This exquisite sense of fragility it was no wonder that in the original story, all manner of villains harbored impure intentions toward him.
Forcing his eyes away from the decadent scene, Lu Jingxing lifted his chin toward the bedroom door and said to the figure standing by the bed in a nasty tone, “You’re not needed here. Get out.”
Hearing the command, the demon dressed in a black three-piece suit, the very picture of courtesy raised his head. A trace of regret crossed his face, but he still licked his lower lip and said softly, “Wishing you a pleasant evening.”
Lu Jingxing stared at the regret in his expression, cold sweat beading on his back… He had the feeling that if he’d been even slightly gentler just now, this guy might have seized the chance to stay and steer the story toward ten thousand red locks.
Before long, the soft sound of the bedroom door closing reached his ears.
Lu Jingxing’s throat moved. Only after the butler’s presence had completely receded did he let out a soft breath, approach the edge of the bed, and reach out a hand over the covers.
“Samuel?”
The person wrapped in the silk quilt, hair spread loose across his face, stirred his head, tilting his neck toward the source of the voice and exposing a slender, fragile curve. His thin lips, like dried roses, had grown much richer in color.
His lips slowly parted, and the voice that had been gentle as a breeze by day was now slightly hoarse:
“What do you intend to do with me?”
Hearing that he still seemed to retain his senses, Lu Jingxing relaxed a little. His gaze shifted aside, but his hand followed that river of flowing golden hair toward the back of the other’s head, preparing to undo the strange binding.
The golden hair was like a flowing river of gold, faintly cool and soft, unbelievably smooth beneath his fingertips.
Lu Jingxing distracted himself by talking. Perhaps because the other trash-tier side characters weren’t present, he felt much more at ease, his tone drawling lazily:
“Not telling you.”
His fingertips brushed against the silk knot. Lu Jingxing bent down and, as he undid it, tried to use the demon’s power to probe what kind of spell the butler had cast on the male lead.
But the moment the black mist surged toward the other’s skin, it was pushed aside as if by an invisible hand, dispersing on its own. Huh?
His instinct to repel darkness was still intact, so how had he been affected in the first place?
Lu Jingxing fell into demon-mode thinking for a moment, never once considering that the male lead’s state might be caused by human-made drugs. Unwilling to give up, he hurled every demon spell he knew for dispelling confusion at the other man.
Hoping either to restore the male lead to normal, or to trigger his natural defense mechanism and rebound both his and the butler’s power entirely.
With his attention split two ways, Lu Jingxing’s progress on the silk knot was extremely slow untying a little, pausing to recall a spell, then casting an ominous black shield over the golden-glowing male lead, waiting for it to dissipate, then repeating the cycle. And with each round, the spells he threw at the man grew more and more powerful.
By the end, even moonlight could no longer enter through the window, and the room was left with nothing but a vast, bottomless darkness.
Lu Jingxing’s magic reserves were more than half drained, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead, when he finally undid the nearly dead-knotted silk—and at the same moment.
With his excellent night vision, he could clearly see the other’s appearance even in the darkness. Long, curled lashes blinked out of focus, and even in the deepest black, the tips of his hair and the points of his lashes held a very faint, very pale golden glow.
Finally, the other party stared fixedly at him. Lu Jingxing reached out a hand, wanting to test whether his temperature had returned to normal.
Seeing that mass of darkness drawing near, Samuel instinctively raised a hand to block it. Everything his fingertips touched was faintly cool. His eyes shifted, and in the instant Lu Jingxing, caught off guard by confusion, let down his defenses, he was suddenly yanked forward by a powerful force!…
The thick black fog enveloping the room dispersed, and silvery-white moonlight spilled into the bedroom, falling precisely along one side of the headboard, illuminating the long sweep of golden hair as it drifted softly into the black, soft strands, mingling and intertwining.
Lu Jingxing’s eyes went wide as that beautiful face drew closer and closer to his own. He did his best to burrow back into the bed, but his wrists were pinned fast:
“Samuel?!”
Seeing the faint flush rising over the other’s entire face, and realizing all the magic he’d just cast had been wasted, Lu Jingxing tried to struggle, only to discover that with this trash-tier body, he actually couldn’t overpower the male lead even in this state?
That was definitely not how it went in the original novel!
The golden-haired beauty pressed nearer and nearer, until the two of them were almost pressed together. He could clearly feel the pleasant chill radiating from this ink-black mass before him. From the color of this sinister aura, he guessed the other was probably not a good person, but… he himself had perhaps been a bit rude too.
The man, who had somehow retained a few scraps of common sense, struggled against the heat for a long while before saying in a low voice:
“Sorry. I don’t seem to be able to control myself.”
The restrained voice sounded mere inches away, yet the scorching breath it exhaled landed right at the corner of Lu Jingxing’s lips, a testament to how close the two of them were.
