On a morning when the clouds hung low and the air carried a bite of early frost, he knocked on a different door.
His knuckles rapped once, twice—unhurried, certain.
"Come in."
Bing Yuxia's cool voice floated out, clear as ice tapping jade.
Ling Feng slid the door aside.
The Ice Empress-to-be stood by the window of her guest courtyard, blue robes draped over her lean frame like flowing water. A jade fan rested in her fingers. Frost gathered along the edges of the window frame where her qi had inadvertently leaked, thin crystals creeping outward in delicate, ruthless patterns.
She glanced over her shoulder.
"…So you remembered," she said, tone light but edged. "This young master was beginning to think you had forgotten our agreement."
Ling Feng shut the door behind him with a soft click.
"With how fierce you looked when I mentioned 'days'?" he said lazily. "If I ran, you'd probably chase me all the way back to Cleansing Incense."
Her fan tapped gently against her shoulder, hiding the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth.
"Then Young Noble knows himself well," she replied. "Where are you dragging this young master today? The Dragon Arbiter Stage is not suitable for a stroll."
"Relax," he said. "I'm not that unromantic."
He extended a hand toward her, palm open, fingers slightly curled in invitation.
"Come on. I want to show you something colder than your face."
Her eyes narrowed, a flash of sharp frost in their depths.
"…You have quite a poisonous tongue," she said. "Do you speak to all women this way?"
"Only the ones I like," Ling Feng replied, utterly honest.
The fan paused mid-tap.
For once, Bing Yuxia didn't respond immediately. She simply looked at his outstretched hand, then at his face, as if weighing something invisible between them.
In the end, she didn't take it.
She slid the fan closed with a soft snap and walked past him, chin high, robes whispering against the floor.
"Lead the way," she said. "This young master will see what tricks you have."
Ling Feng smiled.
"Suit yourself."
He took her not up, but down.
Out of the quiet courtyard, past the training grounds where early-rising disciples were already drenched in sweat, past pill refinement courts that still smelled faintly of herbs and burnt cauldrons. They left the main paths, turning into a side valley where the mist clung thicker and the ambient qi turned sharply cold.
Formations here were old. Not the neat, polished arrays of the current Heavenly Dao Academy, but deep-carved engravings from when the academy's founders had still been young and the world itself felt raw.
Frost-laced stones. Half-buried totems. Faint, ancient runes flickering in and out of sight when the wind shifted.
At the end of the valley lay a lake.
It wasn't large, but its surface was so still it might have been polished jade. Thin ice traced spiderweb patterns across the top, yet faint steam hovered above in gauzy veils—cold and heat tangled in a strange, unstable balance. Each breath tasted of winter and hot springs at once.
Bing Yuxia's eyes brightened despite herself.
"…This is…"
"A pocket vein," Ling Feng said. "The academy buried a cold spring and a fire spring together here. Most students don't even know the formations that keep it from exploding."
He walked to the edge, squatted, and dipped two fingers into the water.
The surface answered like a living thing.
Ice crackled out from his touch in a sharp, crystalline burst, racing across the lake in jagged lines—then withdrew just as quickly, the water rippling once before going mirror-still again.
"It's good material," he said. "Stubborn. Like a certain young master I know."
She snorted.
"You say 'young master' as if you believe it," she said. "You are too used to teasing people, Ling Feng."
"Teasing?" He raised a brow. "I'm just speaking truth."
She stepped closer to the water's edge, gaze fixed on the strange lake.
The chill rose to meet her.
Her own ice dao stirred in response, law-lines whispering between her meridians and the pocket vein below. Beneath the calm surface, her Ice Feather inheritance recognized something familiar and yet… altered.
"…You adjusted this place," she said quietly. "The cold and heat were not originally balanced like this."
"Mm." He stood, dusting off his hands. "Had some free time after terrifying the geniuses here, so I played with the formations."
He looked at her, eyes a little more serious.
"Sit."
Her brows knit together immediately.
