Snow on Cloud Mountain

Cool, aloof, and abstinent master X innocent, alluring little disciple

-

Zhong Yan had loved her master since she was a child.

In the eyes of outsiders, Lin Weiqing was the Yunshan Sect's leading Daoist Venerable, a once-in-centuries genius. Before he had even turned thirty, his cultivation had reached unrivaled heights. He was bright as the moon suspended in the heavens and pure as solitary snow atop a mountain.

In her eyes, her master was handsome and refined, transcendent and aloof from the world. Though upright and stern, he was always soft-hearted and indulgent toward her, treating her with special affection. Her master was a ray of light in her life.

Until the day she impulsively confessed her feelings.

From that moment on, her whole world was turned upside down.

-

The day her master killed her seven years ago, the snow on Yunshan was especially cold.

Everyone said her Daoist heart was weak, that she had colluded with the demonic sect and was guilty of countless crimes. If she wasn't killed soon, she would become a great menace.

She knew her master had the entire orthodox martial world of the Central Plains behind him. The evidence was conclusive, and public opinion was a force to be reckoned with.

But she had killed no one. She had only wanted to stay by her master's side.

-

Seven years later, Qiao Sier went up the mountain to become a disciple. She had planned to coast through life, but unexpectedly, Lin Weiqing, Yunshan's leading master, took her in.

While listening to the outer disciples gossip, she learned that her master had once had a female disciple: beautiful and graceful, she had been the most stunning woman on Yunshan. Whenever people mentioned her, their words were suggestive, as if trying to hide something in plain sight.

And Lin Weiqing's decade-old illness had resisted treatment, until one day he suddenly developed a soul-separation disorder.

Her senior brother wanted her to pretend to be their late senior sister, Zhong Yan, and persuade their master to take his medicine.

She was stunned. "I've never even met Senior Sister. How am I supposed to pretend to be her?"

Her senior brother said, "You don't have to pretend."

Qiao Sier: "???"

Later, on the day she was arrested as a spy for the demonic sect, she finally remembered what had happened all those years ago.

-

Zhong Yan knew that she had only narrowly escaped death back then, and that now she was little more than a candle flickering in the wind.

She wanted to run, but her master wouldn't let her.

The master who had once been so upright and rigid, so mindful of propriety between men and women that he wouldn't even let her touch his sleeve for long. The master who had personally rebuked her for defying all decency and disregarding human ethics. After years apart, he held her hand, drawing closer and closer...

His gaze was tender, his voice low and lingering. He tried every means to stop her, even resorting to force to keep her there, almost pleading, unwilling to let her go.

He would rather betray his sect, even if it meant falling from his lofty position, even if the whole martial world was filled with rumors about him and his disciple.

All he wanted was for her to stay.

But in the end, it was all too late.

-

Zhong Yan, why did you pluck the most distant, unreachable snow from the branches of Yunshan, only to cast it aside?

[Reading Guide]

※ Contains original worldbuilding. One-on-one romance, faux replacement trope. The story begins seven years after the heroine's death, when she returns with amnesia, and uses flashbacks.

※ A mid-tier martial arts world. The fantasy elements mainly involve unusual cultivation methods and various forms of sorcery. Overall, it follows wuxia logic, not xianxia cultivation.

※ The male lead is the strongest in the world, with a sharp tongue and a soft heart. Cold and aloof at first, he pursues his wife in the middle and later parts. Expect angst, sweetness, and plenty of push and pull.

※ Not an empowerment fantasy with an all-conquering heroine. The heroine never turns evil or demonic.

---The new novel The Moon of Clear Notes is currently updating daily. Interested readers, please visit the author's profile in the upper left.---

The day Xiao Li deposed the young emperor and claimed the throne as a woman, the masses bowed in awe and the whole realm hailed her.

From an orphan girl abandoned in the palace after her country fell, to an empress who drove a wedge between powerful enemies and restored her kingdom, every one of her glorious achievements seemed inseparable from the man who had given her his all: Cheng Shu, Chancellor of the Southern Dynasty.

This chancellor wielded power over the court and had won countless military honors. When he reclaimed Luoyang with 100,000 cavalry and requested the honors of the Nine Bestowments, the whole court thought the dynasty was about to change hands. Instead, he took off his armor, presented his military tally, and knelt before Xiao Li, the regent princess, bowing his head in submission.

-

After court, Xiao Li strolled back to the inner palace.

Between the heavy curtains and deep bed drapes, the bitter scent of medicine lingered, interrupted by a man's hoarse, broken coughs.

Xiao Li smiled coldly. Beneath her resplendent gold-embroidered phoenix robe, her slender fingers twisted, then seized his pale, frail face without mercy and flung him hard against the side of the bed. "Now that things have come to this, tell me, Teacher, do you ever regret saving my life when the country fell?"

Cheng Shu fell to the floor beside the bed, reopening the knife wound on his chest that had yet to heal. Blood seeped through the elegant lines of his thin back and waist, staining his light sleeping robe red. He lay there in a wretched heap, chin tilted slightly up, unfocused eyes narrowed as he reached out and caught her skirt. His voice was sorrowful and tender. "I would never regret it, even if I had to die a hundred times."

Xiao Li gave a derisive laugh, then stepped on the back of his long, slender fingers and ground her heel down. Amused, she said, "I remember what you told me before sending me off to be married off for an alliance: 'If Your Highness can return to court, I will accept a thousand cuts and ten thousand slashes.'"

Cheng Shu smiled calmly. The shadow of his long lashes fell across his refined brow. Pain pierced his fingertips, but his words held a hint of delight. "I wonder how Your Majesty intends to carve me up tonight?"

-

Xiao Li once thought Cheng Shu's heart was made of thorns and iron. But when she really began to peel it open layer by layer with the tip of her blade, all she found was devotion vast as the sea, and a love raging like storm-tossed waves.

Cheng Shu had also tried to test Xiao Li's heart... Forget it. His princess had no heart. From the day she returned to court, he had willingly become the sharpest blade and most loyal dog at her command. She could decide whether to love or hate him, whether he lived or died.

P.S.

A beautiful, proud regent princess who goes from unhinged to sane vs. a gentle, refined powerbroker of a chaotic age who goes from sane to unhinged

※ Teacher-disciple romance, older male lead with a nine-year age gap, a touch of everyone-loves-the-heroine and a touch of male rivalry.

※ Set in a fictional world inspired by the Northern and Southern Dynasties during the Five Barbarians period. The political and military writing is for fun, so please enjoy it with a smile.

※ The heroine grows stronger, rising from weakness to power, and becomes the first empress in the history of the novel's world.

Theme: Through countless trials, never forget your original purpose