Su Lianyue’s voice carried a slight quiver to it. “I’m actually… a virgin…”

Xu Yangyi was somewhat surprised, but he nodded. “Mhm.”

This was a woman armored in a hard shell, her inner heart not easily opened. Everything before had been nothing more than a mere pretense.

Clip… Clip… Clip… The clothes on her upper body were all shed away. Unexpectedly, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. She was beautiful, very beautiful. Perhaps it could be said that at this moment, the word beautiful had become somewhat superfluous.

With her perfect S-shape figure and willowy waist without a shred of excess fat, she didn’t make one feel that she was gaunt upon pressing down on her with both hands. Moonlight spilled forth, making the present Su Lianyue appear as if she was a moon-bathed goddess.

“This is my bargaining chip… Are you satisfied…?”

She closed her eyes because she was unwilling to have the tears at the corner of her eyes be seen by Xu Yangyi.

She had her own pride as well. 

Xu Yangyi roughly swept his eyes over her. “You can use money.”

“Is money a difficulty for the good sir?” Su Lianyue allowed the moonlight to illuminate her and laughed gently but bleakly. “I have no spirit stones, and I’m not a cultivator. I can’t divide this share… 

“Maybe to you... women are also cheap. But this is the most precious thing I can put forward…”

“Am I… pleasing to the eye?”

Xu Yangyi lit a cigarette. “What you seek to do definitely isn’t simple.”

“No, it is simple. But I’m not enough by myself to ask anyone.” Su Lianyue gazed at the ceiling, her voice shaking. “Did you know… Sanshui City is a destitute place? The demons here are all initial Qi Condensation. At the greatest, they’re at the middle stage… The demon slayers that come here are at most middle-stage cultivators as well… There’s never been… never, a champion who’s come here… even a city champion…”

“These demons… are content with their lives. They don’t want to cause wanton destruction. They only want to continue living well… You’ve seen that centipede at that stadium, too… That’s the auntie that buys vegetables at the supermarket… How could she warrant a high-level cultivator’s kill order? As for me…” She shut her eyes and her eyelids fluttered. Her body was bared without anything to conceal it. “You don’t know how lowly the cultivation world regards failed cultivators… and how strictly they’re looked after… I’m basically unable to conduct business except with cultivators… not to even speak about leaving Sanshui City… my office term is…” 

She paused. “Fifty years…”

She opened her eyes, staring unwaveringly at Xu Yangyi. “Sir, you’re the first I’ve met. The first cultivator.”

“So I’m a hot commodity?” Xu Yangyi tossed the clothes aside. “Go on.”

Su Lianyue didn’t answer. Her clothes fell off her body, continuing to slide away.

“I want to find my little sister.” Her eyes reddened. “She disappeared after I joined Heavens Law. I joined Heavens Law because my mother was killed by a demon. My parents divorced a long time ago, so it was my mother that raised the two of us growing up.”

“Her name is Su Xingyao. As long as you help me find her, I’m yours. Regardless of where your desires lie, I shall concede to them.”

Xu Yangyi faintly opened his mouth. This was the first time he actually looked at Su Lianyue. In kind, he was welcomed with a serious set of eyes.

“Your bargaining chip isn’t enough,” Xu Yangyi said after a long time. “If a woman could take her clothes off to get me to help her find someone as she wanted… Who do you think I am?”

“I know.” Su Lianyue’s gaze was somewhat empty but was set ablaze in an instant. “I also know… in half a month, you’ll return to Heavens Law to participate in the graduation ceremony… and I know that afterwards, you’ll go to many places, places that I can’t set foot in…”

Xu Yangyi nodded, but in the next second he was about to say something, all of his words became stuck in his throat. Like solid matter, his gaze gathered onto Su Lianyue’s hand, because in her hand, there lay a feather. 

A black feather inlaid with gold edges. At the tail end, there was a golden design that interweaved to form the shape of an eye.

“Ten years ago in autumn…” Su Lianyue’s voice contained an indescribable grief, the emotion in her eyes incredibly staunch. “She disappeared… Only this black feather was the scene.”

Her voice yet to fall, a sharp stab of pain jolted her shoulder, yet she gritted her teeth and didn’t cry out. Xu Yangyi had already seized onto her. The greatness of his strength was as if he wanted to pinch her shoulder blade into smithereens. However…

She simply dared not struggle free!

It was like a white rabbit encountering an old tiger. With his mere power, she didn’t dare to flail an inch! She was too naive… At this moment, all she wanted was to shut her eyes, but she didn’t risk it.

Truly, she was naive… This was a man she couldn’t rely on her beauty to seduce… Wasn’t it so… How could she get past a champion? Furthermore… how could the freaks and superhumans that came from a perverse place like Heavens Law… possibly be normal people? How could her level of beauty… truly be greater in Xu Yangyi’s eyes than cultivation?

A flame burned within Xu Yangyi’s eyes. It was an infernal blaze, ordinarily drowned at the back of his eyes, but when it erupted, it would leave the hearts of men in fear! 

“If you’re lying to me…” Xu Yangyi’s voice was grim without a trace of emotion. “I’ll make sure you suffer a fate worse than death.”

His tone was rather serene, but it carried an absolute chill.

“My words are true. There’s not one lie.” Su Lianyue’s hoarse voice shivered. “If you’re going to search my soul, then search it.”

She finished speaking and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to listen to Xu Yangyi’s judgement. To help or not to help?

She was quite confident in herself before, but as soon as she laid her eyes on an actual cultivator, a true champion, her confidence had given way on first contact. It scattered into ashes without any remains.

Her final hope was the feather in her hand, only to look forward that the gathered resources she had painstakingly acquired in the past ten-odd years and the last million she had relinquished wouldn’t be wasted in vain.