"This young master is not one of your Grand Era juniors," she said, tone cooling. "Do not speak as if you are ordering—"
He stepped behind her and rested a hand lightly on her shoulder.
She froze.
"Relax," he said, voice dropping lower, the casual edge softening. "If I wanted to order you around, I'd say it clearly. Right now I'm just… recommending."
His touch was barely there, but the strength in it was undeniable—an irresistible, gentle pressure guiding her toward the flat stone beside the lake.
After a short, stiff moment, she allowed herself to sit.
The air around them grew colder as her ice dao responded to the mixed vein. Tiny snowflakes began to condense out of the mist, drifting lazily between them and the water.
Ling Feng moved without hurry.
He sat behind her, close enough that his knee brushed the edge of her robe, then raised both hands and hovered them just over the line of her back.
"Last time," he said, "I shoved a modified law into your cultivation in the middle of a battlefield. Effective, but… a bit rough."
"'A bit'," she echoed dryly.
"Today," he continued as if she hadn't spoken, "I'll do it properly. No one rushing us, no idiots screaming in the background, no corpses trying to bite our ankles."
His hands lowered.
He never quite touched her skin. His palms stopped a breath's width away, but the warmth from his hands seeped through the cloth like a quiet tide.
Chaos-infused spirit energy and his particular understanding of her ice-law mark unfolded slowly, unfurling like frost blooming on glass.
"Close your eyes," he said softly. "Follow the flow."
Bing Yuxia hesitated.
Then, trusting more in her own dao than in him, she obeyed.
The lake responded first.
Cold qi rose in a spiral, drawn by his guidance. Her Ice Feather Palace inheritance resonated in answer; the law-lines in her meridians lit up like frost catching distant moonlight.
He saw it all.
Places where past generations had forced her line to be "elegant" rather than lethal. Nodes where the inheritance had been sealed off to pursue lofty detachment instead of battlefield slaughter. Branches of the dao that had been deliberately locked away to prevent madness—or greatness.
He didn't smash them open.
He melted them.
Threads of Chaos-tinged comprehension wrapped around her ice dao, carefully warming the frozen locks from the inside until they loosened. Sealed doors became open corridors. Distant, unreachable thresholds that had loomed at the edge of her perception… slid quietly into her grasp.
The cold sharpened.
It stopped being merely defensive frost and began to have teeth. Ice that could slice. Chill that seeped past armor into dao hearts. Frost that could chain not bodies, but fate itself.
Her breathing slowed.
"…You…" she murmured, eyes still closed. "You are… not afraid that I will surpass your expectations and turn this dao against you one day?"
Ling Feng chuckled, low and close.
"If you can turn this against me," he said, voice next to her ear, "that just means I taught you well. I'll be proud."
Her lashes trembled.
That was not the answer of someone treating her as a chess piece. Not the words of a man who only wanted her as a tool.
That was… someone who genuinely wanted to see the woman in front of him shine, even if she shone sharp enough to cut him.
The thought unsettled her more than any battlefield.
Snowflakes thickened in the air.
The lake's surface froze solid for a moment, glass-clear ice stretching from shore to shore. Then it cracked with a dull boom, steam erupting as the buried fire spring surged up, reasserting balance. In that clash of extremes, Bing Yuxia's comprehension leaped forward like a blade leaving its sheath.
New lines traced themselves in her inner vision: an ice dao that no longer only protected and sealed, but hunted and judged; a cold that ignored armor and distance, sliding into marrow and soul.
Her eyes opened slowly.
Her breath spilled out in a thin, white line.
The air around them was filled with motes of light—half snow, half fading dao runes.
She turned her head slightly, just enough that she could see him from the corner of her eye.
"…You are insane," she said softly.
Ling Feng smiled, eyes warm and amused.
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
Her ears colored faintly. She turned away again, as if the winter wind had suddenly become too sharp for even her.
"This young master… will admit," she said slowly, "that your methods… are not entirely hateful."
"Careful," he said. "Say nice things too often and I'll misunderstand."
"…As if you have not already misunderstood everything from the beginning," she muttered.
