Everything settled into calm.
Li Fei opened her eyes. They had returned to their usual alluring selves, two lakes of rippling light, tender and bewitching, brimming with the charm of words left unsaid. Only when sunlight happened to strike the water did they throw back a bright, dazzling scatter of fragments.
She'd finished Lady Nicole's Spell Jottings, and had only flipped through a few pages of Irena's spell notes. With her current eyesight, memory and thinking speed, her eyes worked like scanners. A slim booklet took moments to get through, and she retained it all with Eidetic Memory. But just now she'd done more than [Memorize]. She'd managed [Understand] and even [Draw Inferences]. By the time she finished Lady Nicole's gift, only two or three minutes were left.
Li Fei wasn't ready to give up, and she kept trying to read the contents of the spell notes.
Unfortunately, if diligence really could make up for a lack of talent, then ants would rule the world, donkeys would be made marquises and chancellors, and the working class would be living in villas. Reality said otherwise. Without certain innate conditions, no amount of grinding did much good. Even Miss Top Courtesan herself, before she met her benefactor and redirected her efforts toward The Art of Tea and the upper-class route, had worked herself ragged for a month and earned only copper coins.
Two minutes later, she set the notes down in defeat.
The deep immersion from before was gone. The twisting diagrams and characters looked like abstract paintings, and no matter how she racked her brain, she couldn't savor any meaning in them.
So she turned to savoring what she'd felt a moment ago instead.
It was a strange sensation, hard to put into words. It felt like she'd gained a great deal, and also like she'd gained nothing at all.
To judge directly what exactly had changed in those thirty minutes, Li Fei opened her mouth out of habit:
"Sys…"
The words Miss System nearly slipped out, and she bit them back. She was in the middle of a spat with Miss System, and the cold war wasn't over yet. Using her was fine, but calling her by name was out of the question.
Li Fei calmed herself, connected to the System Panel through thought, and examined the numbers.
Attributes unchanged.
Experience gains looked normal.
The Knowledge Tree, achievements and spell list were the same as before.
Li Fei frowned slightly, but her brow smoothed out soon enough.
Fireball (Lv5) → Fireball (Lv8)
Terrain Awareness (Lv3) → Terrain Awareness (Lv5)
Summon Sprite (Lv4) → Summon Sprite (Lv6)
…
Spell levels had risen by varying amounts, which meant lower mana costs, shorter cooldowns and stronger power.
And given how tight her schedule was, she'd had hardly any energy to spare for raising spell proficiency.
Yet this half hour of training had pushed a whole batch of spell levels past their thresholds at once.
More importantly…
Li Fei spread her hand, and a fireball drifted in her palm.
She stared at it, concentrated, strained to control her mana, and communicated with the spell model in her soul.
A few seconds passed, and the fireball split into two smaller ones.
As expected!
Li Fei sat up straight in excitement.
For other mages, pushing more mana into a spell to boost its power, or cutting power to save mana, was basic training. The better the mage, the more precise their control. As their spell mastery deepened, they gradually picked up advanced techniques like [Multicast], [Deceptive Casting], [Empowered Casting] and [Polarized Casting].
Li Fei was different.
She always chanted the incantation, fed in mana, awakened the spell model, and the spell took form. Mana cost and power were both fixed, stiff and rigid.
Even with her witch bloodline and the exceptional mana affinity granted by Five Elements Meditation, the most she could do was make a fireball turn, clumsily. It couldn't wheel through the air like a bird and chase down enemies in a spin.
Which meant that, apart from a few spell-like abilities that matched her extremely well, Li Fei didn't really know how to [Cast Spells]. She only knew how to [Sling Skills].
If this went on, even if she pumped Strength and her sword level into five digits and split the Milky Way with one stroke, or stacked Intelligence, Fireball and Charm Marks to five digits as well and unleashed heat and light on par with a star from her fingertip… that would still be [slinging skills], not [casting spells].
But now, Li Fei had finally taken her first step on the path of the caster.
Her long-cherished dream of not depending entirely on Miss System, of standing on her own two feet, had caught a glimmer of dawn.
This left her especially delighted. She turned the two little fireballs over and over, beside herself with joy, even though this was only the most basic spell-splitting operation.
But as the old saying goes, joy begets sorrow.
For a first-ever [cast], stability was naturally not promising.
Sensing the fireballs about to run wild, Li Fei froze with her smile stuck on her face.
Even bare-faced, with her Charm Marks not switched to [Fireball Enhancement] mode, this was still a Lv8 Fireball boosted by Meditation, her class and her sky-high Intelligence!
And around her lay heaps of expensive jewelry and clothes.
Bang!
Deep crimson battle qi surged. Without hesitation, Li Fei smashed a hole through the wall of her beloved villa and hurled the fireball into the distance.
The instant it left her hand, it exploded within a hair's breadth of Miss Top Courtesan. Blazing light and heat swelled in her tragic, heroic pupils…
"Yeowch!"
