Chapter 211 - 210: Eating

Lin Yuan immediately crossed the room, stepping forward to take the heavy tray from her lap with effortless grace.

He then looked down at the tray in his hands. He saw the hand-pulled noodles. He saw the Roujiamo. He saw the glistening duck and the heavy, rich marrow stew.

It was an exact, flawless recreation of the menu he had casually mentioned to Bai Chen hours ago.

Lin Yuan slowly raised his deep purple eyes, looking at his wife. He saw the flour on her forehead. He saw the faint signs of physical exhaustion in her shoulders that completely betrayed the hours of laborious effort she had just expended.

"You cooked this," Lin Yuan stated, his voice dropping to a low, incredibly husky whisper.

"Chen’er assisted heavily with the manual labor," Bai Qingyue admitted, her cheeks flushing a deep, beautiful pink. She looked down at her lap, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly shy. "I realized today that despite all the time we spend together, I did not know what you loved to eat. I wanted to... I wanted to do something normal for you. I wanted to be a wife who cooks for her husband."

Lin Yuan did not speak. He set the tray down onto the low table in the center of the room.

He turned back to her, dropping to one knee before the wheelchair, exactly as he had done the night before. He reached out, his large hands gently cupping her face. His thumbs softly brushed over her cheekbones, lingering on the faint smudge of flour near her hairline.

"You are perfect," Lin Yuan murmured, his voice thick with an emotion. "You did not have to exert yourself for this, Qingyue. But the fact that you did... it is a gift greater than any heavenly artifact."

She leaned into his touch, her eyes shining with unshed tears of pure joy. "Eat it before it gets cold, Yuan. Please. Tell me if the flavor is correct."

Lin Yuan stood up, moving to sit on the plush cushions beside the low table. Bai Qingyue wheeled herself to the opposite side, watching him with bated breath.

He picked up a pair of bamboo chopsticks. He did not rush. He took a single, slow bite of the Roujiamo.

The crispy bread shattered perfectly against his teeth, giving way to the tender, savory, slow-braised meat within. The flavor exploded across his palate. It was not a culinary masterpiece enhanced by immortal alchemy; it was just a perfectly cooked, incredibly soulful mortal dish.

It tasted exactly like the Dream Domain. It tasted like quiet afternoons with Lin Fan. It tasted like home.

Lin Yuan closed his eyes for a brief moment, swallowing the food, letting the profound wave of nostalgia and absolute contentment wash over his spiritual sea.

He opened his eyes and looked at her.

"It is flawless," Lin Yuan said, his voice ringing with absolute, undeniable sincerity. "It is the finest meal I have eaten in a hundred and thirty years."

Bai Qingyue let out a long, shuddering breath, a massive, radiant smile breaking across her face. The anxiety melted from her shoulders entirely.

"I am so glad," she whispered softly.

As Lin Yuan continued to eat, savoring every single bite of the noodles, the duck, and the rich, fierce marrow stew, Bai Qingyue reached to her side.

Resting on a small stand near her wheelchair was her zither.

"I cannot share the meal with you, for my body cannot yet handle the density of a beast marrow," Bai Qingyue said, placing the zither carefully across her lap. "But I will not sit here in silence while you eat. Allow me to play for you."

Lin Yuan looked up, his chopsticks pausing. "Your music is always a welcome blessing, Qingyue."

She smiled, raising her pale, slender hands. Her fingers hovered over the silk strings for a fraction of a second before descending.

She played a slow, delicate, and incredibly intimate melody. The notes trickled from the zither like water over smooth river stones, clear, pure, and filled with a profound, aching tenderness.

As the music filled the master suite, something extraordinary began to happen.

The melody was not merely sound. It carried the absolute, unfiltered purity of Bai Qingyue’s soul, interwoven with the lingering, harmonic resonance of the tether they had solidified the night before.

Lin Yuan felt the music physically wash over his entire body. It was a melody of absolute rejuvenation, carrying a soothing power that seemed capable of reaching the deepest parts of his being. The music seeped through his skin, flowed along his Qi pathways, and gently cascaded into his Sea of Consciousness.

Within Lin Yuan’s mind, the mist of his Spirit Severing aura rippled softly, rising and falling in perfect harmony with the zither’s melody. Every note seemed to soothe his soul, washing away the exhaustion that had accumulated over countless years of cultivation. For a brief moment, he experienced a state of absolute and unparalleled peace.

But just as that rejuvenating power spread into the deepest, most isolated corners of his spiritual sea, something suddenly changed.

The absolute tranquility was violently shattered.

The music did not stop, but an entirely different resonance echoed within the void of his mind.

It was not the mechanical chime of the Millionfold Return System. It was not the chiming, energetic voice of Ling Xi, the sword spirit.

It was a voice that sounded like it had traveled across eons of dead space. It carried the conceptual weight of thousands of thunderclaps detonating simultaneously, yet it was compressed into a calm, ethereal whisper that bypassed the physical world entirely and spoke directly to the core of Lin Yuan’s existence.

"I have been meaning to reach you, fellow Daoist."

Lin Yuan’s chopsticks stopped entirely. His deep purple eyes widened a fraction in the dimly lit room. The bite of duck remained halfway to his mouth.

He sat perfectly still, the soothing melody of his wife’s zither continuing to play in the physical world, completely oblivious to the entity that had just breached the defenses of his mind.