The demonic cultivators rolling dice froze in place.
The one wiping his weapon stopped mid-motion.
The one resting with closed eyes opened them.
The male cultivator kneeling on the ground polishing boots trembled all over and lowered his head even further.
Even Blood Orchid’s hand sharpening her blade paused for a moment.
“She can’t teach well,” Chao’er said.
Her voice was soft, carrying the lazy nasal quality unique to someone just waking up.
Her hand pressed against the female cultivator’s head, gradually increasing pressure bit by bit.
The sound of cheekbone grinding against the tabletop grew denser, and the woman’s hands clawed wildly at the surface, her fingernails leaving white streaks across the wood.
She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out, because Chao’er’s other hand had already locked onto the back of her neck, thumb pressed precisely into the hollow between her windpipe and cervical spine.
Not lethal, but enough to keep a person from uttering a single word.
“Master’s Husband wants something from you, you should answer yes,” Chao’er said.
Her gaze swept across every face in the corridor, her voice still soft, yet her fingers tightened further.
The female cultivator’s face had already flushed purple, her eyes beginning to roll back.
“There is no other answer.”
She released her grip.
The female cultivator slid off the table, collapsing onto the ground, gasping for air in great heaving breaths.
The imprint of the wood grain was stamped on her cheekbone, red and purple, like a brand seared into her skin.
She clutched her throat, ragged wheezing sounds escaping like a broken bellows, tears and snot pouring down her face in a mess.
Chao’er looked down at her, tilting her head.
“Do you understand now?”
“I… I understand…” the female cultivator’s voice shattered into fragments, “Old Ancestor… this subordinate understands…”
“Not asking me,” Chao’er said. “Asking Master’s Husband.”
The female cultivator’s body convulsed violently.
She knelt on the ground, turning toward Shen Mo, her forehead slamming heavily against the blue brick floor with a dull thud, “Young Master… this subordinate knows her mistake… whatever Young Master wants, this subordinate will handle it immediately… immediately…”
Shen Mo said nothing.
Chao’er was watching him too.
The collar of her sleepwear hung slightly open, her ten toes lightly curled.
By any measure, she looked like a little girl who hadn’t grown up yet.
But this little girl had just pinned a merciless demonic cultivator to a table with one hand, leaving her no room to resist.
“All of you, get out,” Chao’er said.
The demonic cultivators in the corridor looked as if they’d received a last-minute pardon.
They scrambled and crawled their way out.
Blood Orchid also stood up, tucking her short blade back into her waist, grabbing the blank-faced boy by the scruff of his neck and carrying him off like a cat.
Morning light slanted in from outside the corridor, staining Chao’er’s bare feet a faint gold.
“Master’s Husband…” she called to him.
Her voice had returned to its usual soft sweetness, with a hint of coaxing at the end.
Shen Mo looked at her. “You did that on purpose.”
Chao’er blinked.
That expression hovered somewhere between innocence and cunning.
Of course she knew what he was talking about, but she wanted him to say it himself.
“You had Blood Orchid ignore my demands, you let that female cultivator humiliate me in front of everyone, you waited until I was cornered with no way out, forced to come to the front courtyard myself and hit a wall, and then you appeared.”
Chao’er’s lashes trembled slightly.
“By being humiliated first and then rising above it, the authority sticks harder. They’ll remember: this man belongs to the Old Ancestor.”
Chao’er lowered her head, her toes curling tighter against the blue bricks.
After a moment of silence, she looked up, and something Shen Mo had never seen before appeared in her eyes.
Not a girl’s grievance, not a thousand-year-old monster’s composure.
It was anticipation.
An anticipation so scorching, so desperate that her breathing had gone uneven.
“So?” her voice trembled slightly. “Is Master’s Husband going to punish this disciple?”
Shen Mo’s brow twitched.
Chao’er took a step forward.
Another step.
Until her toes nearly touched the surface of Shen Mo’s boot.
She tilted her head up, the tip of her nose less than a fist’s width from his chin.
Those eyes blazed with startling intensity, like two flames burning within.
A faint flush spread across her cheeks, creeping from her cheekbones all the way to the roots of her ears.
“Master’s Husband, do you still remember what happened in the valley that day?”
Shen Mo’s face turned red.
Every time he recalled it, his lower abdomen still ached with a physiological pang.
Her voice dropped low, so low it seemed she was afraid someone might overhear, “Afterwards, Master’s Husband led this disciple around on a chain…”
“What was Master’s Husband thinking at that moment?” Her breathing grew rapid, her chest rising and falling softly beneath her sleepwear.
Shen Mo’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
That scene had been utterly absurd, yet thinking back on it now, there was an inexplicable sense of satisfaction.
Chao’er saw through his thoughts and smiled, “Master’s Husband finds it absurd, but this disciple doesn’t. At the bottom of the Demon Abyss, seduced by the demoness, corroded by Yin Sha Qi, spiritual qi scattered, spirit soul shattered, in so much pain I wanted to die. The only thing I thought about back then was this: if I could live and see Master’s Husband again, I would do anything.”
“I know you only see me as a child,” her voice began to shake, “I can’t compete with Honored Teacher, and I can’t fight the madwoman either, so all I could do was…” Her forehead pressed against Shen Mo’s knee.
