She didn’t care about the fashion faux pas, because what she needed right now was full mobility.

She dropped to her knees beside the freezing pool, plunging both her bare arms directly into the icy water.

She closed her eyes, channeling every ounce of Yang Qi her spiritual sea possessed. "Come on! Boil! It’s your time to shine!" she commanded.

The water around her hands began to bubble.

Slowly, the thick sheet of ice began to melt, the water heating up under the sheer force of her internal stove.

"Wangchen! I can’t hold this thermal equilibrium and fix his meridians at the same time! I need a stabilizing agent!" Ji’an shouted over her shoulder. "I need ingredients! Three-Leaf Fire Ginseng, the core of a Yang-attribute beast, and a handful of Dragon-Breath Peppercorns! Do you have them in your vault?!"

Wangchen stood frozen in the doorway.

He looked at his master, who was slowly freezing to death on the tiles.

Then he looked at Ji’an, whose wet inner tunic was clinging dangerously to her frame as she forcefully boiled a swimming pool with her bare hands.

The conflict in Wangchen’s eyes was agonizing.

He was supposed to be the Heartless Dao’s perfect vessel. He was supposed to prioritize his master’s life above all else.

But the dark, possessive, yandere core of his soul was screaming at him not to leave Lin Ji’an alone with another man, especially not in a state of partial undress in a bathing chamber.

’He is vulnerable. He is expending all his Qi. If I leave him...’ Wangchen’s fists clenched, his mind spiraling into irrational, jealous paranoia.

"Wangchen, what are you waiting for?!" Ji’an snapped, turning her head to glare at him. Sweat was pouring down her face, mixing with the steam rising from the pool. "If you don’t get those herbs right now, you’re going to be sweeping up an old man’s ashes! GO!"

The sheer, authoritative command in her voice snapped the Ice Demon out of his possessive stupor.

"I will return. Do not overexert yourself," Wangchen promised, his voice tight. He turned on his heel, blurring into a streak of white light as he bolted out of the chamber, headed straight for the Medicine Peak’s premium vault at a speed that broke the sound barrier.

.

.

.

Alone in the steaming chamber, Ji’an turned her attention back to the patient.

She managed to get the water temperature to a rolling, soothing eighty degrees Celsius. It was hot enough to melt skin for a mortal, but for a Golden Core cultivator suffering an ice deviation, it was the equivalent of a warm blanket.

She scrambled over to Elder Qin. The elder was convulsing, his lips blue, his skin covered in a layer of frost that was slowly turning his flesh black with necrosis.

"Alright, pops, forgive the intrusion, but you’re getting in the soup," Ji’an grunted.

She grabbed the lapels of his heavy, frost-covered outer robes and yanked them open, stripping the heavy layers away until Elder Qin was left in only his thin, white silk undergarments.

She dragged him to the edge of the jade tub and hoisted him over the lip, letting him slide into the steaming, hot water.

The moment Elder Qin hit the water, a massive cloud of hissing steam erupted into the air as the extreme heat clashed with the extreme cold.

Elder Qin thrashed weakly, a low, pained groan escaping his lips.

"Stay under," Ji’an ordered, leaning over the edge of the wide jade tub. She pressed both of her hands firmly against the elder’s bare shoulders, pinning him against the submerged steps of the pool to prevent him from drowning in his delirium.

She focused her Yang Qi, pushing it directly through her palms and into his frozen meridians. It was an exhausting, delicate process.

She had to act like a thermal regulator, pumping heat into his heart while carefully siphoning off the excess, chaotic cold energy before it could damage his organs.

’This is harder than balancing a soufflé in a drafty kitchen,’ Ji’an thought, gritting her teeth as the cold seeped into her own arms, making her joints ache.

For five minutes, it was a grueling stalemate.

But then, the raw Yang Qi began to work.

The black frost receded from Elder Qin’s neck. His breathing, which had been shallow and erratic, deepened. The blue tint left his lips.

Deep within the subconscious void of his Qi deviation, Elder Qin felt it.

He was drowning in an endless, agonizing ocean of dark ice. His cultivation base was tearing him apart from the inside out.

But suddenly, a beam of pure, radiant, blazing warmth pierced the darkness. It was a lifeline. A beacon of absolute heat in a freezing hell.

The primal, deeply buried survival instincts of the Golden Core master kicked in.

His body craved the heat. He needed the source.

Elder Qin’s eyes flew open. They were glassy, unfocused, and completely wild with delirium.

He didn’t see Lin Ji’an, the annoying cook. He only saw the source of the life-saving fire hovering above him.

With a sudden, terrifying burst of desperate, uncoordinated strength, Elder Qin’s hands shot out of the water.

He didn’t gently grasp her wrists. He grabbed Ji’an by the lapels of her thin, cotton tunic.

"Heat..." Elder Qin rasped, his grip like a vice.

"Hey! Wait! Let go of—!"

Ji’an’s warning was cut off as Elder Qin yanked backward with the force of a desperate, drowning man pulling himself onto a raft.

Ji’an, who had been leaning precariously over the slippery jade lip of the tub with all her weight forward, lost her footing entirely.

SPLASH!

Ji’an pitched forward headfirst into the scalding, steaming water of the thermal spring.

The disorientation was instantaneous. Water rushed up her nose, the sudden heat shocking her system.

She flailed wildly, trying to find the surface, but the desperate elder had wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, pulling her flush against him to absorb the radiant Yang Qi she was emitting.