Blind Flower

The cliffs of Spirit Sword Peak were sheer as if carved by a blade, their precipices thrusting straight into the depths of the sea of clouds.

Su Miaoxi curled up on a protruding slab of bluestone at the cliff's edge. The noon sun had baked its surface scorching hot, searing her skin through her thin skirt.

She clutched a handful of smooth pebbles, staring at the rolling cloud-waves below, her eyes brimming with conflict and unwillingness.

One pebble after another fell from her fingertips into the sea of clouds. Each time she threw one, the girl's lips trembled as she breathed out a word, its helpless trailing note whirling in the mountain wind. "Go, don't go, go, don't go, go..."

That endlessly repeating murmur was like a butterfly trapped within a cocoon, fluttering futilely between hesitation and longing, grinding all the struggle in her heart into the howling wind at the cliffside.

The news that her second senior brother had returned to the sect was like fire scorching the tip of her heart.

Her first reaction had been to race toward Spirit Pool Peak, but when she recalled everything that had happened lately, her raised foot came down heavily once more.

Shen Yuxi's distant expression and the deliberate space he kept between them had all become sharp thorns, pricking her eyes until they burned.

She had been trying so, so hard to correct all her old little flaws. Whether it was her laziness during cultivation or her usual childish temper, she had been overcoming them bit by bit. Yet her second senior brother seemed unable to see any of it, always judging who she was now by his impression of who she had been.

What hurt her most was Shen Yuxi's stubborn conviction that she was in love with Eldest