Chapter 26
Chapter 26: Reciting the Heart Sutra Before the Buddhist Scion Was Pointless
The lecture at Fa Hua Temple had just ended.
Lin Qing Xuan politely declined the abbot’s invitation to stay for a meal, then climbed into the carriage with Stone and returned to the residence in haste.
The wheels rumbled over the bluestone road.
On ordinary days, that sound could quiet his mind. Today, it grated.
He turned his prayer beads, one after another, trying to pin down the faint, inexplicable turbulence in his chest.
That turbulence came from the direction of Auspicious Cloud Residence—irritation braided with a thin, hidden anger.
The carriage stopped at the Heir Apparent’s gate.
Lin Qing Xuan stepped down at once, his pace a shade quicker than usual. He crossed the courtyard without pause, his gaze moving on instinct to Xiao Man’s east wing room.
The door was closed.
He stopped before it, lifting his hand until his fingertips nearly brushed the wood.
Then he froze.
Knock?
And say what?
Ask if she had been startled?
In what capacity?
The hesitation lasted no more than a breath. On his cool, distant face, it left no mark.
Just then, the door gave a soft creak and opened from within.
Xiao Man had been about to come out for air. The moment she looked up, she ran straight into Lin Qing Xuan standing outside.
His hand was still raised in midair, as if he’d been about to knock.
She stared, startled into stillness. “Eldest Young Master? You’re back?”
Lin Qing Xuan’s eyes swept over her face—quick, controlled.
No tears. No obvious grievance. No anger. Only the shock of being caught off guard.
The strange turbulence in his chest settled at once, like silt sinking in clear water.
He lowered his hand. “Mm.”
His gaze lingered for the briefest moment, and then he said nothing more. He turned and walked toward his meditation room, steps returning to their usual measured calm.
Xiao Man stood there, blinking.
“…?”
What was that?
This man appeared like a ghost.
He came all the way to her door just to lift a hand?
Just to look at her once?
What kind of ailment was that?
Not long after, Stone came running over, beaming, a tray piled with washed offering fruit in his hands.
“Xiao Man, sis! Hurry and try some! Fa Hua Temple just gave these out—fresh as can be!”
She thanked him, took an apple, and bit into it without tasting much.
Stone watched her, then leaned in with a conspiratorial grin, lowering his voice until it carried the exact warmth of trouble.
“So… Xiao Man, sis. The young master went to bathe, right? Every time he comes back from preaching, the first thing he does is bathe. Says he has to wash off the worldly dust.”
Xiao Man nodded. That part didn’t surprise her.
Stone’s eyes rolled, sly as a rat’s. “Hehe. I just remembered—looks like the young master forgot his towel! It’s draped on the rack in his room!”
He said it in a rush, didn’t wait for her to react, and shoved the fruit tray into her arms.
“Sis, help me out? I… my stomach suddenly hurts. Gotta go to the latrine!”
And like a gust of wind, he vanished, leaving Xiao Man rooted to the spot.
She stared down at the tray, the apple nearly slipping from her fingers.
Stone didn’t go anywhere near the latrine. He barreled straight into his parents’ side room.
“Dad! Mom!”
His face was flushed with excitement. “I did something huge! I sent Xiao Man, sis, to deliver a towel to the young master!”
Granny Chen’s eyes lit up instantly. She slapped her thigh and shot Stone a look that screamed well done.
Old Chen Tou, meanwhile, looked like his soul was trying to climb out through his mouth. His jaw dropped wide enough to fit a duck egg. It took him a long while to find his voice.
“You… you little bastard! Your—your nerve! This… this, if…”
He couldn’t even finish the thought. If the young master got angry, or if Xiao Man made a scene…
“Oh, Dad, stop worrying!” Stone waved a hand, utterly unbothered. “The young master’s attitude toward Xiao Man, sis—can that be the same as everyone else? Didn’t you see him go to her door just now to take a look? A towel is nothing! Maybe… hehe…”
He grinned, shamelessly suggestive.
Granny Chen hurried to reinforce him, her own excitement blooming. “Exactly! You old man, what do you know? Stone is creating an opportunity for the young master! A lone man and a lone woman, and the bathhouse is full of steam… easiest place for things to happen, hm?”
She gave Old Chen Tou a look he didn’t dare misunderstand.
Old Chen Tou stared at the mother-and-son pair, then at his son’s triumphant expression, and felt his vision dim.
Fine.
This family was now twisted into one rope with a single aim: every day, they would manufacture chances for Eldest Young Master and Xiao Man.
Whether it was proper.
Whether something might go wrong.
None of that entered their calculations.
On Xiao Man’s side, her heart had already fought eight hundred rounds of war.
Don’t go?
What if that Buddhist Scion truly had no towel, came out dripping wet, and put the blame on her?
Say she hadn’t served properly?
