Volume Five: "Wine-flushed, I drew my sword and struck the earth in song" - An icy grace, beguiling to the bone: whose pure soul would she devour?

When the three of them returned to Thousand Birds Cliff, the newest member of Four Seas Hall, Miss Kou Xueyi, went to the spring flowing between the rocks and washed the grime from her face with its chilly water.

Only after she had washed away all that dust did the young hall master who had just taken her in discover what a lovely face the haze of soot had concealed! She was a woman in distress whom he had met by chance and rescued almost in passing.

Speaking of it, the few girls Xing Yan had come to know-Ju Ying, Lingyi, and little Qiong Rong, who was still a child-were all among the finest beauties in the world. In the past, he had scarcely given it a thought, assuming that most women were much the same. Only after entering Shangqing Palace, climbing Mount Luofu, and seeing its many young female disciples did Xing Yan realize that even Du Ziheng and Huang Ran, who drew every eye in the palace, fell considerably short of the girls he knew. Though the difference was not quite that between the ugly Dong Shi and the beautiful Xi Shi, neither was it a case of Diao Chan and Zhaojun, each possessing her own timeless charms.

As the saying went, once one had seen the vast ocean, lesser waters could no longer impress. To Xing Yan now, however beautiful other women might be, how could they compare to even half the beauty of Ju Ying or Lingyi? All the more so when the woman washing her face before him was merely an ordinary girl he had happened upon beside a field and rescued along the way.

With such thoughts in mind, when Kou Xueyi washed herself in the waters of Cold Spring and revealed her fresh,