"Who are you?" Xiao Se asked, a flicker of genuine puzzlement crossing his face.
The snake-woman standing before him was striking — fair-skinned, with a figure that carried itself with natural grace, a classically pretty face, and a long, slender tail of shimmering blue scales that tapered elegantly behind her. Something about the combination tugged at a memory from his past life — the gentle, melancholy beauty of Qing'er from White Snake, the kind of loveliness that felt like it belonged to a folktale.
The snake-woman smiled, warm and respectful in equal measure. "Lord Xiao Se, you may not remember me. Three years ago, in the desert — you were the one who rescued me from human traffickers. My name is Yue'er."
The memory surfaced slowly. Xiao Se's expression softened with recognition, and then shifted into something quietly apologetic. "So it was you. I'm sorry — my attention at the time was on Qing Lin. I didn't pay you the regard I should have." He paused, the name settling in his chest with an unfamiliar weight. It had been nearly three years since he had last seen Qing Lin. He hadn't fully noticed the time passing until just now.
"Please don't apologize, Lord Xiao Se — you flatter me far too much." A faint color rose in Yue'er's cheeks, and she quickly turned to gesture down the path ahead. "Her Majesty the Queen gave instructions that if you arrived, you were to be brought directly to her. Please — follow me."
Xiao Se nodded and fell into step behind her.
The Snake-People watching from the sides of the path — who moments ago had been processing the image of their warrior leader being sent through a stone wall — parted without a word at the mention of the queen's command. Whatever reservations any of them might have held, the queen's authority outweighed them cleanly.
"Yue'er," Xiao Se said, glancing around the quiet stone corridors as they walked, his tone easy and conversational. "Do you know where Die is? The queen's sister?"
He already understood the shape of the problem. Mobas calling Die a traitor hadn't been an isolated sentiment — it was an ideology, shared by a significant portion of the Snake-People. If that hostility hadn't been resolved in the time since her return, then keeping Die close might be the safer arrangement. Close to him, specifically.
"Lady Die and Her Majesty went into seclusion together shortly after they returned," Yue'er replied pleasantly.
"I see." Xiao Se filed the information away and asked nothing more.
They passed through several quiet paths — the holy city's interior was more varied than its exterior suggested, the severe stone architecture giving way at intervals to stretches of unexpected green — until the path ended at the edge of a bamboo forest. The slender stalks rose tall and close together, filtering the desert light into something softer, and a narrow trail wound inward between them.
Yue'er stopped. "Lord Xiao Se — Her Majesty's quarters are through here. This is as far as I can take you."
"Understood." Xiao Se gave a brief nod and stepped onto the bamboo path without breaking stride.
Behind him, Yue'er watched his retreating figure until the green closed around it and he disappeared from view. Something quiet and complicated moved across her face — a sadness that knew its own shape, a longing that had long since made peace with being unreturned. They were not from the same world. It had never been a possibility. She had known that.
She sighed — soft, brief, and private — and turned away, her blue tail swaying gently as she went.
The bamboo forest opened onto a small clearing, and in its center stood a bamboo house — simple, unhurried, the kind of structure that seemed to belong to a different pace of life than the stone fortifications of the holy city.
Xiao Se paused outside the door.
He extended his senses outward, reading the auras within. One at the Dou Zong level — unmistakably Medusa, her presence distinct even at this distance. And four others, lurking at the edge of perception like stones submerged just below the surface of a river: Dou Huang peak, all four of them, and clearly accustomed to concealing themselves.
The four elders, he thought. All of them, together.
He raised his hand and knocked.
"Enter." The voice that came from inside was old and dry and carried the particular weight of someone who rarely bothered to repeat themselves. The door swung open of its own accord — or rather, by the invisible hand of some quiet technique — and Xiao Se stepped through.
The bamboo house door closed behind him.
The interior was simply furnished and cool. To one side, seated cross-legged on a low futon with the deliberate stillness of someone in the middle of deciding how to feel, was Medusa. She looked up when he entered — and for just a fraction of a second, something bright moved across her face, unguarded and genuine.
Then she caught herself. Her expression composed itself into something considerably more neutral, and she turned her head away.
Xiao Se noted this with quiet amusement and said nothing.
To Medusa's right, arranged in a loose formation that was probably not accidental, sat four old women. Their skin was the color and texture of long-dried bark, their faces deeply lined with age, and their eyes — when they opened them at the sound of his footsteps — were diamond-shaped and depthless, the cold precision of creatures that had spent centuries perfecting the art of patient observation.
All four pairs of eyes locked onto him simultaneously.
The temperature in the room did not change. The air did not move. And yet something rose — four distinct auras climbing in unison, cold and immense and deliberately coordinated, converging overhead until they coalesced into a shape: a great black python, formed entirely of compressed battle qi, its presence pressing down on the room like a physical weight.
It lunged.
Xiao Se swayed — a single, unhurried step — and golden flames erupted.
They didn't creep or spread the way ordinary fire did. They blazed outward all at once, wrapping his entire body in an instant, and the temperature of the room spiked so sharply and so immediately that even Medusa — a Dou Zong, a woman who had bathed in ritual fire — felt the heat press against her face and frowned. The great black python of compressed battle qi unraveled before it reached him, the cold aura that had formed it dissipating as though it had never existed.
