"All that doting wasn't wasted. Look at you, making something of yourself."
Li Fei cradled a length of faintly luminous green root, and a second wave of unlooked-for elation swept through her.
These were the root fibers of the Longevity Fruit, still carrying a residue of life force. Given an ideal growing environment, in some years' time they would bear Longevity Fruit once more.
Clearly, after the savage battle between the Tree Demon and that Corpse King, the former had seized the fruit and swallowed it on the spot, while the latter had claimed the roots for itself — and in the end the pair of them had only been keeping it warm for a certain mother and daughter.
"Who knows how many years it'll take to fruit again..."
Lilith rolled her eyes and let Miss Stepmother hold her close and nuzzle against her, the delicate tea fragrance drifting from those smooth strands of hair setting her thoughts swaying.
"I happen to have a little treasure."
With practiced ease, Li Fei slipped the spatial ring — an article more private than any undergarment — off Lilith's hand, and drew out a white jade porcelain bottle. Inside was the [Natural Spring Water] she'd won from the fifteen-pull, which accelerated plant growth.
It was a silver-grade reward, when all was said and done. Li Fei reckoned forcing one crop of Longevity Fruit to ripen shouldn't be any trouble.
But theory proves nothing without practice. No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she hauled over a flowerpot, ripped out the jasmine growing in it, and buried the root section in the soil.
"What are you doing?" Lilith asked, eyeing the jasmine petals scattered everywhere.
"And now — the moment of the miracle."
Li Fei winked her right eye and tilted the mouth of the bottle. A fine thread of water spilled over the root, breathing out a vigorous, verdant scent.
"This is—"
Under Lilith's astonished stare, a straight emerald stalk broke through the soil, surging into flourishing growth at a rate the naked eye could follow. Leaves unfurled along its length, studded with twenty-odd swelling buds. A few breaths later most of those buds shriveled and dropped into the wet earth, while the remaining seven or eight blossomed and then withered, leaving five white fruits behind.
The fruits were no bigger than an infant's fist and looked utterly unremarkable — yet as Transcendents, the two of them could feel the surging, undiluted vitality packed inside.
"Not bad at all."
Li Fei gave the bottle a shake. Nearly seventy percent of the [Natural Spring Water] remained.
Which meant that as long as she kept the roots, she could force two more crops of [Longevity Fruit].
"Water of Life? Moonwell spring water? No, neither of those..."
Lilith turned it over for a moment, but couldn't place the stuff's origin.
"Don't just stand there gawking."
Li Fei picked one Longevity Fruit and sniffed it. A light, clean fragrance slipped into her nose, clearing her head without the sharp bite of mint.
She tossed the fruit straight to Lilith, smiling. "Want a taste?"
"Absolutely not."
Lilith shook her head without hesitation.
They were both in the flower of their youth; dumping resources into lifespan was pure waste. Selling the Longevity Fruit and buying two more pieces of gear beat eating it outright.
"Then..."
Li Fei drew Dark Night, sheared the root free of the plant, and proposed, "The fruits go to you, the roots to me. How's that?"
As the saying goes, even mother and daughter keep clear accounts. Li Fei was offering a fair price: five Longevity Fruits for the root. True, the roots could keep producing fruit indefinitely — but any Transcendent with room left to climb would sooner kill the hen for its eggs than sit around waiting on an old bird to lay. The first option bought you a sharper blade right now, and then you could go take somebody else's hen.
So five Longevity Fruits were worth no less than that stretch of root.
"One is enough for me."
Lilith shook her head, the golden twintails swinging behind her.
The Demon Suppression Bureau's desperate counterattack had cost her dearly — gear damaged, a pile of precious consumables burned through. But the Corpse King's hoard was on a level the Tree Demon could never have touched. It hadn't spent most of its life shut away at home, and it certainly hadn't emptied its coffers setting up a Soul-Burial Spirit-Nourishing Grand Array. One trip to the Corpse King's lair had left Lilith's pockets bulging — never mind the cat demon king's crystal core and the effects taken off the Demon Suppression Bureau's members. The Magic Academy periodically invited specialists from the Thieves' Guild to lecture, on topics including but not limited to "Efficient and Comprehensive Spoils Collection," so even a healer knew her way around a corpse.
