"Wait a minute!"
Su Cheng raised her hand and pressed it against the man's chest.
His skin was burning hot. A steaming heat radiated from his body, palpable even through the layer of fabric, almost scalding her fingers.
It was extremely rare to find any trace of demons on the Northern Continent.
This land was under the absolute control of the Holy Church, which strictly forbade the dependents of the Dark God from setting foot here.
Not to mention a place like Golden Amber City. It housed a grand temple of the Church, and the holy clerics stationed there were full of top-tier experts.
Among them, there were definitely more than just one or two who could sense and track a demon's aura.
Grand temples possessed teleportation arrays reportedly connected directly to the Church's Holy City, capable of summoning a horde of peerless powerhouses in a matter of minutes.
If necessary, they could even summon lower-tier deities from the Divine Realm.
Su Cheng did not know the backstory of the demoness supporting character from the original novel—why she had come to the Northern Continent, how she was captured by the Church, or how she managed to escape.
Perhaps it was explained later in the book, but she had skipped chapters when purchasing and missed it.
But she did know that after Lin Yun hooked up with that female supporting character, it sparked a whole chain of troublesome events.
"You need to sleep with someone, I get it," Su Cheng said. "But why come to my house? Why seek me out?"
The demon leaned against the wall, panting. "You have a certain aura about you. Even though it's incredibly faint, I subconsciously teleported to it. It's my first time on the human continent, and I wanted to pick an option that wasn't entirely awful."
Su Cheng: "?"
On her?
She had already turned her pockets inside out; the bracelet was definitely not on her!
The demon opened his eyes slightly. Sweat continuously trailed down his sharp jawline, dripping onto his firm, muscular chest.
"...Mage," he spoke in an exasperated tone, "Do you not know how?"
"Who says!" Su Cheng denied it reflexively. "I just saw the state you were in. What if something goes wrong?"
The demon stared at her with those icy blue eyes. "You don't know how."
Just as Su Cheng was about to speak, the tail wrapped around her waist suddenly tightened.
The demon abruptly leaned in close, his scorching breath brushing against her neck. He extended his slightly elongated tongue, licking her smooth skin.
His tongue was long and agile, the tip searing like a branding iron. It roamed over her delicate skin, pressing against the warm, pulsing blood vessels beneath.
"You're a wind element resonator? I also possess the wind attribute. In that case..."
The demon's lips brushed against her bare shoulder and neck. He withdrew his tracing tongue and began to nip at her tender flesh with his sharp fangs.
"...Blood works too, and it's much faster."
With that said, he sank his teeth into her.
Su Cheng couldn't help but shudder.
It wasn't actually that painful. He broke her skin with a very light touch, drawing her blood with an almost gentle tenderness.
But as he drank, he continuously licked and teased the area. The wound felt achy and ticklish under his touch, and amidst the faint, pulsing stings of pain, a strange sense of pleasure began to well up inside her.
She felt an electric current shoot down her spine. Her waist grew weak and she nearly collapsed, but the tail wrapped tightly around her held her in place.
The tip of that long, pitch-black tail extended outward. It had originally been resting against her thigh, but now the bone blade at its end suddenly stood erect, swishing joyfully through the air.
...He was acting exactly like a dog that had just been given a bone.
Su Cheng thought dizzily to herself.
"That's enough."
After a moment, the demon stopped. He released the tail binding her and licked his thin lips in satisfaction.
The markings on his face began to faintly shift and flow, and a renewed brilliance sparked within those beautiful blue eyes.
Su Cheng stood up. "Are you alright now?"
The demon suddenly flicked his tail again, wrapping it around her waist. He lifted her straight off the ground and set her down on the table.
He leaned in close, pressing one knee between her legs and planting a hand beside her. Looming over her from above, he then bit down on his own finger.
His hands were broad and sinewy. His sharp claws slowly retracted, shifting back into the appearance of ordinary fingernails, as dark, crimson-black blood welled up from his fingertip.
He then smeared it roughly across the young woman's mouth.
