Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Door Shut, Window Closed, Just to Grind Ink?

Inside the meditation room, Xiao Man stood pulled tight as a bowstring. Just as she was about to whirl and fight, footsteps sounded behind her.

Light, steady, unhurried—impossible to argue with.

Her heartbeat climbed into her throat.

But the blow she’d braced for never came.

Lin Qing Xuan simply walked past her, circled the desk, and sat down in the broad chair behind it—the very seat she’d been hovering near.

He lifted the purple-tipped brush from its rest, dipped it into clean water, and spoke in that clear, cool voice as if nothing strange had happened at all.

“Grind it properly.”

“Don’t think about anything else.”

Xiao Man froze.

“…?”

That was it?

Door shut, windows closed, all for… ink?

Don’t think about anything else?

[Who’s the one with other thoughts here?]

She swallowed a mouthful of bitter indignation and turned, slow and stiff.

Lin Qing Xuan had already laid out a sheet of white paper. He lowered his gaze, lifted the brush, and poised it over the page—

Only the ink wasn’t ready.

Resigned, Xiao Man added water to the inkstone and began to grind, circles tight and hard.

The ink stick rasped against stone in a steady hush-hush rhythm, the only sound in the room.

She kept her head down, watching black bloom into water, as if she could grind her frustration into the ink and make it disappear.

Across from her, Lin Qing Xuan wrote.

His brush moved with clean, flowing certainty, each character crisp and restrained. He was copying the Prajna Paramita—the Heart Sutra.

In the dim lamplight, his profile looked carved—lashes lowered, expression unreadable. Prayer beads slid between his fingers with slow, unwavering patience.

Sandalwood curled through the air. The scent of ink rose, dark and warm.

For a moment, the room pretended to be peaceful.

Then, without warning, his voice cut through it, calm as ever.

“Don’t stand so close to Stone.”

Xiao Man’s hand stopped mid-circle.

She jerked her head up, staring.

Lin Qing Xuan didn’t even lift his eyes. His brush continued on, steady, as if he hadn’t spoken.

Inside her skull, every thought detonated at once.

She didn’t dare snap at him aloud, but her glare could have drilled holes through stone.

The brush tip paused for the slightest instant, leaving a tiny dot of ink on the paper.

Still without looking up, Lin Qing Xuan answered her unspoken outrage in the flattest tone imaginable, like he was commenting on the weather.

“Yes.”

Xiao Man went ice-cold.

It felt like the blood in her veins had turned to winter water.

A wave of panic surged up and swallowed her whole.

This wasn’t just that shared-sensation, shared-dream weirdness.

He could hear her thoughts.

If he could do that… then in front of him she was transparent, stripped of every lie she’d ever told herself.

Her fingers trembled. Ink splattered the edge of the stone.

She stood there, face drained, as if an immobilization spell had snapped around her limbs. For a beat she forgot how to breathe.

Lin Qing Xuan finished the line, set down the brush, and finally lifted his eyes.

Those deep, still eyes held her terror the way a mirror held a face.

His gaze slid from her pallor to her shaking hand, to the droplets of ink.

Prayer beads rolled once more beneath his fingers. His voice remained calm, but the words went straight through her.

“When you’re close, I can hear some.”

“Don’t call me ‘that guy.’”

“You can call me—”

He paused. Something, almost imperceptible, warmed his voice for the span of a heartbeat.

“Qing Xuan.”

Clack!

The ink stick slipped from Xiao Man’s numb fingers and dropped straight into the inkstone, splashing black across her sleeve and the edge of the desk.

And she—she was done.

From scalp to toes, she was nothing but tingling, rigid numbness, like an electric current had run clean through her.

Only one thought spun in her mind, louder than everything else:

[It’s over.]

This “chastity defense war” wasn’t just going to reach her body—it was going to dig all the way into her soul.

And this Buddhist Scion didn’t play fair.

He was hacking.