When Liu Shiye returned home that evening, the sky had already deepened into a dusky violet, the horizon still holding the last dying embers of sunset over the open steppe. Smoke from cooking fires drifted lazily through the camp, and the distant murmur of clan life carried softly on the wind.
Inside his home, lanterns had already been lit.
The first thing Liu Shiye noticed was the change. The tea table had been replaced with a better one, its polished surface reflecting the warm lantern light. A ceramic vase holding fresh wildflowers rested in the center of the room.
Small details. But intentional ones. He paused for half a breath as his eyes took in the space. Then he stepped fully inside.
Liu Mingfei emerged from the inner room almost immediately, her expression composed as always, though her gaze searched his face carefully.
"You returned later than usual," she said.
"Business dragged on for a bit." He replied.
Her eyes flicked toward the small bundles tied at his waist, then toward the room.
"I made a few purchases."
"I see that." His tone was neutral.
Too neutral. She hesitated briefly before stepping closer, "I also prepared something for you."
From the table she lifted a small wrapped package and placed it before him. Liu Shiye looked at it but did not reach for it immediately.
A gift. From Mingfei, His mind turned quietly.
He slowly untied the wrapping. Inside were several items. A bag of iron sand. Two jars of herbal mixtures. A bottle of pills. And a folded parchment.
His eyes moved over the contents with calm scrutiny.
"Where did you get these?" he asked curiously.
"The Medicine Hall." She assured him, aware of his concerns.
He opened the parchment and read the instructions written by Master He.
Purification baths. Iron sand tempering. Balanced Yin and Yang supplementation. For someone with a Zhengqi constitution influenced by water affinity.
He folded the paper again. Liu Shiye's gaze slowly lifted to Mingfei as he spoke, "You went through considerable effort."
"It seemed… appropriate." she replied.
He studied her quietly. Then he smiled faintly.
"Tell me," he said, "what did the medicine keeper say about the person you were purchasing these for?"
Mingfei did not falter.
"He said purification must be balanced. Too much Yang would burn the meridians. Too much Yin would cause stagnation."
"And you thought of me."
"Yes."
He let a silence settle. A long one. Enough that Mingfei felt the subtle pressure of it. He distrusted her and she knew it. But how could she fault him. Finally he nodded once.
"These will be useful." He said.
That was all. But something inside Mingfei relaxed slightly.
He had accepted them. It was a start.
"If you are interested," he said calmly, as he set the items aside and stood, "I can show you how these treatments work."
Mingfei blinked slightly.
"You mean… now?"
"Yes."
From a corner of the room he pulled forward a wooden mannequin carved roughly into the shape of a human body. Small charcoal marks dotted various points along the arms, legs, chest, and neck.
"This is the foundation of the Three Score War Healer arts," Liu Shiye explained.
"War… healer?" Mingfei repeated.
"A system combining battlefield medicine and body manipulation."
He picked up a thin acupuncture needle.
"As you know, the human body contains pathways where energy flows. When those flows stagnate, the body weakens." He gently inserted the needle into a marked point on the mannequin.
"Acupuncture can restore circulation." He spoke as he demonstrated a series of precise hand motions.
"And Tui Na manipulates muscle, bone, and energy simultaneously. It also teaches me the best way to scrub the body with the iron sand."
His fingers moved with calm precision along the mannequin's arm.
"Pressure, rotation, release."
Each movement was deliberate. Both controlled and instructional. After several demonstrations he stepped back.
"Theory is insufficient." Liu Shiye sighed.
Mingfei felt a small unease stir. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"A healer must practice on living bodies." said Liu Shiye, curious of how far he could push her.
Her brows lifted slightly. "You wish to… experiment on me?"
He studied her expression carefully.
There it is, the hesitation. Wariness or perhaps even suspicion, Liu Shiye thought, This is what I have to break. And only then can I get my revenge and settle this karma.
Without reacting, Liu Shiye simply nodded once.
"Very well," he said. He turned his head slightly.
"QingQing." His voice was summoning.
The maid was startled, called from her position near the wall.
"Y–Yes, Master?" she replied.
"You will assist," he commanded.
Mingfei blinked. She was confused. But quickly reminded herself that this Shiye was different from the man she once knew. Then it struck her.
He had tested my willingness. And when she hesitated—He moved on. It was both respectful and quietly dominant.
Liu Mingfei shook her head internally, dejected.