Streaks of blackish-red blood painted her skin like haphazard brushstrokes on a canvas. His rough fingers rubbed against her forcefully, pressing her tender pink lips until they flushed a deeper red.
Su Cheng let out a soft groan of discomfort. She subconsciously turned her head to dodge him, but he simply caught her chin and held her face in place.
The demon looked down at her. "...Drink."
"Huh?" Su Cheng blinked. "Will drinking your blood do anything for me?"
"An incubus's blood can suppress all sorts of lust-related hexes. Drinking it once will keep your symptoms at bay for at least a couple of weeks."
He murmured in a low voice, "However, if you aren't afflicted by a hex, drinking it will poison you instead."
Su Cheng immediately grabbed the demon's hand, ducked her head, and began to suck the blood.
A surge of heat flowed down her throat.
Her eyes snapped wide open.
The blood contained a potent energy that instantly invigorated her, sending a rush of warmth coursing through her entire body.
A restless, needle-like stinging sensation spread alongside it, quickly converging toward her back.
The toxins within the demon's blood were gradually absorbed, neutralizing the power of the curse.
An intoxicating sense of euphoria began to rise within her.
She felt as though she had plunged into a steaming, mist-shrouded hot spring. Every pore on her body opened up, and a toasty warmth seeped deep into her flesh and blood.
Su Cheng even heard a faint, joyful sound of laughter.
The voices echoed and overlapped in endless layers—some male, some female, some sharp and high-pitched, others low and raspy—all blending together in a wondrous harmony.
It was like a signal from some mysterious dimension, guiding her consciousness into an uncharted realm.
Su Cheng: "!"
—It was the laughter of the wind elementals.
They roamed and sprinted all around her. Faint, cyan phantoms flickered through the air, and she could even spot tiny specks of red materializing in the distance.
Fire elementals.
In a room like this—with the windows open but the fireplace unlit—wind elementals were naturally abundant, while fire elementals should have been extremely rare, or even entirely absent.
Yet she could still see them, even without casting any magic or entering a state of meditation.
Her perception of the elementals must have heightened.
...Perhaps only temporarily.
But the sensation was still incredibly intoxicating.
She swallowed the blood with an even greater, ravenous thirst.
The tip of her tongue curled over the wound in the webbing of his hand, repeatedly licking the small split in his skin. She even bit down with her own teeth, trying to squeeze out more blood.
A human's lips and tongue were soft, and because her body temperature was slightly lower than his, her touch carried a soothing coolness.
The demon's eyes widened slightly, his expression shifting into something a bit unnatural. The furled bat wings on his back began to subtly expand, and his tail, which had been drooping down, started to swish back and forth once more.
The girl in front of him clung to his wrist, taking one of his fingers into her mouth. She nibbled, bit, licked, and sucked relentlessly, her amber eyes swirling with a drunken haze of pleasure.
The demon gazed down at the sight. His other claw, resting on the table, couldn't help but clench into a tight fist, the veins bulging across the back of his hand.
His gaze darkened. He lifted that hand slightly, as if wanting to grab her, but then stopped himself, opting instead to tug irritably at the chain around his neck.
About half a minute later, Su Cheng started to feel fatigued.
The pain from the curse on her back had already dissipated, but as the blood continued to flow into her, her body began to feel increasingly heavy.
Even though she was just sitting there without moving, it felt as though her stamina was being rapidly drained.
Su Cheng quickly recalled the plot of the original novel. Taking advantage of the demon's wandering gaze, she discreetly traced her fingers, which were smeared with his blood, over the wound on her own shoulder.
With her fingertips dyed in the blood of them both, she reached behind her back and drew a few crooked concentric circles and triangles on the tabletop.
A dark red light suddenly erupted in the room.
The demon shuddered violently. Stumbling back several steps in shock, he collapsed onto the sofa by the window. "You, you—"
Su Cheng wiped the trace of blood from the corner of her mouth. "You played a clever game. You claimed you were giving me your blood to neutralize the curse, but in reality, you were tricking me into sharing your bindings."
As she spoke, her gaze shifted to his neck.
