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Chapter 13: Lessons in the Jade Bath
🕑 Added 2025-07-09 01:22:20 +0000 UTCThe steam swirled, thick and fragrant. Wei Yao sank her body into the pool's hot water, and a sigh of pure relief escaped her lips. Every muscle, tense from the confrontation with her father, seemed to dissolve in the heat. This was her sanctuary, her only fortress of solitude in the entire palace. The private bathhouse was a work of art in white marble, as large as a lesser lord's audience hall. The only sound was the gentle murmur of water falling from a jade dragon sculpture on the far wall. The air smelled of the lotus flowers floating on the surface, their scent soothing the frayed edges of her soul.
She closed her eyes and let her body float, abandoning the day's tension. Her father's fury, Jin Tian's arrogance, the weight of the impending duel… it all seemed to fade into the perfumed mist. For the first time all day, she allowed herself to be just Yao'er, a tired woman seeking a moment of peace.
"Hmm. It could use a bit more amethyst salt," a lazy, familiar voice resonated beside her, far too close. "It helps relax the meridians. Though I must admit, the water is a rather decent temperature."
Wei Yao let out a startled gasp that was almost a choked scream. Water splashed violently around her as she spun, instinctively covering her chest with her arms. Her heart, once calm, now hammered against her ribs like a war drum.
"Uncle?!" she hissed, her voice a trembling mixture of shock and fury.
At the other end of the large pool, lounging against the marble edge as if it were his personal throne, was her uncle, Wei Feng. He was utterly at ease, submerged to his chest, an expression of blissful relaxation on his face. Two perfectly cut cucumber slices rested on his closed eyes.
The image was so surreal, so utterly ridiculous, that her initial fear evaporated, replaced by a monumental exasperation.
"How in the hell did you get in here?" she demanded, her voice a furious whisper so as not to alert the guards outside.
Wei Feng didn’t remove the cucumbers. He simply raised a hand and waved lazily in her direction. "Doors are for people without imagination, dear niece. Besides, your guard is surprisingly easy to distract with a thirty-year-old bottle of rice wine. You should consider upgrading your staff."
"My guards are the elite!" she protested.
"Were," he corrected. "Now they're two very happy men napping behind the peony bushes. I did you a favor. If I could get in, anyone could." He adjusted one of the cucumbers. "Now, if you don't mind, I was in the middle of a very important beauty treatment. The stress of state affairs causes terrible wrinkles."
Wei Yao stared at him, dumbfounded. The man's audacity was cosmic in scale. She remained silent for a moment, water trickling from her hair, unsure whether to scream, laugh, or simply sink and drown to escape the madness.
He finally sighed, a sound of profound regret, and removed the cucumbers from his eyes. He let them fall into the water, where they floated like two strange green boats. He opened his eyes and looked at her; the laziness in them was replaced by an expression of genuine, sharp appreciation.
"Though the real reason I came," he said, his tone shifting, "is to congratulate my favorite niece."
"I'm your only niece," she retorted dryly.
"And yet you're still my favorite. A remarkable achievement," he said with a grin. "I heard echoes of a battle down the halls. I was told my elder brother tried to roar like a dragon, and you answered by tearing out his fangs with pure, cold logic. Masterful." He chuckled softly, a low sound that echoed over the water. "For a moment, I almost felt proud. Almost."
As he spoke, he began to swim lazily toward her. Not with an athlete's stroke, but with the languid movement of a water snake, barely disturbing the surface. The atmosphere in the bath changed instantly. The comedy dissipated, replaced by the same charged intimacy they had shared in the Empress's chambers. When he reached her side, the water swirled around them, the heat from his body close to hers. Wei Yao felt a knot in her stomach, a mix of nervousness and an anticipation that infuriated and excited her in equal measure.
His hands slid under the water and gently took her by the waist, drawing her toward him until their bodies nearly touched in the weightlessness of the bath.
"Don't cover yourself," he whispered, his eyes fixed on hers as he gently pulled her arms away from her chest. "Not with me."