So much that she had wept silently for this coincidence. 

Xu Yangyi gazed coldly at the stunning, half-nude beauty before him. His heart was serene at this moment, but a baleful tempest roared within.

This was It...

This was definitely It!

The killer he had pursued for thirteen years! The god of death he would never forget! This was most assuredly It! The feather was an exact duplicate… so much that he could smell the air of that blood-stained night thirteen years ago!

Against his expectations, It still dared to reveal itself… It had made him fall into a nightmare after he pushed open that door thirteen years ago. Now in the past five years, It had destroyed another household again!

Kill! No mercy!

The killing intent within his heart had never been so firm. His debt, along with the burden of the countless lives that rested on Its back, would be personally made recompense by him. 

Amidst the endless silence, Su Lianyue finally heard a sound akin to a heavenly lyre.

“I accept.”

She suddenly opened her eyes and stared at Xu Yangyi incredulously. 

“But it’s not because of you.” Xu Yangyi’s eyes had turned somewhat crimson, like he was firmly fixed on Su Lianyue yet not looking at her. “There won’t be a next time. It’s too cheap to humiliate yourself in exchange for sympathy. This isn’t a burden you can bear.”

“The path of a cultivator isn’t as simple as you think. Since you’ve already left, spend your hundred years as a mortal smoothly and steadily.”

Su Lianyue couldn’t help but shed tears of joy once she heard these words. Her figure, unyielding like a bow, slowly continued to bend downwards. Subsequently, an extremely low sob, likely from her throat, escaped outwards like a trapped beast.

“Boohoo…” After several seconds, as if the wounds within her heart of the past several years had been torn open, she looked up towards the sky and wailed mournfully, “Ahhhhhh!!!!”

How many years had it been… Finally, finally someone had accepted her request, someone had dared to accept it...

Was the little sister she had been separated for years from still alive? Where was she? In any event… the first dash of color had been added to the grayness of her life. 

No matter how the tears rolled off her face, she didn’t plan on wiping them away. This wound dated far, far back. So far back that she’d believed herself to have forgotten. She didn’t expect that this sudden eruption would be so violent. Her present beauty was like an exiled immortal, a hidden flower in an empty valley beneath moonlight. In this moment, all of her splendor had finally blossomed. 

Xu Yangyi didn’t disturb her, only looking on calmly. He rather understood this emotion. It was just like him when he’d first come to Heavens Law.

How many nights had his dreams returned to that blood-drenched moment? From crying to screeching, even now, he neither wept nor laughed. He had sharpened the dense murderous will within his heart layer by layer to a shine, transforming it into a dagger and concealing it deeply.

After several minutes, Su Lianyue’s sobs stopped. Xu Yangyi looked at the clothes at her feet and said, “Put on your clothes.” 

Yet he hadn’t expected Su Lianyue to laugh. With a charming expression on her face, she came over one step at a time, her eyes bearing a wisp of resolution and determination.

Perhaps… it wouldn’t be bad to give herself to Xu Yangyi like this… At the very least… right now, at this moment, this second, she wouldn’t regret it. The stone in her heart had been set free. Presently, all she desired was to clear her mind and relax.

“Aren’t you… going to take your down payment?” Su Lianyue grabbed onto his hand and slowly, but without hesitation, placed it on her ample breast. Her face blushed for the first time, and she said softly, “My trust… is hard to come by…”

Xu Yangyi was dazed. He looked at her carefully for a few seconds and then laughed, “And my down payment is expensive as well.”

He scooped Su Lianyue into his arms and made off with her without the slightest hesitation towards the bedroom. “I forgot to tell you; I’m a virgin too. Don’t blame me, blame Heavens Law…”

…...

A night without dreams.

A sweet spring night, woefully too brief. The sun had already risen high, but the pair reveled in debauchery, ignoring their matters of business. [1]

The night passed quickly but also rather slowly. By the time Su Lianyue had awakened, Xu Yangyi had already bought breakfast. Of course, what he had bought was Kentucky Fried Chicken take-out.

Su Lianyue arched her lower back. It was incomparably sore. She had guessed earlier that a cultivator’s body would be pretty good… but too much of a good thing wasn’t that great, either.

Xu Yangyi’s gaze as he looked at her was somewhat complicated. He helped her up and handed her a can of cola, not saying anything.

“No need to take responsibility for me,” Su Lianyue said faintly, “I don’t need you to.”

“This is the price.” She took the offered cola, her expression composed. “Yesterday night, I fell into the heat of passion. You fell into the heat of passion. You took the down payment that you should’ve, and that was it. It was a price that I was happy to pay. I have no love for you, only appreciation. As for you, there’s no love for me, as well. It was only a passing pity for me. So things are pretty simple.”

Xu Yangyi looked at her for a couple seconds and laughed, “I thought that after a woman popped her cherry she would fall in love.” 

“We’re both adults here. The idea of falling in love is already too far away…” Su Lianyue sighed, “You know, acquaintances or close friends don’t get into bed first and then talk about feelings like we do. I don’t like things like this. But....” The corner of her mouth raised upwards. “It’s not like I dislike this kind of feeling, either. Ah, I was just pointing out the feeling of the bed.”

Xu Yangyi was silent. After quite a bit of time, he said solemnly, “If something happens later on, give my cell a call. I’ll help you out with one thing. As long as it’s within my limits and doesn’t go against my principles.”

“A promise worth a thousand catties of gold?” Su Lianyue wasn’t too languished and laughed, “I’ll remember it. Anyways, a single promise is so restricted. It’s really stingy of you.”

“As soon as you get better I'll leave.” Xu Yangyi flipped on the television. “No matter what things are like between us later on, I’m not a man that takes and leaves at the very least.”