Tonight the stars were sparse, and even the moonlight was smothered by clouds. It was so dark she couldn't see her own hand.
Li Fei adjusted to the gloom quickly, but when she pushed open the door of her home, candlelight, balloons, flower petals and an ocean of stars lit up her pitch-black pupils.
The house had been decorated with great care. Soft candlelight fell over a carpet of lily petals, and the tassels beneath the hot air balloons drifted slowly.
And all of it was wrapped in a flowing river of stars.
It was a spectacle conjured by a mana projector. Deep-blue tides rolled serenely across the walls, the ceiling and the carpet, and ten thousand stars drifted with the waves, shimmering with fine, scattered light.
For one moment, Li Fei felt gravity vanish beneath her feet, as though she were floating in an enchanting night sky where their eyes were the sun and the moon, and those watery gazes nearly melted her.
Miss Top Courtesan had always excelled at weaving romantic lies that left others hopelessly smitten. This time, though, it was her own heart that had been struck by the arrow of romance.
She was silent for a moment. Then she tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled brightly.
"I'm home."
…
By the time Li Fei was ushered before a nine-tier chocolate ice cream cake with a knife raised in her hand, it was five minutes to midnight.
"Don't you want to wait a few more minutes?"
Qin Zhihua asked in a gentle voice.
"Aw, it's just a birthday. I'm hungry."
Li Fei waved a hand, carefree.
The truth was, the instant she had walked through the door, she'd badly wanted to throw herself into Lady Zhihua's arms and spend the stroke of midnight in a breathless, suffocating KISS, welcoming her coming of age that way.
But for practical reasons, Li Fei had to deliberately wreck that sense of "ceremony" and lighten the mood.
After all, she had to consider the feelings of her housemates, her guests, and the hundred-odd maids who'd all had their way with the lady of the house…
Careless of me.
Li Fei smiled as she cut the cake and handed slices to everyone with her own hands, maids included.
But inside, she was drawing lessons from the experience.
Romance and ceremony always went hand in hand with privacy, and on every day other than birthdays and festivals she could enjoy moonlit evenings with her beloveds. But on special days, there had to be a lively, cheerful party. Otherwise she'd get chopped up with a hatchet. Into a lot of pieces.
Unless…
Unless she organized more group activities to smooth things over. Not every pair of wings would get tangled, but if they could become good sisters who were honest with each other, shared a meal and laughed together, it should be fine.
As Li Fei's thoughts churned, the hour hand and the minute hand on the wall clock overlapped, and the second hand raced toward them with its "tick, tick" footsteps.
Five, four, three…
Light suddenly flared at the collar of Li Fei's dress, and she gave a violent start, caught completely off guard.
Young Madam puffed out her cheeks and pulled out her warm phone.
Heart-Flutter Warrior sent you a window shake.
Heart-Flutter Warrior: Look at the fireworks.
Li Fei instinctively looked toward the window.
Pitch black. Nothing there.
Tick.
The second hand finished its last step and landed on twelve, overlapping with the other two hands, those on-again, off-again lovers, in perfect intimacy.
Outside the window, golden-red flames suddenly blazed across the black curtain of night.
A ringing phoenix cry startled the sleeping ancient city of Loxibrook awake. Nine phoenixes beat their wings and soared, their trailing flames weaving tracks of seamless, dazzling grace.
Even the volcanoes outside the city stirred. Glowing mist rose from them and dyed half the sky red, like cold black seawater crashing into gushing lava, a vast and magnificent painting.
On the far side of the city came a dragon's cry. It lacked the majesty of the black dragons and the Frenzy of the red ones. It was elegant and soft, even a little childlike, like the wail of a baby girl.
Then nine miraculous creatures rose from the magic forest. They spread broad dragon wings, and the lines from their iridescent tails to their slender necks formed a flowing arc that was a joy to behold, radiating refined, noble beauty.
They were a mythical species on par with the phoenixes, born to stand at the apex of the supernatural pyramid of the Nature faction: Fairy Dragons.
Glittering stardust wove itself into threads of every color. With porcelain-white claws they plucked strings of mana and played a lilting, delightful melody.
The whole city was roused. A sleeping nun was shaken awake by her flame demon wife, a round earth elemental head popped up out of the soil, and a young vampire girl riding a unicorn narrowed her eyes… All of them lifted their gazes to the heavens, awed by the harrowing, magnificent sight.
"Dragons and phoenixes together, a sign of great fortune… Isn't New Year still two days off? Did I get it wrong?"
"Maybe Her Highness is just courting someone. She's done this before."
"It's so good to live in Loxibrook."
"…"
Amid the whispers, a great, boundless tide of mana surged upward against the current.
The Black Veil was lifted. Dazzling stars hung in the high heavens, then trembled and swayed under a power that crossed dimensions.
