novelraw Chapter 26 : Don’t Misunderstand, I’m Talking About the Heartbeat
Chapter 26 : Don’t Misunderstand, I’m Talking About the Heartbeat
Chapter 26: Don’t Misunderstand, I’m Talking About the Heartbeat
Moonlight flowed like water, spilling over the bluestone pavement of the long alley.
Fang Chang walked down the stairs, passed through the inn’s backyard, and had just turned into the kitchen when his steps suddenly halted.
A person stood in the center of the courtyard.
The moonlight was sliced into a long, narrow strip by the high walls, falling upon that figure and outlining a graceful silhouette.
It was a woman.
She wore a moon-white monk’s robe, the loose garment gently fluttering in the night breeze.
The fabric was extremely plain coarse cloth.
The style was ordinary as well.
Yet for some reason, when worn on her, it traced out breathtaking curves—her waist cinched slender by a tied sash, and whether upward or downward, everything was so full it seemed on the verge of bursting through the cloth.
Her face was gentle in brow and eyes, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall.
She simply stood there quietly, like a Guanyin beneath the moon.
“This humble nun is Zhang Su.”
She spoke, her voice gentle as well, like the low murmur of chanting scriptures.
Fang Chang stopped and cupped his hands in greeting. “Fang Chang greets senior.”
Zhang Su looked at him, her gaze filled with compassion.
“A Qi Absorption cultivator… Benefactor, do you know that meeting my niece alone at the viewing platform late at night is improper according to etiquette?”
“Oh?”
“The Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya states,”
Zhang Su said seriously, “that a bhikshuni must not be alone with a man in a secluded place. Though Mu Xue is not a bhikshuni, as a cultivator, she should take this as a reference. The two of you alone under the moon—even if on the viewing platform—at such a late hour, a lone man and a lone woman, it is ultimately inappropriate.”
“……”
Fang Chang’s expression turned strange.
This woman was exactly the same as in the game.
That pedantic, rigid tone of moral lecturing had never changed from beginning to end.
Seeing that he did not respond,
Zhang Su simply raised her hand, her fingertips pinching a half-bloomed lotus.
It was formed from the Spiritual Essence power of the Fourth Realm: Sitting in Forgetfulness, lifelike.
Yet it also carried enough force to tear flesh apart.
With a light flick, the lotus drifted toward Fang Chang, slowly blooming three feet in front of him, and then… turned into scattered motes of light, dispersing into the night wind.
“That lotus just now,” she said, “had it struck you, benefactor, you would already have gone to meet the Buddha.”
Fang Chang looked at the fading light and smiled. “Senior has remarkable cultivation.”
Zhang Su seemed slightly surprised at his reaction, her brow lifting faintly.
“You spoke with Mu Xue, mentioning dragon resentment, mentioning a solution… Benefactor, do you know this is attachment?”
“Senior is worried I might harm Miss Lü?”
Zhang Su shook her head.
“You do not have that ability. You cannot harm her.”
As she spoke again, her voice remained gentle, but now carried a faint chill within that gentleness.
“What I am worried about is that she may develop thoughts toward you.”
Fang Chang clicked his tongue.
He was somewhat displeased with the phrase ‘do not have that ability.’
“That child Mu Xue—I watched her grow up. She is proud, sharp-tongued, and looks down on others… but precisely because of this, once someone stirs her thoughts, she will remember it for a very, very long time.”
Zhang Su’s voice softened. “A person like you, benefactor, is troublesome—and also very memorable.”
She raised her hand again, conjuring another lotus.
The formed lotus slowly bloomed at her fingertips, flawless and pure under the moonlight.
Fang Chang looked at the lotus, then at her eyes.
Under the moonlight, the gentleness in those eyes had completely faded, leaving only cold sharpness.
There was no killing intent.
Only a threat.
He suddenly smiled.
“Senior, your lotus hasn’t bloomed fully enough.”
Zhang Su was momentarily stunned.
In the next instant, Fang Chang moved.
The overwhelming blood force of Blood Whale Devouring Tide erupted like mountains collapsing and seas roaring!
A trace of disdain flashed in Zhang Su’s eyes. This level of Blood Demon Path heavy blood, only at the Third Realm, could not possibly harm her Immaculate Glazed Body.
“Boom!”
The blood tide was instantly crushed by a golden Dharma seal.
Hidden within it, a streak of qi arrow broke through with a sharp whistle, unbelievably fast.
—It was not aimed at Zhang Su, but at the lotus. The qi arrow sliced through, striking precisely where the petal met the stem.
“Pa—”
The lotus shattered on impact, scattering into streams of light.
Zhang Su’s pupils contracted sharply.
