That single sentence… that confirmation… it shattered Lànhuā inside out. Want her? How? Why? Why out of nowhere—why her?
"W… what do you mean by… that thing wants me?" Her voice was a broken whisper, eyes fixed on the female yokai circling them. The night air was heavy, damp, and stifling. She tried to keep her breathing soundless, terrified it would hear the shake in her chest. The faint scent of her own blood lingered in the air—metallic, sharp, intoxicating. The yokai inhaled with a slow hiss, lips curling as it licked its tongue across needle-like teeth, savoring the taste it had not yet taken.
"You know exactly what I mean… Miss Lànhuā."His voice dripped like velvet silk, smooth yet carrying a weight of madness. For the first time, he spoke her name.
The sound of it from the guy's lips made her cheeks burn—not from flattery, but from the shameful realization of how badly she wanted to hear it .
Her protector's blade of the nails gleamed faintly in the shadows, her body taut, watching the yokai as it raised its claw. Its hiss cracked through the silence, a promise dripping with hunger.
"I'll claim you… no matter what."
The words echoed like a curse, making both their spines shiver. Claim? Mate?
Lànhuā's chest tightened. The meaning was clear, and it terrified her. If it swore this, it would never stop—its obsession would follow her across lifetimes until it got what it wanted. She didn't want to believe it. But hearing it confirmed by the creature itself made her legs weaken.
"S… shut up!" she hissed, panic taking over. She flung a burning talisman directly at its chest. It struck true, searing into its skin. The yokai shrieked—a high, unnatural cry that split the night like broken glass. From the distance, other spatial grades stirred and hissed back, their calls echoing like a chorus of predators.
"Don't act out of emotion!" the man growled, his voice sharp, warning. "You'll attract more of them!"
Lànhuā bit her lip hard, tasting her own blood, not wanting to admit her mistake.
"I can't be that thing's mate—I just confirmed it!" she barked back, stubbornness masking the quake in her chest.
"It already knows! The more you shout it, the more aggressive it will get. Do you even understand what you're feeding into?!" His jaw was tight, his voice brimming with irritation.
The yokai only grew more excited. Its obsidian eyes glowed with deranged obsession. The girl it wanted was rejecting it—hurting it—and that only deepened its hunger. Its lips parted in a crooked smile, a chilling mix of lust and madness.
"Mates… don't talk to mates like that," it hissed. "Mates… shower each other at lakes. Mates… have babies."Its voice was dark, low, almost soft—mockingly innocent, like it was trying to seduce her into believing it.
But the words slithered into her mind like poison, sickening her stomach.
The creature's scent shifted—sweet yet rotten, cloying like flowers drowned in blood. A heady, needy aroma spilled from its body, thickening the air, making Lànhuā feel lightheaded. The guy clenched her teeth; even he felt the pull of its unnatural pheromone-like stench.
"Shut up! It's nothing but your filthy daydream!" he shouted, face heating with unwanted embarrassment at the shameless words.
The yokai darted—its movements like shadow dancing, too fast, too unpredictable. His sword burned blue, slicing, trailing sparks across the night air, yet the creature slipped away with laughter, its long black hair trailing like smoke.
Then—attack.
With nails elongated into blackened spears, it lunged. Poison dripped from the tips, sizzling as they grazed stone. If they touched flesh, it would mean death. He slashed again, meeting it mid-strike, sparks flying as metal clashed against nails harder than iron.
Unlike common fiends who fed for survival, or the Wàng Xuè who obsessed over humans for power and pleasure, spatial grades were something else entirely—predators among predators. Ordinary yokai used animals, Wàng Xuè used even lower yokai as toys, weapons, and flesh to satisfy their obsession. But spatial grades… they resisted, hunted back, and sometimes even turned that same cycle on their hunters. They weren't prey. They weren't servants. They were the hunters who stalked both man and monster.
That meant he alone was outmatched. His blade, his talismans—no matter how sharp—would always lag behind its distortions. To kill a spacial grade, one needed another of its kind.
The sudden displacement of air made his pulse jolt.
"Miss Làn—!"
Before he could finish her name, it was already there.
The yokai appeared behind her, talons wrapping her arms and waist like black ropes. In one grotesque bound, it wrenched her backward. Their hair tangled midair—its long, wild strands of shadow-black weaving into her flowing white locks, knotting them into a grotesque intimacy.
"Ah—!" Lànhuā gasped, breath stolen from her lungs.
Its palm slammed over her chest, directly above her heart. Claws spread wide, pressing down, one scraping upward to graze the soft column of her throat. Another hooked cruelly beneath her jaw, forcing her face toward its grin. Her pulse thundered beneath its hand—fast, panicked, desperate—and the yokai's eyes glowed with rapture, as if each frantic throb was a lover's confession.
Her body stiffened. The heat of its palm seared her skin—shameless, obscene in its claim. Fear rippled through her veins in shudders, but to the yokai every tremble was ecstasy. It inhaled deeply, savoring, flooding the night with its cloying stench—a mix of iron, musk, and sweetness gone rotten. The air thickened, heavy, suffocating, as though the forest itself bent to its possession .
"Mine…" it hissed. The word split in two voices, a shrill echo twined with a guttural growl—unnatural, like two creatures speaking through one throat.
"Miss Lànhuā!" the man roared, heart hammering, fury shaking his blade. His knuckles whitened—he had been toyed with. Every strike before this… every dodge, every mocking laugh—had been nothing but foreplay. A cruel warm-up to remind him how powerless he truly was.
Lànhuā couldn't move. Couldn't scream. The claws at her throat pressed harder, digging lightly into skin, grazing her jugular, threatening to puncture if she so much as breathed wrong. Even a twitch too sudden, a flinch too sharp, promised to end her life. The weight of its hands over her chest crushed, almost intimate, almost obscene, claiming her heartbeat as its own.
"Mmphhh—!" Her muffled cry scraped against the talons clamped over her jaw. Her voice was strangled, smothered, every technique she had trained for sealed away, as though the yokai had stolen not just her body, but her very will.
"Let her go, you foul thing!" the man lunged, sword blazing with furious blue fire. His hand stretched desperately toward hers—but the space warped, twisted. The distance unraveled like the sea dragging back from shore, each reach pulling her further away. The harder he tried, the crueler reality bent to deny him.
"I need a spacial grade to kill this bitch!" he spat, voice raw, torn between rage and helplessness. Ordinary weapons and talismans could never match a predator of its caliber. Spatial grades were hunters among hunters, immune to the tricks of humans or lesser yokai. A fight without one of their kind was already a trap—he was flailing in a storm with no anchor.
Her body stiffened. Every nerve on fire. Fear twisted with revulsion and an unbearable, alien fascination. Every tremor in her body made the yokai shiver in ecstasy, like the tiniest sign of her panic was a feast.
And then—without warning, without mercy—its form shuddered, warping space itself. The night rippled and twisted around them, a living shadow that swallowed sound and light. In a single, impossible motion, it vanished.
Taking her with it.
And somewhere deep in the shadows, the female yokai's laughter lingered, curling through the trees like smoke. Lànhuā's pulse pounded in her ears—every heartbeat a reminder that she was not free, that the danger was far from over.