After almost twenty days of disappearance, Xiao Yun finally re-emerged from his ‘closed door cultivation’ in the Pavilion of Ancestral Wisdom. He immediately went to look for Xiao Lian, only to be told by a sympathetic servant that she was out, as she often was in the Hundred Beasts Forest hunting low-level demonic beasts like Saber Tusk Boars and Wind Wolves. She sold the cores and hides in the city market to earn her own keep, a humiliating endeavor for a former prodigy of a noble clan. But she stubbornly refused to take any money or allowance from the clan, as she was acutely aware of how dire the financial situation was. She felt that she had already put enough burden on the clan by wasting the Foundation Building pill and not being able to break through, so off she went trying to pay her own way to maintain her cultivation.

  Xiao Yun decided to wait and explore the clan library some more in the meantime.

  Three days later, as the evening sun painted the sky in hues of orange and violet she returned. The guards at the main gate straightened instinctively as her silhouette appeared on the road. She walked with a long weary stride, her leather armor stained with dirt and dried blood, her dark blue robes had tears in few places. There was a massive, foul-smelling sack slung over her shoulder. Her hand rested on the pommel of the plain, heavy sword at her hip. It wasn't a weapon just for show, it was a brutally efficient tool devoid of ornamentation. Although it wasn’t an artifact weapon, it was still made of superior materials compared to ordinary iron and steel weapons. One would need such weapons to hunt even the lowest level demonic beasts after all. Even with the superior materials the sword still had signs of wear and tear. It was obvious that it saw frequent use against tough opponents.

  Xiao Lian herself had a fairly muscular build, like that of a female athlete. Gained over years and years of battling demonic beasts. Although she was unable to advance in cultivation, one’s muscles would still grow stronger after repeated strain. Her long black hair was held in place by an unadorned hairpin, having the complete look of a battle-weary warrior. Depths of her red eyes still roiling with remnant killing intent from her battles. She didn’t appear anything like the typical fairy-like image of a graceful female cultivator. She looked a little too intimidating for that.

  The guards bowed their heads slightly. “Lady Lian” they murmured, their voices tinged with a mixture of respect and pity. She was still a ninth-circle Qi Gathering Realm Master, peak of the mortal coil and a terrifying force to any of them, but they all knew her story. They all knew the elders would not be coming to greet her.

  She gave them a curt nod, her gaze fixed forward and her jaw set. Her face was a mask of cold indifference, but a well-informed eye could see the flicker of pain in her soul as she passed through the grand gates into the courtyard, a place that held both her brightest dreams and her deepest shame. The verandas where the clan elders would have once stood to welcome a triumphant warrior were conspicuously empty. The silence was a judgment heavier than any spoken condemnation. A part of her preferred it that way, not having to face the elders as it would remind her of her failure and plunge her further into guilt and misery. She did not want anyone’s pity nor judgement.

  Xiao Yun had been watching from the shadow of a ginkgo tree, its golden leaves rustling in the breeze. He took a deep breath, calming the slight tremor in his hands. This was it. The first step in his new and strange career. He stepped out of the shadows and walked towards her.

  ‘She’s actually quite pretty in a tomboyish sort of way. If she was on social media back on earth, she would have at least a few hundred thousand followers.’ Xiao Yun thought to himself while walking. He pushed such useless thoughts aside and came back to the present before speaking up.

  “Xiao Lian.”

  She stopped. Her body went rigid and she turned slowly. Her eyes, hard and cold as a winter night fixed on him. She took in the sight of Xiao Yun, the clan’s most infamous piece of trash, the leech who wasted his days in brothels and his nights in drunken stupors. Her lip curled in a sneer, the scar on her face seeming to deepen.

  “What do you want, Xiao Yun?” Her voice was raspy, laced with undisguised contempt. “Have you run out of money for the brothels? I hunt for my living, I have nothing to give to a leech.”

  ‘That’s a bit harsh, but I guess I can’t really blame her now, can I? While everyone in the clan was struggling, Xiao Yun was busy wasting time in brothels. Although he had his excuses, its not exactly a good look.’ Thought Jack inwardly.

  The insult was brutal and public. A few nearby servants and guards froze, pretending not to listen. The old Xiao Yun would have flushed with anger or slunk away in shame.

  This Xiao Yun did neither.

