'Is there… truly no hope left for humankind?'
Under a blood-red dying sun, the defeated black-haired woman lay sprawled on the ground, fingertips stretching forward, her breath faint as a guttering flame.
After a long while, she struggled to lift her small face, still streaked with tear-tracks, and crawled laboriously, inching toward the brook.
Moments ago, Li Fei had wagered the dignity of being born human and fought with her back to the river.
It had been a battle that turned the sky dark and the earth dim, with fluids flowing like rivers.
Yet fighting alone and unaided, she had, in the end, submitted beneath the fairies' demonic claws, escaping with her life only by sheer luck.
Finally reaching the brook, Li Fei simply plunged her head straight in and drank wildly.
Gulp, gulp, gulp…
Whether or not it was her imagination, the water level of the brook seemed to have dropped a little.
With the weight she had lost now replenished, Li Fei lay flat, panting. At first her face showed the joy of a survivor escaped from calamity, but then scene after scene of the post-battle aftermath—heart-stopping and too dreadful to look at—surfaced in her mind.
'Da-da-damn it all.'
Li Fei pounded the ground in indignation, humiliated tears spilling from the corners of her eyes.
Humankind—utterly and completely routed!
Though she had summoned the spirit of 'though ten million fairies stand before me, I alone shall march on,' in the end two fists were no match for a hundred hands. Under the fairies' wave-after-wave offensive, she could parry a move or two at first, stubbornly spitting out lines like 'Grk… kill…,' but very soon she was casting off helmet and armor, her ranks routed beyond recovery.
Clearly, Miss Top Courtesan had, through firsthand practice, overturned the fallacy that 'there are only oxen worked to death, never fields ruined by the plow.'
If the field wasn't ruined, it only proved there hadn't been enough oxen.
The one thing to be thankful for was that she hadn't come away from this battle entirely empty-handed.
Li Fei lowered her head and gazed at the loser's brand of shame upon her belly.
The soul-stealing tattoo bloomed like a flower bud, dewdrops still lingering upon it, carrying a decadent yet cloyingly sweet beauty.
An entire afternoon of grueling cultivation had brought the Ascension Ritual to one-twentieth completion.
So long as she persevered, Sequence 7 was within sight.
After a long while, Miss Top Courtesan weakly rose to her feet, her body still trembling.
But she had already made her peace with it.
'Humankind has lost—but what does that have to do with this Witch here?'
Li Fei murmured, swaying with every step as she made her way toward the exit of the Secret Garden.
And the two fairy chieftains, having finally managed to soothe their kin, hurriedly flew over to see her off.
True to the Secret Garden that had erected the 'Fairy Ring,' the fairies had real martial virtue: upon noticing that Miss Top Courtesan had already begun rolling her eyes back, they did not press their relentless pursuit.
Even though a few untamable fairies who hadn't gotten their turn in line were still itching to act, they were all held back by their sisters—fairies born of Summoning Magic, though they too had the full range of emotions and desires, still placed loyalty first. Should a death actually occur, it would inevitably bring disaster upon their master, and that was something they would not allow to happen.
In the end, amid the fairies' reluctant, lingering gazes as they bit down on their handkerchiefs, Li Fei mounted her broom and flew off into the distant sky.
'Eep! What happened to you?'
Seeing Li Fei's bloodless appearance, Su Ling'er pressed close in surprise and aching concern, cupping that pale, sickly little face and scrutinizing it carefully.
Thanks to her unceasing adaptation training, and with the Sensitivity Aura's level held at Lv10, Li Fei's defenses had been steadily improving. Even a round of hide-and-seek shouldn't have left her looking this ravaged by illness.
So catching sight of her looking like someone just recovering from a grave illness, Su Ling'er was rather startled.
'It's nothing serious.'
Li Fei—soft in the waist but stubborn of tongue—wore a grave expression: 'The path of cultivation is perilous and rugged; now and then one inevitably has to overdraw one's potential…'
'Let's get you a medicinal bath—I'll help nurse you back to health.'
With that, Su Ling'er went off to prepare the bathwater for the young madam.
Li Fei, seizing the moment, slipped into the room to check on little Yawen.
In the three days since her birth, the half-blood fairy had already grown a centimeter taller. Though she still couldn't speak, only babbling 'goo-goo, ga-ga,' she always looked utterly delighted and clingy with affection whenever she saw Li Fei.
