"Come with me."
Lin Yue delivered the words without a change in her expression, then turned and walked away without waiting to see if he would follow.
Ye Chen grabbed his jacket from the hook beside the door and went after her immediately, pulling it on as he stepped into the corridor.
Behind him, Fatty Wang's snoring continued its thunderous rhythm, utterly undisturbed.
As they descended the stairs and moved through the quiet dormitory building, Ye Chen found himself puzzling over a practical question.
The men's dormitory had strict protocols. Female students weren't permitted inside under normal circumstances. Security formations were embedded into the entrance specifically to prevent unauthorized access.
Yet Lin Yue had walked through without apparent difficulty.
He filed that question away. A senior student with a Fourth Grade physique and significant family backing probably had ways of navigating inconvenient rules. He'd ask another time.
The campus was still mostly quiet in the early morning hour, the sky painted in soft shades of gold and rose as the sun continued its ascent.
A few dedicated students moved in the distance, heading to early training sessions.
Lin Yue navigated past the dormitory complex and into a small park nestled between two larger academic buildings, a peaceful space with mature trees and stone benches surrounding a quiet pond.
She stopped in the center of the clearing, turned slowly, and surveyed the surroundings with careful eyes. She was checking for observers.
When she was satisfied that they were completely alone, she turned to face Ye Chen.
He studied her expression. The customary coldness was present, as always, but underneath it he detected something unusual. A subtle tension in her jaw. A quality to her silence that felt less like indifference and more like careful preparation.
She was choosing her words.
"Zhao Long won't let yesterday go," she finally said. "He's not intelligent, but he is stubborn and petty."
"His reputation matters enormously to him, and I stopped him in front of hundreds of witnesses. In his mind, that humiliation reflects on you." Her eyes held his.
"He will keep coming. He will escalate. And eventually, he will bring enough force that I won't always be conveniently nearby."
Ye Chen nodded slowly. This confirmed what he'd already suspected. Zhao Long was a problem that wouldn't resolve itself.
"So I'm proposing a deal," Lin Yue continued.
Ye Chen raised an eyebrow. "What kind of deal?"
What happened next was subtle enough that someone less observant might have missed it entirely.
Lin Yue's spiritual energy, normally a calm, steady presence around her, began cycling rapidly through her meridians.
A deliberate internal technique, Ye Chen realized. She was using cultivation control to regulate her own physical responses.
What Ye Chen didn't know was that she was preventing herself from blushing.
The observation was oddly endearing coming from the Ice Beauty of Tianlong University.
Lin Yue held his gaze, and for a brief moment the mask of cold composure on her face showed the faintest crack.
She felt shy and embarrassed by what she was about to say, but this was the only way.
She was still a virgin, but since this was a necessary sacrifice for her to get through her bottleneck, it was necessary.
She knew that even among her peers, she was a level above, but that was simply due to the massive resources the Lin family had poured into her.
She needed to give the family a return on their investment, so she could secure her future. And doing it with Ye Chen wouldn't be such a loss anyways.
"I will handle Zhao Long permanently," she finally said, each word delivered with careful deliberateness.
"I will ensure he no longer poses any threat to your university life. In exchange, you will help me clear my current cultivation bottleneck."
Ye Chen frowned. "Help you clear your bottleneck? You know I'm an ordinary student, right? How could I possibly help someone at your level with—"
"Through dual cultivation," Lin Yue said. "Using your Pure Yang Sacred Body."
The words landed in the quiet morning air between them.
Ye Chen went very still. His mind processed what she'd just said, turned it over, examined it from multiple angles to make absolutely certain he wasn't misunderstanding.
She was proposing exactly what he thought she was proposing.
He looked at Lin Yue. At her athletic wear still damp from morning training, at the careful rigidity of her posture. This was not a woman who made such proposals casually.
The fact that she was standing here, saying these words to a freshman she'd met less than twenty-four hours ago, spoke to how seriously she needed this breakthrough.
Lin Yue met his gaze directly, her expression cooling by several degrees as the silence stretched. The temperature around them dropped almost imperceptibly.
"Well?" The single word carried the weight of someone who did not enjoy repeating herself. "Do you agree or not?"
Ye Chen felt a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
In his previous life, he'd read enough cultivation novels to know that when fortune presented itself, hesitation was the greatest enemy.
Men of destiny had to be decisive, bold, and absolutely certain of their answer when opportunity knocked.
He looked at Lin Yue—brilliant, beautiful, powerful Lin Yue—and made his decision without another second of deliberation.
"I agree."
***
Ye Chen returned to the dormitory room with a grin he couldn't quite suppress, his mind still processing the conversation in the park.
He and Lin Yue had exchanged contact information and made their arrangements with efficiency.
She had been businesslike about it, practical and direct, as if she was scheduling a study session rather than something infinitely more… intimate.
Yet despite her composure, he'd noticed that her spiritual energy had continued cycling rapidly the entire time.
He was definitely looking forward to it.
When he pushed open the door, he found Li Qiang in the center of the room, moving through a series of deep stretches with the focused discipline that apparently defined his every waking hour.
Li Qiang looked up immediately.
"You were up early," he observed, reaching forward to touch his toes. "Where did you disappear to?"
"Just went for a jog," Ye Chen said casually, hanging his jacket back on the hook. "I wanted to get familiar with the campus layout."
Li Qiang grinned. "Good initiative. We should go together next time."
He straightened from his stretch, and then paused. His eyes moved over Ye Chen with the instinctive assessment of someone trained to read physical conditions.
A small furrow appeared between his brows.
"Something's different about you," Li Qiang said, genuine puzzlement in his voice. "You seem... different."
Ye Chen chuckled, reaching up to scratch the back of his head.
The instant breakthrough to Foundation Establishment had probably altered his spiritual presence in ways a fellow cultivator could subconsciously detect, even without deliberately probing him.
"You're imagining things," Ye Chen said lightly, deliberately looking around the room as he sought to change the subject. "Speaking of which, where's Fatty Wang?"
"Finally dragged himself up about ten minutes ago," Li Qiang said. "He's in the shower."
As if on cue, they could hear Fatty Wang singing enthusiastically and completely off-key from behind the bathroom door.
That was when there was a knock on the dormitory door.
Ye Chen's smile faded slightly, his eyes narrowing.
He'd already had one unexpected visitor this morning. Who was it this time?