At last the river of stars turned and formed a ring of light in the shape of a ❤. Inside the ring was a square, elegant character, "Fei", shining in the cold, dead cosmos.
The celestial phenomenon disturbed more than Loxibrook. The entire vast continent rippled, and one mighty, towering presence after another awoke.
"The laws have no eyes, to favor such a fiend…"
"Is the Age of Myth about to revive?"
"Bai Mengtian, next time I will definitely not lose to you!"
"Thank goodness she isn't a witch."
…
In the ancient city that had just been jolted awake, after a brief silence, murmurs rose on every side.
"That's no courtship. That's a declaration of war against the other six Supremes!"
Someone delivered the verdict flatly.
"She's stronger than when she forced her way to Viranean."
A gray-haired woman sighed softly by her window.
"How many Supremes could pull off something like this?"
A bald giant, built like an iron tower, felt a tremor run through his palm.
"Had she been born four thousand years earlier, she'd be an exalted existence who had to be called by the sacred pronoun, with a capital H."
From within a youth's heart came an aged, muttering voice.
…
While the Fairy Dragons played their song of peace, Li Fei was in a fine mood.
But when the stars began to turn, her eyelids fluttered.
"Sequence 2 is Sequence 2. I am me."
That sentence still echoed faintly in her ears.
A vast sense of security welled up in her chest, and with it came threads of sourness and reluctance.
In the end, all of it settled into a single thought:
As a mother, I'm very pleased…
The kindly smile had barely appeared at the corner of Li Fei's mouth when something springy slammed into her back.
"Happy birthday!"
A familiar voice. Li Fei didn't even turn around. She cut a slice of cake, wound her tail around the waist of the person hanging off her neck, and hoisted her up.
First she chopped Bai Mengtian on the forehead, not too light and not too hard, and only then handed over the cake.
"When you visit someone's home, you knock! No teleporting! But I do love your surprise."
The moment Li Fei finished speaking, a knock came at the door.
Telling who stood outside the room from the knock and the footsteps was a basic skill for Miss Top Courtesan, so she shot Bai Mengtian a look:
See how polite Sister Kalida is?
Bai Mengtian stuck out her tongue and greeted Qin Zhihua.
"Good evening."
"Good evening, Miss Bai."
Qin Zhihua replied graciously. "What would you like to drink?"
"Iced cola."
Bai Mengtian answered without a moment's hesitation.
The iced cola had of course been prepared long ago. Qin Zhihua greeted Lady Kalida, who had just come in, with easy grace, handed the guest her drink, unwound the tail from Bai Mengtian's waist while she was at it, and finally turned to Li Fei.
"Time to make a wish."
"Mm."
Li Fei nodded, closed her eyes, held her hands to her chest, and silently made a string of wishes:
I want lots of money.
I want lots of experience.
Keep the hatchet away from me.
…
Half a minute later she opened her eyes and blew out the candles on top of the nine-tier cake in one breath.
"Next up, it's hotpot and Truth or Dare time!"
Li Fei spread her arms and cheered, bouncing with joy.
…
The first light of dawn spilled into a room that had been baptized by a pillow fight.
Li Fei opened her eyes. Little Yawen lay on her left and Qin Zhihua on her right.
Young Madam turned her head and looked past Qin Zhihua… at Tingbao beside her.
Lady Zhihua had used some masterful positioning to plug the gap between Tingbao and Young Madam, but the tips of the dragon tail and the succubus tail had still touched. Above Lady Zhihua's head, the two tails formed a crooked, twisting heart, like a crown coronating her.
Tingbao, my hero!
Li Fei thought, moved.
Nearly every ♀ in this room had been with Young Madam, and in a romantic setting the atmosphere got a little strange.
A very few people, Lady Sofia among them, were still innocent where Li Fei was concerned, but there was a generation gap, after all.
It was only when Tingbao and Lady Kalida came to visit that Li Fei's coming-of-age banquet was saved and turned into a cheerful gathering.
The villa isn't even full yet and it's like this. What happens when it is?
I need to hurry up and smooth things over!
Li Fei stretched, got up, and changed into a pure white short-sleeved lady's shirt and a pink-and-white pleated skirt. She pulled up thin white stretch knee-high socks until they snapped against her soft, pale calves, slipped her slender toes into little leather shoes, wiggled her boneless ankles, stamped lightly on the floor, and finally spun once in front of the full-length mirror.
Her cascading hair and her skirt flared out together, making the woman in the mirror look especially pure and charming, with sparkling eyes, like a flower blooming in bright sunshine.
Today's schedule was packed. She had to go around collecting birthday presents. To keep her birthday from ending in a jail cell, she definitely couldn't ride her broom through the city like a hurricane, so high heels were out. And to avoid delays, she couldn't wear anything too sultry either, or she'd lose time to certain happy and predictable events.
So this look, first love crossed with schoolgirl, was just right.
