Flower Stealing Master

Before his transmigration, Song Qingshu had watched so many spy-war dramas that he once found himself turning a question over in his mind with genuine seriousness: if he had lived in a revolutionary era and been captured by the enemy, would he defect?

He thought it over for a long time and eventually arrived at a conclusion. If the enemy resorted to torture, he wasn’t sure whether he would break or not. But if they deployed the beauty trap — that, he was fairly certain, was a temptation he could never resist.

“This Mara really spares no expense,” Song Qingshu clicked his tongue in admiration, without a single shadow of suspicion. “He actually sent his own daughters out in person — three of them, no less.”

Modern scientific research has established that people are, in most cases, entirely unaware that they are dreaming. The module in the brain responsible for reality-testing is not activated during sleep, so no matter how bizarre or impossible the dreamscape becomes, the dreamer perceives it as perfectly ordinary.

There are, of course, rare exceptions — those who become conscious within a dream, a state known as lucid dreaming — but that is a matter for another discussion.

The poison of the Heavenly Devil Flower that Song Qingshu had absorbed belonged to the category of botanical toxins. Most botanical toxins act upon the nervous system, sending the body’s corresponding neural pathways into a state of extreme excitation — and so those who are poisoned will frequently experience hallucinations.

Song Qingshu had earlier suffered a backlash from the Heavenly Devil Flower’s venom, and his current condition hovered somewhere between dream and hallucination. Perhaps because the Heavenly Devil Flower had left such a vivid impression on his mind, the great demon-king who appeared before him in that hallucinated world had taken the form of Mara himself.

Three demon-women swarmed about him, languid and bewitching, striking one entrancing pose after another at his side, brushing against him with their graceful bodies, filling the air with a soul-dissolving fragrance. Song Qingshu smiled and said, “Might I ask the names of these three beauties?”

“I am called Tanhā.” [G: Tanhā — Pāli for craving or desire; in the Buddhist account of Māra’s temptation of the Buddha, Tanhā is the name of one of his three daughters.]

“I am called Rati.” [G: Rati — Sanskrit for pleasure or delight; the second of Māra’s daughters.]

“I am called Rāga.” [G: Rāga — Sanskrit for attachment or passion; the third of Māra’s daughters.]

The three bewitching demon-women answered in voices sweet enough to melt bone.

“Tan… hā?” Song Qingshu pulled a pained expression. “That’s a rather difficult name to remember.”

“You may also call me Desire.” Tanhā reclined in his arms, drew his hand to her soft bosom, and tilted her head back to gaze up at him with a look of pure enchantment.

“And you may call me Pleasure.” Rati laughed — a light, tinkling sound — and knelt beside Song Qingshu, leaning close to blow a soft breath against his ear.

“I am Longing.” Rāga pressed herself tight against his back, and a pair of snow-white, silken arms slid slowly in through his collar.

Under this combined assault, Song Qingshu felt himself going soft all the way to his core. “Now those are names I like. As it happens, I have always been rather fond of desire.”

He had a dim sense that the scene resembled something from the legend of the Buddha’s enlightenment — but Song Qingshu quickly pushed the thought aside. What did it matter? He was not the Buddha, and he had no need to extinguish the Five Aggregates the way the Buddha had. [G: 色受想行识, sè shòu xiǎng xíng shí — form, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness; the five constituents of existence in Buddhist philosophy, all of which the Buddha was said to transcend upon attaining nirvana.] 

As the saying goes: when flowers are in bloom, one must pluck them — and here were three beauties offering themselves of their own accord. What conceivable reason did he have to refuse?

He reached out and pulled Rati and Rāga into his arms, and Song Qingshu let himself be swallowed whole by that ocean of pleasure.

Only at some blurred, half-conscious moment did he notice that Tanhā’s face had begun to take on a certain resemblance to Qi Fang, which left him faintly bewildered. But his desires had been stoked past the point of no return by the three demon-women, and he flung the thought aside almost as soon as it arose.