His hands rested on her back and waist, holding her. To her, it was just a touch. To him, it was a diagnosis.
Strong, he thought, as his Resonant Touch felt the torrent of pure power flowing through her meridians. Pure as dragon steel forged in the heart of a star. Shuyin's blood and mine… a terrifying combination. But steel is rigid. Brittle. It shatters if struck at the right angle. She needs to learn to be like water, which appears to yield but conquers all. She needs my guidance.
His gaze turned serious, the amusement vanishing completely. "That Golden Sword peacock is no match for you, Yao'er. His cultivation is impressive for his age, but his foundation is unstable. He's a tall building constructed on sand. Yours is built on dragon rock."
She looked at him, surprised by the sudden seriousness in his tone.
"But," he continued, his voice a low whisper, "even a peacock can have a sharp feather if you're careless. His arrogance is his fundamental weakness, and I will teach you how to use it so he stabs himself with it. The duel is in a month. It's not much time." He leaned closer, his lips almost brushing against hers. "Let me train you."
Wei Yao's first instinct was to scoff. A sarcasm as sharp as ice welled up in her mind.
You, train me? she thought. The great Prince Wei Feng, the palace's drunken ghost? What are you going to teach me? How to sleep until noon? How to distinguish between thirty different types of plum liqueur? Or perhaps how to sneak cucumbers into a princess's bathhouse?
She opened her mouth, ready to unleash a biting remark that would put him in his place, that would re-establish the distance between the diligent heir and the useless uncle.
But just as the words were about to escape, a memory struck her with the force of a lightning bolt. It wasn't her own, but the story she had been told. Her mother's voice, cold and bitter, echoed in her mind:
…he was a prodigy the likes of which the world hadn't seen in a thousand years… …he reached the Core Forging Realm when others were barely forming their Sea of Consciousness… …the embodiment of a dragon's will… righteous, disciplined, with a warrior's spirit…
The image of the lazy vagrant before her superimposed itself over the legend of the absolute genius her mother had described with such pain. The drunkard and the prodigy. The hedonist and the martial ascetic. The failure and the fallen god.
The contradiction was so violent it left her breathless. The sarcastic comment died on her lips, choked by the magnitude of the revelation. This man wasn't just the drunkard he pretended to be. He was… something more. Something the world had forgotten, but that she now knew.
The disbelief on her face was replaced by an absolute confidence. She no longer saw the useless uncle. She saw the only man who, according to her mother, had refined the Founder's Decree. The only man who had laughed in the face of power and chosen his own path. The only man who had defended her.
She looked into his eyes, and for the first time, she saw not a troublesome relative, but an enigma of unfathomable power.
"I accept," she said, her voice firm and clear, without a hint of doubt. And then, she added the word that sealed it all, the word that acknowledged the hidden truth behind the farce: "Master."
The tension in the air broke. A slow, genuine smile of pure satisfaction spread across Wei Feng's face. It was the smile of a gambler who had just won an impossible bet.
"Excellent," he said, his tone becoming light and playful again. His hand, which had been resting respectfully on her waist, slid down with brazen familiarity and began to massage one of her buttocks with playful audacity.
Wei Yao flinched, her face instantly turning red. "Uncle!"
"Yes, student?" he replied innocently, though his fingers continued their work. "The first lesson is tomorrow at dawn, in the western training courtyard. Don't be late. And bring snacks. Preferably the red bean cakes from the southern kitchen. Training a genius like you makes me terribly hungry."
He pulled away from her and swam on his back toward the edge of the pool with the same laziness with which he had arrived. He leaned back again and, after finding his floating cucumber slices, placed them back over his eyes, as if the most important conversation of his niece's life had been nothing more than a brief interruption to his spa routine.
This will be fun, he thought, as the heat of the water and the darkness behind the cucumbers relaxed him. Watching her unleash her true power… that will be a sight to behold.
A small sigh escaped his lips. Although, he mused, it would be much more fun with a glass of that thousand-year-old wine Meng is always talking about. Patience, Feng, patience. The finest pleasures, like training a future dragon empress, require careful planning.
