Flower Stealing Master

“The White Lotus Sect actually sent you to do something this dangerous!” Song Qingshu heard her out and was furious. He made a silent note that the next time he saw Li Qingluo, he would have words with her.

“Someone had to go. And if I want to build real standing within the Sect, I need to take risks the others won’t.” Seeing her husband’s heated reaction, Zhou Zhiruo felt a warmth bloom in her chest for no particular reason. She looked at him with eyes soft as still water. “Besides — every setback may be a blessing in disguise. If I hadn’t come to the Isle of Heroes, how would I have found you again?”

Song Qingshu took her small hand in both of his and pressed a ki$$ to it. “It’s too dangerous for you to stay in the White Lotus Sect. From now on, stay with me — don’t go back to that wretched place.”

“No. I’m going back.” Zhou Zhiruo’s voice was quiet, but the resolve in it left no room for argument.

Song Qingshu was silent for a moment. “I think I can guess why you feel you have to. But let me say this plainly — it doesn’t matter whether you’re the head of Emei or a common disciple; whether you’re the leader of the White Lotus Sect or a village girl. You are my wife. That won’t change. You don’t need to do anything to secure what is already yours.”

Zhou Zhiruo was moved. She leaned against him and pressed her cheek to his chest, her voice going soft. “Qingshu — you are a perceptive man. With you I don’t have to pretend. I never had to work so hard at being someone I wasn’t as I did with Zhang Wuji…”

They had been together long enough that she knew his nature well. He was a man of broad and generous spirit — and the knot around Zhang Wuji had long since been untied between them. She could speak the name without fearing it would sting him, the way she might mention any ordinary fact.

“The truth is, I went into the White Lotus Sect partly wanting to hold my own against Ah Jiu and Qingqing. Ah Jiu is a Ming princess — her standing is noble, and she commands the loyalty of a great many people. Qingqing brought the entire Golden Serpent Camp as her dowry. Compared to them, I have so little to offer you. And they are both so strong — my position will always be under threat if I can’t match them.”

Song Qingshu frowned. “You’ve spent enough time with Ah Jiu and Qingqing to know they aren’t like that.”

“Ah Jiu and Qingqing are both good people — genuinely.” Zhou Zhiruo gave a faint smile. “But this isn’t just about what they personally want. It touches the interests of everyone who supports them. Even if they themselves would never compete, what about the people beneath them? Their followers’ fortunes rise and fall with their mistress’s standing — and the story of the yellow robe hasn’t faded from memory yet.” [G: 黄袍加身 — “draped in the yellow robe”; a reference to the founding legend of the Song dynasty, when Zhao Kuangyin’s soldiers allegedly forced the imperial yellow robe onto their general, compelling him to accept the throne. It became a byword for subordinates engineering their leader’s advancement for their own benefit.]

“That kind of situation isn’t impossible,” Song Qingshu conceded, nodding slowly, a smile beginning to form at the corners of his mouth. “But if you truly wanted to secure your position, there’s always been a simpler path right in front of you. You walked past it and chose the hardest road instead.”

“What simpler path?” Zhou Zhiruo sat up straight, wide eyes fixed on him with frank curiosity.

Song Qingshu gave her an enigmatic smile and leaned close to her ear. “There’s an old saying: a mother’s rank rises with her son’s. Spend more time being close to me. If you give me our first child, no one will be able to touch you.”

Zhou Zhiruo’s face went scarlet in an instant. She turned away, too embarrassed to speak, her fingers working the hem of her sleeve over and over in a knot of conflicted feeling.

Though she and Song Qingshu had been married for some time, it had for so long been a marriage in name only, and after that they had been separated far more than together. She hadn’t yet fully settled into the role of wife — in her heart she was still more girl than woman. She didn’t mind deploying intelligence and strategy for a purpose, but using her own b0dy as a means to an end was something she couldn’t quite bring herself to do without blushing.

Song Qingshu knew her well enough to know she’d never take the first step herself. He smiled and closed the distance between them, and before long a rain of ki$$es was falling on her soft cheek, the curve of her lips, the length of her pale neck, the delicate line of her collarbone…

The tide rose. From within the room came the quiet music of barely-restrained sounds — unlike before, with no pretence in them at all, only the honest language of the b0dy.

Some time later, Zhou Zhiruo was wiping a pearlescent trace from her midriff, her face still flushed, when she murmured, “You… you could have… finished inside, you know.”

Before, Zhou Zhiruo had worried that a child would complicate too many things, and so after their intimate moments Song Qingshu had consistently and thoughtfully withdrawn at the critical moment. She had assumed this time would be the same.

But his words just now had struck her like a revelation, and for the first time she truly wanted a child. Having just been taught this by her husband, though, she couldn’t very well admit it openly — she could only hint at it in the most roundabout way she could manage.

Song Qingshu gave a rueful smile. “It isn’t that I don’t want you to c0nceive. It’s that I am still poisoned — conceiving under these circumstances wouldn’t be wise.”

The Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin was still in his body. He had worried from early on that it might permeate everything — saliva, blood, and other such things. Early on, Xiao Longnu had nearly been poisoned simply from passing medicine mouth to mouth. Fortunately the Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill had partially suppressed the toxin — not enough to resolve it, but enough to ensure he was not a walking reservoir of poison.

In truth, all of this had been worked out after the fact — from what had happened with Qi Fang during his delirious episode in the dream-realm. He had been barely conscious at the time and hadn’t registered the danger. Only afterward, realising what had passed between them, had he felt a genuine dread. If Qi Fang had been poisoned and died because of him, he would have carried that guilt for the rest of his life.

She had come through unscathed, and only then had he finally set that worry down. The days on the river boat afterward had given him ample opportunity to test the matter thoroughly, and he had satisfied himself that, whatever the poison in his body, it would not pass to a woman through intimacy.

His mind drifted briefly to Duan Yu, and whether the man had faced the same problem. He had swallowed the King of Ten Thousand Poisons — the Manggu Vermilion Toad — and thereafter no poison could harm him. But the text had also been explicit that his blood carried lethal toxicity. By any logical reasoning, his saliva and everything else must have as well. Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils never depicted his married life — which was perhaps fortunate. The wedding night might well have been where the tragedy began.

‘Thank heaven I’m not as unlucky as Duan Yu,’ Song Qingshu thought with feeling. If that were truly the case, what pleasure would be left in life?

“Qingshu — you’re poisoned?” Zhou Zhiruo sat bolt upright, quite forgetting that the view of her chest was entirely exposed to the open air. She fixed him with urgent eyes. “What kind of poison have you been given?”

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