Splash...
Water gushed from the spring and fell into the lotus pool.
On the platform above, the man lay and the woman sat, gradually falling silent until only their breathing remained.
Seeing Ye Jingtang close his eyes to rest, Hua Qingzhi could hardly disturb him again. She sat obediently on the edge of the wooden couch, admiring Panlong Cave's scenery by herself.
Magnificent though Panlong Cave's scenery was, it held not a trace of romance or warmth. Instead, it had something uncanny about it.
Thousands of bare-stemmed white lotuses stood motionless in the pool. The enormous Night-Shining Pearl overhead, like a moon, also shed a cold, clear light. It felt like sitting beside the river of the underworld, surrounded by spider lilies.
More frightening still, someone had just died here!
Huang Liansheng's headless corpse slowly drifted toward the pool's distant outlet. Unable to pass through with the water, it began bobbing up and down, barely visible.
"..."
Hua Qingzhi had never been particularly brave. After sitting there a while, she began feeling frightened. Her clothes were also soaked from their dive earlier, and sitting for so long made her cold.
Hugging her arms, Hua Qingzhi held out a little longer before looking around and finding two changes of clothing in a nearby cabinet. First, she draped one robe over Ye Jingtang's back, then asked softly:
"Young Master Ye, how long will you take to recover?"
Ye Jingtang recovered remarkably well, but while the external injuries Huang Liansheng had inflicted were minor, the near-total devastation inside and out from forcibly using the Mountain-Moving Diagram was not so easily healed.
After more than a dozen white lotus petals, the sword wound on Ye Jingtang's back had stopped bleeding and slowly begun to heal, but the sensation of needles piercing every part of