Qin Zhihua drew out a small white handkerchief and gently dabbed the beads of sweat from Li Fei's brow.
"By the way — where's Ling'er-jie?"
Li Fei asked suddenly.
"Ling'er is reading."
Qin Zhihua blinked, briefly caught off guard, then smiled as she answered.
When Su Ling'er had brought Beatrice to the Mercenary Guild earlier, it had been the first time Qin Zhihua felt a genuine pang of regret — she found herself questioning whether taking the girl on as her personal handmaid had been a mistake to begin with. Coming here herself was one thing, but why on earth had Ling'er brought Beatrice along?
What if Li Fei's dream actually came true — and it was Beatrice who made it happen?
Beautiful women had been appearing one after another, and even Qin Zhihua had been struck by how stunning they all were. Yet every single one of them was already acquainted with Li Fei, and they had all happened to show up at the Mercenary Guild at this particular, delicate moment. It left Madam Zhihua oscillating helplessly between hope and dread.
Deep in the marrow of her bones ran the poison of old feudal thinking. Qin Zhihua knew perfectly well that her family elders would never dissolve the engagement — and yet, as if guided by some mischievous fate, she had already quietly begun preparing a handmaid to share a chamber. She didn't dare let herself feel jealous. But she yearned to occupy just a little more weight in Li Fei's heart — unwilling to fade into the background beside everyone else.
Li Fei noticed the distant, distracted look on Madam Zhihua's face. She planted her pale little hand firmly on Zhihua's shoulder, then leaned in close until their foreheads were touching.
"Is Zhihua-jie thinking about someone she likes? You're completely somewhere else."
Li Fei's eyes curved with a warm smile.
Qin Zhihua looked at her — a long, deep look — and the faint trace of wistful longing in her gaze carried a thousand kinds of allure. Li Fei's breath caught in her throat.
The queen of the establishment, who spent her days bewitching others without a second thought, had very nearly had her own defenses breached.
"Bring these with you tomorrow."
With some difficulty, Qin Zhihua pulled herself away from the warmth and scent she couldn't seem to stop craving. She produced a potion satchel that was, at a glance, a pleasure to look at — inside, eleven vials were arranged in neat order.
"Oh, you really didn't have to—"
Li Fei accepted it with a sheepish laugh. "Thank you, Zhihua-jie."
The satchel differed from the standard kit Li Fei usually carried. Alongside the familiar clear glass bottles were several porcelain vials, and from the fine, close-set stitching, it appeared to have been sewn entirely by hand.
[Margaret's Universal Antidote]
Potion Rating: Crescent Moon
Effect: Neutralizes the majority of toxins below Tier III.
[Margaret's Tier-III Mana Potion]
Potion Rating: Crescent Moon
Effect: Restores 500 Mana upon consumption.
[Qin Zhihua's March Pellet]
Potion Rating: Crescent Moon
Effect: Invigorates the blood and regulates the breath upon consumption; greatly enhances stamina. Strength +10, Constitution +10, Agility +5 for 20 minutes. Possesses a moderate healing effect.
[Qin Zhihua's Spring Revival Dew]
Potion Rating: Crescent Moon
Effect: Rapidly stanches bleeding and repairs injuries. Transcendents of Sequence 7 and below who consume it can recover from critical wounds in a short time; unable to regenerate missing limbs. Efficacy decreases at higher Sequence levels.
The honest little heiress had prepared a potion kit a full two tiers above anything Li Fei normally used for herself.
Li Fei's gaze lingered on the character 「霏」 embroidered inside the satchel, alongside a pair of vivid, lifelike mandarin ducks. For a moment her mind went quiet, thoughts rising and falling like slow tides.
Fine. Stop working so hard.
Just get married.
A life of harmony and devotion, a beautiful companion by candlelight — wouldn't that be something?
Li Fei swallowed. Her heart was pounding. Even her firmly held ambition of building a grand household of wives and consorts felt like it was beginning to waver.
The eldest Miss Qin was genuinely dangerous — beautiful, thoughtful, and absurdly wealthy all at once. The last time Li Fei had felt anything like this was when Shannina had walked into her life.
The difference was that back then, Li Fei had been desperate and penniless, and Shannina had been her very first client. The fondness she'd felt then had been tangled up with unspoken gratitude and a quiet edge of self-abasement that she couldn't quite name.
Now, the well-seasoned queen of the establishment could keep a perfectly straight face while managing an entire stable of devoted admirers. The difficulty of winning her heart had increased at least a hundredfold.