He laughed, the sound easy and unbothered.
Then, without any grand declaration, he shifted closer.
Before she could fully process the movement, his arms slid around her from behind—loose, not trapping, but undeniably intimate.
Her whole body went rigid.
"Ling Feng—!"
"Don't move," he said quietly. "Your qi will scatter."
That was… partially true.
Her cultivation, still adjusting to the new pathways he had opened, did calm under the steady warmth pressed against her back. His breathing was even; his heartbeat, absurdly relaxed, thudded against her spine as if holding a woman like Bing Yuxia by a hidden lake in an ancient valley was the most natural thing in the world.
"Relax," he repeated, voice gentler than she had ever heard from him. "I won't bite."
She swallowed.
"This young master… is not some nervous little girl," she said, words strained, annoyed by the tremor she could hear in her own voice.
"Really?" he murmured near her ear. "Your ears are saying otherwise."
Her hand twitched, fan halfway raised as if to smack him across the head.
But she… didn't.
The fan lowered again, resting in her lap.
Slowly, the stiffness leached from her shoulders. Her back eased against his chest by the smallest degree, just enough that their bodies aligned under the drifting snow.
Time stretched.
The lake alternated between thin ice and rising steam. The cold spring and fire spring continued their eternal tug-of-war beneath the surface, but above, Bing Yuxia's dao settled into a new, razor-sharp equilibrium.
Ling Feng didn't rush her.
He just held her, warmth wrapped around ice, until her aura smoothed out completely and the last of the jagged edges in her meridians had been tempered.
When she finally spoke again, her tone had lost some of its habitual aloofness.
"…You are very troublesome," she said quietly. "If you treat all women you fancy this sincerely, you will cause many disasters."
He smiled against her hair.
"Then I'll just have to take responsibility for all of them," he said.
Her fingers tightened on the fan.
"Ling Feng," she said. "You…"
She stopped. The words she wanted refused to come out—the accusations, the mockery, the usual sharp retort all felt… wrong.
He let her fumble for a while, saying nothing, arms steady around her.
Then he eased his hold, letting the hug loosen but not fully break.
"Today was the appetizer," he said lightly. "Next time, I'll make our day even better."
She twisted half around to look at him, pupils dilated, eyes wide.
"…Next time?"
"Of course." His grin turned softer, but not any less shameless. "You didn't think one day would be enough, did you?"
Her lips parted, then closed.
"This young master…" she began, then faltered.
The refusal she would have once thrown out without thinking refused to form. The ice in her heart stirred, reshaped by unfamiliar warmth.
After a long breath, she turned her face away again, cheeks faintly flushed.
"…Fine," she said, barely above a whisper. "We shall see if you are capable."
"I'll hold you to that," Ling Feng replied, satisfied.
When they walked back toward the main academy paths, she kept her usual distance—one step behind and half a pace to the side. But her footsteps naturally matched his rhythm, and when their sleeves brushed, she did not pull away.
The surrounding disciples, seeing the Ice Empress-in-the-making walking in quiet step beside that lawless Young Noble, whispered among themselves. Rumors, like frost, spread quickly.
The following days did not belong only to them.
Ling Feng made sure of that.
That night, the moon hung like a thin, pale hook over the academy.
In a secluded courtyard, the echo of steel on steel rang through the air.
Li Shuangyan stood opposite him, white robes outlined in lunar glow, sword in hand. Her Pure Jade Physique made her every movement clean and economical; nothing wasted, nothing excessive. Sword intent rippled from her blade in crisp arcs, each stroke drawing invisible lotus marks in the air.
Ling Feng stood barefoot on the stone tiles, hair tied back carelessly, hands behind his back as if this were a casual stroll instead of a duel with one of the generation's sharpest geniuses.
Her sword shot forward—straight, fast, cold.
He shifted half a step, letting the strike graze his sleeve, the wind from the tip brushing his skin. His hand came up, catching the flat of her blade with two fingers, redirecting it by a hair's breadth.