A loud cry of pain plunged from third-floor height down to the lawn, and then sparks began to spread.
Half an hour later, Li Fei addressed all the maids with a stern face:
"Nothing happened today. Understood?"
"If I hear any unpleasant rumors outside… hmph, you can imagine the consequences."
With their excellent professionalism, the maids held back their laughter and accepted their mistress's order. They knew perfectly well that if anyone let it slip, she'd be the sole winner of the hide-and-seek game for at least the next three months, hehe.
"Hmph. Go on, back to work."
The imposing Young Madam swept her sleeve and returned to her room, where she opened her mouth and exhaled a thick puff of smoke.
Then she turned to the full-length mirror.
The bob-haired beauty in the glass was strikingly pretty. The new hairstyle made her features look even more refined and her eyes livelier, glancing about with sparkle. It lacked some of the graceful elegance of long flowing hair, but added a touch of fresh, youthful vigor.
But the woman's gaze was ice cold, weary of the world, like a part-time hostess who'd slaved all night over a noble young lady to pay her tuition, only to find afterward that she'd forgotten to collect the fee.
"Fuck."
Li Fei was silent for a long while before she spat out that elegant piece of Chinese.
The injuries hadn't been too serious, and she hadn't needed the big health potion Lady Annie gave her, but it had really hurt. She'd gulped down two of the Crescent-grade healing potions Lady Zhihua prepared.
Worse still, Miss Hair below the shoulders had fallen in battle, killed by friendly fire.
Washing the kelp, oh, washing the kelp…
A mournful melody played in her head. Li Fei sighed sadly and fetched a bottle of premium hair growth serum from Miss System.
Witches might be tough and adaptable, but that had nothing to do with how fast hair grows. Even high-Sequence powerhouses who could regrow severed limbs paid a price to recover from being cut down. Take the legendary Beheading Witch, Mami Tomoe. She chops off her own head every day to play with, but afterward she has to reattach it. Unless she's truly desperate, she won't discard the old head and grow a new one.
High-Sequence experts may have boundless vitality, but their bodies are precious Transcendent materials too. Every inch of flesh and blood holds enormous energy, and regrowing it costs a great deal.
Clearly, Miss Witch of Bliss's long hair counted as Sequence 7-grade material. Forcing it to regrow would only leave the new hair yellow, split-ended and lusterless, so the only option was to speed up its growth by proper means.
Unless she threw a lot of money at it, it would probably take a month.
"Haah…"
Li Fei, her face dark, sighed again.
Since her charm hadn't dropped, changing hairstyles now and then wasn't an unbearable choice.
Suddenly a gust blew in through the hole in the wall, chilly and sharp, turning her expression colder still.
Her gaze fell darkly on the pile of gifts that Miss Hair had given her life to protect.
Most of the "daily-life" items were both expensive and useful.
But the Transcendent items… apart from a few like Tingbao's crown, the remaining eleven storage items gave Miss Top Courtesan a real headache.
If she could swap them for other equivalents, Li Fei would even dare to guest-star as a noble-type Transcendent and challenge a Sequence 5 head-on! Not counting the Blood Demon Scripture kind!
Sadly, they couldn't be swapped.
Forget it. Time to head out. She'd deal with all this tomorrow when she got back.
Just as Miss Top Courtesan made up her mind, a short-haired girl with the same world-weary face came over. Her usually gloomy little face clearly held a trace of delight:
"Short hair… looks good too."
Praise from a pretty girl always lifted Li Fei's mood, and the corner of her lips curled:
"Does it? Then pick me an outfit. If I like it, there's a reward."
Grace pondered, then chose a gray V-neck gauze dress to go with black leather boots.
After helping Li Fei dress, Miss Grace clearly froze, and a barely perceptible look of astonishment crossed her small face.
Simple lines and a gray-and-black palette should have made a gloomy outfit with a classical, decadent air.
But Li Fei's figure was simply too good. The strikingly full, eye-catching neckline, the tender, straight calves and the exquisite, snow-white collarbones forcibly turned the outfit into a come-hither, lure-you-in style that seemed to say more than it said…
"Not bad," Li Fei said.
She smiled softly and, murmuring, lifted a hand to cup Miss Grace's cheek, forcing those sky-blue eyes to meet her own bewitching gaze.
Then she licked her lips suggestively and giggled a couple of times. Her snow-tender fingertips hooked up a black leather collar with a Dark Gold metal clasp, and with a click she fastened it around her pale, slender neck. Her eyelids lowered slightly, and with that faint shift in expression, even the light in her eyes dimmed.
One gloomy-style beauty, fresh out of the oven!
This was Miss Top Courtesan's bread and butter. Pure and radiant, intellectual and elegant, even decadent or domineering, whatever the style, as long as the customer liked it, she could pull it off with ease. Unlike Tingbao, who changed sailor outfit after sailor outfit but always looked like a part-time schoolgirl on the make. Type "professional" in the public chat, please.