A beat of silence followed.
"A strange flame." The elder seated at the center spoke, her voice still measured, but something had shifted in it — the faint edge of genuine surprise, carefully contained. Her eyes remained on the golden flames swirling around Xiao Se with something that might, in a less composed person, have been described as being impressed. "And an extraordinarily powerful one." The flames she was looking at were not any strange flame she recognized, and she had spent a very long time recognizing things.
She let the moment settle, then asked, "You are Xiao Se?"
The golden flames receded. Xiao Se brought his hands together in a measured bow, his posture carrying that particular quality of someone who was being respectful entirely by choice rather than necessity. "Junior Xiao Se greets the four Elders of the Snake-People Clan."
The Great Elder's withered face rearranged itself into something that was almost a smile — it had the right shape, at least. "Sixteen years old, and already at the Dou Huang level. For a human, you have only just reached adulthood." She gestured in turn to the three women beside her. "I am the Great Elder. To my sides, the Second, Third, and Fourth Elders. As for our Chief—" a slight incline of her head toward Medusa "—I believe no introduction is required."
Xiao Se turned his gaze to each of them in sequence, offering a respectful nod. When his eyes finally settled on Medusa — still resolutely looking sideways at nothing in particular — he waited until the angle was precisely right, confirmed that the four elders' sightlines were all pointed away from his face, and winked.
It was a slow, deliberate, completely unambiguous wink, accompanied by an expression that communicated several things simultaneously and all of them inappropriate for the current setting.
Medusa saw it.
The color that rose in her cheeks was swift and comprehensive. That little— he's doing it again. Thinking about that, in this room, in front of the elders—! She locked her jaw and stared harder at the wall, hoping the warmth in her face was not visible from the outside.
The Great Elder's expression returned to business. "Lord Xiao Se." The trace of warmth faded from her voice, replaced by the dry, deliberate cadence of formal inquiry. "Before we proceed — tell us plainly. What is your purpose in coming to the Snake-People's Holy City?"
"To marry Sasha." Xiao Se said it without a moment's hesitation, with the calm delivery of someone stating something so straightforwardly obvious it barely warranted the breath. He turned and offered Medusa a smile. "Your chieftain. Medusa."
Sasha.
All four elders experienced an involuntary twitch — a small, involuntary, synchronized moment of expression that none of them would have permitted under normal circumstances. Then, out of shared instinct, all four of them glanced sideways at Medusa, bracing for the blast radius.
Medusa was not glaring. She was not radiating the imperious, glacial disdain that had historically been the default response to any person who overstepped with her, in any context, ever.
She was looking away from Xiao Se with her jaw set, her ears pink, and the very specific posture of someone who is trying extremely hard to look unaffected and is failing in a way that is, somehow, entirely soft.
Four ancient, experienced, deeply dignified elders stared at their queen.
Their queen, apparently, had feelings. Visible ones. Like a young woman.
They were not entirely sure what to do with this information.
The Second Elder recovered first — and recovery, for her, took the form of offense. "Then explain yourself," she said, her tone sharpening. "Why did you injure Mobas, our tribal commander?"
"He attacked me first," Xiao Se replied, with the even reasonableness of someone who considers the matter quite simple. "Without provocation. With lethal intent. I responded accordingly." He paused. "I didn't kill him — out of consideration for Sasha. But—" something in his tone shifted, and his eyes, when they settled on the Second Elder directly, had gone very still and very cold "—he also said things about Die. Insulting things." He let the pause do its work. "Die is someone I saved. She will also be my future sister-in-law. Anyone who harms her — regardless of who they are — I will kill them."
He was not speaking for effect. The words carried no heat, no theatrical edge. They landed with the particular weight of a simple fact being stated by someone who had already made the decision and was simply informing those present.
The Second Elder's face darkened.
Xiao Se already knew the shape of this woman. Die had told him, once — the leader of the radical faction, a rigid keeper of rules so absolute they had calcified into cruelty. The one who had issued the order for the two sisters to kill each other.
"Insolence!" The word came out hot and sudden. Battle qi flared outward from the Second Elder like a wave breaking — raw and vast, carrying the compressed force of decades of cultivation — and she launched herself forward.
Xiao Se's eyes went cold. He shifted his weight, golden battle qi already gathering at his fingertips—
"Enough."
One word. Quiet. Absolute.
Medusa did not shout. She didn't need to. The Dou Zong aura that unfolded from her was enormous — not aggressive, not violent, but total. It pressed outward from her like a tide that had decided to come in, vast and irresistible, and it met the Second Elder's surging battle qi and simply folded it back. Not deflected. Not contested. Folded, the way one folds cloth — effortlessly, in a single motion — pressing it back into the Second Elder's meridians until the old woman sat rigid and immovable on her cushion, every attempt at further movement meeting that same wall of quiet, overwhelming pressure.
The bamboo house went very still.
Medusa did not look at the Second Elder. Her gaze had moved to a point somewhere between composed and something considerably more protective, and it had not moved since.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +50 Extra Chapters on - P@tr3on "RinBlaze"]
[Every 15 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]