The prototype lay on the low table between them, a strange, alien object. It was crude, the work of an amateur, but it was real.

  “The stitching is clumsy,” Madam Xue had said, her voice a flat, simple statement. “The tension is inconsistent. The finishing is amateurish.” She had looked up, her grey eyes meeting his. “But the design… the principle is sound.”

  The words hung in the air, a verdict that was neither praise nor punishment. He knelt on the floor, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs, waiting for the sentence that must surely follow. He had proven his craft was not a lie, but his methods were still a profound transgression. He was completely at her mercy.

  A sudden, angry shout echoed from a distant courtyard, muffled by the walls. It was a man’s voice, thick with rage and cheap wine, followed by the sharp crack of something breaking. Madam Xue’s expression, which had been one of cool analysis, flickered with a faint, almost imperceptible annoyance. She dismissed it with a slight shake of her head, as if swatting away a gnat. But the fragile peace of the room had been disturbed.

  A moment later, the gnat was at her door.

  The sound was not a knock. It was a hammering, an angry, impatient demand that vibrated through the floor.

  Yang Kai flinched, his blood turning to ice. Madam Xue’s face became a mask of cold, hard porcelain.

  “Stay where you are,” she commanded, her voice a low whisper. “Do not move. Do not speak.”

  She rose with a fluid grace that betrayed none of her inner turmoil and glided to the sliding paper door. She did not open it fully, but slid it back just enough for her to stand in the gap, a slender, lavender-clad barrier between the sanctity of her room and the fury outside.

  Yang Lei stood there, his face flushed with wine and rage. He was a big man, his warrior’s frame gone slightly to seed, but he still radiated an aura of dangerous, frustrated power. His eyes, bloodshot and furious, looked past his wife and locked directly onto Yang Kai, who was still kneeling by the table in the heart of the room.

  The sight of him, of the cripple, in private sanctum, at this hour, sent a tremor of pure, murderous rage through Yang Lei’s body.

  “Wife,” he snarled, the word a mockery. “You have a late-night visitor.”

  “This is a matter of clan business,” Madam Xue replied, her voice as cold and smooth as river stone. “It does not concern you. Go back to your ale.”

  “Business?” He let out a harsh, incredulous laugh that stank of wine. He jabbed a thick finger past her, pointing at Yang Kai. “You call business? For a week, I have watched him scurry to your door after Selene's Veil has set. You deny me, your husband, this room, but you open it for him? For the cripple? The shame of the Second House?”

  He took a menacing step forward, but she did not flinch. “You dare accuse me in my own home?” she whispered, her voice dangerously quiet.

  “I accuse you of making a fool of me!” he roared, his control snapping. “What is this perverted game you play? Do you think I am a child? To believe you and he have nothing going on in here, night after night?”

  Yang Kai felt his world shrink to the confines of the room. He was trapped. He could feel the waves of Yang Lei’s furious Star Force, a wild, uncontrolled pressure that made the air feel thick and hard to breathe.

  Madam Xue’s composure finally broke. A different kind of coldness entered her eyes—not the ice of sorrow, but the frozen, deadly chill of pure, unadulterated rage.

  “So what if there is?” she hissed, the words a venomous dart designed to strike him where he was weakest.

  Yang Lei recoiled as if she had slapped him. He stared at her, speechless.

  “What will you do, husband?” she continued, her voice a low, cutting whisper that dripped with contempt. “Will you challenge a boy who cannot even lift a sword? Will you storm the Patriarch’s hall and tell him that your wife prefers the company of a cripple to her own husband? Think of the ‘Face’ you will lose, Yang Lei. Think of the laughter in the teahouses. They will not see a righteous husband demanding justice. They will see a pathetic fool. A cuckold whose wife has shamed him with the clan’s most useless trash.”

  Each word was a perfectly aimed blow. As he stood there, choked with impotent fury, she delivered the final, crushing blow. Her expression shifted from cold anger to a look of pure, clinical disdain, as if explaining a simple truth to a dim-witted child.

