She burst through the circular moon-gate leading to the rear courtyard.

"Wangchen! I brought the—!"

Ji’an stopped dead in her tracks.

There was no Gu Zhiwei. There was no romantic, sunlit bonding session.

The rear courtyard looked like a warzone.

Dozens of massive, intricately carved practice dummies made of solid, reinforced spirit-stone had been completely annihilated. They were shattered into jagged, frozen shards, scattered across the snow.

In the center of the destruction stood Xie Wangchen.

He wore only a thin, white inner tunic, his chest heaving slightly. His dark hair was unbound, whipping wildly in the localized blizzard he was generating.

Winter’s Sigh was drawn, the blade humming with a lethal, terrifying blue light. He looked feral.

He looked like a monster that had been locked in a cage and was systematically tearing it apart out of pure, unadulterated frustration.

The moment Ji’an’s voice rang out, the blizzard died.

The wind stopped instantly. The snow suspended in the air fell harmlessly to the ground.

Wangchen whipped around, his dark, bottomless eyes locking onto her. The terrifying, murderous aura that had just leveled a courtyard vanished so fast it gave Ji’an emotional whiplash.

He sheathed Winter’s Sigh with a sharp clack. He didn’t walk; he closed the distance between them using a high-level movement technique, appearing in front of her in the blink of an eye.

"You are late," Wangchen said.

His voice was low, slightly raspy, but it wasn’t angry. It sounded... needy.

Ji’an blinked, clutching the lunchbox to her chest. She looked at the destroyed courtyard, then back at his flawless, pale face.

"I... I had to scrub a century of grime off my new kitchen," Ji’an defended herself, holding up the lunchbox like a shield. "And slow-roasting pork belly takes time. You can’t rush the crackle, Wangchen."

Xie Wangchen didn’t look at the food.

His dark eyes flicked downward, intensely scrutinizing her chest, specifically, the exact spot where Gu Zhiwei had pressed his glowing hands the day before.

A dark, incredibly heavy shadow fell over Wangchen’s features. The tips of his ears, which had been perfectly pale, suddenly tinged with a faint, angry pink.

"He touched you," Wangchen murmured, his voice dropping an octave, vibrating with a jealousy so thick it could be cut with a knife. "The Holy Son. He put his hands on you. His Qi... it entered your meridians."

Ji’an froze.

The irony of the situation hit her like a runaway carriage.

She had marched up this mountain terrified that Wangchen was hooking up with Zhiwei behind her back, worried that she was going to wear a green hat.

Instead, she was standing in front of the most dangerous villain in the sect, and he was currently throwing a jealous, brooding fit because the protagonist had touched her.

"Wangchen, he was healing me," Ji’an said slowly, trying to navigate the sudden minefield. "My Yang Qi was completely drained by the ghost. If Zhiwei hadn’t jump-started my battery, I would have passed out in the middle of the plaza."

Wangchen’s jaw tightened. He looked down at the snow, his dark eyelashes fluttering against his pale cheeks. He looked incredibly, impossibly vulnerable.

"I could have healed you," Wangchen whispered, his voice cracking slightly with a manufactured, utterly weaponized fragility. "I have premium restorative pills. I have the resources of the entire peak. But you let him do it. You smiled at him. You let his light inside you."

He slowly raised his head, looking at her through his messy, dark bangs, and his bottom lip caught ever so slightly between his teeth.

His eyes, usually cold, dead voids, were swimming with a soft, desperate, unshed emotional weight.

"Brother Ji’an," Wangchen asked, his voice trembling with devastating precision. "Who do you like more? Gu Zhiwei... or me?"

Lin Ji’an’s brain suffered a catastrophic, total system failure.

[Error 404: Single Dog Defenses Not Found.]

She stared at the boy standing in front of her. Xie Wangchen, the Ice Demon. The prodigy who had frozen a man in a giant lotus flower in six seconds flat.

And right now, he was pouting. He was actually, genuinely pouting, using his unparalleled, divine beauty to look like a kicked, shivering puppy that had been left out in the rain.

’Holy mother of MSG,’ Ji’an’s inner voice shrieked, her heart hammering a frantic, completely unregulated rhythm against her ribs. ’Why is he so cute?! This is illegal! This is a violation of the Geneva Conventions! He is weaponizing his face!’

The urge, the sudden, overwhelming, entirely biological urge, to drop her lunchbox, reach out, squish his pale cheeks, pat his messy dark head, and press a reassuring kiss to his cheek was so violently strong that Ji’an actually had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself.

’Hold the line, Lin Ji’an!’ she screamed at herself, her knuckles turning white around the handle of the lunchbox. ’You are disguised as a man! You are his sworn brother! You are his Martial Uncle! You cannot kiss the homie on the cheek! Boundaries! Maintain the bro boundaries!’

She forced herself to take a deep, steadying breath. She unclenched her jaw and offered a smile that was ninety percent genuine affection and ten percent sheer panic. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

She reached out with her free hand. She didn’t kiss his cheek, but she did compromise.

She firmly, gently placed her hand on top of his head, ruffling his dark, silky hair.

Wangchen froze at the touch, his eyes widening slightly, leaning imperceptibly into the warmth of her palm.

"You dramatic, brooding popsicle," Ji’an said softly, her voice filled with a warmth that completely defied the freezing temperature of the peak. "Are you really jealous of a golden retriever?"

Wangchen didn’t answer, but his silence was a deafening ’yes’.

"Listen to me," Ji’an continued, looking directly into his dark, expectant eyes. "Zhiwei is a good kid. He’s like a loud, shiny flashlight. He’s useful in a dark room."

She gently patted his head one last time before dropping her hand to his shoulder, giving it a firm, reassuring squeeze.