jaginsing:
@ Valley
hmm that's different to my reading of the novel...
"As for Ling Xiao (Yan Hui's master), he knew Yan Hui held the neidan and heart protection scale because he was the one who put them in her body to both save her life and prevent his master from getting them."
Heart protection scale inadvertently hits YH 10 years earlier when TY throws it out (i don't remember LX letter saying that LX put scale in YH), and he takes YH at the fight at the tree when she accidentally releases TY because of her extraordinary ability - TY's neidan already there (hence xian cultivation to hide demon aura).
And it's not spelled out, but she was always at risk of being noticed....which is why when kicking her out didn't work, and she ended up with TY anyway, he flayed her (to completely hide her from LX shifu). Let me know your thoughts. I've only read TL so nuance missing?
No, both scale and neidan were put into Yan Hui by Ling Xiao purposefully, since after Tian Yao desperately threw them away he was sent to retrieve both. Also both were needed to save baby Yan Hui's life, the scale sealed up the hole in her heart and the neidan supplemented her life, I checked the novel and this is from chapter 101.
While its never mentioned exactly why Ling Xiao banished her the first time, I have a theory that basically combines yours and mines ideas for why he did it: It's mentioned that Tian Yao's neidan was leaking demon aura but Ling Xiao taught Yan Hui xian techniques and constrained the demon aura himself to make it undetectable to Qing Guang. This worked for 10 years not just because of the deliberate masking of the demon aura but also because Qing Guang simply wasn't around Yan Hui a lot. As I said, using neidans for his cultivations forced him into a period of seclusion, but the novel mentions that the period between him needing to absorb neidans had shrunk to every 2 months, which would spike the danger Yan Hui would be in as a disciple of whats basically Qing Guang's headquarters, hence her banishment.
Also, what prompted the flaying was something VERY specific, not her merely having the neidan: Ling Xiao whipped her with the intent to break her cultivation base because Yan Hui was practicing demonic cultivation at that point, and that was stimulating the neidan and making it more detectable. She probably would've been fine and flown under the radar had she not started practicing demonic cultivation, but, alas.