Crack!
Fang Jueqian’s mentality shattered completely.
Yet his physical reactions were entirely honest. Once Fang Jueqian was enveloped by the peppermint and lemon fragrance radiating from the collar and hair of the person before him, not only did his limbs begin to grow weak, but the saliva in his mouth also started generating at an abnormally rapid pace.
He wanted to lean back further, but doing so would mean tumbling right into the water.
“Husband!” Fang Jueqian dared to be angry but didn’t dare to speak out. “I… Are you serious about what you just said?”
“Heh.”
The Dao Lord chuckled coldly near his ear. Yet because he couldn’t see the other’s face, the moment completely lacked the high-and-mighty, unapproachable pressure of the past, faithfully restoring the youth’s actual voice tone instead.
Moreover, because the distance between them had far surpassed the bounds of safety, Fang Jueqian could even clearly feel the vibrations coming from the Dao Lord’s chest right beside his own, with breaths puffing against his ear, muffled, sexy, and carrying a lazy, nonchalant magnetism.
The youth asked unhurriedly, with a half-smile:
“Would you prefer it to be real, or fake?”
With that, the Dao Lord finally stepped back a few paces, carving out a safe space for the red-faced Fang Jueqian.
Fang Jueqian gulped down lungfuls of fresh air. Before the heat on his face could fade, he saw the Dao Lord turn around and walk forward without a single backward glance.
Fang Jueqian: “!?!”
What was the meaning of this?
Should he follow, or should he stay?
Rubbing his still-burning ears, Fang Jueqian felt like crying without tears.
Yet very soon, he discovered he had no choice in the matter at all.
Because even after the Dao Lord walked away, Fang Jueqian’s body temperature did not drop; instead, as if some sort of catalyst had finally been administered, all the reactions characteristic of a heat cycle surged up at once.
“Husband, wait for me!”
He hurriedly picked up the scattered dust-removal talismans and body-cleansing talismans on the ground, dragging his increasingly sore, hot, and heavy body as he chased after the departing figure of that person.
While Fang Jueqian was struggling to catch up, the corner of his eye suddenly caught a glimpse of the water’s surface:
An unidentified small flying insect was frolicking on the water, only to be swallowed in one gulp by a fish beneath the surface in the blink of an eye, instantly losing its insect life.
Fang Jueqian subconsciously shrank his neck, actually feeling a trace of chilliness.
Yet raising his head again to see that the Dao Lord’s figure was about to vanish around the bend near the bridge, Fang Jueqian could no longer care about anything else and ran forward in pursuit:
“Husband, slow down, wait for me!”
He really had tried his best.
Huddled on the soft couch, Fang Jueqian watched as the Dao Lord opened an incense burner right before his eyes and placed inside a piece of spice whose very scent smelled thoroughly improper.
The Dao Lord was the one who insisted on doing this.
Fang Jueqian felt feverish and restless, sweat beading on his skin. Remembering that the Dao Lord favored cleanliness, he slapped a few more body-cleansing talismans onto himself.
In the corner of the room, wisps of blue smoke curled upward, exuding a sweet, rich, and deeply disquieting fragrance that stripped away even more of Fang Jueqian’s already meager willpower.
Having capped the incense burner, the Dao Lord walked toward the bed with a cold expression, his robes rustling with wind as he walked, giving off an almost ethereal aura of transcendence.
Behind him, all the dark curtains that had been neatly tied up tumbled down together, blanketing every corner of the room.
The curtains across the room rustled noisily, and the sound of the door latch sliding automatically into place echoed nearby. Yet the Dao Lord’s expression remained unchanged; with every step he took, the room grew a shade dimmer.
By the time he approached Fang Jueqian, the entire world seemed shrouded in dim gloom, leaving only the weak, flickering glow of a candle on a nearby table.
Fang Jueqian swallowed hard.
He was merely an ordinary mortal whose self-control against temptation amounted to a tiny sliver, and he had already tried his best to resist, but it was completely useless.
So how could this possibly be blamed on him?
He was already having a hard enough time as it was!
“What are you spacing out for?” Walking up to the soft couch, the Dao Lord furrowed his brow slightly and spoke with a hint of displeasure.
Here it came again, that look combining displeasure with disdain, as if he were being forced to do something he thoroughly loathed.
Stung as though by a jolt of ice water, Fang Jueqian finally recovered a shred of sanity. Mustering his courage, he proactively reached out and, under the Dao Lord’s chilling gaze, cautiously caught the corner of the other’s sleeve, giving it a couple of light shakes:
“Husband. If the tragedy of a monkey guarding the storehouse and stealing the fruit really happens later, could you spare him just once, considering how hard the monkey tried to struggle?”
In the hazy, amber candlelight, the Dao Lord finally smiled.
In an instant, the sight was breathtakingly vivid.
Stunned by this ultimate display of visual beauty, Fang Jueqian grew dizzy once more, until he heard the Dao Lord calling his name.
“Fang Jueqian,” the Dao Lord said leisurely. “What makes you think you have any qualification to decide that this matter is under your control?”
Spreading his palm to reveal two crimson medicinal pills resting flat upon it, the Dao Lord’s expression turned icy once again:
“Swallow them.”
“Two of them?”
Fang Jueqian couldn’t quite believe it, but after taking a peek at the Dao Lord, he obediently plucked the pills from the Dao Lord’s hand, not daring to utter another extra word, while carefully avoiding touching the Dao Lord’s palm as he took them.