And yet, as Li Fei squinted at herself in the mirror, a doubt couldn't help rising:
I've dressed this innocent, so why do I still look like I'm begging to be ravished?
She hesitated, tied her loose hair into twin tails, glanced at the mirror again, and covered her face.
No good. It's even worse.
In the end she put on a beret, skipped into the living room with a pitter-patter, bent over and opened her mouth to be fed a fried egg by Lady Zhihua, then grabbed her stepdaughter and Miss Grace, who had just sat down and hadn't touched their breakfast, and mumbled a goodbye.
"I'm heading out!"
"You're not taking me…"
Bai Mengtian muttered.
"Sorry about the poor hospitality."
Lady Zhihua, her dantian aching faintly, put on a gracious smile and began entertaining the best friend her fiancée had just abandoned.
…
The moment they stepped outside, Li Fei looped her arms around Lilith's neck and said with a sweet smile:
"Congratulations!"
"Congratulations," Miss Poker Face added softly.
Li Fei had left Lady Annie's home yesterday morning. Barely a day had passed, yet her stepdaughter's supernatural aura had turned subtle and deep, carrying a pressure that was hard to gauge.
Clearly, the cleric of the three-girl caster party had been the first to leap the dragon gate and enter the mid-Sequences.
Loxibrook might have mid-Sequences everywhere you looked, and high Sequences weren't rare either, but in less powerful cities, even whole kingdoms, a mid-Sequence counted as a powerhouse able to hold down a region.
Like a certain Song…
But Lilith, the one being congratulated, couldn't feel happy. She lowered her eyes, her feelings tangled.
Ever since the bewitching flower had bloomed in her heart, her path of cultivation had been absurdly smooth.
By her original plan, even with a Legacy, after breaking into the mid-Sequences she would need several days to consolidate her cultivation and digest some resources. But having grasped advanced supernatural knowledge ahead of time, Lilith realized she could finish the necessary work in a single day, with no worry of missing her stepmother's birthday.
And the results had proved even better than expected. Even Lady Maria, who had always thought highly of her, was startled.
Of course, that was also thanks to what had happened the night before last. After Lilith finished the relay beside her sleeping mother, in just a few hours her mana had grown faster than at least a month of cultivation, and that was a month of grueling effort without any bottleneck.
As a result, some of the resources Lady Maria had prepared for her were no longer needed…
Lilith glanced at Li Fei, her expression turning a little strange.
In Eastern Continent terms, her stepmother seemed, probably, possibly to be the legendary peerless cauldron that let one advance a thousand li in a day…
Li Fei keenly noticed that Lilith's mood was low.
As a responsible stepmom, she naturally couldn't ignore her stepdaughter's bad mood.
So she put her lips to Lilith's ear and whispered in a breathy murmur, faint as a mosquito's hum, that only the two of them could hear:
"Why won't you call me Mommy…"
"What are you talking about?!"
Miss Lilith jumped like a cat whose tail had been yanked without warning, her twin tails bouncing.
"Huh?"
Li Fei tilted her head and tapped her lip with a forefinger like an innocent child, her simple little face full of big, wide-eyed confusion.
"But the night before last, right next to Teacher Annie, you… mmph!"
Her listless stepdaughter was suddenly full of energy again. Face red as the dawn clouds, claws out, she clamped a hand tightly over Li Fei's mouth.
Miss Grace stood calmly to one side, waiting for them to finish their scuffle, her posture so practiced it was heartbreaking.
…
It was still early, but Lady Annie had already prepared a lavish breakfast for her daughter, her lover, and her daughter's and lover's good friend.
During a lull in the meal, she took out a gift box and handed it to Li Fei.
"Happy birthday."
By Loxibrook custom, gift-giving fell into two cases.
Gifts given in private needed no box. Gifts given in front of others were put in a box, which avoided needless comparison or disappointment, so that a gift that should have been a Blessing wouldn't sour anyone's mood.
For example, before putting the ring on Li Fei, Lady Gnaea had taken Miss Top Courtesan off to a quiet corner, while nearly all the other gifts had come in boxes.
"Thank you, Teacher Annie."
Li Fei took the gift with a sweet smile and hugged her tightly.
Watching their intimacy, as if no one else existed, her stepdaughter, who had finally managed to start eating, put down her bowl and chopsticks again. Guilt and self-reproach flooded her heart like a tide.
Her cultivation base advancing a thousand li a day was a good thing.
But the price was hurting her mother and committing a Betrayal against her.
Was it truly worth it?
Searching her conscience, Lilith found with pain that as the eerie flower swayed, her mana was somehow purifying itself on its own…
Miss Grace quietly watched the three of them, and a bold guess slowly surfaced in her mind.
It seems something extraordinary has happened…
But it's not worth being surprised about.
She lowered her eyelids and buried her face in her porridge.
____
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