“All I could do was think of a method neither of them would use.”
From somewhere, she produced a black iron chain, one end fitted with a collar forged from refined steel.
She placed the collar around her own neck, the lock clicking shut with a crisp snap, then pressed the other end of the chain into his hand.
She had to try twice, because her hands were trembling and she missed the first time.
“Master’s Husband,” she rubbed her cheek against his palm, like a dog that had been abandoned once and finally found its owner again, desperately, almost pathetically, seeking confirmation that it was once more accepted.
Shen Mo froze.
His mind recalled Chao’er’s history.
Her birth father died early, her mother remarried, and her stepfather was a compulsive gambler who treated her as collateral to be pawned off.
At six years old, her stepfather sold her to a human trafficker, and she was passed between three different buyers in the trafficker’s hands, each one selling her off again for one reason or another.
The shortest keeper had kept her only seven days.
Su Wan’er found her in a village that had been slaughtered by demonic cultivators—she was hiding among the corpses, having gone two days without food.
She was nine that year.
From six to nine, passed around like goods, the first thing that child learned wasn’t how to smile—it was how to read a room.
She had to judge a person’s moods in the shortest possible time, figure out what expression, what tone, what posture to use to respond, just to avoid being abandoned again.
So every bit of attachment she later showed Shen Mo carried an element of pleasing.
She practiced calligraphy until her fingers froze solid and still refused to stop, not because she loved writing, but because she knew Honored Teacher favored diligent disciples.
Every time she waited for him at the peak’s entrance, it wasn’t because she missed him, but because she knew being waited for made people feel joy.
She tuned all her emotions to the frequency most comfortable for Shen Mo, polishing herself into a pebble that fit perfectly into the hollow of his palm.
This wasn’t calculation.
This was a survival strategy developed instinctively by a child who had been abandoned over and over.
No one ever told her why she was abandoned, so she could only attribute it to herself—”I must not have been good enough, that’s why I was thrown away.”
So she tried desperately to be better.
To please desperately.
To make herself someone who “wouldn’t be thrown away.”
Gradually, she developed this Stockholm Syndrome.
This was the extreme of pleasing: if you won’t love me, at least use me.
“This disciple is the Old Ancestor, the Old Ancestor of all demonic cultivators. They fear me, worship me, follow my commands.”
She gripped Shen Mo’s wrist.
She turned his hand over, palm facing up.
Then she placed her jaw into that palm.
Her face was small, her chin delicate, and when placed in Shen Mo’s hand, it fit perfectly within the curl of his five fingers.
Her skin was cool, carrying the faint dampness of early morning.
“If Master’s Husband, in front of all of them, fastens this chain around this disciple’s neck and leads this disciple across the front courtyard,” her voice traveled from within his palm, muffled, vibrating, “this disciple won’t be angry. This disciple will only—”
She opened her eyes, lifted her head, meeting Shen Mo’s gaze.
In that instant, the flames in her eyes burned at their brightest.
A brand-new emotion born from the fusion of Nan Gong Jin and Chao’er, belonging solely to this moment—the longing to be tamed.
Not by anyone.
By him. Only him.
“This disciple will only blush deeply and follow Master’s Husband obediently,” she said. “Whatever pace Master’s Husband walks, this disciple matches. If Master’s Husband stops, this disciple crouches at his feet. Whatever Master’s Husband commands, this disciple does. Everyone will see that the Old Ancestor belongs to Master’s Husband—not forced, but willingly, because this disciple begged Master’s Husband to collar her.”
Her fingers tightened, pressing his palm hard against her cheek.
The warmth of his palm burned her skin, her face growing redder and redder, as if it might catch fire.
But her eyes never blinked, fixed on Shen Mo, with not a trace of retreat in them.
Shen Mo looked down at her.
His thumb happened to rest on the scabbed wound above her left brow.
“You know I hate you. Aren’t you afraid I’ll use this chance to degrade you?”
“Master’s Husband is already taking revenge on this disciple right now,” her voice was light, carrying a knowing indulgence, “Master’s Husband can’t command anyone in this manor. You have to boil your own hot water. Master’s Husband’s cultivation is only Foundation Establishment—you can’t beat this disciple, you can’t escape this city, you can’t save Honored Teacher, and you can’t wait for Peak Master Qin to come rescue you. Master’s Husband has nothing left.”
“Master’s Husband is actually willing, isn’t he? Whatever the method, you just want to take back control, right?”
Shen Mo’s hand tightened around the chain.
More than that, he also wanted to control the pace at which the physical relationship progressed.
The weak always need to hold on to something to feel safe.
Chao’er’s eyes lit up for a moment.
It was the brightness of “finally connected.”
Like someone who had drifted too long in a storm finally catching the railing of another ship.
Whether they’d be pulled aboard after grabbing hold, or drag that ship down with them—she didn’t care.
What she wanted wasn’t to be saved.
What she wanted was the connection.
What puzzled Shen Mo was that Nan Gong Jin, the soul occupying the other half of his being, hadn’t tried to stop any of this.
He needed an explanation.
Not to convince himself, but to understand.
To understand why someone who could decide his life or death with a flick of her hand would look up at him with eyes full of that devotion, like a beast exposing the most vulnerable part of its throat to its master.