With two pills piled together, the medicinal efficacy was truly extraordinary.
The moment Fang Jueqian swallowed the pills into his belly, before he could manage to get out a single word, he collapsed headfirst into darkness, sinking into a heavy stupor.
His final memory before losing consciousness was the pristine white robes drawing closer and closer, accompanied by the cooling, faint fragrance lingering around his nose.
Fang Jueqian had a dream.
In the dream, he was extremely feverish and thirsty, and having finally managed to find a peach orchard, he prepared to indulge to his heart’s content.
As a result, a sign hung right upon the orchard gate, reading:
Fang Jueqian is not permitted to enter.
Fang Jueqian was filled with indignation. By what right was he barred from entering? That was simply too unfair!
Hot and thirsty, seeing no one around, Fang Jueqian pulled a pen from his pocket and swiftly altered a few strokes on the sign.
In the end, the sign transformed into:
Only Fang Jueqian is permitted to enter.
Having finished his edits, Fang Jueqian admired his work with satisfaction, tossed the pen aside, and stepped into the peach orchard.
The peaches in the orchard seemed to have reached their ripening season, filling the entire garden with a fresh, sweet peach fragrance.
Casting his gaze left and right, Fang Jueqian carefully selected and finally plucked a large, red peach that looked unmistakably like the king of all peaches.
He had just rubbed it a couple of times with his sleeve and hadn’t even managed to take a single bite when the peach miraculously rolled right out of his hand, tumbling onto the ground and continuing to roll.
Panicking since he hadn’t even tasted it yet, Fang Jueqian chased after the rolling peach all the way until he reached the edge of a well.
Then, with an agility hard to match for an ordinary peach, it tumbled right down into the well.
Fang Jueqian was dumbfounded.
What a fiercely chaste peach! To avoid being eaten by him, it had actually chosen to throw itself down a well.
Convinced and defeated, just as Fang Jueqian was about to turn back and search the orchard for another peach to quench his thirst, a brilliant radiance suddenly lit up from inside the well.
An immortal adorned with a tall crown and broad sash emerged from the well, holding two peaches, one gold and one silver, and asked him with a smiling expression:
“Is the peach you dropped this golden peach, or this silver peach?”
Fang Jueqian looked at the golden peach with great reluctance to part with it, then looked at the silver peach, recalling that silver prices seemed to have risen quite a bit recently.
Unable to make up his mind, he blushed and asked, “Can I have both?”
The immortal tumbled over backward in exasperation, flying into a sudden rage: “Where is your ambition? Haven’t you ever heard that story? Only honest children get peaches to eat!”
Filled with intense shame, Fang Jueqian lowered his head in embarrassment:
“I am sorry, the peach I dropped is neither a golden peach nor a silver peach. It is a pink peach that rolls on the ground and rolls exceptionally fast. Have you seen it?”
“That’s more like it.” Tossing the golden and silver peaches aside casually, the immortal stroked his chin and muttered, “Wait, what new variety of peach rolls around? Holy cow, there really is one!”
Reaching into the well, the immortal fished out a peach. Judging from its shape, size, and the way it was still kicking about furiously in the immortal’s hands, it was undoubtedly the exact peach Fang Jueqian had lost.
Gazing at it with delight, Fang Jueqian felt as though the fresh, sweet fragrance of peaches was wafting into his nose once more, while his body once again experienced the agonizing sensation of parched thirst and burning lust.
“Thank you, Immortal! This is indeed the peach I dropped!”
The immortal handed the peach over to him:
“Take it away quickly, take it away! A peach like this is clearly not an upright, proper peach. To prevent it from running away again, you had better hurry up and eat it.”
With the immortal returning into the well, Fang Jueqian held the hard-won peach in his arms, inspecting it from every angle.
The peach was still struggling unyieldingly, trying to leap out of Fang Jueqian’s grasp, but this time Fang Jueqian had already prepared himself and would never let history repeat itself.
He gripped the peach tightly, pressing his body weight down upon it until the peach seemed to resign itself to fate and stopped struggling. He then bit down straight onto the peach’s skin.
Unexpectedly, upon biting down, he didn’t taste sweet peach juice at all; instead, it felt like biting onto something warm, moist, soft, smooth, and firm, possessing an exceptional texture and mouthfeel.
As Fang Jueqian gently licked and sucked against that patch of peach skin, the other parts of the peach would tense up tautly.
Though ill-suited for filling one’s stomach, it seemed wonderfully suited for grinding one’s teeth!
Treating it like a priceless treasure, Fang Jueqian hugged the peach, biting and licking it, occasionally giving it gentle sucks.
The peach was thoroughly uncooperative, trying to slip away from his mouth every now and then, but Fang Jueqian managed to suppress it each time through sheer effort.
Though he didn’t truly drink any peach juice, he genuinely found relief from his physical thirst and hunger through the act of eating the peach, leading him to gnaw on the peach with even greater enthusiasm and meticulous care.
As he gnawed, Fang Jueqian alternately felt burning hot and drowsy, yet at the same time felt a sense of bliss as though floating on a cloud.
Finally, just as the fiery heat inside his body began to dissipate, Fang Jueqian’s consciousness slowly drifted into slumber.
Unknowing how much time had passed, Fang Jueqian dazedly blinked his eyes open, only to see some sort of white object swaying back and forth right before his eyes.