, I'm hungry."
Nangong Min looked at her and said, "Then call me aunt, and I'll take you to eat something delicious."
Yin Qiu frowned and remained silent.
"If you don't call me, you'll go hungry." Nangong Min ignored her.
Yin Qiu would rather starve to death than call her enemy "Auntie" so affectionately. When Nangong Min turned around, she squatted down against the table leg and stared at her without blinking.
Neither of them spoke, and the atmosphere became strange, like a silent standoff.
Shortly after, Nangong Min curled the corners of his lips and said, "All of you, leave."
The women in the pool stopped, got up, put on their clothes, bowed respectfully, and withdrew.
Once everyone left, only Yin Qiu and Nangong Min remained in the main hall, and the lively atmosphere quickly faded, leaving it deserted.
"What would you like to eat?" Nangong Min walked over gracefully, looking down at Yin Qiu.
Yin Qiu squatted on the ground, pressing her stomach, and said, "Anything is fine, I'm not picky about food."
Nangong Min chuckled lightly for no reason: "You look just like a puppy eagerly waiting to be fed."
"Puppy?" Yin Qiu said stiffly, "Why are you swearing at me..."
Nangong Min smiled without saying a word or reaching out to pull her, and walked straight towards the hall. Yin Qiu quickly got up and followed, her vision went black, and she saw stars all over her head.
The women who had been there earlier had already left, their figures reflected on the window paper like shadow puppets. Yin Qiu glanced at them and asked Nangong Min, "Why...why did you watch them bathe?"
Nangong Min seemed to have heard a joke: "Take a bath?"
Yin Qiu hummed in agreement.
Nangong Min glanced at her sideways and said, "They're not taking a bath."
Yin Qiu knew, of course, that they weren't taking a bath, but she didn't know what word to use to describe it, so she could only use the word "bathing".
Seeing Yin Qiu's confused and bewildered expression, Nangong Min paused and said, "You used to work in a brothel, so I don't need to tell you this kind of thing, right?" After saying this, she added, "Besides, you're not a child anymore."
Yin Qiu wasn't surprised that she knew he had worked in a brothel; he just said awkwardly, "I know... I was asking why you looked."
“Of course, it’s because they’re beautiful,” Nangong Min said, his eyes sparkling and his tone playful. “I keep them, I don’t want them to kill or do anything else, just for the pleasure of seeing them.”
Yin Qiu looked at her with a complicated expression.
This person has really strange tastes.
It was indeed strange. When Yin Qiu was in the disciples' academy, she had heard many classmates mention the Ziwei Sect. They all said that the sect leader, Nangong Min, was as ruthless as a snake, with vicious and cold-blooded intentions. Everyone who mentioned her name looked terrified. In the past, whenever Yin Qiu was kidnapped by Wen Chaoyu, she was terrified, fearing that she would be brought to the Ziwei Sect. But now, not only had she actually come, but she had also seen the legendary Nangong Min with her own eyes. Yet, she didn't feel afraid of her at all. She even dared to talk to her calmly and even felt an unbelievable sense of closeness.
Could it be because of her relationship with her father? Yin Qiu wondered to herself.
But according to Man Jiangxue, her father was just an unknown figure in the Ziwei Sect, so how could Nangong Min recognize him as his sworn brother?
Yin Qiu immediately remembered—what else could it be? Of course, it was to make her father deliberately get close to her mother so that he could destroy the Ruyi Sect. After all, she had heard many people say that her father was handsome and no woman could resist him.
After all, a mother is a woman.
Lost in thought, the two, one big and one small, entered the hall one after the other. Nangong Min ordered the food to be served, then leaned lazily against the chaise longue, not saying a word, just watching Yin Qiu eat small bites.
There was no incense burning in the hall, but the smell still wafted out from the inner palace in waves. Yin Qiu frowned at the smell, and the food he ate tasted like wax.
As she ate, she thought of Man Jiangxue, and thought that the fragrance on her uncle's body was still the best, light and refreshing, unlike here, where the smell became stuffy after a while.
Ignoring the gaze that lingered on her, Yin Qiu finished her meal as if nothing had happened, put down her chopsticks, and poured herself a cup of hot tea.
Nangong Min stared at her with great interest before speaking, "Aren't you afraid the food might be poisoned?"
Yin Qiu paused in swallowing, thought for a moment, and said, "If you wanted to kill me, you didn't need to go to such lengths..."
That's what she said, but she was actually a little uneasy.
What if it really is poisonous?
It's not impossible that they might feed her some poison that won't kill her but will make her suffer, in order to force Man Jiangxue to hand over the Holy Sword as soon as possible.
Since we've already eaten it, we can't just throw it up.
“You don’t seem afraid of me,” Nangong Min smiled. “You were unconscious for two days, and when you woke up you didn’t seem particularly flustered. You asked me for food after only a few words. What, haven’t you ever heard of the Ziwei Sect?”
Yin Qiu met her gaze and honestly replied, "I've heard of it."
Nangong Min looked at her for a moment and said, "Then why aren't you afraid?"
How could Yin Qiu not be afraid? She was just pretending to be calm.
She put down her teacup without answering the question.
The main hall door was still open, and the night wind rushed in from outside, ruffling Yin Qiu's hair. She looked up and glanced outside, noticing that there were many maple trees standing in the courtyard, hidden in the dim corners. The maple leaves dancing in the wind were like pieces of sunset drifting in the night, exuding a sense of desolation and loneliness.
Does the Ziwei Sect also have red maples?
As Yin Qiu was thinking, she heard Nangong Min's voice in her ear: "That was transplanted from Liucang Mountain by your father."
Hearing her voice suddenly so close, Yin Qiu was startled and turned around to see that Nangong Min had gotten up from the chaise lounge and was sitting beside her.
Yin Qiu moved a little further away and said, "My dad likes maple trees too?"
Nangong Min tilted his head and looked her over, saying, "He doesn't like it, only your mother does."
Yin Qiu looked puzzled.
“Your father originally planned to bring your mother to the Ziwei Sect after destroying the Ruyi Sect,” Nangong Min smiled meaningfully, “but he never expected that your mother would kill him with a single sword, and even his remains could not be found.”
Yin Qiu was silent for a moment, then said, "Didn't he dislike my mother?"
Nangong Min shook his head, reached out and touched Yin Qiu's eyes, and said, "Your mother had countless suitors throughout her life, but if you were to ask who loved her the most, it would undoubtedly be Yin Xuan."
Yin Qiu was slightly taken aback.
"Your eyes really look just like your father's."
Nangong Min spoke softly, his gaze towards Yin Qiu suddenly becoming profound.
Such a touch made Yin Qiu feel an uncontrollable aversion. She avoided the seemingly clean but blood-stained hand and remained silent.
Nangong Min smiled enigmatically, withdrew his hand, and entered the inner hall without turning his head, saying, "Since you're here, make the best of it. Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year, and it's been a long time since anyone has spent the New Year with me. Come in and keep your aunt company for a while."
Yin Qiu frowned and didn't move. She looked at the crescent moon outside the window, her feigned composure completely gone, leaving only a heavy expression on her face.
He missed the martial arts exam and also missed spending the New Year with Man Jiangxue; all his wonderful plans had fallen through.
What is my uncle doing right now?
Yin Qiu sighed and gently closed her sore eyes.
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