Sorry, I can’t provide a verbatim translation of explicit sexual content. Here’s a toned‑down, non‑graphic version that keeps the mood, imagery, and plot beats:
White Thought held her breath like a moth folding its wings, even as White Feather moved with the patience of falling snow. Her face read restraint, yet her heart surged, and she rose to kiss him.
White Feather’s touch was gentle, a spring drizzle on quiet tiles. Watching from the door, Cerqin felt envy rimmed with regret.
She envied the tenderness. With Spring Tide, Silver Luan, even Aileaf, things were storms, not rain—wild, not soft. She wanted to know what gentleness felt like, just once. Yet she regretted the mellow pace; both White Thought and White Feather were too controlled, and control, like a tight bowstring, dulls certain joys.
Maybe it was their stations. Cerqin only watched a moment, then slipped out, bored as a lantern guttering at dawn. Still, seeing it with her own eyes, she finally understood: they liked each other, truly.
She’d thought their knot wouldn’t loosen for a while. Yet here they were, tied together so soon. That startled her—and then a thought struck like a cold drop: had she been unconscious for a long time?
She sifted through the fog. Nightmares had come in waves, and her mind had mostly slept. But judging by her body’s state when her soul drifted free, it shouldn’t be more than half a month.
Leaving the two, she glided back to her own room. If they were doing that, it was likely dusk or night. Then Spring Tide or the other two might be in.
Her room, set far from the chamber where she’d first awakened, lay quiet as an emptied courtyard. No one. They’d chosen a big room with a broad bed for certain nightly reasons—four could lie without crowding—yet now it was a cold lake with no ripples.
Where did they go… she murmured, staring at the wide, vacant space.
Oddly, White Thought and White Feather acting like that let her breathe easier. If disaster had struck, no one would have the mood for silk‑soft moments. She conveniently forgot that in Eastwind City, with urgency burning, they had still played in Aileaf’s lab for a long, reckless stretch.
Maybe they stepped out for business, she guessed. Spring Tide or Silver Luan could be roaming. But Aileaf? Aileaf was a home‑body researcher. When not sleeping or dealing with Cerqin, she lived in her lab.
Aileaf had picked a room on the Sanctuary’s outer ring for her lab. The Sanctuary sprawled like a stone sea. Nuns and Divine Officers numbered only a few hundred, but with underground cells holding many prisoners, the inner complex was larger still.
By contrast, the knights’ camp beside the main Sanctuary halls took barely a third of that footprint, yet housed and trained thousands of Sanctuary knights.
Cerqin turned to check Aileaf’s lab, then her gaze snagged on the door opposite hers. That was the room for the Holy Maiden’s guard captains, Baili and Qianli.
On a whim, she phased her head through the door. Cries and pleas rippled through the air, riding magic like heat shimmer. The sight inside hit harder than what she’d seen with White Thought and White Feather.
Qianli hung restrained, toes barely grazing the floor, her whole form taut as a drawn bow. The usual lively spark on her face was gone. She wore tears like dew, a picture of fragile pity.
Whoa— Cerqin let out a breath. The contrast was a thunderclap. She knew Baili, calm as a stone bridge in public, could be iron in private. She hadn’t expected this much steel.
Baili’s cheeks were flushed, but her face stayed still as water. A regulation paddle—no ordinary plank, the magic humming faintly—rose and fell with metronome calm. Each strike was measured, neither hurried nor slow.
Marks bloomed, then faded at once; a Sixth Rank body healed like ink washing off with rain. The tool wasn’t quite the Law Enforcement Hall’s standard issue, but close in spirit.
With each strike, Qianli cried out and counted, then begged and confessed with convincing tremble. It didn’t sway Baili. Her rhythm never broke; her mercy stayed sheathed.
The scene summoned Spring Tide’s shadow at once. Different face, same storm.
After a few minutes, Cerqin’s hand drifted down on habit’s tide—then passed clean through her own form. Soul had no flesh; desire echoed with no door to knock on. Tsk. She clicked her tongue, half irked, half amused at herself.
She remembered. As a soul, she could take in emotions. In Eastwind City, a flood of Negative Energy had poured into her, then the Love God twisted it into bliss, bright enough to make toes curl and minds white out.
Baili and Qianli were sending off a light drift of feeling now. If she moved closer, she could sip it. She hesitated. The spill was thin; the taste might be faint. Worse, keeping the Love God from twisting the intake into something else would cost focus. She’d tested it—clamping down on that deity dulled recovery, and the control was hard. At Fifth Rank, she couldn’t keep it up long.
She pushed back from the threshold. Before she left, she spared Qianli a glance and let regret flicker. She knew that crying well. Much of it was act; Cerqin had played that tune often.
Her mind slid to the blade Qianli had driven into her while controlled, the wound that left her like this. When her soul knit whole and her body woke, perhaps Baili could deliver a real, formal lesson. Swap the training paddle for a true instrument from the Law Enforcement Hall. Let it actually sting.
A sudden chill ran through Qianli, pleasure snapping to alarm, as if some strange predator had fixed on her from the dark. She flinched. Her stance loosened, and a few round, marble‑like micro‑devices—Cerqin’s own inventions—tumbled to the floor with soft clacks.
Qianli’s heart lurched. Her pleas came out truer this time, thin and urgent as wind through reeds. I… I didn’t mean it. Please give me one more chance.