Lu Jingxing couldn’t help tilting his head away, escaping the position that seemed poised for a kiss at any moment. Recalling that the male lead in the original novel had indeed always been gentle and courteous toward others, preserving a divine nature of kindness and tolerance, he instinctively spoke up:
“It’s fine. I’ll figure something out.”
Samuel heard his tone clearly, and noticed that this man only ever seemed to wear that vicious expression when dealing with the butler. Puzzled, he tilted his head slightly, a few strands of golden hair brushing across the face of the man beneath him, raising a faint tickle.
Lu Jingxing: “!”
It was as if he could hear the sound of his own orientation being bent.
Forcing himself to focus, Lu Jingxing decided to go for broke. While the male lead was still capable of communication and not yet prone to completely losing control, he searched his memories against the original novel and dug out the Demon King Lu’s most powerful move:
“The avatar of the God of Light cannot be commanded by darkness. The stronger the dark power, the less it can approach him. And when the darkness and malice grow intense enough, the god will be awakened.”
You’re the one, my choice! The double hope of saving the male lead and getting me home!
The black in the room was thick as ink about to drip. Lu Jingxing watched in Samuel’s eyes as his own features slowly shifted, dissolving into that mud-like black, his eyes gradually closing. The black swelled, danger and malice like fine needles stabbing toward Samuel nearby.
Samuel heard a voice in his heart whispering: Let him kill you like this, and you will become omnipotent.
The muddy black crawled up along his fingertips. The darkness, carrying its chill, briefly relieved his current feverish heat. He was just about to let it happen when he felt that heat retreat to a certain point then instead of diminishing, it surged, leaping even higher than before.
It burned his reason to a crisp.
Pale golden eyes slowly closed, and he lost the ability to think. The instant the black crept up his forearms, he raised his hand, and amid the encircling darkness, a faint golden light began to glow bit by bit around his body.
The black invasion halted; the golden light grew ever brighter.
Then, that evil and cold force of the black mire swelling, exploding, destroying spared no prey, devouring the bed, the wardrobe, the carpet, not even the moonlight outside the window! Great masses of black bulged out from the window, chasing after the moon like a hungry wolf!
The instant before black clouds swallowed the moon, a golden radiance suddenly pierced through everything and blazed only to be suppressed by another surge of magic power arriving from the horizon!
When Lu Jingxing regained consciousness, he thought he had succeeded.
Until he realized he was still wrapped in scorching heat, crashing into a pair of pale golden eyes edged with bloodshot red. A faint, lingering demonic aura swirled around the other man, making him look both righteous and wicked, like a mixture of gold and black.
“?!”
He had just opened his mouth to speak when the other man leaned in. Lu Jingxing involuntarily shuddered and, summoning every last ounce of strength, pushed back and cried out: “Samuel! Wait! Stop ”
The next moment, he sharply turned his head away, dodging the lips coming toward him.
Dazed for a second, Lu Jingxing then noticed that this strangely-acting fellow was raising a hand toward his collar. Thinking of what those scummy supporting characters had done to the male lead in the original novel and wanting to prevent them from deceiving the male lead in the future he hurriedly turned his head and made a final struggle:
“We demons don’t have [beep ], so I’m afraid we can’t satisfy your current needs!”
But the male lead didn’t react. He just persistently, desperately tried to cuddle up to him.
Lu Jingxing heard the despairing sound of his collar tearing between his fingers. Watching the male lead perversely trying to offer himself up, he thought with utter hopelessness of his last resort….
None of the clashing forces of darkness and light escaped the butler’s perception.
As if judging the intensity from the commotion, the man with the center-parted hair sat at the edge of the castle rooftop, hands crossed beneath his chin, a trace of gloom in his blue eyes. Purple butterflies fluttered low around him, and from time to time he glanced down at the roof tiles of the castle.
Until he sensed the bedroom door opening once more.
The next moment, he appeared directly at the doorway, his three-piece suit still immaculate, his tailcoat sweeping a slight arc as he bowed: “Has he grown tiresome to you?”
Lu Jingxing gave a scornful laugh. “I never liked him in the first place.”
Then, as if casually, he probed about what had just happened: “There seemed to be a little accident during the experiment just now.”
“Yes,” the butler said with a light laugh, then continued honestly, “but the Lord of Hell’s eyes are everywhere. As I said before, you needn’t worry about any trouble he will settle everything for us.”
Lu Jingxing: “…”
No wonder the male lead was acting so perverse!
No wonder he kept saying, why won’t the god wake up!
Realizing that the greatest villain in the butler’s words the Lord of Hell had intervened in this matter, Lu Jingxing couldn’t help recalling that, at the very last moment, in order to bring the delirious golden-haired beauty back to his senses, he had knocked the man out with all his strength, then absorbed those strange, gold-tinged black mire powers back into his own body.
Surely, nothing will go wrong, right?
If I’d known, I never would have absorbed it, QAQ!