Even if it were Qi Fang — what of it? The arrow was already on the bowstring; there was no drawing it back now. And when he thought about it, it was Wan Gui and his grandfather who had brought him to this state. The image of pressing an enemy’s wife and a grandson’s bride beneath him sent a surge of something strange and sharp through him — a dark thrill he could not entirely name.

These, of course, were nothing more than the shadow-corners of his inner self. In ordinary life, under the governance of morals and principles, Song Qingshu would never have acted on such thoughts. But here, in the hallucinated world, the three w0men before him were nothing but Desire, Pleasure, and Longing — and there was nothing left to hold him back.

*****

When the clouds had parted and the rain had stilled, Song Qingshu felt the tension and frustration of the past two days pour freely out of him. And yet something nagged at him, a faint unease: this dream was a little too vivid, surely…

Then something struck him. He wrenched his eyes open.

Qi Fang lay beneath him — her hair tumbling loose and dishevelled, her gaze distant and blurred, the ivory skin of her face still flushed with lingering warmth, the faint silvery traces of dried tears just visible on her cheeks.

“Young… Young Mistress.” Song Qingshu felt an acute and excruciating embarrassment come over him. Not long ago he had thumped his chest and sworn — sworn — that he wouldn’t touch her. And now, in the space of a breath, he had done precisely this. It had not been his intention; but it had happened, and that was that.

“I don’t know how this happened… I…” He was still reaching for some explanation as he drew himself away from her.

Feeling that movement, Qi Fang’s b0dy gave an involuntary shiver. She sat up in silence, reached for the clean garment she had left folded at the bedside, drew it around herself, and then curled her knees to her chest in the corner of the bed, saying nothing.

“I’m sorry.” Song Qingshu knew very well how hollow those three words sounded. But in that situation, he had nothing else.

“Leave. I don’t want to see you.” Qi Fang’s voice came out weak and thin. Her emotions at that moment were beyond any simple reckoning. What had just happened had visited upon her a depth of physical pleasure she had never known — a kind that her husband had never come close to giving her. And yet at the same time her heart was in agony: the reproach of her conscience, the iron weight of every moral obligation she had ever held — all of it crashed down and buried her in guilt and anguish.

Song Qingshu let out a long breath. “My lady may not believe me, but I need to say it nonetheless. Just now I had no awareness whatsoever. The poison of the Heavenly Devil Flower cast me into a kind of hallucination…”

He stopped.

Wait. Hadn’t he lost consciousness earlier precisely because of a backlash from the Heavenly Devil Flower? Then why did he feel completely fine now?

He turned his attention inward, probing the state of his body. The poison hadn’t been expelled — but it had retreated into quiescence, and his inner energy seemed to have resumed circulation.

Why?

His mind moved quickly. Could it be the Joyful Meditation Method?

He shook his head almost at once. He hadn’t used the Joyful Meditation Method during the hallucination; there had been no dual cultivation, and therefore no process of detoxification.

Then he noticed something: a faint sweetness lingering on his lips. He touched the corner of his mouth almost without thinking, and felt a single clear drop still resting there. His gaze drifted, with an expression of profound complexity, toward Qi Fang’s che$t — and he found that it was indeed less full than it had been before.

‘Well. It seems her m!lk truly does have a detoxifying effect.’ He recalled now that his inner energy had begun to recover earlier as well, after drinking that bowlful. His expression became quite extraordinary. ‘I wonder how much I managed to… obtain, just now.’

Qi Fang heard Song Qingshu say he had been trapped in a hallucination by the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison. A desolate smile rose and faded from her lips. ‘Third Brother, she thought, Third Brother — you plotted so carefully, and yet how could you have known that the very poison you laid would be the ruin of your own wife’s honour? In the end, it was you who brought this on yourself.’

