A few wisps of cooking smoke drifted through the air, casting a soft filter over the small village. The scenery was picturesque—a few strokes outlining the contours, then a charcoal wash to bring it to life.
Liu Erniang leaned in to look, finding her painting unusual yet full of spirit. She teased, “Did your husband teach you this too?”
Ever since Liu Erniang had happened upon Shi Yeshan teaching Su Zhai to read and write, she never missed a chance to bring it up, finding their young married life sweet and their private amusements rather refined.
Su Zhai flipped the sheet of White Deer Paper over and studied Liu Erniang. “Erniang, let me paint one for you too.”
Before transmigrating, Su Zhai had been an art student—she could sketch shapes in a few swift strokes. She deliberately made Liu Erniang look prettier in the portrait, flattering the woman until she was grinning ear to ear, and in the evening, Su Zhai personally walked her home.
Su Zhai and Shi Yeshan’s little home sat at the foot of Qiling Peak, far from the other village houses. Having moved in later, she’d always been somewhat withdrawn, but thankfully Liu Erniang kept her company.
Under the twinkling stars on the horizon, they chatted and laughed as they walked toward the mountain’s base, when Liu Erniang suddenly gasped. “Something landed on your shoulder!”
It was a pink butterfly.
It had been following Su Zhai the whole way, and now it rested quietly on her shoulder.
Su Zhai’s skin crawled. She immediately stamped her feet in little steps to shake it off. “Shoo, shoo.”
The little pink butterfly fluttered away unsteadily, and Liu Erniang laughed, pinching her cheek. “With a face like this, even butterflies adore you.”
Su Zhai was strikingly beautiful—a palm-sized face set with sparkling grape-like eyes that were always darting around, like a porcelain doll.
Though already a married woman, she still had the fresh, innocent look of a girl untouched by the world, which made people take an instant liking to her.
Su Zhai giggled. “Then don’t go home to your husband tonight, Erniang—come sleep at my place.”
Liu Erniang raised an eyebrow, pretending to look toward Su Zhai’s home, only to spot the faint lamplight in her courtyard. “Susu, your Immortal Lord actually came home today.”
Though Su Zhai’s husband was merely a mortal, he served at a renowned great sect, managing worldly affairs on its behalf. In the villagers’ eyes, he was practically half an immortal, and they all treated him with great respect.
Shi Yeshan was always busy, returning only once every ten days or half a month.
Liu Erniang snickered quietly to Su Zhai. “Looks like he knew his little wife was about to stray, so he rushed back in a hurry.”
Su Zhai suddenly felt a bit shy, lifting her head to look up the mountain.
Shi Yeshan stood at the small courtyard gate holding a wind lantern. The bleak autumn wind blew, making the little lamp flicker and sway, his shadow dancing eerily beneath his feet.
His tall figure was bathed in moonlight. He glanced at Su Zhai from afar, then blew out the lantern and hung it by the gate.
He’d probably just lit it to come look for her, only to find she wasn’t home.
Su Zhai silently quickened her pace. Liu Erniang stepped forward with a smile. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t know the great Immortal Lord was coming home tonight. I kept Susu for dinner before letting her go. I hope I haven’t disturbed your reunion.”
Shi Yeshan, however, first reached out and drew Su Zhai behind him before replying politely, “I only just returned myself. We’re the ones who’ve imposed on you.”
Liu Erniang waved her hand. “What imposition? We all adore Susu here. Everyone envies you—having a wife with such a lovely temperament and appearance.”
Shi Yeshan paused almost imperceptibly. “Is that so.”
After seeing Liu Erniang off, the two walked back hand in hand. Su Zhai squeezed Shi Yeshan’s palm. “Have you eaten dinner? Let me heat something up for you.”
Shi Yeshan hummed in acknowledgment, released her hand to let her go to the kitchen, and turned to head inside himself.
When Su Zhai carried a plate of small dishes and two steamed buns into the main room, she found him resting his chin on his hand, feigning sleep—but she burst out laughing for no reason.
Shi Yeshan looked up mildly, but she was still laughing to herself. Only when she’d had her fill did she step forward in a few quick strides, pointing at his face. “You look like a little tabby cat.”
Her eyes were bright and clear, and for some reason, her smile was a touch mischievous.
After saying this, Su Zhai quickly turned and went to the next room to fetch a towel, speaking as she walked. “I was using charcoal today, so my hands were covered in ash—you didn’t even notice.”
She’d squeezed Shi Yeshan’s hand earlier, and the charcoal dust had smeared onto the man’s face, leaving it a mess that was hard not to laugh at.
A warm, damp towel was pressed over his face without ceremony. Shi Yeshan’s fingertips tensed for a moment, then silently relaxed.
Su Zhai wiped his face haphazardly, a little too roughly, leaving a flush of pink on his cheeks. He no longer seemed so cold and distant; the always-restrained, rigorous look in his eyes had loosened, appearing almost languid.
Su Zhai’s movements paused, but Shi Yeshan naturally tilted his head and pressed a light kiss to the back of her hand. “Why were you home so late?”
“Oh, I wanted to learn embroidery from Liu Erniang.” Su Zhai sat down across from him, lazily sprawling over the table. “If I get good at it, I can go into town with her and take on some needlework to bring back.”
The household wasn’t short on money, but Su Zhai still wanted a skill she could rely on.
Shi Yeshan nodded, then suddenly said, “She calls you Su Su?”
“You can call me that too.” Su Zhai glanced at him, suddenly realizing that the two of them had never settled on what to call each other.
Half a year ago, she had been half-dead on the mountain when Shi Yeshan found her and took her home. After learning that she had lost her memory and had nowhere to go, he asked whether she would be willing to marry him.
At the time, Su Zhai had just arrived in this unfamiliar world—weak and barely able to walk—so she could only agree.