Though the lotus had been casually formed, with her Fourth Realm Sitting in Forgetfulness cultivation, a First Realm Qi Absorption cultivator should never have been able to shatter it so easily!
“You—”
Before she could finish, Fang Chang had already closed in.
Zhang Su instinctively raised her hand and struck out with a palm, her monk’s robe fluttering.
She had no intention of killing, only of teaching him a lesson, yet she had already used seventy percent of her strength.
But Fang Chang’s movement technique was bizarre.
In an instant, his entire body turned into a wisp of white cloud-like qi, evading the palm strike, while simultaneously striking toward three inches below her left rib.
Zhang Su recognized that trace of sinister yin energy.
But she did not care. Regardless of whether he could break her protective body, her Immaculate Glazed Body alone—
“Bang!”
A sharp pain suddenly exploded. Her circulating power froze stiffly, and her glazed body shattered at the same moment!
Zhang Su’s figure wavered as she took half a step back, her eyes filled with disbelief.
Why!?
“Heh.”
Fang Chang stepped back two paces and drew out the Blood Thorn Cord.
The crimson vine, carrying a sickly sweet scent, instantly coiled around her neck.
Like a living thing, it slithered downward along her neck.
One loop, then another.
Tightening.
As the fabric was forced to cling tightly, it outlined the undulating contours beneath.
The loose robe was cinched into a slender waist; above that, the front of her robe was squeezed and pulled.
The fabric pressed fully against her skin, bunching and layering into rising and falling ridges.
Zhang Su’s breathing faltered for a moment.
The collar of her monk’s robe was pulled loose slightly, revealing a section of her collarbone.
Fine beads of sweat glimmered within the hollow of her collarbone under the moonlight, sliding downward, slipping into the torn opening of her robe where the vine’s barbs had snagged.
She hastily raised her hand, trying to close her robe.
But the vine was faster, wrapping around her wrist. The pain from her stalled power and shattered glazed body left her unable to resist.
The prayer beads in her hand fell to the ground with a crisp sound.
Through the gap in her robe, the inner garment beneath was visible—moon-white, thin enough to be translucent, pressed into soft, smooth curves. At the foremost arc, something faintly protruded beneath.
At such a moment, even the most ascetic robe had no effect at all.
Moonlight fell upon her face.
On that compassionate face, her eyelashes trembled intensely.
“You… you…”
“The Immaculate Glazed Body of the Guanyin Path relies on refining the body’s impurities with a ‘pure mind,’ gradually turning the flesh into a glazed form—crystal clear, flawless.”
Fang Chang stood with his hands behind his back, a trace of blood-filth aura swirling around him.
“But the problem also lies in that very flawlessness.”
The ‘purity’ of the glazed body would be pushed to its extreme.
When yin-sinister force entered, it would be instinctively captured and instantly purified by the glazed body.
—That was, under the premise it was ordinary yin-sinister force.
However, what Fang Chang used was the blood-filth aura he had meticulously refined.
Blood-filth was produced by refining a hundred types of tainted blood through secret methods.
And as it happened,
the Blood Golden Core Fang Chang possessed came from the various bloods collected over sixty years by that old woman of the Blood Demon Path—extracting tainted blood from it could not have been easier.
This blood-filth had no offensive power. It could not harm the physical body nor destroy the spirit. Its only function was—
filth.
Filthy to the extreme, so filthy it could not be purified.
The glazed body’s instinct thus made the most extreme choice—shattering together with the contaminated portion.
Zhang Su’s pupils shrank. “Blood-filth…”
“Not bad, you’ve got some insight.”
“Refining blood-filth requires a hundred types of tainted blood—cruel and vicious… Benefactor committing such sins— even if you gain a human body in your next life, you will be short-lived, plagued with illness, estranged from your kin, and all your wishes will go unfulfilled. You might as well lay down your butcher’s knife now and attain Buddhahood.”
Fang Chang, being petty, sneered:
“I don’t have that ability—I can’t even deal with Lü Muxue.”
Zhang Su’s body trembled lightly.
She heard the frivolity in Fang Chang’s tone.
Then she saw him lean down.
That handsome yet gloomy face drew close, his shadow covering the chaotic moonlight upon her.
He lifted her robe, opening that thin tear.
Moonlight poured in, illuminating clearly the contours beneath her inner garment.
They trembled more intensely with the strengthening heartbeat.
“Oh… so even disciples of the Buddhist sect have this.”
Zhang Su abruptly turned her face away. Her body inexplicably softened, the tips of her ears burning into a translucent rosy hue.
Fang Chang’s expression paused slightly.
—Don’t misunderstand, I’m talking about the heartbeat.