My Disciple Could Never Be Sweet on the Outside and Dark Within

[Female Master, Male Disciples] [Both Disciples Turn Out to Be Wolves in Sheep's Clothing]

[Updates have been irregular lately. I just started a new job and have been swamped. I'm so sorry.]

Zhu Qiu's hands could concoct medicine for every strange affliction in the world.

When she was fifteen, she found Xiao Ze. For ten years, she traveled with him through mountains and rivers and taught him everything she knew. In the end, he died in a demonic fire, leaving Zhu Qiu alone in the world once more.

Zhu Qiu returned to Qianzhong Mountain, determined to live in seclusion and never venture out again.

Six months later, she found a seriously injured young man at the gate of her courtyard. She brought him home to treat his wounds and nurse him back to health. When the young man opened his eyes, they were clear and pure, wet as a puppy's.

He knelt and begged Zhu Qiu to take him in. He begged for three days and three nights, nearly dying when his wounds reopened, before Zhu Qiu finally relented, moved by his docile, pitiful appearance.

She thought that if she taught him for a while, he would surely find life in the mountains too dull to bear and leave of his own accord. She wouldn't even have to send him away.

But what she never expected was that two years later, the young man would lie across her lap, just as docile as before, and look up at her with a smile. "Master, the newly appointed General Qingyun of Dalong is also called Xiao Ze. Doesn't that sound like my late senior brother's name?"

-

Every year, the thing Xie Ci hated most was accompanying Zhu Qiu to pay respects to her late senior disciple.

Only then would his master, as pure and untouchable as a deity, come back down to earth and show human emotion. She would gaze tenderly at that cold stone stele.

Xie Ci had never received that kind of look.

He wanted to smash the stele, dig out the bones inside and feed them to wild dogs, then send the dogs as far away from his master as possible, so that he would be the only one by her side.

He also wanted his master to show him her human side, wanted to keep her by his side forever. He even wanted to pin her against...

But he couldn't.

He could only act obedient, act well-behaved, act considerate. While his master paid her respects, he would clean his senior brother's stele and smile as he told her, "I'll wait over there, Master. You and Senior Brother can talk a little longer."

After all... how could he ever compare to a dead man?

Until one day, a hidden guard reported that the General Qingyun of Dalong was also named Xiao Ze, was skilled at making medicine, and even looked just like the portrait hanging in his master's study.

Xie Ci thought,

His chance had come.

-

Reader's Notes:

1. A long, serious story with a slow-burn romance.

2. The male lead starts out as an obedient, sly puppy, but his obsessive side only emerges later.

3. Dual POV. Due to the unusual premise, the male lead's perspective will appear a little more often than in an ordinary story.

Theme: Put people first and keep the world in your heart.