"Your Pure Jade Physique lets you recycle force," he said, tone soft, almost conversational. His breath brushed the shell of her ear as he stepped into her space, guiding her wrist with a light touch. "So stop treating every enemy like you need to crush them in one blow. Make them work for you. Let them feed you."
A faint, almost imperceptible shiver passed through her.
"…You always say such shameless things," she replied, voice cool, but her ears had turned a delicate pink.
"Only because they're true."
He let her sword go.
She withdrew a step and attacked again.
This time, when his palm met her blade, she didn't try to overpower him. She let the impact slide along her meridians, let it circle through her Pure Jade framework—and the next instant, the force that should have knocked her backward rebounded along her sword light and crashed back toward him, magnified.
Her eyes glinted faintly.
"Good girl," Ling Feng said, and this time he didn't bother to dodge. Crimson Chaos Force flickered under his skin, Absolute Force turning the rebounded strike into harmless ripples.
He caught her wrist again, halted the sword, and with his free arm, he pulled her into him.
Not rough, not domineering. Just a simple, honest embrace, like it had always belonged there.
Li Shuangyan stiffened for a heartbeat.
Then she melted, her forehead resting lightly against his shoulder as the moonlight pooled around them.
"With you," he murmured, lips brushing the top of her head, "I'm allowed to be greedy too."
Her breath hitched, just once.
She didn't answer, but her fingers curled quietly into the fabric of his robe.
Chen Baojiao's training grounds were the opposite of quiet.
Thunder rolled overhead, violent clouds churning above the valley as if the heavens themselves were being boiled. Pillars of wild, explosive energy erupted, flames and wind clashing in uncontrolled bursts.
She stood in the center of it, armor-light battle clothes whipped by the tempest, eyes bright with warlust. Her Tyrannical Valley Immortal Spring Physique flared, absorbing every impact and turning it into raw fuel.
She roared and swung her weapon, blasting a canyon wall with enough force to make the mountain tremble.
"Feng, if you keep hugging me every time I mess up," she shouted over the thunder, "I'm going to start messing up on purpose!"
He appeared behind her as another explosion went off—silent, sudden, a calm presence in a world of violence. His arms hooked around her waist before she could overextend, pulling her back against him as the shockwave tore a crater where she'd just been standing.
"Then I'll just have to make you so strong you don't need the excuse," he said, laughing, voice warm in her ear.
She leaned her back into his chest without hesitation, breath quick, cheeks flushed from both exertion and his proximity.
"That called… positive reinforcement?" she asked, mischievous glint in her eyes.
"That's right," he said. "Very advanced cultivation method."
"Mm?" She tilted her head back, lips curving. "With benefits?"
He didn't bother answering with words.
He simply tightened his arms around her and breathed against her neck, his qi wrapping around her own turbulent energy. The wild force in her meridians, which usually surged like flash floods, began to spin—compressed, refined, turning artillery showers into guided strikes.
Above them, a single violent cloud condensed.
"Good," Ling Feng murmured. "Again. Less firecracker, more cannon."
Her next strike didn't just explode outward; it punched through a series of reinforced stone pillars they'd set up, shattering all three in a straight line. The mountain shook, rubble cascading down the slope.
Chen Baojiao burst into delighted laughter, the sound bright and fierce.
"See?" Ling Feng said. "Scary woman like you, once you get serious, the heavens should file a complaint."
She twisted in his arms to face him, eyes blazing.
"Then stay close," she said. "If I'm causing trouble, you have to take responsibility."
He smiled, utterly unafraid.
"Gladly."
Xu Pei's storm field was quieter than Chen Baojiao's chaos, but no less deadly.
The air crackled with restrained lightning. Veins of electricity crawled along the ground like luminous snakes, coiling and uncoiling in controlled spirals. Each breath tasted faintly metallic.
Xu Pei stood at the center of a formation he had drawn, simple lines etched into the stone that turned her Violent Cloud Chant into something lean and precise. Her five Fate Palaces pulsed rhythmically, each surge of power compressed instead of spilling.
She cupped crackling storm-light between her palms and compressed it further, her brows furrowed.
