Up on the porch of the flying courtyard, Gu Changsheng set down his teapot and watched the cold well-water do its work. One splash of plain mountain water and a ninety-nine-percent harem halo washes off like cheap greasepaint, Gu Changsheng thought deadpan. No wonder webnovel protagonists never wash their faces in cold water.
Water dripped off the tip of Saintess Lin Qing’s nose and hit the unsealed parchment with a soft plip.
For three heartbeats, the proud Rank 5 Early Saintess of the Frost-Moon Clan stood frozen at the signing pedestal. Her chest rose and fell in ragged gasps as every single memory from the past seven days replayed inside her newly sober mind—without the pink peach-blossom filter.
She remembered how Holy Son Chu Tian had “accidentally” bumped into her carriage outside Sky-Border Pass, reciting a stolen four-line poem about snow and moonlight while blowing pink dust from his fan.
She remembered how, within ten minutes of inhaling that dust, her lifelong vigilance had turned to mush. She had knelt by his stirrup, wept over his fake cough, and promised to bring him the Frost-Moon Clan’s sole survival spirit vein as a “token of pure friendship.”
Worst of all, she remembered five minutes ago—when her beloved Second Uncle Lin Shan. The old man who had gone hungry during the Great Northern Blizzard to give her his last bowl of millet gruel, had begged her on his bleeding knees to stop. She had slapped three of his teeth out for a…