Li Fei made a conscious effort to summon the faces of Mrs. Annie Teresa, Lady Gneia, Melodia, Nicole, Hathaway, the angel lady, and all the other beautiful women she knew — cycling through them one by one until she felt the steadiness return to her heart.
Then her fingers closed around one last vial — and her resolve crumbled all over again.
[Enhanced Lucky Potion]
Potion Rating: Blazing Sun
Effect: Fortune +20 for 60 minutes upon consumption; permanently increases Fortune by 1 point. Note: The permanent bonus can only take effect once.
Snap.
Li Fei's hand gave a violent twitch. In the next instant, with speed she had never before achieved in her life, she snapped the satchel shut and clutched it to her chest, staring at Qin Zhihua with an expression of absolute bewilderment.
If Nicole or Margaret had produced this vial, they would almost certainly have made some outrageous request — something along the lines of personally presiding over Li Fei's coming-of-age ceremony. And Li Fei would have probably, possibly, maybe… said yes.
Romance and ritual be damned — this was a Blazing Sun-grade item. Other than Bai Mengtian, this was the highest-tier gift she had ever received from anyone.
But Qin Zhihua only smoothed out the wrinkles in Li Fei's mage robe with quiet, gentle hands, eyes lowered and demure.
That was precisely what made Li Fei feel that tearing her own clothes off in gratitude right now would be a deeply disappointing thing to do.
"Zhihua-jie," Li Fei asked with grave sincerity, "what's the standard betrothal gift for the Qin family, generally speaking?"
Qin Zhihua smiled but did not answer. There was only a small shadow of sadness behind her eyes.
She already had a betrothal.
...
"You really should cherish honest girls," the queen of the establishment muttered to herself, clutching the Enhanced Lucky Potion as she walked away from Qin's Apothecary, still shaking her head. "Otherwise, when you're tired of playing the field someday, who's going to be left to pick up the pieces?"
The vial felt heavier than it should. It felt warm — almost feverishly so — because it had been filled with something deep and ardent that went far beyond its liquid contents. Li Fei turned it over and over between her fingertips, Qin Zhihua's face refusing to leave her mind.
The potion was too precious to use carelessly. She decided to hold off for now — she'd head to Viranean first and see what opportunities presented themselves. If there was a chance to level up quickly, she'd save it for after the breakthrough. If not, she'd burn through the remaining five Gacha Panel pulls first and reassess.
"What's this?"
Mrs. Annie Teresa walked into the bedroom carrying a cup of red tea and found Li Fei staring blankly at the vial in her hand. She tilted her head with mild curiosity.
"A classmate gave it to me."
Li Fei replied without so much as a flicker of expression.
"A gift from a female classmate? It sounds like you're very popular at school."
Since the two of them had made their quiet little promise, Mrs. Annie Teresa carried a vitality about her that hadn't been there before. The faint veil of sorrow and melancholy that had always shadowed her face was gone, replaced by a warmth that seemed to bloom freely — like a mother teasing a daughter who had grown into her beauty, or a new bride greeting a wife coming home after work. Maternal tenderness and feminine softness coexisted in her, laced with a thread of something tender and spring-like; the charm of a widow finding her second season was, frankly, a great deal to handle.
Her personality had brightened considerably, too. The old Annie Teresa had never made teasing little jokes like this.
"Not at all — it's a classmate I barely know. I paid her to buy it for me."
Li Fei protested with a slightly aggrieved look, tucked the potion safely away, then turned to Mrs. Annie Teresa with the most reluctant, clinging expression she could muster — the very picture of a sweet, innocent girl dragging her feet at the school gate, unable to say goodbye to a beloved senior.
She pouted. "I need to take a few days off from…"
Morality: -13
Charisma: 223 → 233
Mrs. Annie Teresa froze mid-motion. Her jade-green eyes flashed with a sudden, bewildered daze — as though the perfectly adorable, captivating student sitting right in front of her, unchanged in any visible way, had somehow sent her heart into a sudden anxious flutter. It was like a cactus flower blooming without warning, its layer upon layer of delicate petals spreading into a vast, all-encompassing net that pulled ever tighter around a heart that had already been caught inside it long ago.
...
Language lessons, wine sales, and a quick delegation to Ram to submit a leave request to the Academy on her behalf — the next morning, a bright-eyed and thoroughly refreshed Li Fei stepped out the door hugging an armload of paper bags, leaving behind several little fairies watching her go with expressions of profound reluctance.
"Miss Li? Right this way."
The moment she arrived at the entrance of Qin's Apothecary, a hale and spirited old man stepped forward and greeted her with a respectful bow, then led the way with brisk, sure-footed strides.
