Dual Cultivation System: My Cultivation Was Crippled, So I Rely on Intimacy to Level Up

Chapter 206: Self-Persuasion Complete, Senior Sister Makes Her Move!

Early the next morning, Zhou Kai pulled the blankets over the sleeping He Xinrou, tucking her in. He left behind a communication jade slip and quietly departed.

The Asking Star Sect’s affairs were settled. Now, far more pressing matters awaited him back on his own spirit mountain.

…

For the past month, Zhou Kai hadn’t left his domain. He spent his time cultivating and monitoring Li Lanyin’s condition. All the Spiritual Energy radiating from her had completely vanished, drawn back into her core.

She slowly opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was Zhou Kai standing over her.

Li Yunmian stood nearby, a warm smile gracing her features.

“Yunmian, can you tell what constitution Lanyin has Awakened?” Zhou Kai asked, already knowing the answer.

Li Yunmian shook her head, her brow furrowed in confusion. “It seems to be a Wind Spirit Body. But I’ve never heard of a Wind Spirit Body absorbing Spirit Qi at such a pathetic rate. She’s retaining less than one in ten of what she takes in.”

Li Lanyin spoke up, her voice soft with a sudden realization. “I can feel nine wind apertures inside my body. The Spirit Qi I absorbed earlier… it must have been dissipating through them.”

“And now?” Zhou Kai pressed.

Li Lanyin reached out, attempting to command the breeze around her. A gentle zephyr swirled, lightly fluttering her robes. A second later, the air violently churned, transforming her entire body into a blurred, swift shadow.

“I can communicate with—and even harness—the Source Origin of wind through these apertures,” she said.

Zhou Kai did the mental math. A newly Awakened constitution takes about one to two months to stabilize.

Li Yunmian looked at her, a flash of pure envy in her eyes. “All the juniors in the Li Family are Awakening special constitutions,” she said, her tone a little sour. “Meanwhile, aside from cultivating a bit faster, I haven’t changed at all.”

Zhou Kai stepped forward and gently took her hand. “Yunmian is a Golden Core great cultivator,” he murmured warmly. “Once I condense my own Golden Core, your speed will skyrocket. I will keep you by my side forever, preserving your youth and beauty.”

Just then, Mo Qianyuan pushed the door open.

Her sharp gaze swept the room, landing immediately on Zhou Kai’s hand holding Li Yunmian’s. She saw the lazy, thoroughly satisfied smile plastered across her Master’s face.

A sense of perfectly ordered harmony filled the room. To Mo Qianyuan, it was a blinding, stinging eyesore.

Li Yunmian had completely moved out of the pavilion. Mo Qianyuan was now the sole occupant of the entire western side of the spirit mountain.

Her expression remained entirely blank, as if she hadn’t seen a thing. “The Zhao Family members have been cleaned up. Not a single one remains.”

Zhou Kai tossed a Storage Bag to her. “The Zhao Family’s resources. I picked out the items that might be useful for you, Senior Sister.”

He continued, “I’ll also have to trouble you to coordinate the upcoming auction.”

Mo Qianyuan accepted the bag but ignored the auction talk. Her gaze drifted around the room, scrutinizing the furniture as if checking to see if the chairs and tables were placed according to some strict, invisible grid.

“Junior Brother, am I just your external chief steward?”

Li Yunmian, with her sharp intuition, instantly sensed the volatile shift in the atmosphere. She coughed lightly, a knowing smile tugging at her lips, and grabbed Li Lanyin. “You two chat. We’ll be going now.” She shot into the sky, leaving them alone.

Mo Qianyuan didn’t sit. She stood ramrod straight, her eyes boring a hole into Zhou Kai.

Ever since she learned that her Master had also become Zhou Kai’s Dao Companion, a corrosive anxiety had taken root in her soul.

Everyone on the spirit mountain had fallen into their designated places. A new “order” had been established, with her Junior Brother as the sun at the center of their solar system.

Master, Ziyi, Hanyi… their positions were all “correct.”

Only she—the Senior Sister—was like a gear placed in the wrong slot. She was a glaring “error.”

The realization made her skin crawl. No. That’s unacceptable. Errors must be Corrected.

Zhou Kai felt a chill crawl up his spine under her intense scrutiny. He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

“Junior Brother, what kind of position do you think this ‘Senior Sister’ holds in your heart?”

Zhou Kai frowned at the bizarre question. “Senior Sister is Senior Sister. You are someone I respect and trust.”

“Senior Sister?” Mo Qianyuan chewed on the words, a bone-chilling arc lifting the corner of her lips. She took a deliberate step forward. “Then why is it that only this Senior Sister is excluded from the inner circle? Why am I the outlier?”

She raised her hand, her icy fingertips stopping a fraction of an inch from Zhou Kai’s chest. “Tell me. What is the ‘standard’?”

“What standard?” Zhou Kai was taken aback.

“The standard,” Mo Qianyuan repeated, her voice dead and clinical. She looked at him as if deconstructing a complex Talisman, analyzing every stroke for flaws. “The standard for becoming your woman.”

