The breathless click of the ebony door still echoed in the terrified minds of the heiresses outside, but inside the Supreme Box, reality had been swallowed by a volcanic heat.
Yù Qíng did not wait a single second. The mask of compassionate indulgence the priestess had worn to shatter the virtue of the Two Pearls melted completely, revealing the obsessive, possessive, and diseased woman behind the divinity. She drove her nails into Zhì Yuǎn's broad shoulders and attacked his lips with a voracity that bordered on desperation.
The god's scalding tongue invaded the primogenita's mouth, savoring the saliva that tasted of sandalwood and victory. With a relentless movement, his calloused hands seized the blue goddess's slender waist and lifted her from the floor. He did not carry her to the chairs. With the gravity of a meteor, Zhì Yuǎn threw his wife onto her back across the vast black velvet rug that lined the center of the box.
The impact was absorbed by the softness of the fabric, but the pressure that descended upon Yù Qíng crushed the air from her lungs.
Zhì Yuǎn hovered over her, the charcoal-gray robe open, revealing his chest gleaming with sweat. With a single brutal yank, he tore the silk of his wife's intimate garments. The priestess's pure Yin was already throbbing, her pale depths overflowing with a thick, musky nectar that soaked the black velvet instantaneously.
Without any preamble, he drove his own magnificent, incandescent length into her depths in a single motion.
"AHHH! My heaven!" Yù Qíng roared, throwing her head back, her neck exposed as her nails drove into her husband's back. The fullness of his Inner Universe split her open, stretching her internal walls to the absolute limit. "Destroy me... crush everything, husband... mnnn..."
The dense, loud rhythm began. The sound of flesh colliding against flesh echoed off the insulated walls of the box, muffling whatever noise from the auction still happening floors below.
But the Hunger of the Singularity in Zhì Yuǎn's Dantian was not something that could be contained by the first wife's ocean alone. And the altar that surrounded him knew this perfectly.
Yù Méi snorted loudly. The Brutal Blade kicked her own shoes away, carnivorous irritation overflowing.
"I spent the last twenty minutes wanting to break those heroines' faces and having to stay quiet," Yù Méi growled, her almond-shaped irises blazing in living gold as she tore off the golden dress, tossing the silk aside. Completely bare, the warrior of colossal proportions crawled across the rug. "You really think I'm going to sit here watching you eat the cake alone, Qíng? Make room for my fire."
Yù Méi pressed her sweating body against Zhì Yuǎn's right side, her warm tongue sliding along the line of the man's jaw. The god's large hand did not hesitate; his calloused fingers plunged immediately into the youngest's golden hair, pulling her face into a possessive and voracious kiss while his hips continued to massacre the primogenita's core.
On the other side of the rug, the discipline of the snow finally melted.
Mò Yán released a trembling gasp. The diplomat untied the collar of her Hanfu with hurried, feverish hands, the black and white silk falling away to reveal the monumental bust and the skin stained by a hot, scandalous flush. Without a single drop of modesty, she crawled to her husband's left side, rubbing her heavy breasts against Zhì Yuǎn's rigid ribs, whimpering softly when his free hand descended to grope and crush the fullness of her flesh with a delicious brutality.
And at the feet of that storm, Bái Wǎn smiled. The blue-haired girl, still breathless from her own throat's punishment hours earlier, freed herself from the pearlescent dress. With her large brown eyes overflowing with a blind adoration, the former scholar nestled against the man's legs, worshipping his skin with wet kisses, venerating every muscle tensed beneath the force of the act.
The Supreme Box had transformed into the true Furnace of Flesh.
The hours lost all meaning, drowned in the raw friction, the hoarse moans, and the Yin boiling to grind down the husband's infinite Yang. The black velvet floor became a pool of fluids, sweat, and pure distortion of Laws.
When the first rays of sunlight finally pierced the cracks of the Firmament Auction House's illusion glass ceiling, silence descended over the ruined space.
Zhì Yuǎn's Inner Universe turned calm and sated after the long night. The man stretched out at the center of the velvet rug, his broad chest gleaming with sweat, rising and falling with a comforting laziness he had not felt in a long time.
Beside him, Yù Méi also opened her almond-shaped eyes. The Brutal Blade sat up, her hyper-dense and vigorous body completely ignoring the night's exhaustion. She rubbed her flat stomach and pouted sulkily.
"I'm hungry," the golden warrior muttered, cracking her neck. "And not for Qi. I want real food. Thick meat and rice. The sun is already up, husband, let's get out of this room."
Zhì Yuǎn turned his face toward the youngest, the mild warmth in his dark eyes blending with an ironic, amused glint.
"If you devour one more plate like the mountain you ate at dinner last night, Méi, the axle on our carriage will finally give way under your weight," Zhì Yuǎn provoked, his deep voice vibrating with a relaxed, unhurried humor.
Yù Méi's eyes went wide with offense, throwing a small cushion at his face.
"My weight is perfect!" she protested, her ears red.
On the other side of the rug, Yù Qíng was already putting on her navy blue dress. The primogenita glided through the air with her ever-untouched grace, approaching the small center table to pour the morning tea she had kept warm beneath a Qi dome. The sweet, shadowed smile surfaced on the priestess's crimson lips.
"Our little flower has no manners, my love," Yù Qíng murmured, handing the steaming cup into her husband's hands. "The capital outside must be euphoric and noisy awaiting the arrival of the great and mysterious benefactors. But our heaven only concerns himself with his own rest."