She was still lost in that bitter, private grief when she caught Song Qingshu’s gaze. She startled — and then shame and fury rushed through her together. She pressed a hand to her chest and snapped, “Where exactly do you think you’re looking?!”

Song Qingshu gave an awkward smile. “This one has a question he would like to put to my lady — but fears it may be offensive.”

Qi Fang gave a cold snort. “Have you not offended me enough already?”

Song Qingshu was gradually recovering his usual composure. What should not have happened had happened. Fidgeting and squirming now would accomplish nothing; better to face it plainly and see whether there was any way forward.

Still, the question in his mind needed an answer. He opened his mouth and said: “Then I’ll ask directly. Just now — did I… did I $uckle from… from my lady’s…?”

Following his glance, Qi Fang looked down at her own chest. Her jade cheeks went scalding hot. She snatched a pillow from beside her and hurled it straight at him. “Shameless! Disgusting!”

“My lady,” Song Qingshu said with a pained smile, “I am not trying to say anything improper. I only want to know whether the alleviation of the poison in my body has something to do with my lady’s… my lady’s…”

“Don’t you dare say it!” Qi Fang was nearly faint with indignation. She had not expected that of all things, that could actually suppress the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison. “My husband has done you wrong — but whatever he owes you, I have… I have already repaid on his behalf. And I have also… also…”

The shame was almost past bearing. She bit her lip, and then forced herself to go on. “I have also purged the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison from your body. If you have any sense of gratitude, then in the days to come — do not seek revenge against my husband. And do not appear before either of us, ever again.”

“As for tonight…” Song Qingshu asked, genuinely taken aback. “My lady intends to let the matter rest?”

“What else am I supposed to do?!” The bitterness in Qi Fang’s heart was almost past enduring. Faced with what had happened, she ought by rights to have ended her own life — but the moment she imagined her daughter, still so young, growing up without a mother, her heart clenched in her chest, and she let the thought go.

And however many failings Wan Gui possessed, he was still her husband, still her daughter’s father. Qi Fang did not want to find herself, having saved Song Qingshu, the indirect cause of some disaster befalling him. So the only path left to her was to use this night as leverage, to compel Song Qingshu to abandon his revenge.

“If you will promise not to retaliate against my husband, then what happened tonight…” She let the words out, and as she did, she felt the last of her strength leave her. She told herself she was a wicked woman — trading her own honour as a bargaining piece. “…I can treat it as though it never occurred.”

“My lady is truly a devoted wife.” Song Qingshu sighed. “But I’m afraid that what Wan Gui did to me this time — a debt that grievous can’t go unanswered.”

“You—!” Qi Fang’s brows drew together in fury. “What is there for you to resent? Yes, you suffered before — but your poison has been treated. And you also… also obtained my b0dy. What more could you possibly want?”

The corners of her eyes prickled, and the tears came before she could stop them. I’m the one who has suffered the most, she thought. Anyone can see that.

Seeing her weep, Song Qingshu quickly grabbed a piece of silk from the bed and moved to wipe her tears. Qi Fang wanted none of it; she turned her face instinctively away — then seemed to think of something, turned back, and snatched the silk out of his hand with a burning face.

Only then did Song Qingshu notice that what he had seized to wipe her tears was not a handkerchief at all, but the inner bodice she had shed a short while ago. His own face warmed. He cast about for a different subject and said quickly, “My lady misspoke a moment ago. The Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison in my body has not been purged.”

“You certainly didn’t look like someone who was still poisoned.” Qi Fang’s cheeks flushed pink as the memory of moments before rose unbidden — he had been as strong and relentless as a battering ram. There had been nothing of a poisoned man about him.

“That is because my lady’s …nectar,” said Song Qingshu, his gaze drifting involuntarily toward her chest once more. “I can’t explain precisely why, but it seems my lady’s… seems capable of suppressing the toxin within my body and restoring the circulation of my inner energy. And as long as my inner energy is circulating, I can gradually force the poison out — only…”

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