In fact, Lilith's spatial ring was so stuffed she'd had to abandon some of the cheaper loot.
"Wonderful."
Li Fei's face lit up. Right in front of Lilith she plucked the other four fruits and began allocating them like a merchant reciting her inventory. "This one's for little Qiao'er, this one's for Sister Yutong, and this one's for—"
"..."
Lilith's expression darkened.
The sight of her stepdaughter wearing the exact drop-dead deadpan Grace specialized in finally made Li Fei snort with laughter. She pressed a lipstick print onto the fruit and held it out.
"Here. Keep it safe."
"Don't leave your spit on it, that's gross."
Lilith's face was all disgust, yet her eyes lingered on the fruit Li Fei had kissed, memorizing its shape and every contour.
"Oh? You're still holding on to this?"
Business concluded, Li Fei fished out of her ring the orange picture book — yuri smut — that starred herself, and said with perfect innocence, "Lilith likes it that much?"
"None of your business."
Lilith turned her burning face away.
Evidently, the same piece of leverage lost most of its bite the second time around.
"Then..."
Unhurriedly, Li Fei produced the sketches Lilith had drawn with her own hand — a piece that by rights should have reeked of the #Cow# genre, orange stepmother material through and through, and which her stepdaughter had somehow rendered as pure, chaste romance.
The young and beautiful stepmother held the pages against her chest, arranged her features into precisely the expression the woman in the drawings wore, brought her soft pink lips to her stepdaughter's ear, and breathed in a slow, sultry whisper:
"Do you need a model, Lil-ith... teach-er?"
Warm, damp breath slipped into her ear canal, and the small pale shell of it flushed crimson at once. Lilith turned her head in a fluster, only to run straight into Miss Stepmother's warm, scalding gaze, their faces a hair's breadth apart.
Staring into those shimmering eyes, Lilith saw the expectation and the encouragement flowing there plainly enough, and the furious retort already on her tongue jammed in her throat.
Teacher should have been a lofty, sacred form of address.
But for Lady Annie and Lilith, mother and daughter, once the homewrecker had cried out "Teacher, you're sooo amazing" in that warped, ragged voice — and once those cries had carried out of the bedroom into the stepdaughter's ears — the word had taken on a different meaning. A Forbidden one.
"Draw me."
Her breath sweet as orchid, the young and beautiful stepmother cupped the golden-haired girl's scorching cheek in one hand while the other loosened her own robe.
Bang!
A moment later the door slammed against its frame with a crash. Li Fei, thrown out of the room, clutched her clothes to her chest to cover what was on the verge of spilling free, her face a picture of injured innocence.
"Nnh—"
On the other side of that thin door, Lilith covered her face and panted, a stifled little wail escaping her as her back slid slowly down the wood.
The sorrow of these past ten years — the grief Mama could never quite hide behind a forced smile — and the sweet, brimming happiness that had lit her face these last few days rose in Lilith's mind, and would not be pushed away.
How could she ever do something that would break the heart of the mother who had nothing in this world but her?
When Lilith opened those water-blue eyes again, tears glimmered at their corners.
Anyone else can.
But I can't.
"Mama, I will never—"
Lilith murmured it under her breath. And yet the white fruit that had been so honored as to be chosen by Miss Stepmother was, somehow, in her hand.
She lifted it slowly. The small fruit sat in her palm heavy as a mountain, and every inch of the movement cost her.
"But if it's only this much, it should be all right..."
Lilith gazed at the slightly smudged lip print. Two trembling lips drew nearer and nearer to it, and at last the two touched and overlapped.
A tiny fragment quietly flaked away from her soul and, along with the twin tracks of tears at her eyes, dissolved into the darkness.
"You've all done well."
The sky hung between night and dawn, but the rumble of cartwheels was already rising at the city gate.
A convoy rolled forward into the dull light, drawing further and further from Luyuan County.
"Are they... really gone?"
It took a cup of tea's time before the City Lord appeared atop the gate tower, mopping sweat without pause, standing on tiptoe to peer into the distance.
