Chapter 50: The Torment of a Sleepy Embrace

Inside Master Qian’s manor, night had fallen, bringing with it a profound silence.

Only a handful of house guards, their lanterns casting dancing shadows, patrolled the quiet courtyards.

Lu Hongzhuang, lying beside Su Qinghan, breathed with a steady rhythm, clearly lost in the depths of slumber. A faint, almost ethereal fragrance emanating from her, subtly mingled with the coppery tang of blood, ceaselessly drifted into Su Qinghan’s nostrils.

Su Qinghan let out a weary sigh, then, with a sense of resignation, closed her eyes.

‘Sleep, just sleep,’ she urged herself.

‘Let my heart be as still as ice, unmoved even if the heavens should fall.’

Yet, no sooner had she begun her silent recitation of the Heart-Cleansing Incantation than a warm weight settled against her waist.

It was Lu Hongzhuang’s hand.

Su Qinghan’s entire body instantly went rigid.

Slowly, she turned her head, and by the soft luminescence of the moon, she could discern Lu Hongzhuang’s tranquil sleeping face. Long, dark eyelashes lay feathered against her cheeks, and a faint, peaceful smile seemed to play upon her lips.

‘She’s in a deep sleep,’ Su Qinghan thought.

‘It must be unconscious.’

With painstaking care, Su Qinghan gently dislodged the hand from her waist.

‘Never mind,’ she decided. ‘No point in arguing with someone utterly exhausted.’

She rolled onto her side, turning her back to Lu Hongzhuang, thinking, ‘Surely, I’m safe now.’

Yet, no sooner had she settled comfortably than that familiar warmth pressed against her once more.

This time, the hand brazenly wrapped around her waist, then, with an unsettling restlessness, drifted across the thin fabric to gently cup her lower abdomen.

Su Qinghan froze, speechless.

‘Hey, hey, hey!’

‘What in the world are you doing?!’

She tried to pry the hand away, but it merely tightened its grip, as if clutching a comfortable bolster, even rubbing contentedly against her back.

A peculiar, tingling warmth, originating from the point of contact, instantly coursed through her limbs and bones.

Su Qinghan felt a flush creep up her neck, her cheeks burning.

‘Calm down!’ she commanded herself.

She silently recited.

‘You’re a woman now. This kind of closeness between women is perfectly normal!’

‘Normal, my foot!’

‘Inside, I’m a pure man!’

‘How is anyone supposed to endure this?!’

Gritting her teeth, Su Qinghan steeled her resolve, then abruptly flipped over, sprawling face-down on the bed.

‘Now you’ll have nowhere to put your hand, will you?!’

She buried her face in the pillow, a flicker of smug satisfaction igniting within her.

Alas, she was still far too naive.

The hand hesitated for a moment, then, with an almost deliberate slowness, traced its way up her spine, finally coming to rest at the nape of her neck. Her fingers, still seemingly unconscious, began to idly toy with her skin.

‘This movement isn’t suggestive, at least,’ she thought.

‘But it’s even more tormenting!’

‘It’s so itchy!’

Su Qinghan felt herself teetering on the brink of madness, every hair on her body standing on end.

She abruptly shot upright, gasping for air in ragged breaths.

Beneath the moonlight, Lu Hongzhuang remained deeply, blissfully asleep, seemingly utterly oblivious to the egregious nature of her sleep habits.

Su Qinghan glared at her, her gaze sharp and furious.

‘One kick!’

‘Just one kick!’

‘And I’ll kick this insufferable woman right off the bed!’

She raised her leg, her aim locked squarely on Lu Hongzhuang.

Just then, Lu Hongzhuang suddenly murmured in her sleep, her voice thick with profound sorrow and helplessness. “Senior Brother… Senior Sister…”

“Don’t die…”

Su Qinghan’s raised leg froze, suspended in mid-air.

As she observed Lu Hongzhuang’s tightly furrowed brow and the single tear that traced a path from the corner of her eye, the furious blaze in Su Qinghan’s heart abruptly extinguished.

“Sigh.”

With a defeated sigh, she lowered her leg and slumped back onto the bed.

This time, she had learned her lesson, sprawling flat on her back, limbs akimbo, effectively monopolizing the vast majority of the bed’s surface.

‘Now, surely, there won’t be any issues,’ she mused.

She closed her eyes, determined to force herself into slumber.

A quarter of an hour later.

The hand returned.

It bypassed Su Qinghan’s arm, landing with unnerving precision upon that soft, yielding mound.

And then, as if entirely without conscious direction, it gently kneaded.

Su Qinghan’s eyes snapped open, her entire being frozen as if struck by a lightning bolt, utterly incapable of movement.

Boom—

Her blood surged, rushing straight to her head.

She felt her Dao heart, in that singular moment, teetering on the brink of collapse.

“Hey…”

She tried to speak, but found her throat terribly parched.

‘Are you doing this on purpose, or is it truly accidental?’

She turned her head, gazing at Lu Hongzhuang’s sweet, innocent sleeping face, and the unspoken question ultimately died on her tongue.

‘Forget it,’ she conceded.

‘This Daoist master will endure.’

She took a deep, steadying breath, attempting to use the ancient art of breath regulation to calm the tumultuous qi and blood churning within her.

But the hand seemed to have taken root upon her, an unyielding presence. When she shifted to her left side, it merely slid to her side; when she moved to her right, it simply curved around her back.

No matter how she shifted or turned, the hand remained a persistent shadow, steadfastly clinging to the very spot that sent a peculiar numbness through Su Qinghan’s entire being.

Her body grew progressively warmer.

A strange, languid tingling, utterly foreign to her, began to spread from the point of contact, rendering her body strangely weak, yet simultaneously sharpening her senses to an unnerving degree.

