The sleeping curse Lou Yue put on Xiao Rangchen only lasts for half an hour.
After all, the people of the Cangya clan are still searching outside, so she can't leave him stranded there for too long.
The sun was blazing high in the sky outside. Once she climbed back up to the ground, she headed straight for the marmots' burrow.
"Dig through the old tunnel again. If he wakes up and asks, just tell him you dragged him over here from your nest."
As she spoke, she pulled out two high-grade spirit fruits and instructed them:
"Remember, it's because he took over your nest that you moved him away. If he doesn't ask, don't say a word, got it?"
"Don't worry, he won't hurt you." Lou Yue raised her fisted hand, her tone carrying a clear threat, "But if you don't listen to me, your future will be far from pleasant. Understand?"
The fatter marmot nodded right away. The other one seemed not to get it and just stared at her blankly.
The fat marmot quickly pressed its paw on its companion's head, forcing it to nod too.
Lou Yue tossed the spirit fruits to them and left, satisfied.
The Cangya clan, having failed to find Xiao Rangchen, most likely assumed he had perished in the thunder tribulation. They only left a few people lingering in the nearby area.
Lou Yue let out a breath of relief. She walked far away before summoning her flying beast, riding it back to the "Good Fortune Brewing" tavern.
By the time she landed, dusk had already fallen.
She concealed her aura, avoided everyone, and slipped into her room without a sound.
The second she shut the door and was about to relax, a strange tingle crept up the back of her neck. Lou Yue turned her head slowly —
On her bed, three people were sitting in a neat line.
Six eyes were staring at her unblinkingly, watching her like tigers eyeing their prey.
It was the first time Xiao Aiai had seen Lou Yue's true female appearance, and she spoke first in surprise: "So... this is what you really look like."
Lou Yue hadn't switched back from her male disguise earlier because she wanted to take a nice shower first. She could swear she could smell Xiao Rangchen all over her, and it made her feel weird.
She forced herself to stay calm. "Yeah, what are you all doing here?"
"Uncle said you haven't come home for two nights in a row, and he was worried you'd get tricked by bad people. He got called away by Uncle Zhang next door, so he specially sent us here to wait for you to come back, and to give you a little interrogation while we're at it," Liufeng Xin explained.
Lou Yue huffed, annoyed. "I'm not a three-year-old kid. What do you have to interrogate me for? Go back to your rooms and sleep."
Hong Chou suddenly stood up, squinting slightly as she walked toward her.
Lou Yue froze for a second. She hadn't forgotten at all that Hong Chou was extremely experienced in matters between men and women.
She immediately turned to yank the door open and step outside. "If you're not leaving, I am."
Liufeng Xin ran over to grab her arm. "Where are you going? We wouldn't dare really interrogate you. We're just a little curious, that's all."
"I'm exhausted and I need to rest. We can talk about whatever it is tomorrow, okay?"
"Right, let's save it for tomorrow," Xiao Aiai also walked over. "She probably hasn't slept a wink for two whole days. Let her rest first."
Liufeng Xin glanced at Lou Yue, whose face was ruddy and glowing, and muttered to herself, Her energy looks more than full. She doesn't look like she's been busy for two days at all. It's more like she's just had the most luxurious beauty treatment.
She glanced at Hong Chou, and decided to lead everyone away first, then come back to catch Lou Yue off guard later.
"Right right, that makes total sense. C'mon, let's go, we'll talk tomorrow," Liufeng Xin said, half-dragging the other two out the door, not forgetting to throw Lou Yue a look that said I've got my eye on you.
Lou Yue held the door open for them. "...Hurry up and leave, you lot."
Hong Chou was being pulled along for a few steps before she suddenly stopped in her tracks, murmuring to herself, "...There's no way that could be, right?"
Xiao Aiai turned back to look at her, full of confusion. "What's wrong?"
Hong Chou's voice was laced with uncertainty. "I think... I can smell the scent of a man on her."
Liufeng Xin tripped over her own feet so hard she nearly fell over. She didn't even bother to fix her composure, and yelped in shock. "That's impossible!"
Hong Chou rolled her eyes at her. "That's exactly why I said 'seemed to' — but I know that scent well enough that I couldn't be wrong. It's just that something like this happening to her feels too surreal."
"Maybe she was somewhere crowded with men, and picked it up by accident," Xiao Aiai suggested.
"That's not the scent I'm talking about." Hong Chou looked at the wide-eyed, innocent Xiao Aiai and smiled coquettishly. "Aiai, you haven't lain with a man yet, so you wouldn't know what I'm referring to."
Liufeng Xin chided her. "As if everyone is just like you!"
Hong Chou shot back. "Even if you wanted to be like me, you wouldn't have the knack for it!"
Seeing the two of them on the verge of bickering, Xiao Aiai quickly cut in, asking, "Then what kind of scent is it?"
Hong Chou curled her lips, lowering her voice a little. "It's... the scent left after dual cultivation with a man."
