"It's nothing. Don't fret so much — Auntie's fine."
Su Jiu'er's pale lips trembled slightly as her cool white hand stroked Luo Fanchen's cheek, soothing him softly.
"How is this 'fine'?" Luo Fanchen ground his teeth.
"Tsk, tsk. Rotten boy — all grown up, aching for his little auntie now. All those years of doting weren't wasted after all." Su Jiu'er let out a laugh like silver bells, chest trembling with it.
Luo Fanchen shook his head, dead serious:
"I know what you're thinking — I'm weak, so telling me only adds to my burdens. But tell me who wounded you. Even if I'm no match for him today, the day of reckoning will come, and he will pay blood for blood."
Su Jiu'er went still. Her little man was always gentle with her — this was the first time he'd ever been this grave, this solemn.
Looking into those deep black eyes, stubborn and unyielding, warmth flooded through her, and a faint smile of soul-shaking beauty bloomed on her face.
"Our little man is getting manlier by the day. Auntie's poor little heart is starting to pound."
Luo Fanchen — connoisseur of beauty though he was — didn't so much as waver. Expression still grave, he nodded. "It was that Fourth Enshrined Elder and the Holy Son, wasn't it. I'll remember."
"Come on. No more wasting your strength — inside, and treat those wounds."
"How could you know it was them?" Su Jiu'er froze, lips parting in surprise.
"Now I know for certain," Luo Fanchen replied.
Su Jiu'er's eyes flew wide. "Oh, WONDERFUL. Your wings have hardened, have they — baiting answers out of your own auntie?"
Luo Fanchen said nothing. His gaze had gone low and dark, fists clenched tight.
"Hey!"
Su Jiu'er poked a jade finger into his waist.
"When you're like this, you make your little auntie look silly. It's very bad for my dignity, you know."
"Relax~ A trifling mortal wound. Hardly worth mentioning."
"Auntie," Luo Fanchen said, "don't play cute to distract me. You're a Demon Empress — cute is simply not your register."
"...Was it that awkward?" Su Jiu'er asked in a small voice.
"A billion percent," Luo Fanchen answered honestly.
"Oh. Fine." Su Jiu'er deflated like a punctured ball. Silence settled, and by wordless accord the two walked inside.
Sitting on the bed, Su Jiu'er couldn't help asking:
"The truth is, I was terrified you'd lose your head — that once you knew, you'd see red and charge out past anything I could do to stop you, straight to your death."
"A brainless fool only makes his loved ones grieve and his enemies laugh," Luo Fanchen said quietly. "Do I look like a fool who runs off to hand-deliver his own head?"
"I will cultivate. And this debt WILL be repaid."
Su Jiu'er's cultivation was what it was —
One glance told her Luo Fanchen was calm only on the surface. The fists shaking inside his sleeves said exactly how deep the fury went.
He cares about me. He truly cares.
"That Fourth Enshrined Elder is well over a hundred. He's a retired Temple elder who has feasted on resources beyond counting — calling him the peak fighting strength of the human race wouldn't be an exaggeration."
"If the sovereign of the whole soul beast race — the Qilin Emperor — took the field, cutting down that Enshrined Elder would be child's play. But Auntie is only the Demon Empress of the fox line. My resources are limited, and my cultivating years are far shorter than his. In pure strength, I fall short of him."
"And that Holy Son's potential is bottomless — the odds are at least ninety percent he inherits the Temple. Are you certain you want him for an enemy?"
Luo Fanchen raised his head and met her eyes, voice level:
"I'm not a man of grand principles. I hold to exactly one stubborn truth."
"Bully me — fine, within limits. But whoever dares lay a hand on my woman — I don't care if it's the Heavenly King's own father — I will kill his whole house and end his whole line."
"If one year isn't enough, I train three. If three aren't enough, thirty. If I can't beat him, I'll poison him. If poison fails, I'll scheme."
Su Jiu'er's heart lurched hard, complicated lights flickering through her beautiful eyes.
No impassioned speech. No hysterical vows. And yet an immovable will came off him like a wall of tide, crashing against her nerves, plucking the strings of her heart.
In that moment, what grew in her toward him was, unmistakably, a woman's feeling for a man — and not family affection at all.
"All right, all right — no more anger!! Honestly, I wasn't the one shortchanged this time." Now she was the one aching for him.
As if afraid he wouldn't believe it, Su Jiu'er pressed one finger to the space between his brows — and a battle to shake the soul flashed through Luo Fanchen's mind.
The Fourth Enshrined Elder, skull split and streaming blood, left arm mangled to red pulp.
And the Holy Son in his arms burnt black head to toe — alive or dead, impossible to say!!!
