The sky above the Cloudsoaring Peak didn't just turn dark; it completely died.
The vibrant, warm afternoon sun was instantly swallowed by a suffocating, blood-red miasma. The ancient peach tree in the corner of the courtyard—a spiritual plant that had survived for centuries—instantly withered, its leaves turning to black ash that drifted lazily onto the jade tiles.
At the entrance of the courtyard, Tantai Zhi stood perfectly still.
She didn't scream. She didn't charge forward. The terrifying reality of a peak-level yandere was that true, absolute fury was completely silent.
"A fox," Tantai Zhi whispered again, the words scraping against the air like jagged rusted iron.
Her golden eyes had completely vanished into a void of bottomless, murderous darkness. Slowly, deliberately, she reached into the empty space beside her hip. A long, slender sword made of pure, crystallized killing intent materialized in her grip.
Straddling the armrests of Yan Shuo's chair, Su Mei was entirely paralyzed.
It wasn't a spell. It was the biological response of a prey animal staring into the jaws of an apex predator. The intoxicating high of the stolen demonic Qi instantly evaporated from her veins, replaced by ice water.
I'm dead, Su Mei's brain short-circuited. I'm going to be erased from the reincarnation cycle.
On the Heavenly Wood chair, Yan Shuo was sweating bullets.
He didn't care about Su Mei's life. If the fox got chopped into fertilizer, that was her own fault for giving in to her gluttonous instincts. The real problem was the Abyssal Star-Core sitting in his stomach.
Because Su Mei had siphoned his suppressing Qi, the localized gravity of the black hole was violently destabilizing. His ribs were physically cracking under the pressure. If Tantai Zhi unleashed a supreme-tier sword strike right next to him, the resulting shockwave of her aura hitting his personal space would act as a detonator.
His dantian would instantly collapse, and half the mountain would be sucked into a gravitational singularity.
I need to break this connection right now, Yan Shuo realized, his pragmatic, veteran mind racing at lightning speed. I can't move my limbs, but I can still move my core.
Tantai Zhi took a single step forward. The solid white jade tile beneath her silk slipper silently disintegrated into fine dust.
"Wife..." Yan Shuo tried to speak, but his jaw was locked tight against the crushing gravity in his chest.
Tantai Zhi raised her crimson sword. The air in the courtyard began to physically scream as she locked her target onto the shivering fox cultivator. "Filthy, stealing bug."
She was a fraction of a second away from swinging.
Yan Shuo made a desperate, incredibly reckless gamble.
Instead of fighting the crushing gravity of the Star-Core, he completely let go of his internal restraints. He grabbed the violently rotating black hole in his dantian and forcefully channeled its gravitational pull upward, straight through his throat, directly into the invisible Qi bridge that Su Mei had created between their lips.
He didn't just stop her from siphoning his energy. He reversed the vacuum.
Using the Heaven-Swallowing Abyssal Art, Yan Shuo forcefully inhaled.
FWOOSH!
The reaction was instantaneous and incredibly violent. The stolen golden-black Qi that was hovering in Su Mei's mouth was brutally ripped backward, slamming straight back into Yan Shuo's meridians. But the gravitational pull didn't stop there. It kept going, locking onto Su Mei's own pure Heavenly Fox essence.
Su Mei let out a muffled, strangled gasp as a massive chunk of her own cultivation base was violently sucked out of her body and dragged into the abyss of Yan Shuo's stomach.
The sudden, catastrophic loss of Qi acted like a physical explosion.
BANG!
Su Mei was blasted backward as if she had been shot out of a cannon. She flew completely across the courtyard, skipping like a stone over the jade tiles, before violently smashing into the thick stone wall near the storage shed. She crumpled to the ground, coughing up a massive mouthful of blood, her burlap sack torn and her eyes rolling back in her head.
The connection was broken.
Yan Shuo instantly slammed his internal restraints back down on the Star-Core, using the freshly stolen Fox Qi to forcefully stabilize the chaotic gravity in his dantian. The black hole shuddered, then finally locked into a smooth, steady rotation.
His Core Formation foundation was secure.
Yan Shuo let out a ragged, agonizing gasp, his entire body slumping heavily against the fur-lined cushions of the reclining chair. His face was deathly pale, and a thin trickle of dark blood leaked from the corner of his mouth due to the cracked ribs.
The loud bang of Su Mei hitting the wall completely broke Tantai Zhi's murderous trance.
She looked at the crumpled fox, then snapped her gaze back to Yan Shuo. She saw the blood on his chin and his pale, sweating face.
The terrifying, world-ending Saintess vanished in a microsecond. The sky instantly cleared, the sun returned, and the sword of killing intent shattered into harmless red sparkles.
"HUSBAND!"
Tantai Zhi practically teleported to his side. She dropped to her knees, her hands trembling violently as she cupped his face. Her golden eyes were wide with sheer, unadulterated panic, completely ignoring the bleeding maid across the courtyard.
"Husband! You're bleeding! Your Qi is chaotic!" Tantai Zhi cried, frantically pulling out her silk handkerchief to wipe the blood from his chin. "What happened?! Did that dirty bug attack you while you were meditating?!"
