The tentacles felt colder than she had imagined, slick as they coiled around her wrists and her ankles.
Gu Ning looked down at the deep black tentacles and her heart dropped.
"How are these exactly like the tentacles they draw in the H-books, hey!"
Going by how the plot ran in her memory, wasn't this the part where she triggered the defeat CG?
Gu Ning's cold, lovely face went from white to scarlet in an instant.
"No way, no way, I'm not going to end it here today, am I..."
Pat, pat, pat~
The sound of bare feet on floorboards, together with the clear ringing of small bells.
Gu Ning looked up and saw Tao Yao walking toward her, all smiles.
The demonic sect Saintess had shed Bai Zhi's disguise entirely, baring the bewitching, ravishing face underneath.
She walked barefoot, a string of red bells tied around each slender ankle, which only set off the soft pink of her toes.
"Fairy Gu's fearsome reputation has thundered in my ears for ages, and yet who would have thought you'd be such a letdown~"
Tao Yao stopped in front of her and tilted her head up slightly to look at the girl bound and unable to move, the smile of a victor on her face.
Attack and defense had traded places, and the initiative was hers now.
"Those traces were ones I deliberately left uncleaned." Tao Yao lifted a hand and brushed lightly at Gu Ning's chin, her gaze rippling as she admired that flawless face.
"And then I sat back and waited for you to walk into it."
She tilted her head, brows and eyes curving.
"I never thought I'd reel in a fish as big as you."
Gu Ning's lips moved, but in the end no words came out.
She had walked into it, true, but coming here had been her own decision. She had thought that even if she could not win, she could get away...
Gu Ning wanted very badly to cry.
Tao Yao watched the expressions shifting across Gu Ning's face and seemed thoroughly pleased with the effect.
She raised a hand and stroked the tentacles with her fingertips, the way one soothes a docile pet.
"As for these... they are a bit ugly, I'll grant you." She shot a glance at the lumps of deep black matter, a note of distaste in her voice.
"But they are phantom-form puppets I refined from heavenly treasures and earthly wonders. They can slip past a Golden Core cultivator's divine sense and seal off spiritual power."
"The presentation may be poor, but they work beautifully. Wouldn't you say?"
Gu Ning had no answer. A faint fragrant sweat surfaced on her face, her throat worked, and she badly wanted to swear.
All she could pin her hopes on now was the two waiting outside, and whether they would notice something wrong in here. As for getting out of this herself...
"Nnh!"
Gu Ning's body jerked and a cry escaped her, a soft, indignant sound in her throat.
She fixed her eyes on it.
Tao Yao had put out a slender, tapering finger and laid it against Gu Ning's lower belly.
With only a thin layer of cloth between them, that cold touch sent a shiver through her whole body.
"You are the sect master's own personally taught disciple, hailed as the next leader of the orthodox path."
Tao Yao pressed her entire palm down, its center flat against Gu Ning's smooth belly.
A little pressure, and the soft flesh dented into a shallow curve.
"Nngh—!"
Caught off guard, a stifled sound of protest slipped out between Gu Ning's clenched teeth.
It was not loud, but in the quiet room it was startlingly clear.
She locked her jaw at once, a flush spreading over her cheeks fast enough to watch, grief and fury together in her eyes.
It was plain enough. This Tao Yao was a wicked woman with a far worse character than Yu Ruo!
If the original plot had not left her gravely wounded and betrayed, Yu Ruo would never have brought her to heel at all.
Clang~
A crisp collision rang out.
Tao Yao had blocked the Azure Frost Sword thrusting in from the side with one hand, and the faint spiritual energy clinging to the blade seemed to run dry all at once. The whole sword dimmed and fell to the floor.
"It didn't work..."
Disappointment flickered through Gu Ning's eyes.
Seeing it, Tao Yao's eyes curved into crescents, her whole face full of play. She seemed to love the death throes of her prey.
Her palm stayed on Gu Ning's belly, drawing unhurried circles.
"Carry you back and my position as Saintess is solid as bedrock. With luck the sect might even squeeze a great heap of treasures out of your Sword Sect to ransom you."
Tao Yao laughed softly and drew back half a step.
She licked her lips, her gaze traveling over Gu Ning's body.
The damp strands of hair stuck to her cheek, the collar hanging slightly loose, and that faintly reddened stretch of belly.
"But before that."
She drew her palm back, and a thread of pink glow rose at her fingertips.
"I do have one... private wish."
The glow leapt at her fingertips, and her eyes went deep and enthralled.
"I have a secret art. Send a strand of split soul into another's body, and I can spy out their memories and absorb their cultivation."
Her fingers came to rest on Gu Ning's belly again, and this time the fingertips hooked the cloth aside and met skin.
The cold of it made Gu Ning suck in a breath.
The fingertip slid slowly across her belly, leaving a trail of pink light behind it.
"And I can plant interesting things too. For instance..."
She lowered her voice.
"Hanging on my every word. How does that sound?"
As the words fell, that thread of pink spiritual energy bored down through her fingertip and into Gu Ning's dantian.
Gu Ning felt a cold foreign thing invade her body and swim toward the place where her golden core sat.
"Nnh..."
She bit down hard on her lower lip, refusing to let any more sound out.
But her body's reactions could not lie. Her breathing quickened, her chest rose and fell, and a fine sweat broke out over her.
Tao Yao closed her eyes, her whole attention on steering the split soul.
The spiritual energy swam like a fish and reached the place where the golden core lay.
And then it touched the core.
In that instant, everything changed.
A layer of violet spiritual energy appeared around the golden core, wrapping it in silence, turning it impregnable.
And Tao Yao's split soul was devoured on the spot.
"How could..."
Before the words were out, the next change was already on her.
That violet spiritual energy seemed to have been provoked, and it surged outward in every direction like a tide.
At the same time, a thick, suffocatingly strange fragrance rose off Gu Ning.
It was not the scent of flowers, but something cloying, heavy, past all counting or naming.
It sped the heart and heated the blood.
Tao Yao's composure was long gone. Her face changed completely and she tried to pull her hand back.
Only to find it stuck fast to the skin, and that violet spiritual energy came back up through her own fingertips like countless vines, coiling around her spiritual power.
"What in the world is this..."
Her voice cut off short.
Because that spiritual energy had already poured into her divine sense.
Tao Yao's vision swam, and an indescribable rush of muddled longing swept over every sense she had.
Her reason came down with a crash.
She breathed in that fragrance.
So sweet.
Tao Yao's eyes went unfocused, and the bewitching pink in them was swallowed by a deeper violet.
Her hands reached out without her willing it, circled Gu Ning's waist, and she pressed her whole body up against her.
Her cheek came to rest on Gu Ning's faintly rising and falling chest, greedily breathing in the fragrance that had turned her soul upside down.
And Gu Ning had lost consciousness the instant the violet spiritual energy erupted.
Her head tipped a little to the side, but her long lashes trembled faintly, her face flushed all over with something that could not be named.
While Tao Yao, so pleased with herself a moment ago, now clung to her body like a kitten wheedling for affection.
Breathing in, greedily, the fragrance she was drowning in.
The bells rang bright and clear with every movement of the two of them.