"Don't chase spectacle," Ling Feng said, standing only an arm's length away, hands folded behind his back. "Fireworks are for festivals. You want artillery—quiet, mean, and to the point."
Her lips curved, but she didn't look away from the lightning ball.
"You always speak so oddly, Feng."
"That's just personality. Focus."
The storm-light shrank, dense as a star.
She thrust her palms forward.
The contained blast shot out—a spear of condensed lightning. It didn't explode in a wild dome. It drilled a clean hole through the reinforced wall they'd set as a target, then ruptured inside, tearing the structure apart from within.
Stone fragments rained down.
Xu Pei's eyes widened, then sparkled with quiet joy.
"…It worked."
"Told you," Ling Feng said.
She turned toward him, heart pounding, and when he opened his arms, she walked into them without a trace of hesitation, resting her forehead against his chest.
Where Chen Baojiao's embrace was heat and laughter, Xu Pei's was soft, almost reverent. Her fingers curled into his robe like a disciple who had finally found the teacher she had always needed—and something much more than that.
"Wherever you go," she said softly, "this Xu Pei will follow."
He kissed the top of her head, his voice dropping low.
"Then I'll make sure your road never stops before the peak."
Lightnings faded, one by one, as if bowing out of respect.
Even Bai Jianzhen was not exempt from his "lull before the storm."
They met atop a lonely peak outside the main academy, where the wind cut like knives and the clouds passed so close it felt like one could reach out and grab them.
The sword cultivator stood across from him, long hair tied up in her usual strict style, ancient sword at her waist. Her aura was restrained, but her presence was like a sheathed blade—silent, terrifying, ready.
They had already traded blows ninety-nine times.
Their hundredth exchange began with no warning.
Clang.
Her sword left its sheath in a line of pure, condensed intent. No frills, no illusions—just sword. The strike cut across the peak, the edge of its will slicing stray clouds in half and leaving a faint, bleeding line in the sky.
Ling Feng met her sword with his bare hand.
Crimson Chaos Force strengthened his body; Absolute Force ignored the sharpness of the dao, letting him catch the flat of the blade with his palm. Sparks danced, spraying outward like tiny stars. The pressure of their clash sent thin cracks running through the cliff beneath their feet.
"You are pushing too far," Bai Jianzhen said. Her breathing was faintly uneven, though her voice stayed calm. "If you raise my base any higher, my bottleneck will become unstable."
"That's what you have me for," he replied.
He released her sword and stepped in.
Before she could withdraw or retune her stance, he reached up and gently tugged loose the single strand of hair that had escaped her bun in their last clash, using it as a pretext to draw her forward.
His arm slid around her.
Bai Jianzhen went rigid.
Her hand hovered an inch from her sword hilt—instinct screaming to cut everything around her until only herself and her dao remained.
Then, slowly, the fingers eased open.
She stood there—a living sword, wrapped in a man's arms, the world's wind scratching uselessly at their little pocket of stillness.
Her eyes closed.
Her aura, which had been razor-sharp, slowly smoothed out. The sword in her hand remained unsheathed, but its edge dulled from slaughter to quiet presence.
"…Do not do this in front of disciples," she muttered at last.
"I won't," he said. "Not until you stop pretending you don't like it."
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
The tension in her shoulders, the almost imperceptible way she leaned closer, the hint of warmth at the tips of her ears—those were answer enough.
Those days were a strange kind of peace.
Morning frost over quiet lakes with a cross-dressing Ice Empress who called herself "this young master."
Moonlit duels with a jade-boned genius whose sword intent cut the night.
Violent training grounds where a tyrannical beauty laughed in the middle of explosions.
Storm-filled courtyards where a gentle girl compressed lightning into silent death under his guidance.
Lonely peaks where a sword goddess allowed herself, just for a little while, to be a woman held in someone's arms instead of a weapon pointed at the sky.
They laughed.
They trained.
They stole moments of warmth and closeness between cultivation sessions and schemes.
Outside, the world did not stop.