Yan Shuo took a slow, deep breath. His ribs ached like hell, but his pragmatic brain was already spinning a flawless, face-saving narrative. He needed to defuse her anger completely so she wouldn't go over there and finish dissecting Su Mei.
"No, Wife... don't be angry," Yan Shuo murmured weakly. He leaned his head heavily against her palm, playing the role of the exhausted, fragile victim to absolute perfection.
"My cultivation... it went out of control," Yan Shuo lied smoothly, forcing his voice to sound slightly hoarse. "I was trying to compress my core, but I pulled in too much ambient Qi. It created a massive gravitational vortex around my body."
He let out a tired, pained sigh, looking at her with soft, apologetic eyes.
"The maid was just trying to sweep near the chair. The vortex caught her and accidentally sucked her right into my personal space. I had to violently force my Qi outward to push her away before the vortex crushed her. That's why I'm bleeding. It was a backlash."
Across the courtyard, Su Mei was barely conscious, groaning in a puddle of her own blood. She heard every single word of his blatant, shameless lie.
Her brain, heavily concussed and missing twenty percent of its cultivation base, somehow managed to process the absolute genius of his manipulation. The Demon Lord wasn't just saving his own cover story; he was explicitly phrasing it so that she was the clumsy victim of his majestic power, rather than a malicious attacker.
Tantai Zhi blinked, her panic slowing down as she processed his words.
"A... a Qi vortex?" she repeated, looking at his pale face.
"Yes," Yan Shuo nodded weakly, gently resting his hand over hers. "It was entirely my fault. I lost focus. Please don't punish her, Wife. She just got swept up in my mistake."
Tantai Zhi's expression shifted. The lingering murderous intent directed at the fox completely vanished, replaced by a deep, overwhelming wave of protective affection for her husband.
Of course it was a vortex! Her husband was a peerless genius who had just broken through to Core Formation in three days! Naturally, his majestic Qi would occasionally act like a terrifying hurricane. And he had actually injured himself just to push a lowly servant out of harm's way? He was too kind. He was too noble.
"You foolish, wonderful man," Tantai Zhi whispered, tears of relief welling up in her golden eyes. She uncorked the jade vial she had brought from the Alchemy Pavilion and gently pressed it to his lips. "Drink this. It's the Frost Lotus extract. It will soothe your cracked meridians."
Yan Shuo obediently parted his lips and drank the cold, refreshing liquid. The soothing medicinal energy instantly washed over his chest, knitting his cracked ribs back together and cooling the lingering heat of the Star-Core.
He let out a genuine sigh of relief, his color slowly returning.
Tantai Zhi sat on the armrest of his chair, carefully pulling his head against her chest and wrapping her arms around him in a tight, protective embrace. She gently stroked his hair, completely focused on coddling him back to full health.
After a few minutes of domestic peace, Tantai Zhi finally turned her head to look at the crumpled maid near the wall.
Her gaze was no longer murderous, just incredibly haughty and deeply annoyed.
"You clumsy, useless bug," Tantai Zhi scolded coldly, her voice echoing across the courtyard. "How dare you sweep so close to my husband while he is meditating? You disrupted his majestic Qi flow and forced him to suffer a backlash to save your worthless life!"
Su Mei forced herself up onto her hands and knees. She coughed up another splatter of blood, her entire body shaking.
She knew exactly what she had to do. She had to commit to the lie as if her life depended on it—because it absolutely did.
"I deserve death, Supreme Goddess!" Su Mei wept, violently kowtowing against the jade tiles. "I am a blind, foolish insect! I lost my footing and fell into the Lord's divine vortex! I am eternally grateful for his profound mercy in blasting me across the courtyard! I will never sweep near his chair again! Please forgive this clumsy servant!"
Tantai Zhi huffed, turning her nose up in disgust.
"Clean up your blood and go sweep the back gardens," she commanded sharply. "If you ever trip near my husband again, I will cut off your feet so you can't walk."
"Yes! Thank you, Goddess! Thank you, Lord Yan!" Su Mei sobbed, frantically scrambling to her feet and limping away toward the back gardens as fast as her battered legs could carry her.
Yan Shuo kept his face buried comfortably against his wife's soft silk robes, hiding a deeply amused, pragmatic smile.
Crisis averted, Yan Shuo thought lazily.
He had successfully stabilized the most dangerous foundation in the mortal realm, covered up an assassination attempt by a hungry fox, and managed to turn his wife's apocalyptic rage into a dedicated cuddling session.
The soft rice was truly delicious today.
"Are you feeling better, Husband?" Tantai Zhi asked softly, continuing to stroke his hair.
"Much better, Wife," Yan Shuo murmured, closing his eyes. "With you guarding me, nothing can ever hurt me."
Tantai Zhi beamed, her heart swelling with absolute, unwavering devotion. She held him tighter, perfectly content.
And in the back gardens, a traumatized, half-dead fox cultivator began to furiously sweep the dirt, vowing to the heavens that she would never, ever try to eat a Demon Lord again.