Zhì Yuǎn accepted the porcelain. He took a sip of the hot tea, paused with a calculated deliberateness, and raised his dark eyes to his wife.
"My rest would be considerably more pleasant if your morning tea didn't continue to taste of trampled grass, just as it did when you served it to me on the village veranda, Qíng," he replied, his tone dry but laden with an affectionate complicity that pointed directly back to the old bamboo house.
Yù Qíng's lethal smile faltered for a second. The goddess in blue narrowed her black eyes, crossing her arms beneath her full chest, failing miserably to hide the indignant and endearing pout that shattered her mask of an untouchable priestess.
Near the most isolated corner of the cabin, oblivious to the teasing, Bái Wǎn was still sleeping deeply. The ocean-haired young woman was curled beneath a sheet of light silk, her divinely soft face buried in the pillow, her rosy cheeks squished in an incredibly innocent way.
Zhì Yuǎn set his cup on the table. Ignoring Yù Méi and Yù Qíng's grumbling, the god crawled across the rug with the silence of a shadow, stopping beside the youngest's sleeping body.
He did not wake her with commands or with the weight of his own aura. Zhì Yuǎn's large, calloused hand descended with meticulous gentleness. His long fingers began to slowly massage Bái Wǎn's scalp, untangling the long strands of blue silk with a mild and absurdly protective tenderness.
The man's warm thumb grazed the girl's soft cheek.
"Wake up, Wǎn'er," he whispered, his baritone dropping to a register so soft it sounded like a song. "The sun is already high. You are incredibly beautiful even drooling on my sheet, but we need to leave."
Bái Wǎn sighed in her sleep. Her flawless face instinctively sought the warmth of his hand, nestling against her husband's calloused palm.
"Mnn... my heaven..." the girl murmured, slowly opening her pale blue irises, intoxicated and melting at the devoted way she was being woken.
Watching the scene from the center of the room, Yù Qíng rested her hands on her waist, shaking her head with a smile overflowing with indulgence.
"You spoil her too much, husband," the primogenita remarked, her tone feigning reproach. "You'll ruin her. A god shouldn't pamper his own servant as though she were made of glass."
Without taking his eyes off Wǎn'er's adorable face, who was now smiling shyly up at him, Zhì Yuǎn retorted with unshakeable humor.
"And who was it that brushed her hair for half an hour last night before we slept, Qíng?" he asked, his dark gaze turning swiftly to catch the wife red-handed. "Don't pretend this spoiling is a flaw that belongs to me alone."
Yù Qíng flushed slightly, turning her face away with a polished clearing of her throat, while Yù Méi burst into laughter, pointing at the elder sister who had been caught in the act. The altar, shielded from the rules of the world outside, overflowed with life.
Zhì Yuǎn rose, his right hand lifting in the dim light. His Inner Universe turned silently. Without reciting incantations or forming seals, a microscopic fragment of the Law of Destruction swept through the box. In a single thousandth of a second, the sweat, the spilled fluids, the dense smells, and the stains on the velvet and the silks simply ceased to exist, obliterated from reality with surgical precision.
He fastened the black silk cape over his shoulders. The mild, renewed warmth in his dark irises descended upon the golden warrior, who was still rubbing her empty stomach.
"Let's go," Zhì Yuǎn's deep voice echoed through the clean box, his tone carrying a dry and undeniably affectionate humor. "Before our little flower begins to lose her perfect weight from starvation. We march for their gates."
Yù Méi blinked. The Brutal Blade's face exploded in a furious red, her ears burning at being teased and complimented twice in the same morning. She crossed her arms quickly and pouted sulkily, averting her gaze while Yù Qíng and Mò Yán let out a crystalline laugh and Bái Wǎn covered a sweet smile with her sleeve.
When the heavy ebony doors opened, the family emerged into the Firmament Auction House's private corridor.
Waiting on her knees on the cold stone, flanked by old Mò Zhōng, was Mèng Lián. The Mistress of Shadows wore her luxurious crimson silk dress, the mature and sinful beauty radiating its usual shameless charm, but her eyes overflowed with absolute idolatry the moment Zhì Yuǎn's figure crossed the threshold.
She raised her face. The natural boldness of her personality fused perfectly with the blind devotion that now governed her soul.
"The carriage is perfectly prepared at the docks, my Lord," Mèng Lián's melodious, intoxicating voice slid down the corridor. She leaned her torso deliberately forward, exposing the fullness of her neckline in an offered submission. "Will our heaven depart directly to take the jade gates?"
Zhì Yuǎn did not break his stride, walking flanked by his altar.
"We will take a stroll through the capital's streets first, Lián," his unshakeable baritone reverberated in the dim light. "Let the sun warm the gardens before we cross their doors."
The scandalous redhead smiled — a melted, devoted curl of lips. She lowered her forehead until it nearly touched the floor, the crimson silk spreading around her.
"This servant understands. I will eagerly await your command to serve you... in whatever need my Lord desires," Madame Feng murmured, the explicit promise dripping from every syllable as the divinity passed by.
Half an hour later, far from the eyes of the previous night's merchants, the family emerged through the building's docks. The trinity boarded, the cabin doors closing with a muffled click. The monumental vehicle glided out into the streets of the Pale Gold Capital.