Chapter 22
The soft tongue, coated with Five-Colored Dew, licked repeatedly over the wound on her wrist.
The stinging pain from the wound gradually subsided. As the pain receded to a barely noticeable level, the additional stimulation from Gu Jiang's tongue became increasingly overwhelming.
Nie Yinzhi bit her lip, her wrist trembling with an unbearable tingling sensation. She wanted to pull her hand away, but her body was too weak to muster any strength.
The sticky sounds of licking reached her ears, making Nie Yinzhi feel as if her entire body was burning up.
"Gu Jiang..." she called out softly.
"Mmm." His response carried a heavy nasal tone, lazily drawing out the sound. Nie Yinzhi's grip on his clothes tightened involuntarily, feeling as if something had scratched at her heart, making the sensation even more intense.
Nie Yinzhi shifted restlessly, but Gu Jiang's other hand pressed against her lower back. For the first time, she noticed how large his hand was, pressing against the curve of her spine, his palm so hot it made her want to escape.
The pressure of his hand grew heavier.
Nie Yinzhi gave up and tried to distract herself by talking, "Are you feeling better now?"
"Yes." Gu Jiang helped her sit up and asked, "Does it still hurt?"
"No, the wound has healed, but it's all sticky with your saliva." Nie Yinzhi expressed her disgust, pulling out a handkerchief and handing it to him, "Clean it up for me."
Gu Jiang lowered his head, obediently wiping her wrist with the handkerchief. "Don't cut yourself for me again. If you need to feed me blood, just prick your finger."
The Five-Colored Dew's healing effect was excellent. Her fair wrist showed no trace of injury, except for the rosy color where he had sucked, like a crimson camellia blooming on her wrist.
"But finger blood is so little," she said.
Gu Jiang replied, "It's enough."
"Alright then." Nie Yinzhi happily agreed. Cutting her wrist hurt much more than pricking her finger, and since Gu Jiang insisted, she certainly wouldn't refuse.
The demon lord was much more obedient than the dog she had kept as a child. Nie Yinzhi tilted her head, her long hair sliding off her shoulder as she leaned down to study his expression. With a serious, research-like attitude, she asked, "Can I use 'Empathy' now? I want to know what it feels like when demons drink my blood."
Gu Jiang raised his head, and Nie Yinzhi sat up straight, looking at him expectantly.
After wiping her wrist clean, Gu Jiang hesitated for a moment before lying back down with narrowed eyes. "Fine, go ahead."
She knew he wouldn't refuse.
Nie Yinzhi crawled to the inner side of the bed and lay down beside him. She activated the spell mark on her wrist, sending a thread of consciousness along her meridians to entwine with the golden bud, seeping into its small golden leaf.
She waited for a moment but felt nothing. Could she have cast the spell wrong?
Nie Yinzhi sat up and pulled out the symbiosis spell scroll from her spatial storage, reading through the "Empathy" section once more.
The "Empathy" derivative spell had two branches. The first was to infuse the master's thoughts into the servant, subtly changing their thinking to make the controlled person willingly serve them.
The second was to probe the servant's emotions and thoughts, allowing constant monitoring of their inner fluctuations to prevent betrayal at its source.
How terrifying this spell was - just this one derivative revealed its true nature.
The last time Nie Yinzhi had shared her emotions with Gu Jiang, it had worked perfectly. There was no reason it should fail this time.
She couldn't help but poke Gu Jiang, "Didn't you say it would feel good? Why don't I sense anything from you?"
Just as she finished speaking, she felt Gu Jiang's emotions slowly seeping through. If Nie Yinzhi's emotions were like waves - coming dramatically, forcefully washing over one's heart before cleanly retreating - then Gu Jiang's emotions were more like a stream, or even less than that. At least streams flow and make pleasant tinkling sounds.
His emotions were silent, creeping up bit by bit.
Nie Yinzhi lay back down beside him, feeling as if she were soaking in warm water. She suddenly felt drowsy and turned to snuggle against Gu Jiang, wiggling around until she found a comfortable position before closing her eyes.
She hadn't even taken off her dress, and its skirt spread across the bed, its silver-threaded peacock feathers like a displayed fan, half draped over Gu Jiang.
The grey rabbit was still waiting outside the bed curtains. The sound-blocking spell Nie Yinzhi had cast couldn't actually stop him, but with Gu Jiang present, Feng Hanying didn't dare to act rashly.
The floating Red Leaf Sword completely prevented any possibility of him peeking.