  "Besides," she added, her voice dropping even further, "you are a warrior, husband. Think on it. Your nephew is a mortal. A cripple, with the strength of a common boy. I am a cultivator of the Third Stage." She let that fact settle in the air, a chasm of power between them. "Even if I were the whore you imagined me to be, and I laid myself bare for him on my own bed, what do you think would happen? His pathetic, untempered body would break against mine. Do you truly believe a cripple has the strength to do anything to a cultivator?"

  She took a small, deliberate step back, her gaze sweeping over him with utter contempt. "So why do you waste my time with such baseless, physically impossible accusations? Or has the wine finally rotted your senses along with your courage?"

  He stared at her, his face a mask of purple rage, his mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out. He had no good moves. To act was to invite public humiliation. To do nothing was to accept his own irrelevance. He looked past her one last time, his gaze falling on Yang Kai with a look of pure, cold hatred. It was a promise. Then, with a choked, animalistic sound of pure fury, he turned and stormed away, his heavy footsteps echoing down the corridor until they were consumed by the silence.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  The moment he was gone, Madam Xue’s furious facade crumbled. She leaned against the doorframe, her shoulders trembling. She slid the door shut, the soft thud sounding like a thunderclap in the silent room. She turned, her face pale, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. She had won, but it had been a costly, ugly victory.

  Yang Kai watched, horrified. He saw not the cold, untouchable matriarch, but a woman shaken to her core. He scrambled to his feet.

  “Third Aunt… I am sorry,” he stammered, the words tumbling out. “I… I heard everything. This is my fault. I have brought this shame upon you. I put you under your husband's suspicion. I never thought…” His voice cracked. He looked at the prototype on the table, the source of all this poison. “I will stop. I will burn the sketches. I will not cause you any more trouble.”

  She looked at him, at his shattered resolve. Burn the sketches. Give up. A cold, familiar despair washed over her, but this time it was not for herself. It was for him. He was about to do it. He was about to let the ugliness of one man extinguish his fire. He was about to become just like them. Another broken Yang man, full of apologies and defeated sighs. The thought was intolerable. Her husband had just tried to shame her into submission, to define her by his pathetic jealousy. She would not stand by and watch his poison infect this boy as well.

  “No,” she said, her voice quiet but sharp, cutting through his apology. He stopped, startled.

  “You will not stop,” she commanded. “You will not give that pathetic man the satisfaction.”

  She saw his confusion, his fear. “This has nothing to do with you,” she explained, her voice strained but firm. “My husband's anger has been a poison in this house for a decade. He is angry that I allowed a man into this room. It would not have mattered if it were you or the Patriarch himself.”

  She saw that her words were not enough. He was still broken. She walked to the table and picked up the prototype.

  “You are giving up on this?” she asked, her voice hardening. “On your only path? Because of the barking of a chained dog?” Her gaze swept over him, fierce and analytical. “You are crippled in body, nephew. Do not allow your will to become crippled as well. Look at the men of this clan—your father, your uncles. They are cultivators of the Third Stage, yet they do nothing but complain as this house turns to dust. They have power, but no will. That is the true weakness.”

  She took a step closer, her voice dropping to an intense, conspiratorial whisper, a lesson meant only for him. “You have stumbled upon a strange path. It is unorthodox. It is shameful to them. But it is a path. Do not abandon it so easily. In this world, there is no right and wrong. There is only strength and weakness. Morality is a luxury for those who have already won. We have not. You might yet become more of a man than any of the three Yang brothers.”

  She walked to the mirror, her decision made. It was no longer just an abstract idea; it was a necessary action. A lesson. “You said you needed to see your work on a true form to understand its flaws. To make it perfect.” She turned back to him, her eyes blazing with a bitter, defiant light.

  “Let me try your work, nephew,” she said, her voice now calm, deliberate, and final. “This will be the first step of your idea. Let us see if your strange path has the strength to lead somewhere new.”