‘In my past life, this Daoist master vanquished demons and purged evil, enduring countless tribulations, and my Dao heart remained as steadfast as a mountain.’

‘Am I truly to have my cultivation shattered in this life, simply by a woman’s sleep habits?’

Su Qinghan felt a profound sense of despair, tears threatening to well but refusing to fall.

She felt as if she were not resting on a soft bed, but rather splayed upon a searing hot iron plate, enduring unimaginable torment.

Time dragged on, second by agonizing second.

Su Qinghan, having finally abandoned all resistance, lay prone like a dead fish, allowing the hand to ‘misbehave’ upon her body as it pleased.

‘Do as you please,’ she thought, numbly.

‘This Daoist master is tired~’

Within her, a strange, tingling heat, utterly alien, began to emanate from the point of contact, spiraling outwards in concentric waves, permeating every fiber of her being.

It rendered her utterly powerless, yet simultaneously hyper-aware.

She began to question the very fabric of her existence.

‘Could this truly be the fabled love tribulation?’ she wondered.

‘But this is far too haphazard!’

Just as Su Qinghan’s sanity threatened to unravel under the weight of this bizarre torment, a sudden clamor erupted from outside the manor.

“Stop! Who goes there?!”

It was the sharp, vigilant shout of Master Qian’s Guard.

Immediately thereafter, a crisp, yet anxious, feminine voice cut through the night.

“Demon Exorcism Division on official business! Urgent matters! Stand aside at once!”

“The Demon Exorcism Division?” the guard’s voice responded, laced with a hint of doubt. “Do you possess any credentials?”

“Look closely!”

The girl’s voice carried an edge of impatience, and she seemed to produce something from her person.

“An Eighth-Rank Demon Exorcist’s Waist Token! I need to see Senior Sister Lu Hongzhuang! Is she staying here?!”

The guard’s demeanor instantly underwent a complete transformation.

“Ah, so it is an esteemed official from the Demon Exorcism Division! My deepest apologies! Lady Lu is indeed resting here, in… er, in that guest room with the broken window.”

No sooner had the words left his lips than a flurry of urgent footsteps approached from the distance, heading directly for their room.

‘They’re here!’

‘My savior has arrived!’

A wave of ecstatic relief washed over Su Qinghan.

“Thump! Thump! Thump!”

The room door was pounded with earth-shattering force.

“Senior Sister Lu! Senior Sister Lu! It’s Yun Rong!” The girl’s voice from beyond the door was thick with desperation, almost on the verge of tears. “To the south! Niujia Village has been attacked! The casualties are severe! Please, you must go and provide aid immediately!”

These thunderous knocks finally succeeded in jarring the deeply comatose Lu Hongzhuang awake.

She groggily pushed herself upright, rubbing her eyes, her face a mask of utter bewilderment.

“Mmm… who is it… in the middle of the night…” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.

Then, her movements abruptly ceased. She felt it.

The sensation beneath her hand was utterly wrong.

‘Too soft.’

‘Too yielding.’

‘This is absolutely not the bed board!’

Lu Hongzhuang’s sleepiness instantly vanished, replaced by a jolt of pure terror. She snapped her gaze downwards.

The next second, her eyes widened in a perfect circle.

Her hand was pressed firmly against Su Qinghan’s chest.

“!!!”

Lu Hongzhuang’s mind went blank with a resounding *buzz*.

Immediately after, a wave of heat surged from the soles of her feet straight to the crown of her head, her entire face flushing so crimson it looked ready to drip blood.

‘I… I… What… what have I done?!’

‘How did my hand get here?!’

‘Last night, I only… only wanted to lean against Su Qinghan to sleep for a bit, didn’t I?’

‘How could it have…’

Lu Hongzhuang snatched her hand back as if electrocuted, hiding it behind her back, as if it didn’t belong to her.

With a guilty conscience, she cautiously, swiftly, glanced at Su Qinghan.

Su Qinghan remained lying flat, eyes tightly closed, her breathing steady and deep, seemingly undisturbed.

*Phew—*

Lu Hongzhuang let out a long, shaky breath, her racing heart finally settling back into place.

‘Thank goodness.’

‘Thank goodness she didn’t wake up.’

‘If she knew… that I… that I actually did such a thing…’

‘It would be utterly mortifying!’

‘How could I ever face her again?’

Meanwhile, the ‘sleeping’ Su Qinghan’s mind was already a tumultuous sea of emotions.

‘Go!’

‘Hurry and go, you!’

‘Niujia Village is waiting for you to save them! The villagers are calling for you, waiting for your protection!’

‘This Daoist master is truly tired! Please, I beg you, just go!’

She could feel Lu Hongzhuang’s frantic gaze sweeping across her face, and could only desperately maintain her ‘sleeping’ state, not even daring to let her breathing falter.

Finally, under Su Qinghan’s silent ‘prayers,’ Lu Hongzhuang scrambled out of bed in a fluster.

She haphazardly pulled on her outer garments, even tying her sash crookedly, then snatched up the long sword leaning against the wall.

She flung open the door and rushed out without a backward glance, her voice still carrying a trace of imperceptible panic. “I’ll be there immediately!”

The sound of footsteps faded, and the courtyard quickly returned to silence.

Su Qinghan remained stiff on the bed for another ten seconds, ensuring Lu Hongzhuang had truly left, before finally letting out a sigh of relief.

Phew—

‘Sleep, sleep,’ she thought, then her mind was filled with images of Lu Hongzhuang’s sadness over her fallen comrades. ‘Aaaahhh! Daoist master, meeting you truly is eight lifetimes of bad luck!’

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