Or take it out on Stone?
Go?
That was the bathhouse.
He was bathing.
In the end, a drudge’s survival instinct crushed her shame flat.
She set the fruit tray down and trudged toward Lin Qing Xuan’s meditation room.
Sure enough, a clean, soft, plain white cotton towel hung neatly on the clothes rack.
She lifted it as if it were a scalding coal and moved, step by heavy step, toward the bathhouse.
The door was shut. Water sounded faintly within.
Xiao Man drew in a breath and knocked. Tap, tap, tap.
“Eldest Young Master? This servant has brought you a towel.”
The water continued. No answer.
She raised her voice and knocked again. “Eldest Young Master?”
Still nothing.
Maybe the water was too loud. Maybe he didn’t hear.
Xiao Man braced herself and pushed the door open, gently, as though even the hinge might scold her.
Warm, damp air rushed out, carrying a clean scent like soap pods.
The bathhouse was large, divided into an outer room and an inner room. The outer room was spare—table, chairs, a rack for clean clothes. The inner room was screened off by a huge gauze panel embroidered with a scene titled “Moonlight Over the Lotus Pond.”
Lotus blossoms stood poised and tall. Fish swam in lively arcs. In the haze of steam, the embroidery drifted between real and unreal.
Behind the screen, a figure leaned against the rim of a bathing tub—only a blur through the mist.
Xiao Man stopped outside the screen, heart hammering.
“Eldest Young Master? I brought the towel. Should I leave it on the rack in the outer room?”
The silhouette shifted.
A low voice, dampened by steam and edged with lazy ease, slid through the mist and landed in her ears with startling clarity.
“Come in.”
Xiao Man’s mind went blank.
Come in?
Into where?
But the arrow was already loosed. She couldn’t snatch it back midair.
She clenched her teeth and circled the screen.
The scene behind it hit her like a sudden flare.
A massive wooden tub, filled with warm water.
Lin Qing Xuan reclined against the tub wall, eyes closed. Steam softened the usual chill in his features, making him look—dangerously—less like an untouchable figure carved from snow.
Water dripped from the ends of his dark hair, traced the line of his throat, and slid over broad shoulders and a chest built with quiet strength. The waterline cut off just below his chest, as if it had been placed there on purpose, cruel and precise.
His skin above the surface was pale as jade, his muscles smooth and powerful—nothing like the fragile scholar she’d expected from someone who lived among sutras.
Xiao Man caught one breath of it and heat surged straight to her face. She dropped her gaze so fast it almost hurt, but her mind still skittered in the dark like a startled horse.
And then—
The man in the tub opened his eyes.
Those eyes, deep as still water, found her at once through the steam—caught her lowered head, her panicked flush, the way she stood as if she’d been sentenced.
Lin Qing Xuan’s lips parted. His voice, roughened slightly by heat and water, came slow and unhurried.
“What about the last part?”
Xiao Man nearly died on the spot.
Shame surged so fast it felt like drowning.
She thrust the towel forward, her voice cracking high. “T-the towel! This servant takes leave!”
She turned to flee.
“Wait.”
It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.
“Scrub my back.”
Xiao Man froze.
Scrub his back?
This was… this was too close. Too intimate. Too—
She stood there, torn between refusing and surviving, and survival won by a landslide.
Wordlessly, she stepped closer. She grabbed the washcloth draped on the tub rim, stared fiercely at her own toes as if a miracle flower might bloom there and save her, and reached out.
Her movements were clumsy, rushed, with no rhythm. She scrubbed his back as if she could erase herself along with the water—and in her mind, she chanted like her life depended on it:
“Form is emptiness; emptiness is form. Sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness are likewise…”
Lin Qing Xuan felt the unskilled—nearly rough—pressure of her hand, and he heard her silent recitation looping, fragment by fragment. At the corner of his mouth, something lifted—a curve so faint it was almost nothing.
Reciting the Heart Sutra in front of the Buddhist Scion?
Truly… pointless.
He had the sudden urge to turn his head and see her expression.
The moment his shoulder shifted, Xiao Man reacted like a cat with its tail stepped on. She slapped a hand down on his shoulder, voice sharp with panic.
“Young Master, please do as you like—just don’t move! This servant… this servant has done what she should! Men and women should not touch! This servant takes leave!”
She flung the washcloth down and bolted out, a gust of pure terror and embarrassment. In her haste, she didn’t even set the towel down properly—she ran with it clenched in her fist as if it were evidence of a crime.
Lin Qing Xuan stiffened under her sudden grip, then listened as her footsteps fled away and that line—men and women should not touch—rang in the damp air.
Beneath the water, his fingers rolled a prayer bead soundlessly.
He leaned back against the tub wall and closed his eyes. In the white haze of steam, the faint curve at his mouth deepened by a hair.