Liufeng Xin: "..."
Xiao Aiai: "..."
"With my experience of taking several men to bed in a single night, I can't possibly be wrong," Hong Chou said with absolute certainty.
A flush crept up Xiao Aiai's cheeks, but she still tried to defend Lou Yue. "Could it not just be from being in very close proximity to someone?"
"No way. And think about it — with her usual temperament, if she wanted to get rid of us, it would be so easy. But instead of that, she chose to leave by herself. Didn't you notice she also subconsciously put some distance between her and us a moment ago?"
Liufeng Xin said, at a loss for words, "How come whenever it's something of this sort, you can talk so much sense?"
"You can doubt anything else about me, but you can't doubt my abilities in this area!"
Xiao Aiai: "...Then who is it?" She had not forgotten what they had said earlier about her brother being fond of Lou Yue. If Lou Yue already had someone she liked, she could persuade her brother to let go as soon as possible.
Hong Chou smiled playfully. "You hit the nail on the head. I'm dying to know too — who could have managed to win over our proud Yueyue?"
A guess immediately popped into Liufeng Xin's head, one that almost made her jump right where she stood. But she did not show a single hint of it on her face. Instead, she deliberately yawned. "Stop speculating blindly. Maybe you really did smell it wrong. Ugh, I'm so sleepy, I'm going to bed."
With that, she left the other two behind without a second thought and went back to her room.
Hong Chou thought Liufeng Xin's unusually calm reaction was odd, but with no one to bicker with her, she could take the chance to tell Xiao Aiai all the ins and outs of the affairs between men and women.
Lou Yue, inside her room, knew nothing about any of this. She was sitting in a large, wide bathtub right then.
Warm, curling steam rose over her chest, and over the scattered, dark and faint red marks dotted all across her skin.
She closed her eyes, leaning her head back gently against the edge of the tub.
Her long, slender neck was arched, the lines of it smooth and graceful, and there were pale red marks on it too, winding their way down past her collarbone.
Her long eyelashes were dotted with tiny specks of water, softening her usual sharp, imposing air and leaving her looking lazy and worn out. The natural upward tilt of her eyes was softened by the steam, lending her an unplanned, bewitching charm.
After a moment, Lou Yue slowly lowered her head, her fingertips brushing over her flat lower abdomen.
There was not a single visible sign of anything amiss on the surface, but deep inside her body, faint spasms still lingered.
With her cultivation level at the Nascent Soul stage, she could not get pregnant unless she wanted to.
But she had no idea if it was her cauldron physique, or the effect of the secret mark, that even hours later, there was still a hidden, unrelenting longing for Xiao Rangchen lingering in her body.
None of the three jade slips had ever mentioned a situation like this, and it was not as if she was simply unsatisfied with her desires.
It could only be the fault of that cauldron physique, or that secret mark.
Tch. What a nuisance.
Next time, I will never use that secret mark again.
The thought had barely crossed her mind when she gritted her teeth.
What next time? There is no next time, not at all!!
She stood up abruptly out of the water, deciding to use sleep to suppress this annoying, lingering feeling.
Lou Yue slipped on a close-fitting bellyband, threw a casual inner robe over her shoulders without even tying its sash, and walked back into the main room through the connecting door.
The second she spotted Liufeng Xin, she quickly tugged the open front of her inner robe closed.
"Don't bother covering up, I already saw everything," Liufeng Xin said, propping one leg up in a lazy cross, her tone laced with amusement.
Lou Yue: ...... She'd let her guard down. With Liufeng Xin's notoriously nosy, prying personality, her own hasty exit earlier had been suspicious from the start.
"Go on, spill. It was Xiao Rangchen, wasn't it?"
Lou Yue tied her sash properly, walked straight over to the bed, and flopped down onto it.
Liufeng Xin immediately scrambled onto the bed right after her, shoving her further toward the inner side of the mattress.
Lou Yue shot her a cold glare.
Liufeng Xin completely ignored her, her gaze fixed intently on Lou Yue's neck and collarbone. The more she looked, the brighter her eyes grew, and she even reached out a hand to tug at Lou Yue's robe lapel.
Lou Yue swatted her hand away. "That's enough. Go back to your own room."
Liufeng Xin stared at the faint marks scattered across that skin, clicking her tongue in disbelief. "Is he a monster? Did he treat you like a slab of pork to gnaw on?"
The corner of Lou Yue's eye twitched.
"Luckily you came back wearing a high-collared robe, so the others didn't notice a thing. If they had, you'd be dragged into a four-party inquisition tonight for sure."
Liufeng Xin flopped onto her stomach and asked, "So, did Long Aotian get struck by heavenly thunder tribulation, and you saved him by doing dual cultivation with him?"
Lou Yue closed her eyes and said nothing.
"Then he must know you're a woman now, so what about you two—"
"He doesn't," Lou Yue cut her off.
Liufeng Xin: "Huh?"
