Chapter 45
Chapter 45: The Secret in the Sutra
When the Third Princess’s beloved vase shattered into a field of fragments, Lin Yu Ning felt as if her soul had left her body.
Everyone knew her cousin—the Buddhist Scion—was cold and distant, untouched by dust, like an immortal fallen into the mortal world.
To ask him for his calligraphy?
It sounded harder than climbing to the heavens.
Lin Yu Ning had never asked him for anything before. She knew nothing about Buddhist teachings.
She only knew she was afraid of him.
By the time she returned to the Lin Manor, her mind was still a blur. She lingered outside the Auspicious Cloud Residence for a full half hour, circling like a moth around flame, before she finally gathered the courage to step inside.
In the courtyard beneath a bodhi tree, Lin Qing Xuan sat cross-legged in a pale monk’s robe, eyes closed, chanting scripture.
His features were refined as if painted—clean brows, high nose, thin lips pressed in stillness. A faint sandalwood scent hovered around him, pure and untouchable.
And yet the coldness radiating from him could have frozen breath in midair.
“C-cousin…” Lin Yu Ning’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, trembling with tears.
Lin Qing Xuan’s lashes fluttered. He opened his eyes.
They were deep, indifferent eyes—empty of emotion, like a god looking down from the clouds at something too small to matter.
One glance nearly sent Lin Yu Ning fleeing.
“What is it?” he asked.
His voice was clear as jade striking stone—and just as cold.
Lin Yu Ning’s legs shook. She forced herself to speak, stumbling through everything that had happened. By the end, her eyes were swimming, tears threatening to spill.
She braced herself to be dismissed.
Instead, Lin Qing Xuan listened in silence, then paused as if weighing the matter.
“Go to the inner study,” he said at last. “Take a scroll.”
Lin Yu Ning froze.
Then her head snapped up, disbelief widening her eyes.
He… agreed?
Joy crashed over her fear so abruptly she nearly choked on it.
“Th-thank you, Cousin! I’ll—”
“Xiao Man will take you,” he added, voice flat, as if the decision cost him nothing.
Then he closed his eyes again, returning to his chanting, as though he hadn’t spoken at all.
Lin Yu Ning ran.
Xiao Man was in the back courtyard, humming as she hung bedding to dry, when Lin Yu Ning burst in like a startled rabbit.
“Sister Xiao Man! Cousin—no, the Buddhist Scion—he told you to take me to the inner study to fetch a scripture!”
Xiao Man’s hands stilled.
The inner study?
That place was more forbidden than the palace’s restricted halls. Except for Lin Qing Xuan himself, not even a fly was supposed to enter.
And today he was letting Lin Yu Ning—the walking disaster—go in?
For a moment, Xiao Man wondered if the sun had truly risen in the west.
Still, she led Lin Yu Ning to the study.
The heavy rosewood door opened, and a clean blend of sandalwood and ink washed over them.
The room was simply furnished, but every detail felt restrained and expensive—the kind of quiet that pressed itself into the bones.
Beyond, the inner room held a towering wall of shelves packed tight with scripture scrolls.
Xiao Man dragged over a low stool from memory, climbed carefully, and reached for the topmost shelf.
She took down a Heart Sutra wrapped in cloud brocade, mounted with particular care.
She remembered this one. Lin Qing Xuan had completed it not long ago, his strokes so steady and luminous they seemed to carry a faint, calming power.
She held the scroll with both hands, turning to pass it to Lin Yu Ning—
The stool jolted.
Someone had bumped it.
Xiao Man’s footing slipped. The scroll flew from her hands and struck the floor.
It snapped open, white paper unfurling across the polished surface.
And as it spread, a palm-sized, yellowed talisman drifted out, spinning down like a dead leaf.
“Huh? What’s that?” Lin Yu Ning blurted, curiosity taking her before fear could stop her. She bent to pick it up.
“Don’t touch it!” Xiao Man’s shout cracked through the room.
She lunged, faster than Lin Yu Ning, and snatched the talisman first, crushing it in her fist.
Lin Yu Ning flinched, startled by the sudden fierceness, and pulled her hand back with an awkward pout.
“Fine. I won’t. Why are you yelling—”
Xiao Man didn’t hear her.
Her heart hammered as if it wanted to burst free.
Slowly, she opened her palm.
On the old talisman, five cinnabar characters blazed red as fresh blood:
Suppress the heart demon. Seal.
Xiao Man’s mind went blank—then exploded into noise.
This was meant for Tuan Tuan.
Wasn’t he the one who said he was Tuan Tuan, and Tuan Tuan was him?
So he’d been suppressing it all along.
So he’d been lying to her.
The realization split through her like ice.
She stood there, frozen, the truth cold enough to numb her fingertips—then her balance shifted.
In the scramble, her knee slammed hard into the base of the shelving behind her.
Click.
A faint mechanical sound turned inside the wall.
“Ah!” Lin Yu Ning shrieked and stumbled back, face blanching.
Before their eyes, the massive rosewood bookcase—so heavy it would take several strong men to move—shifted on its own, sliding half an inch.
A narrow, black gap opened between shelf and wall, deep as a wound.
Xiao Man had no time to react before thick, ink-black mist shot out of the gap like an arrow.
Tuan Tuan?
No.
This aura was a hundred—no, a thousand—times more terrifying.
The mist streaked across the room and vanished.
And in the next heartbeat—
“Nngh!”
Xiao Man’s body buckled.
It felt as if all her strength had been ripped away. She dropped to her knees, pain so sudden and violent it stole her breath.
Agony flooded up from the depths of her soul.
It wasn’t the clean pain of flesh. It was deeper—like a red-hot iron pressed against her spirit and ground back and forth until thought itself blurred.
Her ears rang. Darkness swam at the edges of her vision.
This wasn’t her pain.
It was empathic resonance.
That cursed, unbreakable empathic resonance tied between her and Lin Qing Xuan.
Xiao Man’s pupils tightened to pinpoints.
A thought so terrible it froze her blood struck clean through her.
Lin Qing Xuan… was in trouble.
At the same time, beneath the bodhi tree, Lin Qing Xuan’s fingers moved steadily over a strand of prayer beads when, without warning, the string snapped.
One hundred and eight bodhi seeds scattered across the ground, clattering like rain on stone.
His eyes flew open.
Color drained from his face in an instant, leaving him pale as paper.
He clutched his chest.
A mouthful of blood burst from him, staining his pale robe a shocking red.
Pain crashed over him like a violent tide, swallowing everything.
His mind blurred, consciousness tearing at the edges.
But one thought rose with brutal clarity:
The heart demon he had suppressed for so long—worn down day after day with scripture and discipline—had escaped again.
And the empathic resonance he had sealed away from Xiao Man would open once more, dragging his pain across that bond and branding it onto her…