  Before he could process her words, she turned her back to him, facing the polished bronze mirror. The movement was deliberate, almost ritualistic, a final, chilling act in a play he didn't understand. He watched, his breath caught in his throat, as her hands, pale and slender in the candlelight, moved to the sash at her waist.

  The silk of her plum-colored robe was so fine it seemed to hold the light, and it whispered against itself as she worked the knot free. The sash loosened. The robe parted, sliding from her shoulders with a soft, sighing sound. It flowed down the elegant lines of her body, a river of dark silk, pooling in a silent, luxurious heap around her ankles.

  She stood before the mirror wearing only a simple, white silk chest wrap and a matching loincloth. It was the functional, artless uniform of her station, yet it could not conceal the truth of her form. The plain fabric was pulled taut over the serene, majestic curve of her ass—a shape that was not brazenly heavy, but high, tight, and perfectly sculpted, hinting at a dancer's strength beneath her sorrowful stillness.

  He watched, unable to breathe, as her slender fingers reached back, finding the knot of the chest wrap between her sharp, elegant shoulder blades. She worked it free with a single, practiced motion.

  The tension released. The wrap loosened, and he saw her shoulders relax a fraction of an inch. In the mirror's reflection, a sight that made his mind go white, he saw her breasts swell forward. Freed from their binding, they were magnificent—full, high, and settling with a soft, natural weight. Her nipples, two faint, dusky rose points in the warm candlelight, tightened in the cool air. So pale. So soft.

  She let the simple wrap fall from her hands, a discarded piece of white silk on the floor. She stood there for a moment, her back to him, her front reflected in the bronze, a pale, perfect statue. Then, she picked up his creation.

  Her back was still to him as she brought the band around her torso. The crude, ugly fabric of his work looked profane against the perfection of her skin. She fumbled for a moment with the clasp he had fashioned from a small piece of polished shell, her fingers, so deft with a calligraphy brush, clumsy and uncertain with this alien mechanism. He could see the faint line of frustration between her brows in the mirror. The design was a language she did not speak.

  “The clasp,” he whispered, his voice a hoarse, broken croak. “It… it hooks.”

  She paused. Her hands stilled. Then, following his instruction, she guided the small hook into the loop. He heard a soft, definitive that was unnaturally loud in the silent room.

  The band was secure.

  She settled the cups over her breasts. He watched her adjust them, her own hands moving with a strange, hesitant curiosity, a craftsman testing a new, foreign tool. Then she drew the straps up and over her pale, smooth shoulders, her movements slow, deliberate.

  She turned to face the mirror.

  And she went absolutely still.

  The effect was immediate. Transformative. The crude, ugly object he had made was no longer just a piece of stitched cloth. It was performing its function with a brutal, undeniable efficiency. It lifted her breasts, pushing them up and together. It shaped them. It cradled, presented, and sculpted them. The full, proud curves, which had been flattened into modest restraint by the simple wrap, were now a declaration. The design created a deep, alluring shadow between them, a valley of cleavage that had not existed a moment before.

  She stared at her own reflection, her grey eyes wide. The analytical calm was broken, replaced by a dawning, stunned understanding. She lifted a hand, her fingers trembling almost imperceptibly. She did not touch the garment. She hovered her fingers just above her own flesh, as if rediscovering its shape, its potential. She ran a finger along the upper curve of a cup, tracing the new, proud line it created.

  She turned her head, her gaze meeting his in the reflection of the bronze mirror. The look in her eyes was a complex, terrifying storm. Shock. Calculation. Disbelief. And something else. Something he had never seen there before. A flicker of a woman, a woman who had been a ghost of sorrow for a decade, seeing herself as a woman again.

  “It works,” she whispered, the words barely audible, a profound, world-shattering admission. “It actually works.”

  [Cycle of the Azure Emperor, Year 3473, 7th Moon, 7th Day]