The spark of it starts small, well beneath Jiang Cheng’s notice, but builds steadily.

Sect Leader Nie has still not returned to the main hall over half an hour after the agreed time.

Nie Huaisang asks Jiang Cheng to plug him up after sex so he can be filled with Jiang Cheng's cum while presiding over a discussion conference. Halfway through the day, Jiang Cheng thinks he should check if Huaisang needs a refill.

“You missed the discussion conference,” Jiang Cheng snaps back at him, whipping his head up stiffly from his perfunctory bow.

Nie Huaisang’s smile doesn’t waver, his entire expression perfectly, painstakingly polite. He looks pale, but anyone of his mettle would, clad in the violent contrast of silver and black. It all relinquishes nothing to Jiang Cheng but the means to inflame his irritation for the situation and for himself. He had left the conference too quickly to contemplate his choice, and now, in Qinghe Nie’s main hall, he’s slowed down enough for the whiplash of regret to be both immediate and immense.

An explosive misunderstanding leaves Jiang Cheng assuming he's escaped matchmakers forever and Yu Ziyuan assuming she can solve her son's singleness with the right young man. Only one of them can be right. But what will Jiang Cheng do when the last name on the matchmakers' new list is his friend, Nie Huaisang?

Talking at someone is only fun for so long. That's all being a sect leader is: talking and talking to people bound by courtesy to listen to you. It's so fucking dull. A relief, then, to face one’s equal, and no less an old friend who is inclined to interrupt you whenever you ramble. He likes it. It’s one of Jiang Cheng’s best qualities.

In the years after Guanyin Temple, Nie Huaisang attends to unfinished business.

Nie Huaisang flips his fan shut with a fluid pivot of his wrist and taps it to his own mouth, signalling for Jiang Cheng to lower his voice. “So you can see just how serious this is! If it’s found out, we’ll really be in some strife.”

“We?” Jiang Cheng gapes at him, and does not lower his voice at all. “We?! There is no we in this! This is a problem of your own making, it can be a problem of your own solving!”