Keep up or be left behind is what he's telling me. She believed in heart.
All the while, QingQing nervously stepped forward and Liu Shiye gestured calmly for her to sit. He didn't need to speak for QingQing to comply, it was her life's work to understand her superiors.
"Observe carefully," Liu Shiye said to Liu Mingfei.
He gently took QingQing's forearm.
"Listen to the pulse, the tension, even your breathing. Every detail tells a story." He spoke as his fingers pressed lightly along the maid's arm.
His expression became entirely focused. Liu Mingfei watched and her pulse began to quicken.
He…He really knows medicine…How?
The Liu Shiye she remembered could barely sit still for conversation. He had been impatient –temperamental and arrogant.
And though she was an aware of his changes. She was finally becoming aware of how different he truly was. She began to wonder about what else he knew and the secret he openly kept.
For the time being, she settled for his demonstration. He moved like a scholar dissecting truth itself.
Every motion is patient and deliberate. Every explanation is measured.
The weak, arrogant, and violent man I knew is gone, The realization struck her with quiet force.
In his place stood someone different. Someone who commanded without anger. Controlled without cruelty. He thought where others stumbled blindly.
Who is this man? She asked herself, as the small fragment of the past fell away and revealed someone new.
Time slowly passed as he demonstrated Tui Na techniques.
His hands moved across QingQing's shoulders, arms, and back with firm but controlled pressure. He rotated her joints. Traced her muscles. He applied just enough pressure to relieve tension and make the body willing.
QingQing soon began sweating lightly under the exertion of the treatment. Her breathing deepened and clothes clung to her budding frame.
Her composure fractured beneath Liu Shiye's touch. Her brows would draw together, lips parting as his fingers found some hidden knot and pressed with certainty. The tension revealed itself in those brief instants—tight, coiled, resisting—only to unravel moments later beneath his persistence. What followed was not simple relief, but a softer yielding, a quiet surrender that left her shoulders lowered and her breath unsteady.
Mingfei watched closely, taking in the smallest details of the demonstration.
At first, her attention was nothing more than idle curiosity, the distant interest of one observing an unfamiliar craft. There was something precise in Liu Shiye's movements, a quiet authority that turned even the smallest gesture into something measured, intentional. His hands did not wander; they discovered. They did not hesitate; they understood. He pulled apart the secrets of the body and grasped them with two strong hands.
But as the moments lengthened, her gaze lingered. Soon, something subtle, unwelcome, began to swell within her.
It slipped in quietly, like a whisper curling through an open window—barely felt, yet impossible to ignore once noticed. A faint tightening beneath her ribs. A warmth that did not belong to the room.
Jealousy. Her heart shutters.
The realization came with a flicker of irritation, sharp and fleeting, yet it lingered longer than it should have.
QingQing's garments had grown damper, all of her just neigh revealed but obscure, the thin fabric clinging closer to her form with each passing moment. The lines of her posture softened, pert breasts on display with erect nipples threatening to tear themselves free. Her body responded with increasing indulgence beneath Liu Shiye's hands. What had once been rigid resistance now gave way easily, as though the tension within her had forgotten how to hold itself together.
Not long after, a sound escaped her pillow pink lips—soft, unguarded. It hovered in that uncertain space between, carrying a fragile vulnerability that seemed to linger in the air long after it faded.
Mingfei's fingers tightened around her sleeve as she listened to the gasps, sighs, and soft moans of twisted relief and ecstacy.
Why? The question rose, quiet but insistent.
She was the mistress of this house. QingQing, is nothing more than a servant. Her servant. There was no place for such a reaction, no justification for the strange, persistent heat that began to gather in her chest as Liu Shiye's hands moved—steady, assured—across another woman's skin.
She straightened her back and held her chin up. This was unbecoming. Worse—it was indulgent.
Turning away, she reached for the long-neglected flute carved from a stag's antler resting upon the shelf. It held its original form, its curve and twisting nature added to the beauty of its harmonics. Its surface was cool beneath her fingers, a familiar weight that grounded her. She lifted it to her lips, drawing in a slow breath before allowing the first note to slip free.
The melody began softly, a quiet thread weaving through the room. But it did not remain gentle for long.
As her fingers moved, the music deepened, unfolding into something richer, more intricate. Each note layered upon the last, building a rhythm that demanded focus, that pulled her mind away from the sight behind her.