  “I’m not here for money.” he said with an even tone. “I wish for a moment of your time. I have been spending some time in the clan’s library and I believe I have found something you may want to hear. Something that may be of help. It’s regarding your…stalled cultivation.”

  Her 'heart demon,' they called it. A wound on the soul that refused to heal, a spiritual cancer that devoured any progress she made and prevented her from advancing into the next major realm. It was her most private shame, the anchor that had dragged her down from being the hope of the clan to a cautionary tale.

  And now the clan’s foremost failure wanted to discuss her failure? The audacity was breathtaking.

  Xiao Lian’s eyes narrowed. Something was rather unusual. The wastrel she knew was arrogant in his uselessness, a swaggering fool who couldn’t even look at her in the eye. This person standing before her was still wearing the same robes, still had the same pampered face, but the air around him had changed. The usual haze of degeneracy was gone. In its place was a strange and surprising stillness. His posture was straight, his gaze direct and uncomfortably clear. There was no lust, no greed and no fear in his eyes.

  She was a warrior who had faced down demonic beasts that could easily tear a man in half. She trusted her instincts above all else, and her instincts were telling her that the young man before her was not the Xiao Yun she knew.

  Intrigue, a long-dormant emotion, stirred within her hardened heart. It was a curious flicker in the vast darkness of her cynicism. What could this useless fop possibly have to say to her?

  Her pride clashed with her curiosity. She had been disappointed by experts, by elders, by precious pills. What hope could lie with him? But then, what more did she have to lose? Her days were a monotonous cycle of bloodshed and silent humiliation, her nights haunted by the memory of her failure.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  She shifted the weight of the sack on her shoulder, the bones and hides within making a dull clattering sound. She gave him a long searching look, her gaze sweeping over him one last time as if trying to peel back his skin and see the soul beneath.

  She then looked down at her own hands, calloused and strong yet powerless to break the invisible chains that bound her spirit. What did she really have to lose? Her pride had already been ground into the dust over a decade ago.

  Finally after a few moments of uncomfortable silence she gave a sharp nod. “The ancestral library. In one incense stick’s time.” It wasn’t a request. She picked that spot since it was secluded, but that choice suited Xiao Yun just fine, considering it had been his exile for almost a month.

  Without another word, she turned and marched towards the branch family’s drab quarters, her fierce aura leaving a chill in the air. A few of the clan’s younger descendants greeted her on the way with respect and admiration in their eyes, and she only gave short nods of acknowledgement.

  Xiao Yun watched her go, a slow smile touching his lips. He hadn't been rebuffed. He hadn't been ignored. He had been given an appointment. In his line of work that was as good as a victory. The proud phoenix of the clan was fallen and wounded, but she was also listening. The first piece was on the board. Now the game could begin. He turned and walked back towards the dusty tomb of knowledge, which he was slowly turning into his command center.

  A short while later in front of the Pavilion of Ancestral Wisdom.

  Xiao Yun had the servants quickly set up a table with two chairs under the shade of the weeping willows. There was an ornate pot, from which the scent of ordinary jasmine tea wafted out. Xiao Yun had taken a seat, and he was mentally rehearsing his lines while waiting for his test subje- ahem, his guest.

  Soon, Xiao Lian appeared, still wearing her battle-weary uniform. As she approached, he looked up and for a moment, Xiao Lian felt a strange sense of dislocation. The way he looked at her still gave her an unfathomable feeling. They held a weary depth, a placid understanding of one’s place in the world that had no place in a teenager’s face. They were the eyes of a man who had seen more than his years should allow.

  This was Jack the earthling, looking out from behind a mask of youth. In his past life, he had his fair share of experiences, of successes and failures, of trauma and stagnation, navigated tedious office politics and dealt with difficult personalities. He saw Xiao Lian not as a failed cultivator, but as a traumatized individual stuck in a feedback loop of self-sabotage, a concept utterly foreign to this world yet universally human. He would be lying if he said there weren’t any similarities between their lived experiences. She held the clan’s hopes and failed to reach her full potential, while something extremely similar had happened to Jack on earth, getting into a top university with full scholarship yet failing out of it. He had his reasons, but people only saw wasted potential.

  "Xiao Lian," he said, his tone respectful and direct. He gestured to the chair opposite him. "Thank you for coming. Please have some tea."

  Suspicion coiled in her gut but she sat, her posture rigid, her hand never straying far from the hilt of her sword. She did not touch the tea. "You said you wished to discuss my cultivation."