Zhou Kai’s brow furrowed deeper. The bluntness of it was jarring, but the cold delivery was downright unnerving.

He had never looked at Mo Qianyuan through that lens. Now that he had a reliable Spiritual Energy source for his Talismans, he genuinely just wanted a normal, platonic relationship with her.

“Senior Sister, you…”

“Let me tell you.” Mo Qianyuan talked over him. It wasn’t an explanation meant for him; she was reciting a universal truth she had just violently unlocked.

Her gaze swept over Zhou Kai, viewing the room not as a living space, but as a vast, intricate Formation. “A new order has been established on this mountain. Master is your Dao Companion. Ziyi is. Hanyi is. Even the newly arrived Lanyin is.”

With every name, the frigid light in her eyes intensified.

“When everyone is an ‘exception,’ the only one who strictly adheres to the ‘rules’ becomes the sole ‘error.'”

Her logic was terrifyingly cold and clear, fueled by the manic obsession of a compulsive disorder.

She wasn’t asking why Zhou Kai didn’t love her. She was demanding to know why she, as a component, had been installed in the wrong slot, ruining the perfect symmetry of the Formation.

“I’ve been thinking about where the problem lies.” A strange, eerie clarity shone in Mo Qianyuan’s eyes—the result of forcibly streamlining a mess of complex human emotions into binary code. “They are not wrong. I am wrong. This ‘Senior Sister’ is standing in the wrong position.”

The revelation instantly vented the crushing anxiety building in her chest. She took a deep breath, like a judge passing a final sentence.

All her past, genuine care for her Junior Brother was instantly warped and re-contextualized by her fractured mind.

“I managed your affairs. I cleaned up your enemies. I worried for your safety… I always thought that was just a Senior Sister’s duty,” she murmured. The icy sneer on her lips actually softened, morphing into self-deprecating realization. “Thinking about it now, I was the one who was slow on the uptake. If it weren’t for a deeply rooted love, why would I have done all that?”

Self-persuasion complete.

Zhou Kai’s heart skipped a beat, but he forced his mind into a state of absolute calm.

He saw it clearly now. This wasn’t a confession of love. This was a terrifying, unbreakable logic loop born from severe OCD.

“Senior Sister, you’re missing the point,” he said, his voice heavy as he tried to smash her logic with his own. “There is no ‘standard’! You, Ziyi, Master—each and every one of you is unique. You are people, not replaceable cogs in a machine!”

But Mo Qianyuan had already completed her internal reconstruction. Her goal wasn’t emotional connection. It was “Correction.”

“Junior Brother, you are right.” She suddenly smiled.

The smile wasn’t cold, but it held absolutely zero warmth. It was like a perfectly drawn Talisman—every curve geometrically precise, but utterly devoid of a soul.

She tilted her head slightly, directly mimicking Li Yunmian’s signature lazy posture, and deliberately softened her voice.

“As the eldest Senior Sister, taking care of my Junior Brother is inherently my duty.” She stepped so close he could smell her breath. “Since I was standing in the wrong position, I shall simply step into the right one.”

She raised her hand. The accusatory finger was gone. Instead, she tried to inject a trace of deliberate gentleness into her icy touch. Mimicking a movement she had observed someone else do, she lightly brushed Zhou Kai’s collar, smoothing out a wrinkle that wasn’t there.

The action was standardized. Meticulous.

And completely wrong. Her fingers were freezing, her movements stiff as a board.

Zhou Kai’s muscles locked up. He felt a wave of revulsion. This wasn’t Mo Qianyuan.

It was a clumsy, robotic imitation. The head tilt was Li Yunmian. The soft tone was Chen Ziyi. The aggressive, direct approach was Shen Hanyi.

“Enough!” Zhou Kai snapped, his voice dropping to a glacial temperature as he seized her wrist. “What the hell are you doing? Why are you copying them? Mo Qianyuan, look at me!”

Her hand trembled for a fraction of a second before going completely still.

In Mo Qianyuan’s eyes, Zhou Kai’s rejection was data. It was proof that her “Correction” had failed. The light in her eyes died. The fake gentleness evaporated, leaving behind the dead stillness of an ancient well.

Failure. Was my imitation not accurate enough? Is my ‘Correction’ flawed?

She slowly pulled her hand from his grip and took a calculated step back, restoring the standard safe distance of a “Senior Sister.”

“Nothing,” she replied, her voice flat and completely stripped of emotion. “As for the auction, I will handle it properly with Junior Sister Qiaoqiao. Rest assured, Junior Brother.”

With that, she turned on her heel. Her back was ramrod straight, her strides measured with the precision of a ruler—not a millimeter off.

The door clicked shut.

Zhou Kai stood frozen in the center of the room, his expression darkening like an approaching storm.

He understood exactly what was happening, and that was what terrified him. She wasn’t seeking his love. She was executing a mental command prompt she had hardwired into her brain to fix a perceived bug in the system.

She was actively erasing “Mo Qianyuan” to become an empty shell that fit the “standard.”

No. I can’t let her do this.

This was way past relationship drama. This was a faltering Dao heart. These were the textbook signs of the onset of Qi Deviation!