The moment the window opened, a girl with raven hair and snow-pale skin slid inside.
Her long hair was slightly disheveled. A faint red glimmer flickered in her damp eyes, a suspicious flush lingered on her cheeks, and even the curve of her lips was ambiguous and sultry. Black, white, and red came together in a face of beauty with incomparable visual impact.
"What do you want?"
Li Fei shut her book with one hand and planted the other against the girl's forehead, keeping their distance to avoid close contact.
Bai Mengtian turned her face and, like a puppy, sniffed at Li Fei's palm. She even stuck out the pink tip of her tongue for a taste.
And just like that, another day of the drug's effect was gone.
A jolt like electricity spread through her, and Li Fei's heart seized up for a moment. Then she pulled her hand back, pretending nothing had happened.
"It's... the taste of Straight Girl Mint!"
Bai Mengtian shuddered and backed away in terror. [Azure Mint] had no effect on her, but she recoiled from the stuff on instinct.
"You can taste that?"
Li Fei's brows knitted. It made no sense at all.
"Fei-bao, my Fei-bao."
Bai Mengtian wiped away tears, sobbing. "Who was so heartless as to poison you like this... They even used Straight Girl Mint."
"It's okay now, Mommy's here to save you..."
Before the words had finished leaving her mouth, a glimmer of blue magic flared on her snowy little paw. She meant to circulate her power and force the poison out of Li Fei.
"No need."
Li Fei blew out the magic in her palm with a single breath and said calmly, "All I did was correct some of my old flaws. I'm doing very well now."
"Sis, you're definitely going to regret this in a couple of days," Bai Mengtian warned in earnest.
"Regret? I know exactly what state I'm in, and I never do anything I'd regret."
Li Fei waved it off lightly, then asked, "Tell me about the Year of Mist. Pick whatever you're allowed to say. We've run into it anyway."
Bai Mengtian sighed, kicked off her JK-style leather shoes, and climbed onto the bed as if she owned it.
Today she wore a navy-collared dress trimmed in gold. The black skirt and the Dark Gold lines at the collar made a simple, understated color scheme that gave her an especially noble, refined air, like a young lady at an aristocratic academy, her approachable smile hiding a distance that couldn't be crossed. The only pity was the swell of her bust, which propped the collar up at roughly a forty-five-degree angle to the floor and warped the pure-maiden impression completely.
Beneath the airy hem were well-proportioned, slender calves, a red string dangling at one ankle. Her delicate feet seemed boneless, tightly wrapped in sheer black stockings, and as she crawled toward the head of the bed with her back to Li Fei, the soles showed a pale skin tone flushed with pink even through the taut silk.
Li Fei looked away, but then her good friend's feet brushed lightly against the sheets and another hour of the drug's effect evaporated.
Bai Mengtian hugged a pillow and settled against the headboard. Only after letting out a contented breath did she begin:
"The Year of Mist is a signal sent to every high-Sequence Transcendent, an invitation to a feast.
"It's not only Enlos and the Eastern Continent. Powerful high-Sequence beings from the Abyss, the Bone Domain, the Elemental Realm, and other great planes will turn out in full force to join in.
"After all, the food at that feast is just too tempting..."
Li Fei narrowed her eyes.
Qin Zhihua had mentioned before that quite a few world-famous titans had died during a Year of Mist.
Put that together with what Bai Mengtian was saying, and it was clear: the Year of Mist heralded a feast that countless high-Sequence Transcendents were willing to risk death to attend, one whose repercussions reached beyond a single plane.
What kind of delicacy could hold such a heart-stopping allure?
The answer wasn't hard to guess.
A normal year had only three hundred and sixty days, but the Year of Mist had three hundred and sixty-one. The "one" that had slipped away in other years would return in the Year of Mist.
And in the four thousand years since the Age of Myth ended, from the heights of Heaven Mountain to the deepest layers of the Abyss, not a single great being of Sequence 1 had emerged.
That returning "one" might well be the opportunity for Sequence 1...
As her thoughts churned, Li Fei's eyes gradually dulled to gray, as though veiled by the color of mist. The blood vessels in her body twisted like convulsing snakes, pushing eerie patterns up through her skin.
Two lines of blood ran from the corners of her eyes, forming a shocking scarlet trail of tears.
Snap.
Bai Mengtian clapped her hands lightly. A wave of magic surged and, like a breeze brushing her face, woke Li Fei and wiped the blood from her cheeks.
"Baby, stop thinking about it. The ticket is a high Sequence, a high Sequence of the Knowledge Sequence."
She tactfully let her best friend know that she wasn't one yet.
—Damn it. If I hadn't wasted so much time on messy, Depraved relationships, I'd have had a seat at this Year of Mist feast for sure! Good thing I woke up before it was too late...
Li Fei sighed softly and stopped dwelling on the "feast" itself, turning instead to its fallout.
"Are you going?"
"Of course."
Bai Mengtian answered without hesitation. "It only comes around once in half a century or so. Missing it would be such a waste."
She paused, then added:
"'Turn out in full force' isn't an exaggeration... Among high-Sequence Transcendents, who doesn't have a little ambition?
