Has the City Lord Had a Nosebleed Today? (4)

Lin Qianshuang stared at Mu Weiyin’s frozen mask of a face and felt sick. The woman kept claiming she loved Junior Sister Xiao, called her a future dao-companion, then went and locked lips with her Senior Sister.

She lifted a hand to slap that face, but slammed it across her own instead.

I’m the one who needs waking up.

Mu Weiyin caught her wrist, shoved a pill between her teeth and hissed, “If you want to die I wasted my time saving you. Swallow this Soul-Stabilizing Pill, our breaths will merge and the stone lions won’t smell you.”

The moment it melted, a thin spiritual film wrapped her body, bottling up every trace of demonic qi. Outside the stone beast padded in a circle, then its footsteps faded toward the distance. It was gone.

Lin Qianshuang saw she’d misjudged Mu Weiyin, yet they were still breathing the same air, and the woman looked utterly unfazed after kissing a stranger.

So… she didn’t really love Junior Sister Xiao? All that “lifelong dao-companion” talk was just a smokescreen, and Xiao was just another piece on the board?

If that was true, then she’d been match-making for nothing.

Might as well test it.

She let her eyes go wide and clueless, lifted the wrist Mu Weiyin was still gripping, and leaned in until her lips almost brushed the woman’s ear. “City Lord, my heart’s already taken. You grab me like this, steal a kiss. This isn’t how you treat a cauldron. Don’t tell me you actually… like me?”

The voice brushed her ear, close and flirtatious.

Mu Weiyin flinched like she’d been burned and yanked her hand away. A flicker of panic, alien on her usually composed face, tightened her features; her lashes fluttered, stunned. She stared at Lin Qianshuang, eyes narrowing in thought.

Lin Qianshuang’s heart gave a hard thud.

What’s with that look? Don’t tell me… she actually likes me?

A stone seemed to drop into Lin Qianshuang’s chest. She caught Mu Weiyin’s wrists and pinned them back, gaze dark. “City Lord, I thought you were devoted to my junior sister, so I stepped aside to let you two be together. Seems I was blind. You’d stoop to someone as lowly as me?”

Mu Weiyin caught the mockery on Lin Qianshuang’s face and realized she’d been strung along. She flushed, voice hard. “You’re one of my people; I trust you. This once I’ll overlook the insult, but don’t push it. Lanle is my dao-partner. What happens between us is my business, not yours.”

Lin Qianshuang released her wrists, a weight sliding off her heart. She smiled, gentle again. “Your Lordship, Xiao and I trained under the same master; I treat her like a little sister. I can’t watch her be wronged. If you want to punish me for speaking out, I’ll take it.”

Mu Weiyin eyed that easy smile and felt something lodge in her throat. After a beat she asked, “If you hate me, why jump into the trap with me? Nothing’s free. What were you after?”

Lin Qianshuang blinked, surprised she’d puzzled over that. A laugh slipped out. “The title and status you promised, those are payment enough.”

As expected, this was still the same shameless woman she met that first day.

Mu Weiyin vanished from under the bed; a breath later she stood across the room, robes smooth as new under a ripple of qi.

She scowled at the memory of that talk, cringing inside. She’d known the answer, why ask the obvious? When had she become so foolish?

The wooden window swung open, laying bare the Underground Palace’s gloom: ghost-fires winked among weed-choked skulls.

Lin Qianshuang unclenched her fist; a thread of demonic qi slipped out, sketching the dead demon’s mansion straight into her mind. Stone beasts still patrolled the outer path, ready to double back at any moment. Who knew when the rescue party would show, best to hole up inside.

She tried to ease a sliver of spiritual sense through the gate; a blinding light flung it straight back.

She opened her eyes; someone had caught her from behind, stopping the thick demonic qi from knocking her flat.

Mu Weiyin stepped beside her. “The mansion is packed with resentment. Your cultivation’s still shaky—push again and you’ll kill yourself.”

She brushed her ring, took in the fight outside, and added, “My people are still tangled with those crusading cultivators. The formation’s down, and with this level of resentment and demonic qi, there’s got to be a treasure inside. Come with me and take a look.”

Lin Qianshuang was happy to; she followed at an easy pace.

The two slipped soundlessly to the mansion’s stone steps.

Mu Weiyin glanced at the plaque, pushed the door, and walked in.

Dust scattered from the door-knocker where the gold leaf had peeled away. A few crimson tomb-worms crawled out of the cracks, stubby tentacles flailing across the flagstones like wind-up toys. It should’ve been funny.