However, on their wedding night, Shi Yeshan told her the truth: he was impotent and could not fulfill the duties of a husband.
Su Zhai was actually relieved. She finally understood why Shi Yeshan had made such a request.
Although Shi Yeshan had joined the immortal sect, his aptitude was poor. He was merely a low-ranking Outer Sect Deacon handling miscellaneous sect affairs, not much different from an ordinary mortal.
His parents were both deceased. Now approaching thirty, he had remained alone all his life, inevitably troubled by gossip.
He had been born impotent, did not want others to know, and could not bear to waste another woman’s life. He happened to encounter Su Zhai, who had nowhere to go, and the two simply warmed each other.
But after more than half a year together, Su Zhai gradually came to appreciate Shi Yeshan’s gentleness and reliability. She naturally held out her hand for him to see. “But I keep pricking my fingers today. Look.”
On her porcelain-white fingertips were two or three small red marks, quite conspicuous.
Shi Yeshan’s gaze lingered on those tiny wounds, examining them carefully. Then he wrapped her hand in his palm and rubbed it gently. “Then don’t learn anymore.”
Su Zhai just fidgeted in silence. After a long while, she suddenly pulled out a sachet and placed it in Shi Yeshan’s palm. “For you.”
Shi Yeshan had no habit of using sachets, and besides, this one was rather ugly—crooked stitches, odd shape.
It was clearly her first time doing needlework. Her heart had been thinking only of him; the first little thing she ever sewed was made for him.
Shi Yeshan looked at it from this side and that, and found that the thing actually bore some resemblance to Su Zhai. “…Mm, am I supposed to carry it?”
Su Zhai tossed out a single line: “Up to you.”
Nights in the mountains were always a bit chillier.
After Su Zhai finished bathing, Shi Yeshan scrubbed the tub clean and set it out in the small courtyard to dry. He noticed the shadow of the wind lantern suddenly sway.
A pink butterfly was quietly resting on the lamp, its wings fluttering in a light tremble, its antennae lengthening and shortening, showing a hint of hesitation.
Shi Yeshan stood tall in the courtyard and tilted his head to glance at the little butterfly. It then flew over unsteadily, and under the moonlight, suddenly transformed into a youth in pink robes, kneeling properly before Shi Yeshan. “Grandmaster, it really is you! How could you be here?!”
Even his appearance had changed.
“Keep your voice down.” Shi Yeshan frowned. “Don’t disturb her.”
“Grandmaster?” The youth could hardly believe it, murderous intent flashing in his eyes. “I’ve been tracking this Succubus for over half a year. Since you knew all along that she was living here…”
As he reached the latter half of his sentence, the youth suddenly lost his voice. He opened his mouth and flailed for a long while but could not produce a single word. Frustrated, he straightened up and gestured wildly, but Shi Yeshan remained unmoved, so he could only shut his mouth sullenly.
Shi Yeshan’s face was expressionless. “I told you to keep your voice down.”
He sat down on the stone bench in the courtyard. “Did you poison her?”
The small red marks on her fingertips were in fact Hua Fan’s Heat Venom entering her body. Su Zhai didn’t know this—she mistook them for needle pricks and showed them to him, probably with a hint of wanting to be spoiled.
This Succubus wasn’t particularly clever, yet sometimes she was hard to read.
When she was happy, she would laugh, and she would insist on telling him to laugh along with her. Occasionally she was sad, but she would hide it away secretly so he wouldn’t know.
Today, this Succubus showed him a small injury and made a fuss about it endlessly. But last month, when she accidentally fell from the mountainside and bruised a large patch of purple on her waist and belly, she said nothing about it. When he discovered it, she even insisted stubbornly that she wasn’t in pain.
Hua Fan could not make a sound. He only nodded heavily, nearly shaking his head off, but his grandmaster was still lost in thought.
After a moment, Shi Yeshan finally lifted his Silence Curse. “Your Heat Venom has no cure, and when it flares up, it is uniquely agonizing in this world. Why do you hate her so much?”
Hua Fan gritted his teeth. “The demonic path caused my father’s cruel death. I wish I could cut her into a thousand pieces.”
Shi Yeshan asked, “Did she kill your father?”
“…Although it wasn’t her specifically, but—”
“Since it wasn’t, then you are displacing your anger. Hua Fan, you need to learn a lesson.”
The moment he finished speaking, a thread of cold light condensed at his fingertip. Seeing it, Hua Fan’s heart seized with fear, and he spoke urgently: “But Succubi are lewd and evil by nature and deserve to die! Today she was even planning to cheat on her husband! Absorbing people’s Yin Essence and Yang Origin—I heard it with my own ears!”
The cold light paused slightly. Shi Yeshan asked, “With whom?”
“With that woman called Liu Erniang.” Hua Fan stiffened his neck. “They were preparing to have a secret rendezvous tonight, and only gave up when they saw her husband come home. Hmph, that husband of hers is also a deaf and blind cuckold—he doesn’t even know his wife is cheating right under his nose…”
Hua Fan fell into an eerie silence, realizing belatedly that this succubus’s “husband” seemed to be none other than his own master.
He was instantly horrified, staring in disbelief. “You’re the cuckolded green-headed turtle?!”
Shi Yeshan glanced at him. “I… should not be.”
A cold gleam flashed, and Hua Fan dissolved into a wisp of pink mist, gradually dispersing and vanishing into the void.
The small courtyard fell back into stillness.
But from within the room came a stirring.
It was the sound of Su Zhai tossing and turning restlessly, the rustle of porcelain-white skin against fabric, followed by cold air rushing into her warm mouth, scraping against her sticky, feverish throat, picking up her damp, heavy breath before she expelled it bit by bit through parted lips.
Heat Venom.
It had taken hold.