"You are a menace, Brother!" Ji’an hissed, rubbing the back of her neck. "What is wrong with you?! You can’t just pick people up by the neck in front of the Emperor! I am not a toddler! I am sixteen years old!"

Lin Feng didn’t immediately reply.

He slowly walked around the edge of the pavilion, his heavy boots making no sound on the wooden floor.

He reached up, unclasping the heavy, silver-scaled cape from his armor, tossing it casually over the railing. He looked out over the moonlit lake, his broad back turned to her.

Without the blaring lights of the banquet hall, the sheer, imposing reality of his physical presence was overwhelming.

He wasn’t just tall; he was built like a fortress. The silver scars on his neck and jaw caught the moonlight.

"Sixteen," Lin Feng murmured, his voice incredibly soft, drifting over the quiet water.

He turned around slowly. The stoic, unreadable mask he had worn for the Emperor was entirely gone.

The look in his dark, silver-flecked eyes was so heavy with unspoken knowledge that Ji’an’s anger evaporated instantly, replaced once again by that cold, creeping dread.

"Time sure flies, doesn’t it? I still remember, when I left for the Northern Barrens, you were barely six years old," Lin Feng said, taking a slow step toward the table. "You were small, fragile. You jumped at shadows, and you could not look a servant in the eye without trembling."

He placed his large, leather-gloved hands flat on the stone table, leaning forward.

"I spent ten years in the freezing mud, dreaming of returning to protect you. I spent all these years terrified that the woman who called herself our mother would finally crush the last spark of light in your eyes."

He tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over Ji’an’s face, tracing the sharp, arrogant set of her jaw, the relaxed, combative posture of her shoulders, and the undeniable, vibrant, fiercely confident aura that radiated from her very pores.

"And yet," Lin Feng whispered, a dark, incredibly complex smile touching his lips. "I return to find that the fragile little bird has burned the cage to the ground. You joined an orthodox sect, spar with the War God, wield a sword with the heavy, bloody sorrow of a veteran who has seen the end of the world."

He leaned closer, the distance between them shrinking to a mere few feet across the stone table.

"Tell me," Lin Feng demanded, his voice dropping into a low, intimate register. "Who are you? And what have you done with the weeping child I left behind?"

The silence in the pavilion was absolute.

Ji’an’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her breath hitched.

The jig was up and had been strapped to a rocket and fired into the sun.

Lin Feng was not an idiot. He was a master tactician.

He had spent his entire life protecting the original host. He knew every single nuance of her personality.

The trauma, the fear, the submissiveness.

And looking at the fierce, foul-mouthed, spatula-wielding chef standing before him, he knew with absolute, irrefutable certainty that the soul inside the body was fundamentally, intrinsically different. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

’He knows,’ Ji’an panicked, her mind racing through a thousand desperate excuses. ’Should I lie? Should I tell him a demon possessed me? Should I tell him the cultivation technique altered my personality? Or should I jump into the lotus lake and try to swim to a different continent?’

"I..." Ji’an started, her voice cracking slightly. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to stand tall. "I grew up, Big Brother Feng. People change when they leave the estate. I had to learn how to survive."

It was a weak excuse, and they both knew it.

Lin Feng stared at her for a long moment.

And then, unexpectedly, he laughed.

It wasn’t a cruel laugh, or a mocking one. It was a deep, rich, genuinely amused rumble that shook his broad chest.

He pushed off the table, standing up to his full, towering height.

"You grew up," Lin Feng repeated, shaking his head slowly, a dark spark of sheer fascination lighting up his eyes. "A remarkable transformation. Truly miraculous."

He walked slowly around the table, completely ignoring her defensive posture, until he was standing right in front of her.

Ji’an held her ground, refusing to step back, though she had to crane her neck to look up at him.

"Do you think me a fool, little bird?" Lin Feng murmured, looking down at her.

He reached out, not grabbing her neck this time, but resting his hand gently, heavily, on the top of her head.

"A terrified child does not learn to swing a sword with the weight of a thousand dead souls simply because she joined a sect," he whispered, his thumb lightly stroking her dark hair. "A fragile noble does not look at the Imperial Second Prince with the bored irritation of a chef swatting a fly. The fire in your eyes... it is not the fire of my little sister."

Ji’an swallowed hard. "Then what are you going to do? Are you going to tell Father? Are you going to call the Imperial Exorcists to burn the demon out of your sibling’s body?"

Lin Feng’s hand stilled on her head.

His expression darkened, the amusement vanishing, replaced by something so profoundly, overwhelmingly intense that it made Ji’an’s breath catch.

"Exorcists?" Lin Feng breathed, the word tasting like poison on his tongue.

He leaned down, his face hovering mere inches from hers. The smell of cold iron and pine enveloped her entirely.

"You think I would let anyone touch you?" he whispered fiercely, his eyes burning with a possessiveness that rivaled Xiao Yichen’s madness and Xie Wangchen’s icy obsession combined.

"Besides, Rest assured, you aren’t a demon or anything," Lin Feng vowed, his voice a low, rough rumble that vibrated straight through her chest. "The weeping child I left behind is gone. But what has replaced her..."