At first, Jianheng had rationalised it as a pure, martial rivalry.

The cook had insulted the Sword Peak.

The cook had claimed his Dao of the Iron Wok was superior.

It was Jianheng’s duty to crush him in the arena and prove the blade’s supremacy!

But as the days passed, the nature of his obsession had warped, twisting into something dark, hot, and intensely, horrifyingly shameful.

When Jianheng closed his eyes at night, he didn’t imagine disarming Ji’an in the arena.

He imagined disarming her, stepping into her guard, and forcing her to yield.

He imagined the feeling of her slender wrists pinned beneath his hands. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

He imagined the way those arrogant, silver-flecked eyes would widen in shock, the way that sharp tongue would falter, the way her breath would hitch if he leaned in and...

Jianheng’s face flushed a brilliant, bright crimson, the heat completely banishing the chill of the blizzard.

Damn it!

’He is a man!’ Jianheng’s orthodox, rigid upbringing screamed at him, a wave of guilt and panic washing over his soul. ’I am the heir to the Sword Peak! I am expected to marry a peerless maiden, to continue a pristine bloodline! To harbor such depraved, cut-sleeve desires for a fellow disciple... for a boy... it is a corruption of my Dao! It is a sickness!’

But the sickness felt good compared to the reality he was being forced to face.

The thought of Ji’an, the phantom warmth of her proximity, the fiery, undeniable life force she radiated, called to his soul with a magnetism his orthodox teachings could not suppress.

His Yang energy surged, seeking the complementary Yin that Ji’an unknowingly released.

His body knew she was his perfect match, even as his mind tortured him with the taboo of homosexuality.

Jianheng gripped the hilt of his embedded sword, his knuckles turning white.

’Even if it was a sickness, I wish I didn’t have to find the cure. No, I don’t want the cure,’ the Sword Lord resolved, a dark shadow falling over his sharp features. ’I wish I didn’t have to care what the elders say. I don’t care if the entire sect shuns me. He challenged me, stepped into my arena. That makes him mine to conquer. And when I break his spatula... I will claim the hand that wields it.’

.

.

.

Miles away from the orthodox peaks, in a subterranean training labyrinth completely devoid of light, Mo Wuchen moved.

He was the ghost of the Shadow Peak.

He possessed no grand, booming techniques.

He mastered the unseen blade of the fatal strike delivered from the dark.

To master the shadows, one had to become the shadow, devoid of attachment, devoid of presence, devoid of emotion.

Wuchen hung upside down from the ceiling of the cavern, his legs wrapped around a stalactite, completely suspended in the pitch-black void.

He was regulating his heartbeat, slowing it down to one beat every ten seconds, erasing his life signature.

He was supposed to be visualizing the anatomy of his next target.

Instead, he was visualizing the line of Lin Ji’an’s neck.

Wuchen’s eyes opened in the dark.

They were entirely black, acclimated to the absence of light.

As the master of shadows, Wuchen had spent countless hours watching people when they thought they were alone.

He had watched the other disciples train.

He had watched the elders scheme.

And, inevitably, he had watched the cook.

He had hidden in the canopy of the peach trees on the Drunken Peak, watching Ji’an work.

He had watched the way her slender, yet surprisingly strong arms handled the heavy iron wok.

He had watched the way she hummed to herself when she thought no one was listening.

He had seen the soft, unguarded expressions that the arrogant young master never showed the world.

Wuchen had always preferred to watch from a distance.

Observation was safe.

Interaction was a liability.

But watching Lin Ji’an from a distance was no longer enough.

The quiet, passive observation had slowly, insidiously mutated into a desperate, gnawing hunger.

The shadows around Wuchen felt cold and empty.

He remembered the blinding, vibrant heat of the kitchen.

He remembered the smell of the food, the undeniable gravity of her existence.

’I am a creature of the dark,’ Wuchen thought, his slowed heartbeat giving a sudden, painful, erratic flutter. ’And he is the sun. If I get too close, I’ll get burned with his dazzling light.’

He knew it was wrong.

He was an assassin; he was not meant to crave the light, let alone covet the young male heir of a Sovereign Peak.

The societal implications of a male-male relationship meant absolutely nothing to Wuchen; the shadows judged no one, but the intensity of the desire terrified his disciplined mind.

The urge was not romantic.

It was entirely, darkly possessive.

He didn’t want to court Ji’an.

He wanted to steal her.

He imagined slipping into her room at night, wrapping her in a cloak of shadows, and spiriting her away to a place where the loud, obnoxious Golden Retriever and the terrifying Ice Demon could never find her.

He wanted to keep her in his dark, silent world, the only source of warmth in his endless night.

’Just mine,’ Wuchen whispered to the empty cavern, a dark, obsessive possessiveness wrapping around his soul like a chain. ’I will tie him with shadows. The sun belongs to the night.’

*

*

*

In the desolate, cracked wastelands of the Northern Demonic Expanse, the sky was a permanent, bruised shade of purple.

The air was toxic, filled with the miasma of ancient wars and the lingering malice of slaughtered gods.

Yan Xuanye, the supreme sovereign of the demonic factions, sat upon a throne carved from the obsidian bones of a subjugated titan.

He was a being of terrifying power, draped in bright red robes that many men find hard to wear confidently.

His eyes were like twin supernovas trapped in a void, radiating a crushing authority that forced his demon generals to keep their faces pressed firmly to the ash-covered floor.