After nursing, Eva irresponsibly flew off on her own to play—she was active by nature and disliked sitting still—leaving Sofia, who had taken maternity leave, to raise the daughter solo, widow-style. Sofia's cool, sharply defined features were now overtaken by maternal tenderness and doting—the city hall security squad's benefits truly were generous: once you had a child, you could apply for maternity leave even if the child wasn't your own.
The young madam sat on Sofia's lap, cradling Yawen in her arms—they looked exactly like a family of three.
Sofia hesitated a moment, then in the end—just as she usually did when escorting her mother-in-law to school—she gently slipped her trembling fingertips around the waist of the woman in her embrace.
Only when approaching footsteps drew near did she withdraw her hand as if waking from a dream, her cold heart pounding wildly without pause.
It was Grace—invited over to 'stay for a few days'—coming to tell Li Fei it was time for dinner.
In the past, dinner had always been handled at the shop, but given her schedule, after discussing it with Madam Gneia, Miss Top Courtesan had decided to ramp up the hunger-marketing. During the month or so she would spend ascending to Sequence 7, she would, like Aurora, show up to work at the shop only irregularly.
As for whether this would drive customers away, that was an utterly needless worry—just imagine: if you, as a customer, went to the nightclub to book the prettiest hostess, only for the proprietress to tell you that the shop's top courtesan was actually the campus belle of a prestigious university—and not just any belle, but the gorgeous, talented, scholar-goddess-tier belle who'd been trending all over the headlines lately, now so devoted to prepping for her graduate exams that she could neither eat nor sleep and couldn't come to the shop every day… the reaction of the vast majority of rich madams or young heiresses would be to up their booking price—and up it hard!
Mulling over her ever-climbing market value, Miss Top Courtesan cheerfully lifted her bowl and downed in one go the chicken soup that had been dosed with Serpent-woman scales and a hefty load of other tonics.
After the meal, the young madam, having recovered a measure of vitality, went pattering back to her room and dug out the [Mage's Robe].
This crescent-moon-grade piece of equipment hadn't accompanied Li Fei for very long. In the battle against Kova, the brutal fighting had not only left Li Fei covered in wounds—the robe, too, had been torn to tatters.
Her original plan had been to repair this piece and then offload it together with [Flowing Silver], since she already had two full-moon-grade equivalents in [Blade of Joy] and [Guardian Mage Robe].
[Heartshatter], [Belt of Strength], and [Quietsong] were likewise crescent-moon-grade, but since she had no replacements for them at the moment, Li Fei decided to keep using them for now.
But now, she had changed her mind.
Li Fei took out the glittering golden champion's medal, lit a cigarette, and sat at the head of the bed, rubbing the pad of her finger over the lifelike white-dove engraving, lost in silent thought.
As the wisps of smoke curled upward, the idea that had abruptly surfaced in her mind that morning grew ever more complete.
She wanted to try whether she could proactively 'create' an achievement for herself—and rake in a bit of money along the way.
If the plan went smoothly, Li Fei would reap both fame and fortune, gain a new achievement, and might even scrape together the cost of the Sequence 6 class customization.
And if it failed… well, it seemed she'd only lose a teeny-tiny hundred million points of Morality Value?
No sooner thought than done—Li Fei fished out her phone.
My Favorite Hobby Is Bending Straight Girls: Calling Tingbao, calling Tingbao.
Throbbing Warrior: ?
My Favorite Hobby Is Bending Straight Girls: I got my hands on a Pandora's Box—come open the mystery box with me?
Throbbing Warrior: Where should we meet?
My Favorite Hobby Is Bending Straight Girls: I'll take a bath and come to your place.
Throbbing Warrior: Hm? Now that you put it that way, I'm wide awake.
My Favorite Hobby Is Bending Straight Girls: Drop dead! Oh right, is big sis Kalida home?
Throbbing Warrior: Wh-what? You two have actually been hiding this from me…
Throbbing Warrior:
heh heh
My Favorite Hobby Is Bending Straight Girls: I just need her for something. Wait for me.
Li Fei set down her phone, packed up the hole-riddled [Mage's Robe] together with [Flowing Silver], the [Pandora's Box], and that medal, then padded barefoot to the bathhouse.
Grace and Su Ling'er were already soaking in the hot water.
Since Lady Zhihua wasn't home, the young madam had turned the tables and become master of the house—she could now openly and brazenly invite other girls to stay over!
—What a pity, though, that the new-recipe 'sandwich' would have to wait until tomorrow night before it could be savored.
