The warm, tropical breeze filtering through the bamboo pavilion was entirely at odds with the freezing, deeply ingrained arrogance that defined the very soul of the woman lying naked upon the woven mats. Su Binglan, the peerless Palace Mistress of the Ice Heart Palace, a cultivator who had once stood proudly at the Early-Stage of the Nascent Soul Realm, was currently reduced to a vulnerable, shivering patient. She lay flat on her stomach, her face turned to the side, her eyes squeezed tightly shut in a desperate, futile attempt to preserve whatever fragile remnants of her dignity still existed.
Wang Jian knelt beside her, his large, calloused hands heavily coated in the warm, aromatic, amber-colored medicinal oil. He was executing the fabricated 'Physical Meridian Stimulation' with the slow, meticulous, and agonizingly deliberate pace of a master predator playing with his trapped prey.