"They're gone, my lord. They've truly gone," the secretary said humbly.
"Good. That's good..."
The City Lord let out a long breath — then, after a while, jolted awake as if from a dream and started howling. "Quick! Send for the physician, quickly!"
Li Fei was fated never to hear him. She was astride her skeletal ghost-mare, riding point for the convoy alone, treating every demon she met to a Fireball.
By her original plan, she would have lopped off that City Lord's dog head before leaving and stripped the City Lord's manor bare on her way out.
But the man had not only paid his thousand taels of gold a day in "security fees" without a whimper — on hearing that Li Fei intended to depart, he'd thrown in a parting gift as a token of his regard. All told, the gold he'd offered up came to a full five thousand taels, and in all those days he hadn't made a single suspicious move.
A piece of deadweight that knew its place and could be squeezed this easily was genuinely rare. Leaving him alive might prove useful later.
So Li Fei changed her mind. Not only did she spare him, she spent 10 Wealth Points and actually handed over an antidote capable of neutralizing the slow poison.
Then several female ghosts caught up with the column, carrying bundles that gave off a foul stench.
"Well done, sisters."
Li Fei took the bundles, tapped the ghost gourd, and drew them back inside. A wisp of white smoke rose from it a moment later and shaped itself into a female ghost with mature features — none other than Huang Zhenzhen, newly recruited outside Luyuan County.
Her features were even and gentle, but an unshakeable savagery had soaked into her face, ruining the mild, gracious air she should have had and leaving her looking harsh and sullen.
"Sister Zhenzhen — was it he who destroyed you?"
Li Fei smiled and flung a bundle to the ground. The hemp cloth fell open and a blackened human head tumbled out, rolling across the dirt.
The head was beyond recognition, the skin sloughing off, covered in darkened wounds. Yet Huang Zhenzhen stared at it, transfixed.
Venom-soaked malice poured off her, boiling like water in a kettle. That lovely oval face twisted and contorted into something monstrous.
"Yes. It's him... I'd know him even if he were burnt to ash..."
The frigid voice seemed to rise out of the deepest hells, laden with boundless hatred. Without her noticing, Huang Zhenzhen's eyes had turned scarlet, tears of blood running down them. "Lü Zhengchun..."
"I'm sorry. I couldn't let you kill him with your own hands," Li Fei said, lowering her eyes, her tone sincere.
"Aaah—"
Huang Zhenzhen let out a low, keening wail and threw herself at the head with abandon, shredding it inch by inch with her long nails.
Li Fei waited in silence while she poured out her hate.
Before that wretch Lü Zhengchun died, he had ruined one last common family. He'd taken a fancy to a peasant woman, and when she refused to be obedient, he invented a charge of "colluding with demons" out of thin air, hauled her husband and son both into the dungeon, and tortured them.
He never did get what he wanted — Li Fei took his head off with a single stroke at Squire Wang's estate first. But the family of three in that dungeon never came out again.
The innocent father and son bled out in despair and agony, and the woman, her home and family destroyed, dashed her own head against the wall. All three were rolled into straw mats and dumped outside the city.
Later still, a vengeful ghost crawled out of the peasant woman's corpse, wrapped in a chest full of resentment and killing air. Her name was Huang Zhenzhen.
The moment Li Fei learned of it, she dispatched her female ghosts to find Lü Zhengchun's head — the same head that had once served as a token of allegiance — and bring it before Huang Zhenzhen.
Crunch. Crunch.
Huang Zhenzhen chewed the skull to pieces mouthful by mouthful and swallowed it down. Then she sat staring blankly at hands smeared with blackened blood as the bloody light in her eyes faded, point by point.
The enemy she had hated to the marrow — gone, just like that?
The hatred and obsession that had dragged her back up out of hell, that she could not put down even after becoming a vengeful ghost, had vanished with absurd ease. Huang Zhenzhen's eyes, whites and pupils clear once more, held nothing but bewilderment.
Then, thoughtfully, she turned to look at Li Fei, whose face wore compassion and regret.
"When will we women ever truly stand up?!"