After waiting for a long time, Feng Hanying belatedly realized what was happening inside. In the past, he had always been the one to leave others waiting while he sought pleasure, and now he finally understood how it felt to be the one waiting outside.
The rabbit stamped his feet in frustration, filled with murderous rage. After hopping around the room a few times, he sheepishly retreated to the other end.
In the evening, when the servant brought the food Nie Yinzhi had ordered, he knocked on the door repeatedly.
Feng Hanying glanced inside - the Red Leaf Sword still faithfully hung before the bed, and the people inside showed no sign of coming out. Nearly driven mad with annoyance, Feng Hanying jumped behind the door and snarled, "Get lost, or I'll chop off your hands."
The servant, terrified by the killing intent seeping through the door crack, trembled all over and nearly dropped his tray. "P-please calm down, sir." He then fled in panic.
As the daylight dimmed, it grew even darker inside the bed curtains, with only Nie Yinzhi's white dress remaining visible.
Gu Jiang slept quietly but was quite restless. Having someone beside him constantly hindered his turning, making him uncomfortable.
He instinctively wanted to kick her away, but when he caught the faint fragrance, he would suddenly jolt awake, hazily thinking, "Oh, it's Nie Yinzhi, can't kick her, she'll hit me."
So he had to pull her back into his arms instead.
In her dreams, Nie Yinzhi vaguely felt herself being pulled back and forth, sometimes held close, sometimes pushed away. When she could barely breathe from being pressed down, she couldn't help but whimper, and then she was flipped over to lie on top of Gu Jiang.
The peacock-feathered skirt had been completely rumpled by Gu Jiang's bold sleeping posture, tangled with his black robe almost into knots.
Outside, the sky darkened and then gradually brightened again, with dawn breaking on the horizon.
When the pain pierced her consciousness, Nie Yinzhi woke immediately. She opened her eyes in confusion, touching her neck, not understanding why her chest felt like it was being pierced by countless needles, as if she wasn't breathing air.
Nie Yinzhi belatedly realized these were Gu Jiang's sensations.
Her "Empathy" spell hadn't broken yet.
She couldn't directly feel his pain, only sense his emotions of "feeling pain" and "feeling like being stabbed by needles."
Gu Jiang hadn't woken; he was used to this state.
Nie Yinzhi felt dazed. As the effects of her blood wore off, she could feel the increasingly heavy invisible pressure weighing on Gu Jiang. It wasn't the realm pressure from high-level cultivators, but something more vast - the rejection force from not being accepted by heaven and earth.
Every breath he took was so painful. Nie Yinzhi roughly guessed why Gu Jiang had previously had no breath or heartbeat - it was probably similar to his stealth technique from before.
However, back then he only needed to deceive the surrounding cultivators. Now, he needed to deceive heaven and earth itself to feel a little more comfortable.
Nie Yinzhi felt distressed and wanted to cut her hand to feed Gu Jiang more blood.
He caught her hand, rubbing his brow. "If you keep feeding me like this, you'll die from blood loss eventually. Nie Yinzhi, your blood isn't medicine for me - too much isn't good."
Nie Yinzhi remembered that if demons drank too much blood, she would end up sending them to their final rest. While her blood gave him temporary comfort, it was also consuming his demon energy.
"So the so-called Divine Maiden really is heaven's nemesis sent to destroy you all." Folk legends weren't all fairy tales; they just became legends as time passed and fewer people knew the truth. "So what do we do now?"
"If you're uncomfortable, break the 'Empathy' connection," Gu Jiang patted her reassuringly. "This is normal for me, don't worry about it."
Nie Yinzhi lay on his chest, resting her chin on her hands. "Are demons really so sinful that they need to be suppressed by the laws of heaven and earth?"
Gu Jiang let out a derisive laugh, his chest slightly rising, "So-called demons are just those who defy it. Only the Demon Ancestors truly need to bear the pressure of heaven. Currently, there are five living Demon Ancestors, and demon cultivators merely cultivate using the demon energy of these ancestors."
Nie Yinzhi didn't know much about demons. She only knew that demon energy came in different forms with different names. Feng Hanying's demon energy, which was also Gu Jiang's, was called "Blood Moon Shadow."
When his demon energy wrapped around one's hand, it felt ice-cold. At first glance, it might seem less intense than other demon energies, but when killing intent arose, this energy could effortlessly dissolve a person into blood without causing any pain.
