North of Starfate City, a sweep of snow mountains gleams, white like a blank winter scroll.

People say, if you cross those white peaks, you step into the Ice Deity’s immortal realm, a place iced like a crystal palace.

Yet no one has ever threaded that labyrinth of white ridges; no one dares trespass that human forbidden zone, as cold as a sealed shrine.

Not even a ninth-tier Supreme, a hawk at the zenith, has made it through.

She laughed, a little frost-breath of disbelief; ninth-tier Supremes sit above the tide of men—what gate could stop them?

So Linyue Yao loves coming here to find Snow Maple wood; a single tree feeds the hearth for a month.

Snow Maple is a rare tree; its flame is a spring sun, warm not searing.

Even at its peak, the heat feels like a quilt of light, yet it warms as well as any timber.

It burns for ages, red coals breathing like sleepy foxes; pity, it grows only in this forest.

No help for it. For her orphanage, she comes to forage Snow Maple and wild game, to turn frost into coin.

She’ll haul back a few logs too, to keep the stove glowing like a small sun.

La-la-la—

Only when the mountains feel empty as blank paper can she let herself fly like a kite in open sky.

Since the day she chose to build an orphanage, she set aside the “maiden” cloak, folding it like an old scarf.

In her younger years, she roamed the continent, tasting every land’s wind and watching handsome faces like passing stars.

None matched her palate; her heart stayed a quiet lake, unruffled by smiles.

She loves children; she’s always wanted to feel what it’s like to raise one.

But—truth bites like frost—she’s an old virgin.

It’s not that Linyue Yao is plain.

Her looks are gentle: a cute round face with a warm-spring smile, and straight white hair flowing down like a snow waterfall.

At a glance, she’s pure “good wife, loving mother”—that ripeness makes people assume the ring is there.

More call her a widow than imagine she’s single, mist stacking over a clear lane.

For decades, that misread has been a heavy door on her heart, iron-cold and stuck.

Eventually, she saw through it; men are swine with shiny hooves.

So she built an orphanage herself, gathering homeless children to satisfy her—

ahem—her urge to do charity.

It’s embarrassing; if anyone who knows her found out—especially old rivals—they’d guess the motive in a heartbeat.

She’d suffer social death, her face cracking like thin ice under morning sun.

So she keeps low-key, living like a quiet stream that hides among stones.

Even the orphanage she funded from her little secret stash sits far outside Starfate City, on a small empty patch of earth.

Most folk never notice that lonely place, so remote even birds drift past without a cry.

In the last dozen years, Linyue Yao has adopted many children, becoming a passable “mom” in her own steady way.

More than ten have left her care and found footing in the world, fledglings catching their first wind.

But money—money is a hard wound, a cold blade that never stops pressing.

For reasons she won’t voice, she never hired help; she carries the orphanage alone, with older kids pitching in when the tide swells.

She’s got too much to juggle and no time for a regular job.

As a ninth-tier Supreme, she won’t shame herself by asking the Empire for alms.

So to make money, she comes to this forest to find wood, turning pine-scented silence into food and fire.

Sometimes, in places this desolate—where the wind hums and no footprints linger—she even finds a child someone cast away.