Volume 4, Chapter 103 – Love Begins with Steadfastness

After about an hour of studying acupoints, the unrest upstairs in the loft finally subsided.

This round of cultivation had been different from the usual ones. Because it had been mixed with many steps that belonged to those “improper acts,” it consumed much more strength and mental energy. At first, Bai Zhuqing had still been able to hold to a few of her own positions. But after she had fully conveyed her feelings to Bai Xiang, she felt once again that it was Bai Xiang who had accepted her.

It was as though, by the end, she had already lost all her strength, and it was once again Bai Xiang who had led her, guided her, and helped her explore the mysteries of her own meridians and acupoints, even carrying her back to the washroom again once it was all over.

That kind of release truly did leave Bai Zhuqing feeling much more settled inside.

In truth, for all the way she sometimes joked around and said disrespectful things about her sister, if she were ever actually made to carry anything out for real, she turned timid and did not really dare.

Because her desire in that area had been stirred up by the Golden-Pupil Illusory God. She did not understand why, but with the reverence and affection she felt for Bai Xiang, she could not allow herself to truly offend her in that way.

Only… today Sister Xiang’er had actually allowed it…

Though if it counted as offending her, why did it feel like Sister Xiang’er had still been the one leading me through all of it…?

Under the shower, the girl quietly turned these thoughts over in her heart.

And very quickly that sense of being led had truly settled back onto me again.

Then from now on, what Sister Xiang’er and I have should count as the kind of truly real Dao-companion bond, shouldn’t it?

Not just the kind where hearts are joined in cultivation, but also something comparable to the jianghu lovers written about in biographies and strange tales…

When Bai Zhuqing had blurted out that reckless request, she had never once dared imagine that Bai Xiang would agree. So now, while her heart held sweet recollections of those shadowy scenes and the process itself, it was also mixed with a faint unease, a fear that this had been her sister’s “final reward.”

Because it really did make very little sense.

Bai Zhuqing herself had read many biographies, strange records, and even novels and ghost tales. And in all those stories, no matter the gender of the lovers, hardly any of them ever came together this easily.

There were always dangers and storms to pass through first before they could reach that point, their feelings slowly melding together through one frank exchange after another.

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Speaking honestly, Bai Zhuqing did not think she and Bai Xiang had shared many scenes like that. She also knew that what she had once felt for Bai Xiang could even be described as morbid. That only made this reward feel more unreal to her.

So when they were finally drying themselves and changing clothes, she still could not help edging over to Bai Xiang’s side and asking uneasily, “Sister Xiang’er…”

Hm?

Bai Xiang was shaking out a fresh pair of black stockings and putting them on. At the sound of the question, her movements barely paused. She only turned her face slightly and looked at Bai Zhuqing from the side.

She’s not even calling me “Auntie” anymore.

So obedient?

She’s starting to feel insecure again, isn’t she.

“I want to know why Sister Xiang’er chose me.” Bai Zhuqing worked herself up and finally forced the question out. She had decided to go all in. “I’ve seen a lot of people too. I just feel that if you were going to choose a Dao companion, then they are more than I…”

“None of them are worthy.” Bai Xiang cut her off. Her brows finally drew together slightly.

Haven’t I already said almost the same thing before? Did she really not take any of it in at all?

Feeling just a little irritated, Bai Xiang pulled the stockings up to her lower abdomen and then let them snap into place with a sharp sound.

Then she abruptly steadied her younger sister, pressed her back against the wardrobe door, and looked down at her in an even more elevated, more oppressive posture, watching the uncertainty and fear in her eyes.

“There are indeed many people in this world more accomplished than you,” Bai Xiang said softly, looking straight at her and enunciating each word. “But only you are the one closest to me.”

“There are things only you can see.”

“There are things only you can persist in the way you do.”

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“So tell me yourself: if I do not favor someone like you, if I do not set my heart on the one who has held fast from the very beginning, then am I supposed to transfer my affections to some later arrival?”

“Love must begin from steadfastness. What sort of logic would it be otherwise!”

This—

Bai Zhuqing was completely stunned by this “crooked reasoning” of hers!

And yet… thinking about it carefully, it did seem as though it ought to be so.