Mu Weiyin’s voice stayed flat. “Four hundred years ago someone paid Tianshu Intelligence Tower to erase a scandal. The rumor: Penglai’s founder Xiao Linsha and the demon cultivator Chen Luoyun were lovers. They secretly had two daughters, one each.

Back then Tianshu City didn’t exist. Rogue cultivators were dirt, spat on and squeezed by every sect. Righteous disciples weren’t allowed to mix with demon cultivators, let alone the founding head of a righteous sect.

Xiao Linsha, already slammed for being a woman, couldn’t keep the sect steady. To save her hundred and twenty disciples she cut ties with Chen Luoyun.

Chen Luoyun called her heartless, dumped both infants in the half-built city the rogues were raising, and swore she’d never see Xiao again.

The Chen clan decided its runaway daughter had spawned two abominations and hunted the kids through Tianshu for the next hundred years.

It wasn’t until the Chen family surrendered thirty years ago that the trouble in Tianshu City finally cooled off.”

Lin Qianshuang trailed Mu Weiyin into the abandoned mansion, grabbed a random chair in the main hall, and, while listening to her story, couldn’t resist snarking: “Chen Luoyun swore she’d never see Xiao Linsha again in this lifetime, yet her ‘retreat’ sits right on top of Xiao’s tomb? She still likes Xiao Linsha, just too proud to admit it. And the Chen clan, their daughter runs off and they still won’t butt out. Stubborn fossils.”

Demon cultivators spawning a demonic fetus? Didn’t shock her at all.

Once she’d learned that her own cauldron body could grow a kid beneath its Nascent Soul through spiritual cultivation, nothing seemed wild.

The tale felt oddly familiar; she rolled it around in her head and realized it read like the footnotes to those gossip scrolls on Tianshu’s City Lord.

She eyed Mu Weiyin. “Lord, rumor says you and the Young Lord were street rats here back then. You also mentioned Chen Luoyun ditching two babies… Those kids weren’t you two, were they?”

“Chen Luoyun and Xiao Linsha, seeing this place, I finally get it. They loved each other. Why else share the same tomb?”

Mu Weiyin gave Lin Qianshuang a sidelong glance, then ran a finger along the dusty rim of the coffin. “Four hundred years. I can’t even picture their faces anymore. I used to hate them, but karma’s karma. If Chen hadn’t dumped me, I’d never have met Pavilion Lord Mu, never become City Lord, and my kid sister wouldn’t have been kidnapped. It left us scattered for decades.”

She shrugged. “Heaven doesn’t play favorites; everyone walks the road they’re dealt.”

Lin Qianshuang bit back a retort: Wrong, City Lord. There’s one cockroach who never dies, just sits there raking in loot. Heaven even sent a lightning taxi to haul his butt out last time he almost croaked.

The thought that Liang Jingxuan could pop up again made her temples throb.

Two life-size portraits flanked the hall. In a foul mood, she stalked over. The white-robed swordswoman and the scarlet-clad beauty stared across the empty space, love poems inked beneath each in matching lines, call-and-answer lovers still talking after centuries.

Lin Qianshuang studied the two near-photographic portraits, Xiao Linsha and Chen Luoyun, complete with love poems signed under each. Then she glanced at Mu Weiyin, who’d been hovering by the coffin forever.

Pity, she mused. City Lord inherited both moms’ killer looks, yet missed their flirt game. Those two could charm a rock, while Mu’s delivery is ice-cold, all stiff words and stand-offish pressure, hard to talk to.

Mu slid her fingertips along the coffin seam, eyes shutting then opening again. The six-petal spirit seal on her forehead flared; she condensed qi and slammed the lid. It slid clean off.

Inside lay a woman in red, an exact match to the painting: eyes closed, cheeks rosy, skin springy, like she was napping. Mu’s mind wavered; vision blurred. She reached out on instinct. The instant her fingers brushed the corpse, the body turned to ash, leaving only a scarlet longsword buried in the silk.

Mu stared at her empty hand, lost in thought. The sword wagged once, twice, drifted into the air, and vanished.

In a blink, it (whatever it was) was already hovering behind the woman who couldn’t take her eyes off the portrait.

Mu Weiyin jolted and rushed forward.

“So you’re the daughter-in-law my girl picked?”

Lin Qianshuang was still staring at the painting when an ice-cold hand clamped onto her shoulder. A rush of frigid air slid up her neck and she shivered hard.