At the end, to the Elder's howling curses, Su Jiu'er slid into a fold of space and was gone.
"This..."
Luo Fanchen's eyes cleared — then his chest shook. His little wife was SAVAGE. And here he'd assumed she'd gotten the worse of it.
Catching his stunned look, Su Jiu'er tipped her chin up in proud disdain, the Demon Empress's majesty on full display.
"Provoke me if you like. But bully MY little man? Never."
"I, Su Jiu'er, do not swallow that particular grievance."
Luo Fanchen caught those cool, soft hands. "A gentleman's revenge keeps ten years. Don't ever risk yourself for me like that again — it's too dangerous."
"My, my — look who's grown bold enough to hold his auntie's hand." She scolded — but didn't pull away. "And do you know the second half of that saying?"
"Eh?"
"A LADY'S revenge runs dawn to midnight, every day." Su Jiu'er's lovely eyes narrowed. "That old dog meant murder. My only regret is failing to butcher him."
Then she recounted everything — the Elder and Huang Yan's scheming conversation in the carriage, word for word.
"The hearts of men are vipers. These lords on high who see the people below as weeds and ants — they do deserve killing." Luo Fanchen's laugh was ice.
Su Jiu'er shook her head, still feeling the closeness of it:
"That old dog's true strength is unfathomable, and he carries a divine artifact of the Temple of Light on him. It's lucky I struck from ambush — and that he never dreamed I'd open with a life-gambling secret art. Add that he had to shield his dog of a son, and THAT is how he lost so badly to me."
"But if I hadn't fled when I did — the moment the secret art ran out and the weakness set in, with that artifact in his hand, the one left behind on that road would have been me."
"How bad are your wounds?" Luo Fanchen pressed.
"The root of me is untouched, but I'll need time to recuperate." She paused. "You've taken the Pontiff as your master now — you have protection. And she and that Fourth Enshrined Elder are plainly not of the same faction. So I can leave with my mind at ease."
"What? You're LEAVING?"
Su Jiu'er sighed. "I am a soul beast, when all is said. The human world was never going to be my home — and the wilds of Qingqiu serve cultivation far better."
"All these years were so you could grow up healthy in human society. You can stand on your own now."
"Besides — I can feel my five-hundred-thousand-year fierce-beast tribulation approaching. Tribulations are deadly. I need to seal myself away and train."
"Tribulation?" Luo Fanchen didn't follow.
"You've awakened your martial souls now," she said. "It's time someone properly told you about soul masters."
Luo Fanchen gathered himself and listened.
Su Jiu'er began, low and unhurried:
"On this continent, humans temper the body until sixteen to forge the physical foundation. At sixteen, grown, they may awaken their martial soul."
"At first awakening, everyone's soul power is level one — the rank called soul apprentice."
"That's you: a level-one soul apprentice."
"Train soul power to level ten, and you need to acquire a soul ring to break into the next realm — level eleven. Soul master."
"What exactly is a soul ring?" Luo Fanchen asked.
"When a soul beast dies, for a short window its essence can condense into a soul ring — special soul beasts also yield soul bones. A soul master draws the ring into himself to complete the breakthrough. What soul bones do, you'll learn in time."
"There's a great deal of finesse to it that I'll skip — your teacher will drill you tomorrow, no doubt. You're a commoner on paper; knowing too much would look wrong, and could expose my existence."
Luo Fanchen itched with curiosity but could only nod. She went on:
"Level eleven is soul master — also called a First Order power. Each order spans ten levels."
"The First through Ninth Orders, in sequence: soul master, Great Soul Master, Soul Venerable, Soul Ancestor, Soul King, Soul Emperor, Soul Sage, Titled — and Transcendent."
"That Holy Son and Holy Maiden are both Fourth Order Soul Ancestors — though by her aura, the Holy Maiden must have only just taken her fourth ring and broken through."
"The Fourth Enshrined Elder and the Pontiff are Ninth Order Transcendents — the ones who can shatter the void."
"But among Ninth Order Transcendents the gaps are still enormous. Level ninety-one and level ninety-five are not remotely the same thing."
"Then what level are you?" Luo Fanchen pressed.
"Me?" Su Jiu'er considered. "Roughly the equal of a human power at level ninety-five or so."
Seeing his puzzlement, she explained:
"Soul beast cultivation is measured in years, not levels."
"Eh?" Luo Fanchen blinked.
"Soul beasts are broadly ranked: hundred-year, thousand-year, ten-thousand-year, hundred-thousand-year."
"A hundred-thousand-year soul beast equals a human at level ninety-one. And on reaching a hundred thousand years, it faces the great crossroads of its beast life."
"What crossroads?" Luo Fanchen knew the knowledge pouring into his ears now was nothing any mortal could touch, and leaned in.