I was the one who held on the longest. From beginning to end, I stayed faithful to my admiration and dependence on Sister Xiang’er… Even when Sister Xiang’er’s entry into the Dao made it seem as though she had become a different person, I still instinctively felt that she had not been replaced by someone else. It was only the awakening of memory. Her essence, her source, her core, her soul, everything about her, was still the same as the sister I loved…

If all this were just an investment scheme, just a financial game, then the constancy I held onto really would give me the right to be the one left smiling in the end.

But feelings… can they really be looked at like that too?

Emotion is irrational. It is ruled by feeling. That is exactly what makes it emotion. Just like everyone in the world talks endlessly about loyalty and fidelity, but ever since Great Yu was flooded with foreign technology from the federal nations and started absorbing those new currents of thought, all kinds of “awakened ones” have sprung up in society one after another beyond counting.

Especially in recent days. With the Court’s control over the provinces growing weaker and weaker, with the appearance of the Void Realm people and the pressure of one calamity after another, the taut string inside countless people has finally snapped.

Even taking powders has become an elegant pastime at upper-class gatherings in certain provinces! Many once-famous scholars and women have cast off the old rites and started glorifying “bodily freedom” instead!

A world and a society like this could only be described as the total collapse of rites and music. How could it ever be refuted by a single sentence like “Love must begin from steadfastness. What sense is there otherwise?”

If words like that were spoken aloud and carried onto the internet, they would probably be met at once with mockery and ridicule from any number of people.

Those who have also let themselves go amid the tide of Loss of Order, who are letting themselves be carried along by it, would never allow a mirror called “morality” to be raised up again!

And yet.

And yet the one saying these words was Sister Xiang’er.

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She seemed to possess a certain quality, a quality that had only begun to show after she awakened her past-life wisdom and entered the Dao… She always believed she could do something, and as long as she believed it could be done, then it would be done.

Whenever she said such things in that tone, others might not be sure, but Bai Zhuqing herself always felt that this was simply how it ought to be.

What those golden pupils reflected seemed to be not only the outer world, but also the future that her sister had already sketched within them.

She really did have a kind of overbearing certainty to her, as though all things in heaven and earth ought to turn according to the pattern of her thoughts.

So when these words came from Sister Xiang’er alone, they did not strike me as ridiculous.

“I… I understand now!”

“I’m sorry! I should never have doubted Sister’s character…”

Bai Zhuqing’s eyes were filled with that incomparably beautiful face, that stern and inviolable presence. She was so drowned in it that before she knew it, her lips and tongue had moved of their own accord and spoken words of surrender.

How embarrassing…

And yet, only in front of Sister Xiang’er… showing this side of myself does not even make me feel very ashamed…

Seeing her yield and more or less think things through, Bai Xiang finally let her go, and her tone softened along with the movement.

“Now that this boundary has been crossed today, there is substance between us.”

“If you desire something in the future, tell me.”

“But remember this.”

“…Do not become addicted.”

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Even after Bai Xiang had finished changing and left, Bai Zhuqing was still leaning against the wardrobe door, unable to recover herself.

She says not to become addicted, but something like this… something like this…

Now that the knot in her feelings had been straightened out, now that she was sure her sister had not done all of this in preparation for leaving her behind, Bai Zhuqing at last relaxed completely. And once that happened, certain restless things became impossible to suppress. She found herself unavoidably recalling again and again those shifting shadow-scenes within the “white mist illusion.”

Those were the details of what had happened.

Before, the stimulation had been too overwhelming, and her mind had screened it out on its own. But the memory itself had not vanished. Now it surged back up, letting her blush as she savored it piece by piece.

That final line too, spoken by Bai Xiang alone, had not sounded reckless.

Instead, it had carried a feeling of preserving order.

As though this were simply the principle of heaven and earth, something that should naturally be so between the two of them.

But how could that be…

How could I not become addicted…?

Her face flushed scarlet. Leaning against the wardrobe, she turned her knees inward and covered her eyes tightly with both hands, as though doing that could hide all those intimate secrets deep in her heart so that no one would ever glimpse or sense them.

“Hah…”

At the same time, down in the stairwell, Bai Xiang too was bracing herself against the railing as she let out a breath.

To think I had to be the one to say such things…

In an extremely rare gesture, she touched her somewhat heated cheeks, stood there alone until her breathing had settled, and only then took up her sword again and strode away.