Beneath a blood-red moon, a tall, slender figure in white flashed across the main courtyard. Her long shadow swept over the walls and roof eaves before she finally alighted beside the least conspicuous rockery in the rear courtyard.
Pei Yuqing slipped behind the rockery, lifted the drooping willow branches, and pressed a hidden mechanism. A stone door swung open. Once she entered, it quickly closed by itself, leaving no trace from the outside that anyone had passed through.
This corner of the compound lay closest to the water. Qiu Qi disliked damp places and rarely came here, so the consorts living nearby were usually those she had cast aside.
Yet in a place that devoured people without even spitting out their bones, being forgotten was a blessing rather than a curse.
At the end of a long corridor, in the innermost room, a roomful of people waited for her news.
When Pei opened the door and her exquisite, aloof face appeared, everyone inside first let out a collective breath of relief. The sorrow in their eyes eased a little. But it soon dawned on them that if Pei had returned alive, Qiu Qi must be alive as well.
“Sister Pei, you’re finally back. That fiend didn’t do anything to you, did she? Yin Ci said the last few consorts summoned to her bed screamed horribly at night. Their voices were worse than a slaughtered chicken’s. Ugh—just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.”
Zu Mianmian’s beast form was a sheep. Her temperament was as mild as her appearance: she loved sleeping and lounging around, hated trouble, and avoided conflict. Just by looking at her, one would think she was easy to bully. But anyone who looked down on her for that and provoked her tended to meet a gruesome end.
Pei Yuqing crossed to the seat of honor and sat down. Yin Ci, seated to her right, twitched her nose and looked at Pei’s bleeding right hand.
“You’re hurt?”
Yin Ci’s beast form was a wolf, and her predatory nature was etched into her bones. She was especially sensitive to the smell of blood and the presence of killing intent.
Pei lowered her lashes and glanced indifferently at her still-bleeding palm before nodding.
“It’s nothing.”
“But—”
“The plan failed. The fiend is still alive.”
Pei cut Zu Mianmian off and delivered the result in the most concise way possible.
Beside them, a gray-blue chickadee that had yet to take human form flapped toward Pei and landed on her shoulder.
“Chirp… Master… don’t leave me.”
The bird had been Pei’s mount, and the two had grown up together. All of its spiritual power came from Pei. Now that Qiu Qi had sealed away most of Pei’s strength with the collarbone seal, the bird could barely maintain human form.
The chubby little bird struggled to move its claws, then rubbed its round head against Pei’s cheek with tear-filled eyes.
“Sob… chirp.”
Pei couldn’t bear the display. With a sigh, she lifted the bird in front of her.
“Enough. I’m not dead yet. Stop crying. You’re ugly.”
Pei knew the temperament of the creature she had raised. If she had told it about the plan in advance, it would have cried enough tears to wash away the entire rear courtyard. Everyone would have learned that she was going to her death, giving the fiend time to prepare and ruining the plan completely.
Though, technically, the plan had still failed anyway.
“So what happened tonight?”
Yin Ci spoke up. It was what they were all most curious about.
Pei set down the teacup in her hand.
“Everything went flawlessly until I watched her swallow the beast essence orb with my own eyes. The only explanation is that the human shaman’s spell failed to take effect.”
“At first, she did pass out in obvious agony.”
Under the influence of the master-servant contract, Pei had also felt the life force draining from her own body. But at a certain point, that suppressive force had suddenly vanished. When Qiu Qi’s voice announced her awakening, Pei’s consciousness had cleared as well.
“But after the fiend woke this time, her personality was… completely different from before.”
“How so?”
Pei told them how she had ambushed Qiu Qi without being noticed and how her mind-reading ability had failed to work. In return, she was rewarded with a whole row of stunned faces.
“This is only the tip of the iceberg. You may have to witness the rest yourselves.”
Words alone probably wouldn’t be enough to let them truly picture it.
“Could the spell have had some effect after all? It didn’t kill her, but perhaps it caused something to go wrong with the beast essence orb?”
The beast essence orb inside Qiu Qi was bound to countless resentful souls. An ordinary person would probably explode and die within three days of having it inside their body. The original owner had remained unharmed only because her body was impervious to weapons and practically indestructible.
Although the human shaman’s curse had not killed Qiu Qi outright, it might still have weakened part of her power, preventing her from fully controlling the beast essence orb and indirectly causing the changes in her memory and personality.
Zu Mianmian hugged her arms and shuddered.
“She’s changed again. What if she becomes even more terrifying than last time?”
When the original owner had lost control in the past, she had once slaughtered half the beastfolk in the compound just to liven things up—all because the weather had been unpleasant that day.
