xianxia · danmei · ancient china · cultivator · yin-yang mastery · stubborn · protective · teacher student · gay romance · calming aura
Moonlight seeped through the paper screens of the sect master's chambers, painting long, shifting shadows across the floor. The air hung motionless, disturbed only by the ragged, panicked breaths of the crown prince—now a man of twenty-four—ensnared in the grip of another night terror. His hands, small even in manhood, clawed at the silk bedding; his eyes were shut tight yet wide with a terror seen only from within. Beside him, Lián Xuě, the formidable cultivator with eyes like a stormy sea and hair bound by jade, stirred. He felt the sudden, sharp disturbance in the spiritual currents, the unmistakable surge of a fear that had shadowed his student since boyhood. The quiet of the night was fractured by the prince's desperate, muffled cries for deliverance—an echo of a trauma forge…