"And you are, elder?"
Li Fei studied him with curious eyes.
The old man had a kind smile settled into his face. Time had whitened his hair, but it had not managed to bend his spine. He gave the impression of something solid and dependable — weathered but unbroken.
"Just call me Old Jiang."
He chuckled warmly.
"Understood, Elder Ji— Old—"
Li Fei followed behind him with a little skip in her step, drawing out the last syllable in a playful lilt. In those few short moments, she had already left the old man with an impression of someone cheerful, charming, and entirely well-mannered.
They didn't enter the apothecary itself. Instead they rounded to the side, into a connected residential courtyard. The heavy wooden gate, thick with layers of red lacquer, stood wide open. On either side stood a pair of stone sculptures rendered with striking lifelike detail — horned creatures that suggested the strength of tigers and leopards, regal and imposing.
The queen of the establishment had arrived twenty minutes ahead of schedule, yet more than a dozen people were already present in the courtyard, gathered in small clusters of two and three, making easy conversation.
Among them, Li Fei spotted Qin Zhihua and Su Ling'er immediately. She broke into a little trot and headed straight for them, radiating boundless energy:
"Zhihua-jie, Ling'er-jie — good morning!"
Miss Qin was, as always, dressed in white so pure it put snow to shame — though today she had exchanged her skirts for a white robe, riding breeches, and tall boots, with a sword at her hip. The look added an edge of gallantry to her usual elegance, as though a peerless swordswoman had stepped straight out of the pages of some romantic tale: pale as jade, radiant as a clear sky after rain.
Li Fei turned the image over carefully in her mind, trying to find a comparable figure from memory, and came up short. Huang Rong lacked Zhihua's quiet grace; Wang Yuyan lacked her martial edge; Xiao Longnü was too coldly remote.
Perhaps a Wang Yuyan who knows how to fight — beautiful, devoted to a fault… fortunately, this young lady is no Murong Fu. Beauty and ambition alike — she intends to have both.
Li Fei's eyes curved into crescent moons as she quietly affixed a private little label to Qin Zhihua.
"Good morning. Miss Li Fei looks to be in very high spirits today."
Su Ling'er studied Li Fei's radiant smile with open curiosity.
Unlike her mistress, this dainty and lovely little handmaid was still wearing her flowing bright-yellow dress, its embroidered slippers and gauze stockings carrying a delicate fragrance with every step; a lock of tea-brown hair was tied into a small braid full of girlish charm. She had the poise of a well-bred young lady — yet her flawless complexion, sharp-featured face, and that hair color so unlike an Eastern woman's lent her an air of exotic allure that was entirely her own.
"Because I thought of something that made me happy."
Li Fei's smile didn't waver. She spread the still-warm paper bags out on the nearby wooden table, grabbed one in each hand, and pressed them into the arms of the two women. "You haven't eaten breakfast, have you? You definitely haven't. I made these myself — cakes. Go on, try them."
"Mm."
Qin Zhihua accepted the paper bag Li Fei held out to her and cradled it gently — it was the first gift she had ever received from Li Fei, and she wasn't quite sure what to do with herself.
"Eat up, Zhihua-jie — you're not actually planning to collect this bag of cake as a keepsake, are you?"
The queen of the establishment saw straight through the eldest Miss Qin's intentions without a moment's effort. She leaned in close to her ear and repeated, in a soft murmur, the same words she had said yesterday:
"Zhihua-jie — just how much do you like me, anyway?"
Qin Zhihua's body went still. Her pale fingers gathered the loose strands of hair at her ear, and slowly, she drew out a piece of cake. To the sound of Su Ling'er's admiring exclamations, she took a small, careful bite.
"If you do like it — I can make them for you every day going forward," Li Fei said with a warm smile. "For all of you."
A thread of sweetness bloomed across Qin Zhihua's palate and spread all the way into her heart.
The pity was that this sweetness was not hers alone. Beyond Su Ling'er, Li Fei had also given a cake to Old Jiang, to the other mercenaries, and to Grace and Beatrice as they arrived.
Watching Li Fei chatting happily with Beatrice — as though meeting a dear friend after a long separation — and occasionally calling out to Grace as well, Qin Zhihua felt a hollow ache settle in her chest. Then it deepened, because the handmaid who couldn't read the room had wandered over of her own accord and struck up an animated conversation with Beatrice, looking entirely as though the two of them had been waiting a lifetime to meet.
Madam Zhihua finally admitted it to herself: choosing Su Ling'er had been a mistake. Back behind the counter, the girl had seemed so capable and quick-witted. How had she turned into… into this?