  "I did." Xiao Yun confirmed, pouring a cup for himself. The aroma of jasmine filled the air. "You've been at the ninth circle of Qi Gathering Realm for a long time. The elders had said it's a heart demon."

  "The elders say many things." she clipped out, her patience already wearing thin. "If you summoned me here to state the obvious, you are wasting my time."

  "No," Xiao Yun said, meeting her fiery gaze without flinching. "I called you because I believe I can help you resolve it."

  …After a short silence a harsh humorless laugh escaped Xiao Lian’s lips. "Haha you? The great Young Master who couldn't be bothered to cultivate for the last seven years? You think you can solve a problem that has baffled even the foremost experts, healers and pill master’s for thousands of years?"

  "Their methods are wrong." Xiao Yun stated simply. "The way they look at the problem is wrong. They try to treat it like a physical flaw, something to be blasted away with potent pills or brute-force meditation. They're trying to heal a nonexistent wound. They never address the root cause." He leaned forward slightly, his strange and experienced eyes holding hers. "A heart demon isn't a magical curse. It's a memory. A scar on your soul and mind yes, but one left by a real event. Your Qi, your instincts and your very life force remembers the pain. It stagnates because it's afraid to move past that point, terrified of experiencing that pain again."

  This was Jack’s theory that the so-called heart demon was just PTSD or mental trauma. It could have been caused by any number of things, and it usually lied dormant in a person’s subconscious mind. When a cultivator tried to break through a major realm however, the gushing spiritual energy overstimulated that specific part of their brain, causing them to relive their trauma in some way, instigating great emotional distress which would lead to the cultivator losing their concentration and losing control over their rushing spiritual energy. Which would also explain the failure to break through and the cultivator sustaining internal injuries.

  Unfortunately, the field of Psychology and the concept of mental health wasn’t very developed in such cultivation settings. The idea that mental trauma, something that wounded you emotionally or psychologically could also affect your cultivation wasn’t a very popular one, so they named it ‘heart demon’ and treated it like a mysterious illness or some sort of an evil spirit that blocked one’s cultivation path. Or at least that’s what Jack theorized.

  Hearing the way he talked about her affliction, Xiao Lian’s breath caught in her throat. No one had ever described it like that. They spoke of it in esoteric terms, of meridian blockages and spiritual dissonance. Some called it “Having her Dao heart damaged”. He spoke of it as if it were a common injury.

  "To heal it, at least according to the method I discovered," Xiao Yun continued, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, "we can't ignore the memory. We have to confront it. Understand it. Rob it of its power over you. For me to help you do that, you would need to trust me. You would need to tell me what happened. Everything. The event that created this invisible wound. Your deepest thoughts and feelings regarding that event. No matter how private or painful it is."

  This was his solution. He wasn’t exactly a psychologist, but he had taken a couple elementary psych classes back in college for additional credits before he dropped out. To heal from trauma, one had to confront those memories voluntarily. Of course this couldn’t be applied to every single case, but Exposure Therapy was a good way to overcome phobias, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, identifying and changing negative thought patterns and behaviors associated with trauma were common methods used to help patients. Although Xiao Yun wasn’t a therapist, he figured it couldn’t hurt to try and help someone overcome their traumas, especially in a world where licensed psychologists didn’t exist. After all, he did have some personal experience in overcoming trauma, maybe he could help others do the same.

  Hearing his words, Xiao Lian’s already stern face hardened into a mask of fury. Her hand, which had been resting near her sword now gripped the hilt so tightly her knuckles turned white. The scar on her face seemed to burn.

  "You dare," she snarled, the words low and dangerous. A faint pressure, the raw power of a peak Qi Gathering realm cultivator began to emanate from her, causing the tea in the cups to tremble. "You think I'm a fool? You want to pry into my past, learn my deepest secrets so you can have something to hold over my head? Is this your new game Little Yun? Trading drunken brawls for blackmail?"

  "That's not my intention," Jack said calmly, though he knew how this looked from her perspective. He was prepared for this, or so he thought.

  "Liar!" she roared, shoving herself to her feet with such force that the chair screeched against the ground and flew off. In a flash she was beside him, her hand raised, crackling with volatile Qi. The air smelled of ozone. She was a breath away from striking him down, from shattering the skull of the clan’s useless heir and ending the main bloodline then and there.