“It’s impossible to tell for now.”
“And the assassination plan…?”
Pei lowered her gaze to her mangled palm. In this frail body, even the minor spells she had once cast with a snap of her fingers now consumed a shocking amount of strength.
It was laughable.
“The assassination plan remains unchanged.”
…
Qiu Qi had always been a terrible sleeper. In the five-foot-wide bed in her rented apartment, she might go to sleep at the headboard and wake up on the floor. That sort of thing was perfectly normal for her.
So when she woke that morning with her arms around someone else’s waist and drooling all over her, she wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
Mostly, she was mortified.
Afraid that the woman beside her might suddenly spring up and strike her with a palm, Pei had actually stayed awake all night. Yet in the three hours since she had returned, nothing had happened.
The only noteworthy thing was that Qiu, who had initially been sleeping right at the edge of the bed, had inched closer and closer to Pei as she slept.
Qiu’s clothes had been loose to begin with, held together only by the sash at her waist. But even sturdy fabric could not withstand the ten sleeping positions she cycled through in the time it took an incense stick to burn. Before long, the hem had ridden up to her upper thighs, leaving her no more than a finger’s breadth from exposing herself.
Pei lowered her eyes and glanced once at Qiu’s smooth, bare thigh. With perfect composure, she tugged the hem back down to cover her again. Her gaze remained calm and utterly free of desire.
“Mmm… hot…”
The sleeper scratched wildly at her neck, then tugged at the hem again.
Her wide neckline fell open, exposing a slender, fair shoulder. Several fresh scratches marked the skin, apparently inflicted by the woman herself.
Pei lowered her gaze and quietly pulled the clothing back into place.
“Hot…”
“You’re going to catch a cold, my lord.”
“But I’m really hot…”
The body’s original constitution craved coolness and hated heat. Qiu still hadn’t adapted to it.
By the eighth time Pei had pulled the hem back down, Qiu—the undisputed champion of sleeping in—finally deigned to wake.
She opened her eyes and instinctively reached beneath the pillow for her phone. Instead of the familiar cold rectangle, her hand closed around something warm and soft.
A muffled groan from above her head made Qiu freeze. Memories of the previous night came flooding back.
Right. She had transmigrated.
She was now the Beast God, with a harem of lovers—well, assassins.
“Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
That excuse might have been believable the first time, but how many times had Qiu done this by now? In Pei’s mind, the title of queen of wandering hands had surely already been cemented.
That palm had landed squarely on the shoulder caught in the Profound Ice Ring, so Pei naturally assumed Qiu had done it deliberately. Her lips pressed into a cold, hard line, and her voice was icy.
“Of course, my lord.”
Qiu pulled her hand back. Only after seeing the scarlet blood on her fingertips did she truly realize what had happened.
“Let me see.”
Qiu frowned and reached to pull open Pei’s collar.
The previous night, she had only caught a hurried glimpse of the ring from behind. Up close, the sight of metal driven through living flesh was even more shocking. Pity and heartache filled Qiu’s eyes.
Pei looked down and saw a smear of red seeping through the fabric at her shoulder. Qiu clearly hadn’t held back with that last blow; she had gone straight for torture.
When her skin was unbroken, the Profound Ice Ring was relatively bearable. But once there was even a hairline wound, its thousand-year-old chill would seep in with the blood and circulate through her body, making someone as sensitive to cold as Pei wish for death.
For one fleeting moment, Pei had let herself believe that Qiu might truly have lost her memory. Now it seemed that Pei herself was the one who had failed to learn her lesson.
Qiu did not miss the instant Pei’s face turned pale, and she quickly pieced together the reason from the jumble of memories she had inherited from the original owner.
“Sorry. I swear I really didn’t do it on purpose.”
Pei closed her eyes. Her gray-white lashes cast an icy veil over them. Bone-eroding cold followed the blood from the wound, gnawing into her flesh and bones inch by inch. It felt as though countless ants were biting her from within.
This was not pain she could simply endure for a while and be done with. It gnawed endlessly at her tightly stretched nerves.
In that state, facing the woman whose face she hated more than anything, Pei could neither speak nor fake a pleasant tone.
“What exactly do you want? If you’re going to kill me or flay me, just get it over with. This hemming and hawing isn’t your style.”
Qiu met Pei’s cold, razor-sharp gaze and felt her heart drop. She knew she had truly made a mess of things this time.
She had only just escaped the tiger’s jaws the night before and hadn’t even had time to celebrate her lucky survival. One slap that morning, and all her efforts were ruined.