"I would rather no woman on this earth ever again die with hatred in her heart and turn into a wronged spirit!"
"..."
The words Li Fei had once spoken to the female ghosts echoed in her ears again.
Her ghostly life given a purpose once more, Huang Zhenzhen walked toward Li Fei step by step, then knelt at her feet with an expressionless face and pressed her forehead hard to the ground.
"Dear sister, what is this?"
Li Fei swung down from the saddle and hurried to lift her up. "Rise, rise."
Hair hanging loose about her face, Huang Zhenzhen looked at Li Fei and said, one word at a time, "From this day, this concubine's life belongs to you. Mountains of blades, cauldrons of oil — I will refuse nothing."
"Am I the sort to trade on a favor for repayment?" Li Fei shook her head again and again. "Women should help women. Seeking justice for my sisters is simply my duty."
"You avenged a blood debt as deep as the sea for this concubine. Such kindness—" Huang Zhenzhen shook her head calmly. "This concubine still understands what it means to repay a kindness."
"This — well — haah."
Li Fei looked torn for a while, then sighed. "Then once you've risen to the Heaven Realm, sister, look after the sisters of the Qian Division for me. Call it doing your part for all the women under heaven."
Huang Zhenzhen had died with resentment running very deep, and her aptitude in life had likely been considerable, so when she was reborn in this other form, the density of her ghostly energy far outstripped what most female ghosts could reach. She had become a vengeful ghost at the peak of the Earth Realm, one step short of the Heaven Realm.
A Ghost Giant fused from a thousand Sequence 8 female ghosts and a Ghost Giant born of a thousand Sequence 7 female ghosts were simply not in the same class of combat power. A premium ghost like Huang Zhenzhen was well worth Li Fei's extra attention — and having avenged her almost by accident, the loyalty side of things was decently secured too.
"This concubine understands."
Huang Zhenzhen nodded.
"Stop calling yourself 'this concubine.'"
Li Fei spoke with earnest weight. "All women under heaven are equal — what wife, what concubine? It's nothing but a trick men use to set us competing over them. They want a stack of wives, and then they pick out a so-called principal wife to help them oppress the rest... hah. The wife crushes the concubine, the concubine crushes the maidservants, and in the end every woman alive is fighting the others to the death over a man's favor while he sleeps easy. By what right?"
"And even if you do win his favor — all it means is that out of a pack of dogs wagging their tails and begging, the most obedient one got tossed a bone."
"So you see, sister, the very word 'concubine' is a way of grinding us women down!"
"..."
Huang Zhenzhen's eyes went pure black, her long hair lifting and drifting; she seemed deeply shaken. She was silent a long while before nodding hard. "I understand."
"So long as you understand my heart, sister... go and rest now."
Li Fei drew Huang Zhenzhen back into the gourd. The smile faded from her face and she rode on in thought.
With her transcendent mastery of the Art of Tea, her unrivaled beauty, delightful little arts like the Sensitivity Aura, plus a ten-inch silver tongue and a succubus tail, bringing the Kun Division's female ghosts into line had come as naturally as water flowing downhill — no effort at all.
The Qian Division's ghosts were another matter entirely.
Li Fei intended to bind them together with the doctrine of "girls help girls." The results from her test plots — the mine and a few other sites — had taught her that spiritual incentives worked no worse than material ones.
Her grasp of women's rights was admittedly shallow, nowhere near as refined as her attainments in tea. That hardly mattered.
Female ghosts who had died with their grievances unanswered were filled to the brim with hatred for the world. Every last one of them had an antisocial streak; they were scarcely better than witches.
All Li Fei had to do was scatter the seeds of an idea. Watered by resentment, those seeds would soon enough grow into an extreme, fanatical, and all the more infectious tree of thought — and one gust of wind would carry its seeds into every corner of the Demon-Sealing Continent.
Besides, even if it failed, she'd lose nothing.
"I was a little fairy from the heavens to begin with. Who could possibly be better suited to leading a feminist movement?"
The sweet smile returned to her face, and the light clatter of hooves carried on the wind toward Lin'an, capital of the Great Song.
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