Liu Shiye revealed a devious smirk as music became her refuge. He could see she felt something, something she wasn't ready to admit. In truth, any feeling was acceptable. Any feeling is a start of successful manipulation.
Liu Mingfei kept her discipline, her defense. For if she lost herself in it, then nothing else could take root. She wanted to give him a chance, but she also wanted control and independence.
Her mind shook and her image overlapped with QingQing's. She wanted to know, to experience. It was her right. Why did she have to hesitate? Her music changed, a song of envious allure, yearning of ecstasy, and a becoming of embrace.
Behind her, Liu Shiye continued.
QingQing's body responded as though shaped by unseen hands, each press, release, drag, and forceful knead drawing something hidden to the surface before letting it dissolve. There was a strange fluidity to it now, a quiet responsiveness that she embraced and Liu Shiye took advantage of.
The lanterns dimmed as time slipped quietly forward, their light softening into a warm, flickering haze.
At some indistinct moment, Mingfei became aware that QingQing's outer garments had been removed. The thought brushed against her awareness lightly, almost dismissed as necessity. It was practical. It had to be.
And yet— Her music shifted.
The tempo quickened, notes threading together with sharper precision. Each note reaches just beyond the last as though chasing something unspoken. QingQing felt this between her legs and Liu Shiye did his best to make sure that they would reach the end.
Mingfei shut her eyes tightly. Fore, each time her gaze betrayed her and drifted back she saw him, not as a husband or a man indulging in proximity, but as something far more disquieting.
There was no excess in him. No distraction. His expression remained composed, his attention absolute. He was not drawn by the moment. He commanded it. And that quiet mastery unsettled her more than any impropriety could have.
However, on the other hand, his has moved to the tempo of her music, and she didn't want to witness him playing another woman silly to her art. It made her feel like an addition, a stranger witnessing other's intimacy, but it also birthed something unspoken and shameful within her.
The heavy breathes and sultry moans that escaped QingQing began to echo strangely within Mingfei's thoughts, distorting the space between observation and imagination. What she heard no longer remained entirely external.
For a fleeting instant, the world shifted.
She was no longer standing apart.
In her mind, she occupied the place before him—felt the imagined weight of that focus, the unsettling intimacy of being seen so completely, so precisely. And at the same time, she remained where she stood, eyes shut, displaced within her own space.
The contradiction tightened around her chest. The music surged. Notes climbed higher, faster, weaving into something almost hypnotic. The melody pressed forward, driven now by something that resisted restraint.
As the final note rang out, sharp and unyielding, QingQing howled.
The profane howl broke through the room, sudden and raw. Her body trembled as though something held too tightly had finally given way. She hand gripped the edges of the table, and the wood cried under her strength. Her body arched frozen, then fell, trembling some more.
Her strength then left her all at once, her form collapsing back into the table, sprawled out and limp. An utter mess, naked, and on full display as her juices flowed from her aroused, pink pussy.
Silence followed.
Mingfei stilled, the flute lowering slowly from her lips as the last traces of sound dissolved into the dim glow of the lanterns. Tension fled and her eyes opened.
QingQing remained slumped, her breathing deep and irregular, a heavy sheen of moisture catching the flicker of light along her skin. The room felt altered, a thick scent she had never smelt before, hung thick.
But the energy was changed, as though something unseen had shifted and settled into place. Only then did Mingfei register the passage of time.
Nearly an hour.
Liu Shiye said nothing. He simply withdrew. Lowering himself to the floor, he crossed his legs and closed his eyes, as though the moment required no acknowledgment beyond its completion.
His breathing slowed as his presence turned inward.
Every motion, every subtle response beneath his hands replayed itself within his mind. He traced each detail with quiet precision—the resistance, the release, the shifting currents that had moved beneath the surface. What others might dismiss as sensation, he understood as language.
QingQing's body spoke to him and he listened. It was nothing less than enlightening. When Liu Shiye finally opened his eyes, there was a clarity to his gaze that had not been there before.
The light in his pupils was sharper, but quieter. His awareness expanded outward, slow and casually, like ripples spreading across still water. Within a hundred meters, nothing stirred beyond his notice.
Is this what the Three Score War Healer technique brings? He thought as the world lay bare before his spiritual sense, If I can master Tui Na the body will become clay beneath my hands. My spiritual sense will reveal all and my hands will remake.