Chapter 13
Chapter 13: The Buddhist Scion’s Sweet Clinginess Is Unbearable
Moonlight lay like silver across the floor, but it couldn’t wash the heaviness from Xiao Man’s heart.
This cursed place didn’t even allow the small luxury of staying up late.
Candles were expensive; they were snuffed early. Forget phones. Forget computers. There was nothing to numb the mind, nowhere to hide.
She considered squeezing in with Dong Chun, but Dong Chun was on night duty.
Knocking on Xiu He’s door?
The room beyond had been silent for ages.
She paced in her cramped space like a trapped animal, circled twice, then slumped onto the icy edge of the bed, shoulders sagging.
The more she tugged at her worries, the tighter they knotted. Her eyelids grew heavy. Her thoughts blurred…
She didn’t know how much time passed before she jolted awake.
Not from sound.
From a presence.
From a stare so heavy she could feel it pressing against her skin.
She snapped her eyes open, heart lunging into her throat.
Lin Qing Xuan.
He stood at her bedside.
Moonlight slipped through the lattice in thin, stingy lines, outlining him in a faint silver edge. His face was mostly shadow, unreadable.
But his height, his stillness, the weight of him—he looked down at her like a statue carved from cold jade, and his shadow nearly swallowed her whole.
A chill hand rose.
His fingertips brushed her cheek with slow, certain pressure. The faint roughness of calluses scraped her skin, pulling a helpless shiver from her.
“Xiao Man…”
His voice was low—husky in a way that didn’t belong to him. Each syllable landed clean in the silence, hooked and dangerous.
“I won’t let you leave.”
Xiao Man’s breath stopped.
She wanted to jerk away, to curse, to scream—yet her body wouldn’t obey. It felt bound by invisible threads, pinned in place. Even her voice locked behind her teeth.
It was too real.
More real than the times he’d dragged her into his dreams.
This wasn’t him waiting for her in a dream.
This was him standing at the edge of her bed in the waking world.
Cold spread through her bones.
Before she could even understand that terror, the air rippled. The room bent. A familiar dizziness surged up and swallowed her whole.
When her vision cleared, the bed beneath her was gone.
The cramped little room was gone.
She had fallen into his dreamscape again.
But this time, the scene was different.
No golden Buddha statue. No ancient trees twisting together.
Only warm mist, soft and blurred, like gauze in a spring dawn.
And Lin Qing Xuan—so distant by day, so expressionless—now clung to her like a lost child.
His arms wrapped tight around her waist. His face pressed into the hollow of her neck, as if he could burrow there and disappear.
“Good sister…”
The words came muffled, broken with a strange, fragile dependence.
His breath was warm against the sensitive skin of her neck, raising goosebumps in a wave.
“Don’t go… just pity me…”
Xiao Man’s mind went blank with a dull, buzzing roar.
Only one feeling remained: absurdity so huge it made her dizzy.
Sister?
She stared down stiffly at the tall man buried against her, whining like an abandoned puppy.
Moonlight—moonlight in a dream, too—softened the hard planes of his face. Thick lashes shadowed his eyes.
The clear, cold purity he wore by day was gone. In its place was pleading so brittle it looked ready to snap.
Pity him?
She almost laughed out loud. Almost clawed at herself to wake up, just to make sure she wasn’t trapped in a dream inside a dream.
What was this supposed to be?
By day, in front of Old Madam, he’d worn that devastated, holy-victim face—as if she’d wronged him, used him, thrown him away.
Now, in her bed, in his dream, he’d turned into a clingy flirt with his arms locked around her waist, calling her “good sister” and begging for “pity.”
A sharp, wicked heat flared inside her, burning away the fear that had seized her when she first saw him.
Anger took its place—hot, humiliating, furious.
“Lin Qing Xuan!”
Her voice cracked as she tried to pry his arms off her waist.
“Get up. Stop acting.”
“How old are you? Older than me by years, right? This body is eighteen—who are you calling sister? Do you have no shame?”
“Who was that pathetic daytime act for? And now what—this pitiful little performance?”
She fought, but his grip didn’t budge. His arms were iron hoops welded shut.
He only nuzzled closer, like he meant to melt into her skin, and his voice turned small and wounded.
“Sister… don’t leave me…”
Disgust and fury surged.
Then his fingers slid toward her sash—
Xiao Man’s hand flashed.
Smack!
The sound cracked through the mist.
His face turned with the strike, a red mark blooming on the pale curve of his cheek.
And then—before she could pull back—he caught her wrist.
Not harsh, not gentle. Certain.
He drew her hand forward until her palm hovered a breath from his chest.
Beneath the thin monk’s robe, she felt the rise and fall of his breathing. Heat rolled off him, seeping through cloth into her fingertips.
Her fingers curled reflexively.
And memory—damn it—memory struck like lightning.
Sweat on her collarbone in a previous dream. The slow drag of his breath. The heat of skin pressed too close to think.
The past came flooding back, carried on the warmth under her palm.
“Lin Qing Xuan,” she hissed, voice trembling with shame and rage, “who are you putting this damn act on for?”
He didn’t answer.
He only lifted his eyes.
They were wet, dark, stained with something that looked too much like need. His lashes clung together as if mist had kissed them. The corners of his eyes were faintly red, and his lips—bitten—were too vivid, too soft.
A terrible, traitorous shiver ran through her.
The hand she’d meant to use as a weapon lost some of its force.
His chest under her palm was burning.
Even through the cloth, it felt like it could scorch her reason to ash.
This bastard.
Where was his cold, untouched holy air now?
Fed to the dogs.
What was this supposed to be—an abandoned puppy begging for mercy?
No.
This was a two-faced flirt, sweet on the surface and sharp underneath. The worst kind.
“Lin Qing Xuan.” Her fury cooled into something cutting, each word placed like a blade. “You’re the Buddhist Scion. Why are you doing this? Who are you trying to fool?”
He still didn’t speak.
He simply looked at her—eyes thick as ink, shamelessly wrapping around her as if she couldn’t move without dragging him along.
As if she were the one who had pulled him down into mud.
As if she were the one trying to run.
Xiao Man’s thoughts screamed: What a joke.
This body is eighteen.
He’s twenty-three.
And he’s here calling her sister, clinging to her like this, acting like she’s the heartless one?
“By day you play the wounded saint in front of everyone,” she snapped, “and by night you do this. Don’t you feel fake?”
His grip tightened.
Not enough to hurt—enough to remind her he could.
Then, with infuriating calm, he guided her palm to his cheek and leaned into it, rubbing slowly, as if her hand belonged there.
The gesture was a blatant hint.
Xiao Man sucked in a sharp breath, trying to wrench her will out of the trap.
But the message was painfully clear.
He wasn’t a god.
He wasn’t a buddha.
He was a man.
A man Yao Xiao Man had slept with.
Heat rushed up her neck, into her face, into her skull—shame and anger colliding until she could barely breathe.
And just like that, without speaking a single word, he had her again.