"It must choose: continue cultivating in its beast body — or seize the chance to remake itself fully as a human, and begin cultivation again from the very start."
Su Jiu'er's tone turned heavy. "Cultivate on as a beast, and every hundred thousand years brings a heavenly tribulation. Nine deaths for every one survival."
"Cross it, and live. Fail, and die — burned to drifting ash."
"The road I chose... is that one."
Luo Fanchen listened with his heart in his throat, quietly boggling at how brutal the soul beast path was — tribulations on top of everything else.
"Wait — Auntie, you said your FIVE-hundred-thousand-year tribulation is coming. That wouldn't mean you've already lived five hundred thousand years... would it?"
"Excuse me?!" Su Jiu'er's eyes flared.
"I suspect you of insulting me. Calling me an ancient monster to my face!" She reached out and twisted the soft flesh at his waist, hard.
"OW — hissss—"
"Vicious vixen! Husband-murder, is it now?!"
"Pah!" she huffed. "For your information: a soul beast's 'years' are a rank, like your human levels — NOT the years it has actually lived."
"If it were actual years, with a high-rank soul beast appearing maybe once in tens of millennia, your human soul masters would have hunted us extinct for breakthroughs generations ago."
"I cultivated under my mother's protection, tucked away from the world. Even I don't know precisely how long I trained."
"But it's certainly less than a THIRD of what that old monster Fourth Enshrined Elder has had — or he'd have died on that road today, no question."
"The point is: I. Am. VERY. Young!!"
She bit off every word, glaring blue murder as she stressed it.
An iceberg queen making that face was so absurdly adorable that Luo Fanchen's hands itched to squeeze her cheeks. He restrained himself.
Restraint.
Self-preservation.
"That's the broad shape of it. The finer points, let your Pontiff teacher handle."
"Why do you keep bringing up the Pontiff?" Luo Fanchen teased. "Auntie — you wouldn't happen to have seen how beautiful she is and gotten jealous?"
"Jealous?" Light flashed through Su Jiu'er's eyes; she gave a cold little laugh. "Jealous of WHOM, exactly?"
An inexplicable killing intent brushed the back of Luo Fanchen's neck.
"Come, little man. Answer me." Her smile was silk. "Who is more beautiful — Auntie, or the Pontiff?"
Two faces surfaced instantly in Luo Fanchen's mind.
One a calamity of a beauty, bewitching and sultry, a single glance enough to wake the oldest hunger there is. The other, a nation-toppling frost — peerless, majestic, the kind of cold that makes men tremble and sink all the same.
WAIT. Wake up! You're actually weighing it?!
This was never a multiple-choice question!
Luo Fanchen was a man who played for points. He followed the guidance of his heart and answered without a heartbeat's pause:
"Is that even a question?"
"Auntie is the most beautiful, obviously. The Pontiff and the Holy Maiden together — both of them combined — couldn't rival one ten-thousandth of you."
"Mm." Su Jiu'er nodded, satisfied.
Inwardly, Luo Fanchen sneered fondly: Women. Heh. Creatures whose mouths and hearts have never once met. Still claiming you're not jealous?
Her lips curled. "I'll let it go this time. Next time, I'll ask you again — in front of your Pontiff teacher."
Luo Fanchen's heart dropped through the floor.
Nothing under heaven so venomous as a woman's heart! If you want me dead, just SAY so — why the elaborate staging?!
"Hehehe."
Watching him eat the loss, Su Jiu'er laughed until she swayed like a flowering branch — undisguised now, radiating her full, staggering allure.
Luo Fanchen's throat went dry. He wanted a taste of her, badly.
Beautiful. Too beautiful.
He leaned in by degrees — braced, as ever, to be shoved heartlessly away. But Su Jiu'er made not a sound, blue eyes resting quietly on him.
He crept closer still, careful as a thief, until they were a breath apart and each could hear the other breathing.
A faint sweet scent curled at the tip of his nose, unraveling him.
Su Jiu'er's eyes had closed, her curled lashes trembling faintly — betraying exactly how un-calm their owner was.
The hint could not have been plainer.
Sixteen years — and this was the first time Su Jiu'er had ever allowed him this close.
When a woman signals THIS clearly and you still don't kiss her — do you even have emotional intelligence? Are you even human?
But Luo Fanchen's hard-won past-life expertise made him grit his teeth and reach a merciless decision.
Su Jiu'er waited, heart thudding. In everything else she was a Demon Empress for the ages — in matters between men and women, a blank white page.
This was her first kiss. How could she not be nervous?
What is the little man DOING!! A girl makes it this obvious — surely, SURELY he isn't this dense about romance?