Li Fei thought with a touch of regret, as she too eased slowly into the water.
Even though she had spent the whole afternoon at it…
—but that had been cultivation!
As the saying goes, balance work with rest: after high-intensity cultivation-snuggles, a proper bit of relaxation-snuggling was simply indispensable…
Li Fei swam to the spot between the two of them, savoring the sensation of her weary muscles steeping in the hot water. The added medicine seeped into her skin, and—of all things—it let her feel threads of coolness within the steaming bath.
Su Ling'er suddenly pinched the young madam's waist and, patting her belly, said:
'Make that pattern appear.'
'? That's hardly appropriate…'
the young madam said bashfully.
'Make it appear. Now.'
Recalling the Eldest Miss's parting instructions, Su Ling'er patted Li Fei's belly relentlessly.
At last, a tattoo composed of fifty-four exquisite patterns surfaced upon that fair, lovely belly.
'Good heavens…'
Su Ling'er covered her face and sighed, her expression all but saying, 'Eldest Miss, please come back quickly—the young madam is beyond saving.'
Grace bit her lip and said nothing, silently lowering her head, as though the fifty-odd hats suddenly clapped onto her head had bent her neck under their weight.
'I-I'm doing this for the sake of cultivation!'
The young madam explained the whole matter of the Ascension Ritual with righteous confidence, then planted both hands on her hips and declared with utter arrogance: 'Even if big sis Zhihua came back, she'd understand and support me.'
A thousand miles away, a sword-glint flashed at Qin Zhihua's fingertips, cleaving apart the great door of an ancient tomb.
Bathed in moonlight, she knit her brows and pressed a hand to her own lower belly.
Some unseen, fated sensation stirred the meridians and acupoints throughout her body, and the True Qi within her dantian roiled without cease.
'Too fast…'
Qin Zhihua sighed inwardly.
By the realm-classification system of the Continent of Enlos, before she met Li Fei she had ascended to Sequence 6 and mastered Advanced Combat and Advanced True Qi, already qualifying to make a push for Sequence 5—she had even gotten most of the resources and intelligence required for ascension just about ready.
It was only that Qin Zhihua had placed her focus on pharmacology and had been in no hurry to ascend.
Little did she expect that, once she set foot upon the path of entering the Dao through love, her True Qi cultivation would surge forward by leaps and bounds, effortlessly breaking through to the peak of the Fifth Heaven, while her several other transcendent knowledge realms advanced right along with it as a matter of course.
This meant that, given sufficient resources and the completion of the Ascension Ritual, Qin Zhihua could leap straight to Sequence 4!
She even suspected that, freed from the shackles of Sequence ranks, her exceptionally pure and lively True Qi might break straight through to the Sixth Heaven—the high Sequences were so close to her now, as if within arm's reach.
Yet Qin Zhihua was not happy, for it would mean pouring vast amounts of energy into obtaining the Ascension Ritual content and secret-medicine formulas for higher classes, and then into gathering the secret-medicine materials, completing the Ascension Rituals, and so on—leaving her without enough time to keep her company.
Yet she found it hard even to suppress her own cultivation.
After all, once she had fused emotion and the Law into a single furnace, Li Fei had become Qin Zhihua's very martial Dao. She who had never cared for fighting and killing now held an unprecedented devotion to her own martial path—merely visualizing her beloved was the equivalent of cultivating, ceaselessly, day and night.
Wordlessly, Qin Zhihua drew her sword and strode into the ancient tomb.
In the darkness, a sword-energy hung suspended, rising upward.
…
'Ta-da-da-daa~'
Li Fei plonked the black-and-yellow Pandora's Box down on the table and, itching to give it a go, said: 'Time to open the mystery box~!'
She certainly didn't dare open this thing all by herself—lest something like a genuine Succubus Empress should leap out of the box, carry Miss Top Courtesan off, lock her away in a basement, and consign her thereafter to a lightless life of endlessly birthing half-blood little succubi.
'Hurry it up, hurry it up.'
Bai Mengtian, clad in a black spaghetti-strap nightgown, urged her on, her lustrous fair feet swaying back and forth behind her.
Lady Kalida sat off to one side, her smooth purple hair spilling over her shoulders, her plump, slender legs crossed, her figure graceful and alluring—soft and fleshy everywhere yet perfectly proportioned—the tender, fair, delicate skin of her legs covered all over with fly-head-sized fine print. She watched the two of them quietly, like a kind mother tending her two adorable daughters, save for the mature, bewitching charm in her brow and eyes.
