“Kill you?”
Qin Shuying sneered, and pure Taiyin Spiritual Power surged in her palm.
It was a frigid aura even more overbearing than the Passion Entwining Ointment.
Without a shred of mercy, she pressed her hand against Shen Mo’s Dantian!
“Ah—!”
Shen Mo let out a suppressed scream of agony. The icy spiritual power forced its way into his Meridians, which were scorching as if about to burst.
The extreme pain of fire and ice clashing inside his body was far worse than being sliced alive.
However, like a bucket of freezing water, it forced his crumbling consciousness back into a moment of clarity.
“Want to die? It will not be that easy.”
Qin Shuying watched him, satisfied. He was drenched in cold sweat and convulsing with pain, but he was no longer trembling from the drug. She withdrew her hand.
She looked down at him, her gaze like that of someone watching a dying, cornered beast.
“I want you to beg me while your mind is clear. Not because you have lost your senses to a poison, but because you personally choose to beg me for the sake of survival—for even a single chance to breathe.”
As the icy spiritual power was withdrawn, the dryness and heat within his body surged back ten times more violently than before.
Shen Mo’s vision began to blur. The strings of his sanity let out a mournful cry as they reached the breaking point.
Qin Shuying watched him at her leisure, enjoying the process of her prey struggling.
She wanted to crush his pride and make him break the shackles of his Husbandly Virtues with his own mouth.
“I… I…”
Shen Mo’s fingernails dug deep into his palms. Blood seeped out, but the physical pain could not compete with the scorching heat inside him.
He looked at Qin Shuying’s beautiful face, so close to his own, filled with cruelty and pleasure.
Finally, before the fire of desire—strong enough to incinerate everything—could swallow the last of his reason, he closed his eyes in despair. Two trails of tears rolled down his burning cheeks.
His voice was as faint as a mosquito’s buzz, yet it landed in Qin Shuying’s ears like a clap of thunder.
She had waited for this moment for far too long.
She had waited for him to be unable to refuse any longer, waited for him to be completely at her mercy, and waited for his arrogant head to lower for her.
Yet, she had not expected that when this moment truly arrived, a surge of twisted satisfaction would erupt in her heart.
Since the meat was already at her lips, there was no reason not to eat.
A cold arc curled on her lips. She shoved Shen Mo down onto the cold Stone Couch and pressed her body over him.
She did not rush into anything. Instead, she bit his earlobe with a hint of punishment and whispered into his ear in a cold, feverish tone, “You chose this yourself. Shen Mo, remember, you are doing this willingly.”
At the final moment before his consciousness surrendered, Shen Mo unconsciously murmured his wife’s name, his voice broken and shattered.
Qin Shuying’s movements came to an abrupt halt. A violent, cold light flashed through her eyes. “Hate me all you want. I do not need you to be willing, nor do I need you to be grateful.”
She moved her hand from his face and gripped his wrist, her fingers locking with his in an irresistible hold.
“You only need to stay alive.”
She hauled him up from the Stone Couch. Shen Mo fell into her arms like a pile of soft mud, his body as hot as charcoal.
He wanted to struggle, but he lacked the strength to even lift a finger. He could only lean against her helplessly as she carried him toward the Low Couch in the corner.
Outside the room, the wind howled.
……
When Shen Mo woke up, the first thing he saw was the gray, hazy light outside the window.
It was a heavy, leaden gray, as if soaked through with water, pressing down on the horizon and making the room feel dim and chaotic.
It was that darkest moment just before dawn, a precursor to the retreating night.
There was a deathly silence in the air, the kind that follows a settled storm. Even the sound of his own breathing felt intrusive.
He tried to prop himself up, but as soon as he put strength into his elbows, a sharp sting shot through his shoulder blades, like rusted gears being forcibly turned.
A nearly inaudible gasp escaped his throat, but he forced himself to swallow it back down.
The pain was real—a tangible protest from his muscles, skin, and bones.
It felt as if his entire body had been dismantled and then pieced back together; every bone was screaming with soreness and weakness.
Beneath that pain was an indescribable sense of emptiness seeping out from the marrow of his bones.
After one night, the core essence that supported Shen Mo’s existence had been brutally stripped away by something, leaving behind only a hollow, superficial shell that trembled slightly with every breath.