Flower Stealing Master

The person clambering through the window in considerable disarray was, naturally, Song Qingshu.

With the stairway guarded at every step, he had circled around to the outer hull and attempted to climb up the exterior of the ship. After several failed attempts he gave that up entirely and changed approach — could he use Qinggong instead?

His core difficulty was not the absence of inner energy, but the impossibility of sustaining its circulation. His power was there; it simply could not flow. Like Duan Yu, however, he found that after enough attempts — ten, twenty, more — there would occasionally come one brief instant when the channel opened. It lasted only a heartbeat, but for the purposes of a single Qinggong movement, a heartbeat was enough.

After countless failures, Song Qingshu caught one of those moments. For an instant he was weightless, and he vaulted upward to the uppermost deck — only to feel his inner energy vanish the moment he reached Qi Fang’s window. He had just enough presence of mind to shoot out a hand and catch the window ledge. From this height, a fall would have left him crippled at best.

‘I can’t use Qinggong this way again,’ he thought, looking down at the dark water far below, and feeling genuinely shaken. Becoming the first master of Qinggong in the wulin to fall to his death — that would be a humiliating matter.

Hanging from the sill with both hands, suspended over nothing, he dragged himself through the opening with great effort.

He had barely tumbled inside when he looked up and found Qi Fang nearby, her mouth already open to cry out. His heart lurched. If the guards were alerted, he was finished.

He did not quite know where the strength came from. He crossed the distance in one stride, bore her down to the floor, and pressed his hand firmly over her mouth.

“Mmm—!”

Qi Fang’s terror was total. Whatever lingering doubt she had held about her earlier attacker dissolved in an instant — the situation before her left no room for ambiguity. She bit at his palm and screamed against it, the sound dying into muffled gasps beneath his hand.

She fought with everything she had. She was no sheltered court lady; her body retained the muscle memory and the spirit of genuine martial training. She twisted and bucked beneath him like a cornered animal, trying to work herself free.

Her strength was formidable enough — but the fundamental disadvantage of her build meant that once both her wrists were pinned down by his weight, she could not break free by force. In desperation she drove her knee sharply upward toward his groin.

Song Qingshu broke into a cold sweat. His reflexes were just fast enough — he clamped his legs around hers at the last possible moment. Had that landed, he reflected grimly, the women in his life would have been keeping a very lonely vigil.

Qi Fang continued to struggle without pause. For all her years of comfortable living, her body was genuinely full of vigour — the residue of her martial training had not entirely left her. Only Song Qingshu’s weight holding her down prevented her breaking away, and with his inner energy inaccessible, it was a closer contest than he would have liked.

Then he became aware of something unwelcome. Qi Fang had shed her outer robe for her bath; she wore only a thin underlayer that concealed almost nothing of the vitality beneath it. The warmth coming through the fabric, the faint, clean fragrance of her, the ceaseless movement of her body against his — Song Qingshu discovered with considerable embarrassment that his body was responding to the situation in the most inconvenient possible way.

Qi Fang went still for a moment, as though she had sensed it. Then she redoubled her efforts.

Song Qingshu could feel his grip starting to slip. He knew that if he lost hold and she called out, he had no good options left. In desperation, he lowered his voice to barely above a breath: “I am a friend of Di Yun’s.”

At those words, Qi Fang stopped.

She looked up at him, bewildered.

“I am going to release you now,” Song Qingshu continued quietly. “Don’t cry out. If you agree, blink once.”

Qi Fang blinked rapidly, and managed a small nod. Song Qingshu eased his hand from her mouth.

“Are you really an acquaintance of my martial brother’s?” She did not cry out — she asked instead, with urgent intensity. Her relationship with Di Yun was something only the people of the old Wan household would have known. A guard from the Minister’s residence would have had no way to know Di Yun existed.

“I am,” Song Qingshu said simply.

Qi Fang’s mouth opened — and then some awareness crept back into her expression. A faint rose colour came to her cheeks. She bit her lip. “And how much longer,” she said with quiet, restrained irritation, “do you intend to sit on top of me?”

Song Qingshu felt heat rise to his own face. He got to his feet at once and offered her a hand. “My apologies. The situation called for it. I hope you’ll forgive any offence.”

Qi Fang ignored the hand and stood on her own, smoothing her dishevelled hair, and asked immediately: “Is my martial brother still alive?” She was plainly not interested in discussing what had just happened.

“Of course he’s alive. Who told you he wasn’t?”

Qi Fang opened her mouth, then seemed to catch herself. Her expression shifted.

“It was the Wan family who told you, wasn’t it.” Song Qingshu had a fairly good idea even without her saying it. “Your martial brother is alive. Though…”

“Though what?” The sudden news of Di Yun’s existence had her caught between shock and something like joy.

“He was wrongfully imprisoned. His shoulder blades were pierced through. Several of his fingers were cut off…” Song Qingshu let out a slow breath. “But none of that was what hurt him most. What hurt him most was knowing that the martial sister he loved had married another man.”

“My poor martial brother…” At the account of Di Yun’s suffering, Qi Fang’s whole body swayed. She caught the edge of the table to steady herself. Then a sadness came into her face. “If only you hadn’t done what you did then — how different everything would have been.”

Song Qingshu’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean by ‘what he did’?”

Qi Fang bit her lip, and in the end shook her head. “I don’t want to revisit any of that.”

“I don’t know the full details of what happened,” Song Qingshu said quietly, “but I can tell you this — Di Yun was innocent. He was wrongfully accused.” He knew the broad strokes of the story, but A Deadly Secret was not among the novels he had the finest recall of, and the specific manner of Di Yun’s framing had grown hazy.

“He was innocent? What really happened?” Qi Fang felt the ground shift beneath her. She pressed urgently.

“I don’t know the particulars — only that Wan Gui coveted you and arranged to have Di Yun framed, leaving you in the Wan household,” Song Qingshu replied.

Qi Fang felt dizzy, her vision briefly darkening. The words struck her one by one like blades. She let out a low, broken sound: “I misjudged him — I wronged him—”

But then, involuntarily, she thought of her husband — his relative gentleness toward her across the years — and doubt began to move in her. ‘Could this man be inventing an outrageous story to drive a wedge between us, to save himself?’

The warmth left her face. “I can’t take one man’s word and begin to doubt my own husband,” she said, her voice cooling. “And you are a guard of the Minister’s household. Speaking against your own masters behind their backs — that is rather contemptible behaviour.”

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