'May the Goddess of Nature bless us…'
Li Fei muttered, and with anxious, nervous tension, flipped open the box.
Kya-kya-kya—
A dense swarm of red creatures came flapping out of the box on bat-wings, each with a round little head, all letting out shrill, unbridled cackles.
Kalida's face broke into a smile as she loosed a Spatial Binding, freezing this flock of little red monsters motionless in midair, unable to budge.
'What in the world are all these things?'
Li Fei was stunned.
By their appearance, these creatures closely resembled the Death Alignment's Sequence 9 Demon Spawn.
Only, compared with the illustrations in the textbooks, the things that had flown out of the Pandora's Box looked rather more vivid in color, and their heads had been enlarged in size, making their bodies seem very small.
'Tch.'
Bai Mengtian pursed her lips and offered her appraisal: 'Mediocre.'
Li Fei mulled it over briefly, then with a 'shing' drew Flowing Silver, a shark-toothed murderous look on her face.
A steep price of 8,888 gold coins, and all she'd pulled was a pile of Sequence 9 stinking-fish-and-rotten-shrimp?
Goddammit, I knew it—gambling dogs deserve to DIE!
If I ever spend money on a Pandora's Box again, I'll chop off Tingbao's paws on the spot!
'Not bad luck at all.'
Kalida spoke up at just the right moment: 'These are Lucky Imps. Apart from being a gift from Lady Pandora, traces of their existence can be found only in a very few Folded Spaces.'
'Kill them, and you'll get some little surprises—a boost to constitution, an increase in mana… some lucky ones have even comprehended higher-level transcendent knowledge on the spot.'
'Oh my.'
Li Fei's anger instantly turned to delight. Forcing down the pang in her heart, she said: 'Whoever's present gets a share—how about a third each?'
Kalida shook her head:
'The higher one's Sequence rank, the lower their value—but for Transcendents of the low-to-middle Sequences, these Lucky Imps are still quite useful.'
'So, they belong to you.'
'Then I won't stand on ceremony.'
Li Fei secretly let out a breath of relief. She was just about to hack at one to test it out when she stopped herself and hesitated: 'Or maybe… we should move somewhere else?'
After all, this was someone else's home—making a bloody, gory mess wouldn't be good.
'It's fine.'
Kalida made a 'please, go ahead' gesture.
The words had scarcely left her mouth before Li Fei raised her sword and ran one of the imps through.
To her surprise, no blood spurted forth—the slain Lucky Imp dissolved into a small puddle of red powder.
[You have slain a Lucky Imp. Gained 500 EXP.]
The generous experience points made Li Fei's heart skip.
Even a Sequence 8 Knowledge Sequence Transcendent might not necessarily yield her this much experience!
Woohoo, gibber-gabber!
Li Fei let out a cheer and went on a cackling killing spree.
[You have slain a Lucky Imp. Gained 500 EXP.]
[You have slain a Lucky Imp. Gained 500 EXP. Strength +1.]
[You have slain a Lucky Imp. Gained 500 EXP.]
Fifty imps leveled Li Fei up on the spot, with an extra bonus of 1 point of Strength to boot.
This meant that these things not only provided a hefty chunk of experience, but also carried a small chance of yielding an extra surprise.
—If a mere fifty were this potent, then with five hundred thousand of them, wouldn't this lady here be able to box Tingbao and kick Nicole, single-handedly subdue Chloe and Hathaway, and reign invincible across the land from then on?
Still not satisfied, Li Fei licked her lips, her drive to make money now stronger than ever.
The Pandora's Box—what a fine thing! She'd have to open more of them in the future.
'It seems Miss Spokeswoman has reaped a fine harvest.'
Kalida smiled, lightly stroking the tattered robe and the medal beside her, and reminded her tactfully:
'Do you really intend to auction these off?'
'You should know that equipment that fought at your side until it broke is no different from a comrade-in-arms; and this medal is your "honor."'
'To auction off your comrade and your honor with such fanfare so soon after the exchange match ends… it might invite some gossip and rumors, you know.'
Li Fei winked playfully:
'Don't worry, big sis Kalida—I've already got a plan.'
'Though I'll still need your help with a few things…'
'As for the specific aim and the overall plan, do allow me to keep you in suspense—but I believe this matter will benefit the aquarium, and indeed the development of Loxibrook's charitable causes.'
With her own reputation as collateral, Li Fei successfully struck a small partnership with Kalida.
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