The naturally gentle and magnanimous Miss Qin pressed her back teeth together and quietly revised the training schedule she had set for Su Ling'er — adjusting both the pace and the intensity upward.
Just as Madam Zhihua's thoughts were beginning to tangle into a knot, the queen of the establishment glided to her side, smile bright as summer flowers. With practiced ease, she swept Zhihua's hair back from her ear and leaned in close, her voice dropping to a warm, private thread:
"Let me tell you a secret. Not a word to anyone else."
"Actually — today I only made one portion of cake with my own hands. The rest I had my daughters make."
"Can you guess which one I kept for myself to give away?"
Beneath Li Fei's gaze — soft as flowing water, warm enough to melt through stone — the answer seemed to need no words at all.
Thump. Thump.
Qin Zhihua's heart leapt wildly. She gave a slow, small nod. Her hands circled around the paper bag, drawing it to her chest, then gradually tightening — savoring the warmth still held inside it, letting it seep into her.
Li Fei cast a glance at her System Panel. Seeing that her Morality score had not dropped any further, she allowed herself a quiet breath of relief.
...
Outside Loxibrook, a grey stone gate bathed in the clear morning light.
The gate was unlike anything ordinary. It was shaped like an enormous demon's skull — its jaws thrown wide open, the gap between upper and lower jaw a full five meters across, and within that gaping maw flickered a shifting, cerulean light.
Every so often, humans or strange and fantastical creatures emerged from the blue light; in the other direction, high-spirited Transcendent parties strode forward and disappeared into the demon's open throat.
"So this is the Path of Conquest? Don't tell me the entrance was actually built using a demon's head."
Li Fei studied the stone gate. An inexplicable sense of oppression settled over her — the feeling of a mouse staring at a cat that had been mounted and preserved. Even rendered motionless, even hollow, it was enough to make something primal in her blood shudder and recoil.
"That's right. Demons are born with the innate ability to manipulate space — their bodies have always been prime materials for spatial-class Transcendent work."
Beatrice stepped naturally into the role of narrator, a look of reverent wonder shimmering in her lake-clear eyes. "But Viranean lies in the boundless sea at the edge of the continent — even materials drawn from demons wouldn't be sufficient to bridge a distance that vast. So Lady Bai personally brought out a Demon Overlord's skull that she had severed with her own blade."
Oh? Someone's well-informed.
Ordinary people wouldn't know that within Loxibrook, Bai Mengtian possessed something approaching omniscience regarding anything said about her — a kind of divine awareness that meant every whispered word eventually reached her ears. Casual mentions in idle conversation, or songs sung in praise of her legendary deeds, were one thing. But if someone whose gender did not meet Bai Mengtian's romantic preferences said something they shouldn't have — well. They could look forward to a personal delivery from the constabulary.
In point of fact, Bai Mengtian had already conceived of a forbidden-curse-level spell. Its effect, roughly speaking, was this: if anyone dared to use her as subject matter for anything other than a certain genre of story involving two women, they would drop dead on the spot — and like the Sensitivity Aura, it could be active around the clock. Fortunately, the city lord, the benevolent Lady Elizabeth, had talked her out of it, and had quietly arranged for all portraits of Bai Mengtian to be destroyed — thereby keeping Loxibrook's "missing persons" count under control. The number of specially talented individuals loaded onto ships bound for the Eastern Continent's imperial palace had also begun to decline sharply.
"A Demon Overlord… Lady Bai Mengtian is really that formidable?"
Su Ling'er murmured to herself.
It was difficult to reconcile. The one time she had encountered the woman, she had looked less like a legendary figure and more like a student working a part-time PR job — a slightly bashful, beautiful girl who happened to be even younger-looking than Li Fei. And yet apparently she commanded that kind of terrifying power.
Good grief. Someone doesn't know how the world works.
Li Fei covered her face with her hand, then gave Su Ling'er a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and proceeded to talk openly about her best friend's dark reputation:
"Ling'er-jie — Bai Mengtian has a fine reputation here in our city, sure. But don't forget what her name means to the rest of the continent. She's basically neck-and-neck with the Witch Covens at this point. Why do you think no one has come to put her down these past two years?"
Before she could finish, Beatrice clapped a hand over Li Fei's mouth with a look of pure alarm:
"Don't — please don't say things like that about Lady Bai here of all places…"
"There's no need to worry."
Qin Zhihua gently removed Beatrice's hand from Li Fei's face. Meeting the elven girl's startled gaze with a calm, soft smile, she said:
"She and Lady Bai are the closest of friends."
____
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