Ultimate Villain's Return as a Doctor in the Cultivation World-Chapter 150 - Let the Man Have Fire

The village path was half an hour.

The mountain air at dawn had the clean cold of high elevation and the specific spiritual density of a purified geography—the herbs in the cave’s surrounding area were still at work, the decades-old contamination fully cleared, the ambient qi of the mountain noticeably richer than it had been before Cang had arrived and begun his systematic dismantlement of two thousand years of dragon-qi corruption.

Wei Lingyue’s formation-sight read it as she walked.

"The spiritual density here is—" She paused. "This is the output of a Nascent Soul-grade purification event. This entire mountain zone has been cleansed."

"I had time," he said.

"This would have taken a sect’s full elder board eighteen months," she said.

"I had good herbs," he said.

She looked at the path and the mountain and the specific quality of air that had been cleaned by someone who had decided to clean it, and filed this in the category she had been building since the Trial: ’things he says were expedient that were not expedient.’

The village clearing came into view around the final bend.

It announced itself by qi signature first—the ambient output of multiple women at various cultivation stages, layered and complex in the way of a space that had been lived in—and then visually, and then by the specific stillness that fell when everyone in the clearing registered his approach simultaneously and stopped what they were doing.

Lianhua was the first sound.

"’He’s here,’"—directed at the cave, the fox-kin’s sensory advantage giving her the qi-read thirty seconds before anyone else—and then the clearing reorganized itself into the social geometry of nine women who have been waiting and have now received the thing they were waiting for and are managing their individual responses with varying degrees of success.

He came around the last tree.

Chen Yun and Wei Lingyue were three steps behind him.

The clearing looked at the three of them.

And then Lianhua’s silver eyes found Chen Yun and Wei Lingyue and the expression on her face performed the full sequence—recognition, assessment, the specific re-reading of a situation she thought she had already read—and arrived at a conclusion.

"’There are more,’" she said.

Not to him—to the clearing, to Zhen Ying specifically, the silver eyes delivering a flat communiqué that said: ’I was right and now we’re all looking at the evidence.’

Zhen Ying was already looking.

The silver-grey eyes of the serpent matriarch read Chen Yun and Wei Lingyue with the comprehensive assessment of a three-hundred-year-old Nascent Soul cultivator who has been doing baseline reads of everything in her environment since before most of these people were born, and the read completed in approximately two seconds.

The full results of it were visible in the single horizontal line her mouth became.

"’Trial,’" she said.

"Yes," he said.

"’Both.’"

"Yes," he said.

Madam Lin, from the cooking area doorway, with twelve weeks of pregnancy giving her posture a particular deliberateness: "’He said there would be a few.’"

Song Mei, her hands over her mouth: "’There are two.’"

"’Two is a few,’" Suyin said, from the household tablet, with the specific tone of a maid who is maintaining records and is not going to editorialize.

"’Two is not a few,’" Zhang Yue said, from the south side of the clearing, both hands around her tea cup, the expression of a sister who has been away for a month on a revenge mission and has returned to find the population of the household has increased by twenty-two percent. "’Two is two. A few implies—’"

"’Sit down, everyone,’" Cang said.

They sat.

Not all at once—the social gravity of the clearing doing the work, each woman finding a position relative to the fire pit with the organizational logic of people who have been living in close proximity and have developed implicit understandings about spatial arrangement.

Zhen Ying to his right. The First Wife’s position, occupied without discussion.

Lianhua to his left. The position she always took, occupied with the silver-eyed quality of someone who is not going to be argued out of it.

Song Mei beside Lianhua, Xiao Hua beside Song Mei. Suyin and Xiao the maid slightly back, the maid posture of people who are present and attending and are not claiming a position in the social hierarchy of the gathering.

Madam Lin across from him, the deliberate seated posture of a woman who has decided that the view from directly opposite is the correct view for this conversation.

Zhang Yue beside Madam Lin. Liling beside Zhang Yue.

Chen Yun and Wei Lingyue did not immediately sit. They stood behind him at the three-step distance that had become their default, and the clearing looked at them standing there—two women at Nascent Soul Early, one with a demon sword and one with a crown, both with the specific quality of people who have been in a sealed cave for thirty-three hours with a man and have emerged with new cultivation stages and new understandings and have not yet decided where they fit in the geography they have arrived at.

Wei Lingyue sat.

She chose the position adjacent to him on the left of Lianhua with the composed precision of a woman who has read the room’s formation geometry and has identified the correct placement.

Lianhua looked at this.

Wei Lingyue looked back with the grey eyes that had stopped performing anything approximately thirty-three hours ago.

The clearing was very quiet.

Chen Yun sat on the other side, the demon sword resting across her knees, her dark eyes moving across every woman in the clearing with the inventory of a sword cultivator assessing a new operational environment.

"’Who is your favorite?’"

Lianhua. Directly. The specific directness of a fox-kin woman who has been sitting with this question since the previous evening and has decided that sitting with it further is less efficient than asking it out loud.

The clearing received this.

Song Mei pressed both hands over her mouth.

Xiao Hua took a breath.

Suyin wrote something on her tablet.

Zhang Yue looked at her tea cup with the expression of someone who is glad to have an object to look at.

Liling observed.

Madam Lin said nothing, which was the loudest thing in the clearing.

Cang looked at the fire.

"I don’t rank," he said.

"’That’s an evasion,’" Lianhua said.

"It’s accurate," he said.

"’You have a first. You have people you go to first and people you returned to first and people you—’"

"Lianhua," he said.

"’What.’"

"Your position is what it is," he said. "The same way Zhen Ying’s is what it is. The same way theirs are what they are." He looked at the fire. "I know who each of you is to me. You know it too. Ranking it doesn’t change it."

"’I was first,’" Zhen Ying said. Not loud. The flat, settled certainty of a woman who has decided that this fact is simply a fact and requires no additional performance to remain true. "’First Wife. That is a position. That is mine.’"

"’I was in the cave first,’" Lianhua said.

"’The cave and the mountain were different events,’" Zhen Ying said.

"’I preceded you by—’"

"’Geography is not—’"

"’Both of you,’" Madam Lin said.

Both women looked at her.

Madam Lin had the specific quality of presence that came from being the person in the clearing who had held a household together during the years Lin Feng was gone, who had raised a child alone, who had lived the version of strength that had no cultivation stage behind it—just the ordinary gravity of a woman who had decided her people were worth holding together.

She looked at Lianhua.

She looked at Zhen Ying.

"’He’s here now,’" she said. "’You’re all here now. Let the man sit by his fire.’"