Chapter 18 - Li Moxue

Hidden Shadow Market, Thousand Flowers Building

Inside the red light district of the Hidden Shadow Market was a six-stories pagoda. It was magnificient, being of beautiful red and golden colors.

It was the Thousand Flowers Building, one of the three branches of the Yin Flame Pavillion in the Hidden Shadow Market.

The Thousand Flowers Building is a high-class brothel. All the women inside are cultured, witty and intelligent, knowledgable of chess, arts and charm techniques, talented, and most importantly, beautiful.

Its first floor is dedicated to a stage where the many women, the 'thousand flowers' of the building, display various performances, from singing, playing the zither, the guzhen or the pipa, sword dancing, etc.

Then from the second to the fifth floor are rooms where people can exclusively spend time with the women they rented for the night.

However, the clients can never indulge in sexual intercourse with the women of this building, as they only sell their arts.

Sexual intercourse and dual cultivation are services provided in another branch of the Yin Flame Pavillion.

As for the sixth floor of the Building, it is dedicated to the office of the Elder deployed in the Hidden Shadow Market and the residences of the Pavillion Daughters that come to the Hidden Shadow Market for training.

Today, in the Elder's Office of the Thousand Flowers Pavillion, a beautiful woman sat alone, cross-legged, on a silk cushion.

She wore a white hanfu embroidered with bediviling red spider-lily patterns that hugged her slender and lithe body and her generous figure.

Her face was oval-shaped with pale skin, smooth and soft like the most respendescent of white jades.

Her hair was white like snow and shined like the Lunar Star. It was let down, falling on her back down to her waist like silky rays of moonlight.

Her eyebrows were like willows, her features velvety, and her eyes shaped like immortal phoenixes.

But those eyes, with shapes as beautiful as they were, had pupils and irises with only black for colour, dark like the void, empty of appearing emotions.

Her temperament was restrained, hidden under layers of deliberate concealment. Like a fairy falling from the heavens to the mortal world, like a beautiful flower resting at the top of a mountain peak.

She was Li Moxue, the Eldest Daughter of the Yin Flame Pavillion.

Her eyelashes fluttered as she finished her cultivation. 'After having opened the Twelve Primary Meridians, I finally established my Spiritual Sea... This is the Peak of the Foundation Establishment Realm.'

She looked inwards, inside her Dantian, gazing at the grand Sea of ghostly and cold icy blue Yin Qi, so cold it appeared to be liquid ice instead of water.

Spreading inside her body were thousands of Qi Vessels and twelve iridescent pathways of energy, the Meridians. Instead of connecting the Dantian with Heaven and Earth like Yu Weiyuan's Meridians, they were like reservoirs for sinister resentment that continuously tempered the Yin Qi she had refined with her Yin Flames.

She looked lower, examining her crotch area where three flames, burning with icy blue color, floated within her body.

But a bit higher, she could see an intact womb with a complete hymen, protected by a layer of potent Yin energy. It was Primordial Yin.

'I must NEVER let the Mothers of the Pavillion discover this.' Her black eyes, which were empty like the void shook in anxiety as she imagined what the Pavillion Elders, which were called Mothers within the Sect, would do to her if they learned of her intact womb.

After all, having the ability to bear children was a taboo in the Yin Flame Pavillion. After spending thousands of years without it, the tradition of adoption had become anchored deeply within the Pavillion, so deeply a hate for childbearing slowly took root within the sect's ideology.

But Li Moxue hated this.

Today, She was nineteen years old.

Nine years ago, she had been the pampered young daughter of a wealthy merchant. She lived happily, with loving and harmonious parents.

When her mother became pregnant for a second time, Li Moxue thought she became more beautiful than before. Her smile became more motherly and the innocent little Li Moxue thought she became warmer when she interacted with her.

She then asked her: "Mother, why are you more beautiful?"

Her mother answered: "You will understand when you become a mother."

Ever since then, Li Moxue hoped to make a family as warm as hers, and one day give birth a cute daughter or a healthy boy to raise.

She was someone simple, with a simple family and simple dreams.

Someone who should have never become involved in the cultivation world.

Unfortunately, when Li Moxue was kidnapped by the Mothers of the Yin Flame Pavillion, she learnt that she was cursed with a talent, a talent she never wanted.

A Heaven Spiritual Root. And the Three Yin Sacred Body.

The Three Yin Sacred Body was a peculiar physique excusively possessed by women.

When a woman was born with this physique, she owned three Primordial Yins instead of one. Moreover, her Yin energy will be stronger and more condensed, making her a more perfect cauldron but also an excellent cultivator of the Yin Dao.

When the Yin Flame Pavillion discovered her innate physique, they immediately established her as the Eldest Daughter of the Pavillion, the equivalent of the Prime Disciple of the Profound Heaven Sect or the Head Disciple of the Divine Sword Mountain Sect.

With their teachings, she managed to ignite her three Primordial Yins into powerful Yin Flames that allowed her to cultivate the [Yin Flame Manual] even faster, allowing her to progress quickly, even somewhat approaching the prowess of the Immortal Spiritual Root, as today's Li Moxue is on the cusp of breaking through the Golden Core Realm at nineteen years old, one year later than Yu Weiyuan.

But through these nine years of non-stop cultivation, Li Moxue had to hide one thing. Each time she formed a Yin Flame, her womb was protected by her remaining Primordial Yins.

But when she was forced to form her third and supposedly last Yin Flame by the Mothers of the Pavillion, her womb stayed completely intact.

Her Three Yin Sacred Body had mutated. Instead of three Primordial Yins, she had been blessed with four. Her fourth Primordial Yin had protected her womb.

The then ten years-old Li Moxue was elated: she could still have childrens of her own. She could still have her own little family.

But she had to hide. She had to hide her body from being probed and investigated, keep herself from showing to much of her emotions, avoid revealing hints and raising doubts...

Thus, she developped this cold persona. She forced her own personality down to not show any gap. She curbed down her emotions, leaving her heart empty and her black eyes void of sentiments.

All for her little childhood dream.

Suddenly, the door to the office opened and an elegant middle-aged woman wearing dark-purple robes with a black flower pattern entered the room.

"Moxue, prepare to receive some distinguished guests."

Li Moxue crisp and charming voice resounded, her tone emotionless. "To whom must we owe the pleasure?"

"The Profound Heaven Sect." The elegant woman answered promptly. "Its new Sect Master, the Killing Star, Yu Weiyuan and two of his Elders along with the Sword Princess Lu Ai."

"Make sure to act accordingly."

From Li Moxue's empty eyes appeared a hint of surprise as she heard who the 'distinguished guest' was.

Yu Weiyuan, the youngest Nascent Soul Realm cultivator of the world. The twenty-five years old Sect Master of the Profound Heaven Sect.

Someone capable of slaying Divine Transformation Elders at the Early Stage of the Nascent Soul Realm.

The Killing Star, a mighty cultivator with Murderous Qi capable of covering the skies and overturning the Earth.

She nodded her head in response to the elegant woman.

"Yes, Mother Lu."