If she didn’t clear up this misunderstanding, she could guarantee that tonight—tonight!—the greatest adult-manga artist of the twenty-first century would meet her end right here.
Driven by her survival instinct, Qiu pouted. Her reddened eyes shimmered with tears, and her entire face was the very picture of helpless misery. Her voice trembled.
“My wife… you still suspect me after all?”
Pei stared at her wet eyes and froze for a brief moment.
Thinking of the hundred and one gruesome ways she might die, Qiu threw herself into the act even harder. She blinked, and a fat tear rolled down her cheek.
“I know how much you’ve been wronged in the past, so I sincerely want to make it up to you. I like you so much. I want to cherish you properly, as if I could hold you in the palm of my hand. I swear on everything I have that my feelings are completely genuine. How could I possibly want to kill you?”
Several tears fell onto the back of Pei’s hand, hot against her skin. Pei lowered her gaze to the glittering drops. She couldn’t deny that they had disrupted her carefully maintained composure.
If asked to name something that could make the fiend smile, Pei could immediately name ten things.
But cry?
Never had anyone heard of the Beast God shedding tears over anything.
Whether the tears were genuine or not, their rarity alone made them as astonishing as the sun rising in the west.
Pei hadn’t expected Qiu to wake from a single night’s sleep with so many brand-new tricks.
“All right, I understand. Words alone prove nothing.”
Qiu raised an arm and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve.
“I’ll go find a way to get this ring off you right now. Then you’ll see how sincere I am.”
Something about Qiu’s behavior felt strange. Pei couldn’t tell what she was really plotting, but for now, she could only take things one step at a time and counter whatever came.
“I’ll await your good news.”
If Pei had known how to remove the ring, she would have done it herself long ago. The trouble was that it was easy to put on and devilishly difficult to take off.
First, the Profound Ice Ring had been embedded in her body for years, growing into the surrounding flesh. Removing it would inevitably bring a bout of agony. But that alone was something Pei could endure. What truly concerned her was the second problem.
Using brute force to tear the ring off would pull at the skin and flesh, creating a massive wound. In her current weakened state, she might not survive even one night with severe blood loss and cold poison coursing through her body.
And finally, the ring’s material was rare, with a high melting point, extraordinary heat resistance, and incredible hardness. Apart from its matching key, it was nearly impossible to break with outside force—and only Qiu Qi knew where that key was kept.
Qiu wasn’t thinking about any of that yet. Her immediate concern was stopping the bleeding.
She rose and fished a bottle of healing salve from the cabinet. The original owner had always used this kind of medicine for injuries, so it ought to be highly effective.
“My wife, bear with me. I’ll stop the bleeding first.”
Pei nodded and gently closed her eyes, looking utterly resigned to being at someone else’s mercy.
Qiu lowered her gaze to the wound on Pei’s shoulder. The instant her eyes touched the blood, her body visibly shuddered, and the beast essence orb in her chest began to stir restlessly.
Qiu bit her lip and used every ounce of strength to calm the power surging through her body. She knew the bloodthirsty orb was greedily reacting to the sight of blood. Her body’s instincts were urging her to transform into a beast, pounce on the frail, innocent beauty before her, and tear into her.
Pei waited for quite a while, but the sharp sting she expected never came. Instead, Qiu touched the wound with a medicine-dampened cotton swab, so gently it was almost weightless, then blew a cool breath over it.
“Hoo…”
After applying the salve, Qiu blew softly over the wound before lifting her eyes to Pei.
“The bleeding’s mostly stopped. Does it still hurt?”
Pei’s gaze fell on Qiu’s face. She noticed the deeper bite mark on Qiu’s lower lip and the dark red that had not yet faded from her eyes.
As mentioned earlier, the original owner had already found it difficult enough simply to coexist with the beast essence orb for so long, and she had never attempted to suppress it. Yet Qiu had not only managed to do so—she could still speak to Pei without changing expression.
“Does it still hurt?”
Qiu blinked, then lowered her head and pursed her lips as she blew again.
“Hoo-hoo… pain, pain, fly away. Pain, pain, fly away.”
Her cool breath skimmed over Pei’s delicate skin, raising an indescribable, tingling sensation. It seemed to threaten the hard defenses Pei had built around herself.
The fingers resting on Pei’s knees twitched. Then she raised her hand in one swift motion and clapped it over Qiu’s mouth, ruthlessly cutting off that strange sensation.
“Stop blowing. The more you blow, the worse it hurts.”
“…Oh.”
Qiu Qi: I fought through a whole-body case of goosebumps to say all that sappy nonsense, and it was all fucking for nothing. 🙂
