No Crossing Yumen Pass

"They say a holy monk's heart is still as water. How come one little touch from me makes it ripple?"

She was the most intoxicating poison in the Western Regions. For three hundred miles beyond Yumen Pass, everyone knew the name Jialuo.

Her red dress whipped in the wind, silver bells chimed like falling snow, and her curved blade drank its fill of blood.

He was the purest snow in the Central Plains, the revered Master Cidu, worshipped by the people beneath the ancient bodhi tree at White Horse Temple.

With features like a painting and prayer beads in hand, his plain monk's robe seemed untouched by the mortal world.

The first time Jialuo saw Cidu was amid the sandstorms beyond Yumen Pass.

The monk, dressed all in white, stood in a mountain of corpses and recited prayers for the dead.

She tilted her head and watched him for a while, then suddenly laughed. "Little master, you perform rites to save them. Who will save you?"

Later, right in front of him, she killed the people he had come to save. Blood splashed across his snow-white robe. "Monk, I want you to break your vows."

He closed his eyes and recited scripture, but the hand fingering his prayer beads couldn't stop trembling.

[Bonus scene]

The day Jialuo was trapped on the city wall, Cidu knelt before the Buddha and asked for one final divination.

The omen was disastrous.

He gave a soft laugh and snapped his prayer beads in front of everyone.

"If I cannot save her, then I will fall into the Avici Hell with her."

At that moment, Jialuo was barely clinging to life, yet she smiled without a care in the world.

"Cidu, you've chanted scripture ten million times. Was even one of those prayers for me?"

The white-robed monk caught the blood she coughed up in his palm and answered hoarsely:

"Every one."

A wild beauty from the Western Regions x a lofty, saintly monk from the Central Plains | A long-planned fall from grace

Jialuo: Settles things with her hands, never her words | Professional holy-monk-botherer | The Western Regions' biggest handful

Cidu: Says "Amitabha" to your face | Cleans up her messes behind the scenes | Slowly turning dark

Content warnings

1. Both are virgins, happy ending. The heroine is genuinely unhinged, while the hero only pretends to be proper.

2. At first, she flirts and he holds back. Later, he goes wild and she indulges him.

3. Mutual salvation, with the fated feeling of "I would betray my faith for you."

#You taught me to be compassionate, but I want you to indulge in every last worldly desire.

(Add to your collection and get Jialuo's handwritten guide, How to Make a Lofty Beauty Break Her Vows.)

Theme: Live well