Lou Yue: "He thinks it was all a dream."
Liufeng Xin froze, her face full of total disbelief. She stared blankly for a long moment before finally sputtering out, "...... I never thought Long Aotian would be such a dummy."
"Mm," Lou Yue replied, the corners of her lips tugging up into a faint smile.
Deep in the underwater cave, the so-called dummy, Xiao Rangchen, was slowly regaining consciousness from his faint.
He pushed himself up slowly and looked around his surroundings.
There was no one else there but him.
After a split second of daze, he suddenly remembered something and called out, "Master?" [Master?]
He immediately raised his hand to touch the thorn-shaped buckle on his right ear, and only relaxed his taut expression slightly when he sensed that Yu Youchun's divine soul was weak but still intact.
The last scene he remembered before losing consciousness was Yu Youchun burning his own divine soul without hesitation to prop up a barrier and forcibly pull him away from danger.
If not for that, he would have perished the moment the heavenly thunder tribulation ended.
His gaze fell on a newly dug passageway in the corner. He swung his legs over the edge of the stone platform to stand up, but then his movements suddenly stiffened.
Xiao Rangchen sat back down on the stone platform in silence, waiting for the physical reaction beneath him to fade away.
The scent of Lou Yue, the sound of her voice, every vivid, burning touch from his dream all flooded back to him in an instant.
The gurgle of water rippling outside the cave echoed lowly, making the whole moment feel even more surreal.
Xiao Rangchen's eyebrows were drawn tight, and he swallowed hard.
This wasn't the first time he'd dreamed of her, but it was the first time after waking that his body still held such a strong, lingering reaction.
Every inch of his skin seemed to remember the feeling of pressing against that other person in the dream.
But that had only been a dream. It wasn't the real Lou Yue.
He let out a heavy breath, then sat cross-legged on the stone platform to steady his mind and gather his spiritual energy.
Moments later, he realized his cultivation had steadily climbed to the mid-stage of Nascent Soul, and his eyes flew wide open in shock.
Why the mid-stage of Nascent Soul? How was it possible that he had just gone through a near-death calamity, one step away from having his soul scattered to nothing, yet now not only was his spiritual energy full and his body unharmed, his realm had even risen a full level out of nowhere?
Xiao Rangchen's fingertips curled tight, and the fog of doubt in his chest grew thicker and thicker.
This was something his master's divine soul could never have pulled off, and it was far beyond what his own body could heal on its own.
There was definitely something very wrong here.
He got to his feet and began to survey his surroundings carefully.
Apart from the newly dug tunnel, he found nothing else. There were no footprints on the ground at all.
As for himself, other than his slightly rumpled clothes, he was not hurt or unsettled in any way.
Yet the very fact that everything was so clean, so perfectly "normal", made him feel all the more that something was amiss.
Xiao Rangchen bent low to step into the tunnel, and when he emerged at the other end, he spotted two rat-type demon beasts curled up and sleeping in each other's arms.
The moment they caught sight of him, they jolted awake, broke apart, and stood ramrod straight in unison.
Xiao Rangchen spoke in a cool, even tone. "Did you two dig this tunnel?"
The two demon beasts nodded.
"Have you seen anyone else besides me here?"
The fatter one immediately shook its head, while the one beside it stared blankly at him, not reacting at all.
The fat beast used its paw to grab its companion's head, and forcibly waggled it back and forth in a "no" gesture.
"When you dug through to this side, I was already there, wasn't I?"
The fat demon beast thought for a moment, recalling that he had indeed been present when they dug through the second time, and nodded in confirmation.
Xiao Rangchen asked no more questions.
He turned to leave, but had only taken two steps when the slow, dim-witted demon beast behind him suddenly let out a loud, resounding belch.
Xiao Rangchen paused in his steps and turned his head.
The fat beast was clamping its paw tight over its companion's mouth, screeching at it in a frantic, exasperated way, as if it could not be more disappointed in its foolishness.
Xiao Rangchen turned away expressionlessly, and walked straight out of the cave.
He put on a face veil, pulled up the hood of his cloak to conceal his features, masked all traces of his aura, and darted out of the area like a wisp of dark shadow.
The people from the Cangya clan probably assumed he had turned to ash just like the rest of the fools who had charged into the heavenly tribulation, so most of the manpower they had posted in the nearby cities had been pulled back.
A cold glint flickered past Xiao Rangchen's eyes. Sooner or later, he would settle this score with them, principal and interest paid back in full, every last debt repaid.
But before he could settle those accounts, there was someone he had to go see first.
Xiao Rangchen found a low-profile, out-of-the-way inn, quickly washed up and changed into fresh clothes, then left the city once more.
Since Qinglin had fallen into a deep slumber, he traveled straight ahead at full speed, propelled by his spiritual energy.
The sharp night wind tore his hood from his head, ripped at his cloak, and made the fabric snap and flap loudly behind him.
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Top 10 red bags