Before Gu Jiang emerged, only Feng Hanying possessed such demon energy.
"Blood Moon Shadow?" Gu Jiang repeated the name, seeming neither pleased nor displeased with it. He didn't care what it was called.
Like a curious child, Nie Yinzhi kept asking questions, "You said there were five. Where are the other four?"
Gu Jiang shook his head, "I only saw them once, when I fell into demonhood." When he became a demon, neither the righteous nor demonic paths would accept him, and he had to fight his way to survival.
"So you're the most junior demon lord. No wonder you only have Feng Hanying as your subordinate." So Gu Jiang wasn't an old demon lord but a young one, Nie Yinzhi found this thought amusing.
"Just picked him up by chance," Gu Jiang mumbled before preparing to sleep again.
Nie Yinzhi stopped bothering him and sat up, smoothing out her wrinkled dress. Looking in the mirror, she saw that her face powder from yesterday had been completely rubbed off since she went to bed without washing her face. Her lipstick was smeared all over, and her hair was a mess.
Nie Yinzhi took a deep breath, nearly exploding with frustration. As a noble lady, she had learned proper etiquette since childhood, always sleeping properly and neatly. This was the first time she had ended up in such a disheveled state.
She turned to glare at the culprit but noticed the red stains near Gu Jiang's ears. Her face heated up, and her anger dissipated, replaced by embarrassment as she moved closer to wipe off the lipstick marks.
Nie Yinzhi peeked outside the bed curtains and saw the gray rabbit curled up by the door - Feng Hanying hadn't fled.
She wished she had lowered the curtain separating the inner and outer chambers. With someone outside, she had no choice but to change clothes behind the bed curtains before stepping down.
The rabbit by the door immediately turned to look at her.
Nie Yinzhi finished washing up in the inner chamber, spent time arranging her hair in front of the mirror, and finally emerged.
Unlike yesterday's careful grooming, today she was much more casual. Her long hair was tied up high, adorned with just a small ornamental hairpin. Her face was bare of makeup, and she wore a light mauve gauze dress with deeper colors at the hem, like the gradient of evening clouds.
Nie Yinzhi said, "I didn't expect you to be so well-behaved." Keeping watch at their door.
Just because she had climbed into Gu Jiang's bed, she had become smug, and Feng Hanying despised smug women the most.
The rabbit stared at her disapprovingly.
Nie Yinzhi disliked his gaze, and as she was feeling hungry, she decided to do what she hadn't done yesterday.
Seeing her trying to catch him, Feng Hanying hopped around the room trying to escape. His consciousness was completely trapped in this rabbit's body, unable to transfer to other animals to escape. The mighty Demon Lord was being chased around the room by a Golden Core cultivator.
In the past, he could have killed ten such Golden Core sword cultivators with a single strike.
Nie Yinzhi finally caught him, lifting him by the ears as she headed out.
"What are you going to do?" Feng Hanying had an ominous feeling.
"I told you yesterday, didn't I? I'm taking you to the kitchen to be roasted," Nie Yinzhi said.
With Feng Hanying's consciousness trapped in the rabbit's body, he would have to experience being skinned and roasted alive, and if she were particularly cruel, even the sensation of being eaten bite by bite.
Once outside, the rabbit's aura suddenly turned sharp, its eyes gleaming with an eerie cold light. Feng Hanying's deep voice sounded in her ear, warning, "You're very bold. Do you know who I am?"
Nie Yinzhi showed no fear, "Feng Hanying, of course I know. The Demon Lord who threw the cultivation world into chaos, imprisoned in the Ten Thousand Demons Cave ten years ago."
The rabbit kicked its legs, "Since you know, you should understand that there's no good end for those who offend me."
Nie Yinzhi stopped walking. "You're right." She turned back, "Why don't we discuss this in front of your master? Are you blind or haven't you noticed? Or do you think I'm just Gu Jiang's plaything? Your master is completely infatuated with me now. If I tell him to go east, he won't go west; if I tell him to catch rabbits, he won't kill chickens."
After a moment of silence, Feng Hanying finally yielded, "What do you want?"
Nie Yinzhi carried the rabbit to the main hall and sat by the window, placing him on the table. "That's better. We're all family here, we should talk things through properly."
The rabbit stomped its hind foot, clearly disagreeing.
"My name is Nie Yinzhi, you can call me..." Nie Yinzhi thought for a moment before saying shamelessly, "Master's Wife."
Feng Hanying felt like laughing again.
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