Tao Yao had her cheek against Gu Ning's cheek, rubbing gently, taking in the warmth and the softness.
A satisfied, muddled murmuring came from her throat.
Her fingers would not keep still either, traveling up from Gu Ning's waist, tracing the outline of the body beneath her through the disordered cloth.
Those peach blossom eyes were still unfocused, the pupils replaced by a deep violet.
"Nnh..."
Gu Ning was still unconscious, both eyes shut, her long lashes casting faint shadows on her cheeks.
Her brows were drawn faintly together, as though she were in the grip of a nightmare. Her lips moved, and the breath that came out was scalding and quick.
What neither of them noticed was that the golden core ringed in violet spiritual energy was undergoing a change of some strange kind.
That thick layer of spiritual energy around the core was slowly forming a small vortex, spreading outward ring by ring.
And around the vortex, violet threads like creeping vines were passing soundlessly through skin and winding themselves around Tao Yao's body.
The threads pierced her meridians, coiled around her golden core, and began drawing off her cultivation slowly, the way one savors a rare delicacy.
Strand after strand of pure spiritual energy flowed into Gu Ning, gathered into her golden core, and made it brighten a little.
And Tao Yao noticed none of it, still breathing in the ends of Gu Ning's hair with a satisfied smile on her face.
Wholly unaware that her cultivation had slipped from mid Golden Core to early Golden Core.
At that same moment, in the depths of Gu Ning's sea of consciousness.
The place had been a clear and open space, sword energy running across it in every direction.
Now it lay under a thin violet haze that pressed both the sword energy and the cold down out of sight.
Gu Ning's consciousness floated in the mist, dazed and dull.
"Where am I..."
She looked down at her own hands and found nothing there at all.
"Is this... my sea of consciousness?"
Gu Ning began to look around.
And then she saw a blurred human shape in the mist.
It was a woman, slender of frame, long hair falling to her waist, wearing a long dress.
The mist covered most of her face, but even so a hint of an exceedingly beautiful face showed through.
The figure seemed to notice Gu Ning's gaze, and smiled faintly.
She bent down and laid a gentle kiss on Gu Ning's forehead.
Gu Ning closed her eyes on instinct.
When she opened them a moment later, the sea of consciousness had returned to what it was, and that figure was gone.
***
In the waking world.
Gu Ning's lashes trembled, and her eyes came slowly open.
Consciousness returned with a heavy, stifling feeling.
Something was lying on her. Heavy, soft, hot.
She lowered her eyes and saw a sight she would remember for the rest of her life.
Tao Yao was sprawled on top of her.
Her clothes were in disarray, one plain white shoulder more than half slipped free, baring snow-white skin and a finely made collarbone.
She was curled up in Gu Ning's arms like a cat gone lazy, her face buried in the hollow of her neck.
Through two thin layers of cloth, Gu Ning could feel the heartbeat in the other's chest clearly.
Those restless little hands were still locked tight around her waist, as if afraid she would escape.
Gu Ning's brain crashed for three full seconds.
"Hee hee~"
Seeming to sense that she was awake, Tao Yao raised her head, tilted it, and showed that bewitching, ravishing face.
Those peach blossom eyes were still veiled in a thin mist, not entirely lucid.
Like a small animal that had never met a human and was full of curiosity about one.
Gu Ning opened her mouth, and before she could say anything Tao Yao had already bent down.
Soft lips closed lightly around her earlobe.
"!"
A numbing current shot straight to the crown of her head and ran down her spine, and her body went weak against her will.
Her face went scarlet in a rush, pink spreading from the roots of her ears down her neck, and those cold eyes filled with shame and fury past enduring.
"Get a hold of yourself!"
She gritted her teeth and tried to shove the person off her, only to find that Tao Yao was wrapped around her like an octopus and would not come off at all.
No. Calm down, calm down!
Gu Ning drew a deep breath and forced herself to be still.
Looking at the state Tao Yao was in, it was very likely the effect of her own physique.
She had no idea why it came with a charm effect too, but at least the woman had not been reduced to an idiot, had she?
"There should still be a way to fix this!"
Gu Ning decided to treat the dead horse as a live one, and with great difficulty worked one hand free from Tao Yao's coils.
A fine thread of spiritual power surfaced at her fingertip, and she touched it lightly to the space between Tao Yao's brows, reaching her divine sense.
"Hey! Wake up."
In an instant the violet mist in Tao Yao's eyes drew back like a tide, and those peach blossom eyes were clear again.
Tao Yao blinked.
And blinked again.
She looked down at herself. Clothes half off, draped over Gu Ning, one hand clamped around her waist, the other stuffed inside the woman's robe...
Then she looked up and saw Gu Ning pinned beneath her, cheeks scarlet, eyes misted, with every appearance of having just been thoroughly wrecked.
"You, you, you! I, I, I!"
She launched herself off the line, scrambling off Gu Ning in a flurry of hands and feet, and then her legs went soft and she nearly dropped to her knees.
She looked at her own hands, and then at Gu Ning on the floor, whom she had regarded as her "husband."
There was no need to think about what had just happened.
But her memory stopped at the instant her split soul was devoured.
She was a demonic sect Saintess in the end, and she had weathered storms before.
Two deep breaths, and Tao Yao forced the heat off her face and checked her own condition.
And her expression went from puzzlement, to disbelief, to horror at the last.
Her cultivation?
Where was her cultivation?
A mid Golden Core cultivation had dropped to early, and barely holding at that. The core itself had gone dark and dull, covered in cracks.
Her spiritual power had been looted clean, not a fifth of what it was at her peak.
Tao Yao's head snapped up, and she looked at Gu Ning like a wife done wrong.
Gu Ning had sat up by now and was straightening her ruin of a collar.
Sensing the look, and though a flush still lingered on her face, her eyes had already gone back to a wholly cold surface, and she met it head-on.
"You... what did you do to me!"
Tao Yao bit her lower lip, and the sweetness was gone from her voice, replaced by a teeth-grinding shame and rage.
Only, with the unfaded red still hanging on her cheeks, a good deal of the force went out of it.
"Heh heh, so you have a day like this too! Weren't you very high and mighty a moment ago?"
Gu Ning was enjoying herself thoroughly. She was not the weak thing she had been a moment ago!
"You drew off my cultivation?!"
Gu Ning went blank for a beat, then looked down toward her own dantian.
The color of the golden core was deeper than before, and a layer of pale pink spiritual energy she had never seen hung around it.
"Is this Tao Yao's spiritual power?"
Only then did she realize that her cultivation had reached the peak of mid Golden Core, with the faint shape of a breakthrough behind it, while Tao Yao's aura had plunged to early.
A moment ago she had been ready to say the woman had taken advantage of her. Now it looked as though she had come away with the bargain of a lifetime.
"I..." Gu Ning opened her mouth, and thought of that blurred woman's figure.
Could it have been her?
"You what!" Tao Yao's voice shook with fury. "You drew off more than half of over ten years of my cultivation! Do you know how much I suffered for it? Do you know how hard the scheming in the Mystic Nether Sect is? Do you have any idea—"
The angrier she got the more she said, and she surged to her feet and glared down at Gu Ning.
Except that her collar had not fully closed, her collarbone was still bare, and her bare feet on the floorboards rang softly with every step.
The picture, all told, carried very little menace.