“Ahem, ahem, ahem!!”
“You little fiend! What a fiend you are… ahem!!”
“Ahem… One of these days, I’ll chop him up myself!”
Su Bai watched as Xue Ji gargled tea while cursing furiously, and really wanted to remind her, “Even if you tied both of them together, they probably wouldn’t survive a slap from that little fiend.” But on second thought, how could she possibly do something that would boost the enemy’s morale and undermine her own? So the words got stuck in her throat, and she swallowed them back down.
After rinsing her mouth with a vengeance, Xue Ji took a small sip of tea, then turned her head to Su Bai, her gaze tinged with hope. “Body, do you have any backup plans left?”
“Nope. Who could’ve guessed that after all that stick-and-carrot education, the fiend would still come at me.” Su Bai pressed her hand to her forehead, clenching her fist tightly, her brows furrowed in deep agony.
If she could do it all over again, she swore she wouldn’t use such harsh discipline—at least, she wouldn’t have beaten the child into such a freak.
“Do you have any follow-up plans, then?” Xue Ji pressed on, unwilling to give up.
“None at all.” Su Bai answered, completely out of energy.
“So what do we do next?”
“No idea.”
For a moment, silence fell like a shroud, deathly still.
After a long pause, a woman’s voice suddenly sounded, as if wondering aloud or asking, “Hey, do you think that little fiend might just send us flying?”
After a beat of silence, the two women exchanged glances, and, as if sharing a single mind, they spoke in perfect unison: “That fiend is definitely going to send us flying!”
Once again, a suffocating silence settled, oppressive as a thick fog in the air.
“Sigh~ Let’s just sleep. One day as a monk, one day of ringing the bell.”
“Mm, scoot over a bit.”
“Your tail looks really nice.”
“Pretty or not, don’t touch it. It’s super sensitive.”
[After a brief chat, the two of you drift off to sleep. But knowing the true nature of your little fiend, your sleep is anything but peaceful. You even dream that the fiend really does send you both flying, sharing sensations and doubling the pleasure—your brain is completely fried, and you turn into a shivering little cream puff.]
[Time slips by in your anxiety, during which you receive two bits of news: one good, one bad.]
[The good news: the fiend hasn’t sent you flying—maybe there’s no interest, or maybe the skill points just weren’t put into that department. You think the latter is more likely.]
[The bad news: the fiend seems to be tinkering with some mysterious things. The problem isn’t what he’s tinkering with, but that he’s not messing with you right now, probably because he’s saving up for something big in the future.]
[This has you extremely irritable, but right now you’re like a bird in a cage; every means of self-rescue has been anticipated and countered. There’s no hope of turning the tables.]
[Suppressing your emotions, you begin to investigate how the fiend obscured the connection between you and Xue Ji. Very soon, you find a slender gray stone needle in Xue Ji’s Heavenly Wisdom Acupoint, which seems to be the culprit.]
[But even though you’ve found the “illness,” unfortunately, you have no way to remove the needle.]
[Year 1211 of the Simulation.]
[After over a hundred years of suppressing “One Thought Manifests a Thousand,” you’re unable to hold it back any longer and are forced to break through to the next realm—Spirit Heart, Thousand Faces.]
[After the breakthrough, there’s none of the hardship and transformation mentioned in the inheritance. You just feel the world becoming clearer, with some subtle, indescribable changes.]
[That same year, Zhou Xuan, citing the need for Xue Ji, symbolically asked your permission and then took Xue Ji away. Who knows where they went; they were gone for three days and three nights.]
[Three days later, when you saw Xue Ji standing before you, you felt a terrible sense of foreboding.]
Xue Ji batted her pink, heart-shaped eyes, captivating and enchanting, her slender tail playfully swaying behind her. Her face was adorned with a charming, teasing smile, and her rosy lips parted gently: “Body, what’s wrong? Surprised by the new me?”
“Uh… Are you okay?” Su Bai felt a twinge of unease rise within, and silently took a few steps back.
“I’m fine, better than ever!”
Xue Ji stepped lightly to Su Bai’s side, every gesture, every expression brimming with a hard-to-describe allure and ease.
“Body, I’ve figured out so, so many things these past few days.” She reached out and clasped Su Bai’s hand affectionately, interlacing their fingers. Tears sparkled in her eyes, yet her lips stubbornly curved into a smile.
“Being ‘Su Bai’ is exhausting. Being ‘Mr. Bai’ is exhausting. Being a ‘man’ is exhausting. I don’t want to be exhausted anymore. I don’t want to carry all this. I want to be happy, too.”
“Don’t worry about me, don’t save me, and don’t hate him. Just treat me as an insignificant fragment, let me atone in my own way. Leave our parents to you or to A-Xuan from now on.”
She lifted her face, the tears in her eyes growing ever brighter, yet her smile remained just as carefree—a smile tinged with a hint of depravity and madness, sending chills down the spine while also making one hopelessly enamored.
Alarm bells blared in Su Bai’s mind, an ominous feeling rising without warning.
Without a word, she dragged the laughing and crying Xue Ji to Zhou Xuan, only to find Zhou Xuan playing chess with a [Divine Emperor Soldier]. Upon seeing Su Bai arrive, Zhou Xuan looked calm and unsurprised, as if he had long expected her.
Su Bai transformed into Black Chicken Bro and flipped the chessboard straight away!!
“You little fiend! What did you do to the other me!!”
“Master, don’t be so irritable.”
With a wave, Zhou Xuan dismissed the [Divine Emperor Soldier], then looked up at Su Bai with a cool gaze. He glanced at Xue Ji, who kept casting flirtatious looks his way, and said,
“Your disciple can guess why Master is here, but rest assured—I haven’t used any soul-bewitching techniques or the like.”
“Then what’s going on with her?” Su Bai lunged forward, grabbing Xue Ji—who was sneaking closer to Zhou Xuan—her eyes practically spitting fire.
“Disciple merely helped Master’s soul fragment recognize its true inner nature. If Master were in this fragment’s place, you would’ve done the same.”
“Turn her back, now!”
“This was your own choice, Master. I cannot change it.”
“Bullshit! I’ll kill you, you fiend!!” Su Bai was instantly enraged, ignoring the gap in strength, and lunged straight at him!
But just as she was about to reach Zhou Xuan, Xue Ji suddenly stepped between them, blocking her way. Su Bai screeched to a halt, disbelief written all over her face.
“Body, calm down first.” Xue Ji hugged Zhou Xuan’s arm tightly, her slender tail affectionately coiling around his arm. “I haven’t been bewitched—I chose this. I’m truly tired. I don’t want to be ‘Su Bai’ anymore.”
Su Bai’s eyes widened as she stared at Xue Ji, her chest heaving, breath short, clearly unable to accept this outcome.
“You!” She jabbed a finger at Xue Ji.
“You!” She jabbed at Zhou Xuan.
“Damn it! Have you both gone insane? Whose side are you on?!” Su Bai shook with rage, but suddenly seemed to recall something. She shoved aside the blocking Xue Ji and stormed up to Zhou Xuan.
“If things are like this already, and there’s no hope of breaking out, then I might as well go mad too!”
She grabbed Zhou Xuan by the collar, her beautiful eyes blazing with fury.
“Zhou Xuan, I’m going to bet my life with you!!”