Having shown off her professional skills in full, Li Fei picked up the thin steel chain that should have been attached to the collar's clasp and placed it in Grace's palm:
"I'm not really fond of props, but if it's you, wanting to leash me now and then wouldn't be so bad."
Miss Grace put the chain away with a solemn face.
Then Li Fei linked arms with her, and the two of them leaped straight out through the hole in the wall.
…
"Old Yu, do you want a wife?"
At the door of Miss Grace's home, Li Fei greeted Yusura, who was waiting there, with great warmth.
The [Qian] Division had more than four thousand sisters in total. Even with two thousand left behind on the Demon-Sealing Continent, the rest who'd ascended with her were plenty to arrange matchmaking events for hardworking subordinates like Yusura.
It wasn't out of kindness. He ran the charity foundation and both mines, so not planting a nail beside him would have been hard to justify.
"You jest, Miss Li… this old man is well on in years and has no such worldly thoughts…"
Yusura declined with a genial chuckle.
He looked as kindly and approachable as ever. But after dealing with so many merchants and officials lately, his refined air had only deepened, like an elder statesman who held great power yet stayed down to earth.
"Fine," Li Fei said.
She weighed it for a moment, then sighed in regret.
On second thought, they were all grasshoppers on the same string. If things came to light, she could at worst hide in the Bai Residence and take a new name, while for Yusura it would be a sure death sentence. And his son, daughter-in-law and grandson were in her hands anyway, and Qiao'er was gradually taking over the work too… she could do without this nail.
The two of them chatted their way inside and went over some business matters. Only then did Li Fei get to the point:
"Old Yu, I'm planning a 'Loving Blood Bank' project. What do you think?"
"I'm listening."
Yusura took a posture of attentive listening.
"When we do charity, we have to think comprehensively," Li Fei said, perfectly serious.
"Beyond universal, basic needs, we should consider certain marginal groups and run targeted, diverse public welfare projects to give them aid in their hour of need."
"I've heard that in some remote regions, vampire children are so poor they can't afford blood to drink, and they're starving and skin-and-bones…"
I've never heard that.
But if she says there are such children, there are.
Yusura's smile didn't waver as he kept listening to Li Fei's line of thought.
"Seeing those skin-and-bones vampire children, my heart aches!"
Li Fei's eyes brimmed with tears, her face full of compassion for all the world.
The Enros Continent had no modern medical system, and blood transfusion was a derivative of that. With no other choice, she'd had to find another route and use vampires as a cover.
She might not rake in much, but it was always worth a swing at the tree, jujubes or not, wasn't it? Besides, if she could trick even a single unicorn into donating blood, Li Fei would save a solid hundred thousand gold coins. Who told the Blood Demon Scripture to cost so much to use?
Yusura listened in silence, pondering whether the idea was workable and what profits it could produce.
Out of nowhere, he noticed that as this woman talked, her looks seemed to grow even more bewitching…
Having her charm rise right before his eyes had happened before. But women already dazed by Miss Top Courtesan's tea-craft could hardly judge objectively or rationally. It was natural for them to find the one they adored ever more captivating.
Yusura, however, had always held Li Fei in awe and had vaguely worked out part of the pattern behind her charm boosts. Once again, he caught a clue.
The more outrageous the things she does, the stronger her charm gets?
If she can already be this lawless now, then if it keeps going…
A bead of cold sweat seeped out. Yusura's smile grew even more respectful, and he resolved to offer even more [Loyalty] from here on to this human woman, fated to topple and drown the Enros Continent.
"In short, vampires are an inseparable part of Loxibrook. In the Peacekeepers, in the Golden Tangerine… ahem, and in every trade, they shine and give their all for our big family!"
Li Fei spoke with righteous grandeur:
"So we can no longer stand idle toward those vampire children who can't afford a drink!"
"We must not only let vampire children drink their fill, but drink well!"
"Establishing the Loving Blood Bank is imperative and cannot be delayed!"
Clap, clap, clap…
Yusura applauded softly. "A great idea. I'm moved."
"Of course, we have to consider storage and transport costs, so any blood that can't reach the remote regions in time should just be sold nearby. To avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, don't sell it in Loxibrook."
Li Fei tapped the table with a finger.
"Other cities should have vampire slaves, right? Rent a few and take some magic photographs for the publicity work… no, forget it. It would be trouble if someone recognized them."
"But remember, our main target right now is Sequence 4 Transcendent beings. For every portion of blood essence they donate, you get a thousand gold coins as commission. Oh, I mean, a performance bonus."
"That's basically it. I'll leave the details to you, and I trust you won't disappoint me."
Yusura nodded. "I understand."
"Good."
Li Fei leaned back slightly against her chair, crossed her long legs, and lifted her coffee to dismiss him. "Let me know when Kenneth arrives."
"Yes, Your Excellency."
Yusura kept his head bowed as he backed out the door.
____
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