A chain wrapped tightly around his throat, digging into his snow-white skin. The golden light of its runes looked as though it were piercing straight into his veins.
It began to slowly contract, like molten gold thread searing into his flesh.
The demon's breathing grew increasingly ragged. Sweat dampened his hair, trailed down the bulging veins on the side of his neck, pooled in the hollow of his collarbone, and soaked through his tattered clothes.
Whenever he writhed, the tips of his hair brushed against the chain, sending faint ripples of golden light shimmering through the air.
Tilting his head back, the demon tried to press the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth to fight off the suffocation. The line from his jaw down to his collarbone was drawn as taut as a fully stretched bowstring.
He let out a few low groans, his fingers angrily clawing at his firm chest. "Who exactly are you? How do you know the counter-curse—"
The man seemed to have a very hard time accepting the fact that he was being played.
Su Cheng just watched him in silence.
In the original novel, Lin Yun and the female supporting character had a wild encounter. During it, the female supporting character had tried to pull a similar stunt on him, but the old man residing in Lin Yun's bracelet had warned him, allowing him to counter her in time.
The demon had initially slept with the protagonist to restore his power, but once his strength had recovered to a certain point, he wanted to break free from the restriction around his neck.
The situation was the same now.
Although the process was different, they had reached the same destination.
Looking at the demon curled up on the sofa and listening to his increasingly heavy, ragged pants, Su Cheng knew this was the backlash of the spell.
Because she already knew the plot, she wasn't angry in the slightest.
"That Light-Forged Binding Seal on your neck," Su Cheng said, hopping up to sit on the table and lightly tapping the demon's kneecap with her foot. "I can probably guess whose handiwork it is—"
It was complete nonsense.
But because she had accurately named the holy spell, the demon's body stiffened. He clearly believed her.
"I can help ease your problem," Su Cheng murmured softly, "but I have a condition."
In truth, as a human and not a creature of dark descent, her resistance to holy spells wasn't nearly as low as his.
So even if she shared the burden of the holy spell with him, her life wouldn't be in danger; she would just feel extremely exhausted.
The original book had mentioned this as well.
Lin Yun hadn't cared about the exhaustion; he simply wanted to use the situation as leverage to blackmail the female supporting character into sleeping with him.
To Su Cheng, sleeping together was secondary. The priority was getting her hands on his blood. Otherwise, the next time the curse flared up, she would drop dead if she couldn't find a bed partner.
Incubus blood was practically equivalent to quick-acting emergency heart pills.
Besides, once the blood left his body, he would lose the ability to control whoever drank it. Having him offer up some blood to store in a vial would be perfectly safe.
"...A condition?"
The demon sneered through his heavy pants. He seemed to want to say more, but his voice shattered in agony.
Frowning at the sight, Su Cheng lifted her leg, using her knee to prop up his chin and slowly force his head up.
The man was gasping violently. A sickly, feverish flush had spread across his cheeks, neck, and chest, giving him a decadently beautiful and deeply erotic allure.
She reached out and touched the rune-engraved chain, silently reciting the incantation she remembered from the book.
The spell the cheat-like old man had taught the male lead wasn't spoken in the common tongue; it consisted of several bizarre, guttural syllables.
Because stringing them together sounded suspiciously like cursing someone out in the streets, Lin Yun had found it hilarious at the time, which was exactly why Su Cheng had memorized the syllables so well.
"Ah—"
The demon's breathing leveled out slightly, and his complexion improved a fraction, though he still looked incredibly uncomfortable.
"You see, if you want me to continue," Su Cheng said, withdrawing her hand and blinking innocently, "then I want your—"
"Hah." The demon tilted his face up to look at her and suddenly grabbed her ankle. "Human, I know what you want. I accept."
Since her shoes had fallen off long ago, the young woman's bare foot was exposed, looking smooth, fair, and delicate. Faint blue veins meandered across her instep, and her five toes were as pristine as rounded seashells.
The demon stared at her with a mocking gleam in his eyes. With a firm tug, he lifted her calf, lowered his head, and pressed his lips against her ankle bone.
Su Cheng: "?!?!"
That is not what I wanted!