"Those whose potential is spent want to take the chance to go one step further. Those who haven't hit a bottleneck can't stay unmoved by this feast either, since it lets them go even farther.
"Not a hundred percent, but at least ninety-nine percent of high-Sequence Transcendents will go."
The result didn't surprise Li Fei. On the Transcendent path a hundred ships raced one another, and only those who seized more resources could surge ahead.
But she couldn't help voicing her worry.
"Then is Loxibrook still safe?"
"In theory, yes," Bai Mengtian said. "High-Sequence beings never lack confidence or courage. If they gave up this feast, they must have seen something even more attractive."
"Take Death school mages who've mastered master-level or even grandmaster-level [Soul Summoning]. Normally they don't dare go on a rampage, for fear of drawing too much hatred and being hunted down. But if Enlos goes through a vacuum period with the high-Sequence powers all gone... heh. Slaughter the living in a few dozen cities, complete some Forbidden ritual, raise an army of the dead, then duck into some folded plane and seclude yourself for a decade or so. When the heat dies down, you come back with a new face. That's a relatively low-risk, high-reward choice.
"Or say two high-Sequence powers have a blood feud. They might skip the feast just to wipe out the enemy's whole family while he's away from home..."
Li Fei said nothing. She silently stood up, sat on the edge of the bed, and fixed her gaze on a certain notorious she-demon.
"No need to worry about revenge."
Bai Mengtian waved a careless hand. "My enemies are just the Noble Alliance, and they wouldn't dare retaliate. They know that if anyone dares raid my home, I'll visit each suspect in turn and question them with [Hypnosis], or rewind time. I'd always find some trace.
"As for the Death school mages... Sure, the Knowledge Sequence will be away for a while, but the Bloodline Sequence's phoenixes, fairy dragons, and mantises will all be guarding this place. There are also unicorns, griffins, plenty of elemental beings, and all the city's defensive rituals and tools... Honestly, even with the Knowledge Sequence's top-tier beings gone, this city's foundations are enough to hold out against a grandmaster for a while."
"So relax. Nothing can possibly go wrong, okay?"
As she spoke, she even raised a soft, warm foot and patted Li Fei's shoulder. "When I come back, let's go on a trip to Sunlight City..."
Li Fei covered her mouth and asked, rationally:
"Stop planting flags. When do you leave?"
"Not until [the right time]. The next few months are fine."
Li Fei breathed out in relief and said quietly:
"There's still time..."
"Time for what?"
"To dig an underground escape tunnel."
"?"
"Don't misunderstand. It's not that I don't trust you."
Li Fei looked calmly into Bai Mengtian's eyes. "But I have to dig an underground tunnel."
...
"Please, come in."
The unexpected visitor at this hour left Miss Grace a little flustered, enough that a faint change of expression crossed her crystalline, indifferent little face.
"Sorry to disturb you."
Lady Annie smiled sheepishly.
Her golden hair had been tousled by the night wind, and the long trench coat lent her a steadier, more capable air. Between the hem of the coat and the shafts of her tall boots, the lines of her legs, wrapped in flesh-toned stockings, looked especially slender and taut.
"I eat your cooking often too."
Miss Grace opened the door wider, inviting her guest inside through action rather than words.
"Thank you."
Lady Annie thanked the female ghost, who bent her knees slightly, hands folded at her waist, and returned the courtesy with the classical Eastern grace of her kind, then led the horse away to be tended. With so many female ghosts idling about anyway, Miss Top Courtesan had assigned a batch to Grace as maids, sent another batch to the Secret Garden to help with the ten-child policy, and pulled yet another batch in as volunteers for the Sparkfire Charity Organization.
Since Grace was wearing a nightgown, she brought Lady Annie straight to the bedroom. There was no better place for a heart-to-heart.
Lady Annie bent over and pulled down the metal zipper on the inside of her dark boots. With a slight twist of her dainty ankles, her slender feet slipped free of the boots with a soft pop, trailing a barely perceptible wisp of white steam.
Clearly, for an ordinary human woman, horseback riding was hard physical work. It had left the sheer stockings a little damp, clinging tightly to her delicate feet, with heat still rising from them. The porcelain skin of her feet, half hidden beneath the silk, looked hazy and alluring.
"Tea or coffee?"
Grace asked.
"Black coffee is fine, thank you."
A moment later, Lady Annie was sipping her black coffee, and its rich, bitter aroma gradually neutralized the unease in her heart.
She lifted her head and looked at Grace.
That complicated gaze made Miss Poker Face rare flustered, just as she was when facing Qin Zhihua.
"Actually..."
They spoke at the same time. After a brief moment of surprise, Lady Annie curved her lips and gestured for Miss Grace to go first.
"Li Fei and I are not just friends."
Grace confessed.
"I know."
Lady Annie's tone was calm, and her eyes stayed on that excessively pretty face before her.
Her fluffy, flaxen short hair looked especially fresh. Beneath the long lashes, her pale green eyes were as pure and clear as a newborn fawn's. Her features were more exquisite than porcelain, and her cool-toned skin had a transparent, fragile quality that deepened the aloof, world-weary air of her indifferent expression.
Lady Annie asked herself honestly: if she were the same age, she'd hardly be able to resist a girl like this.
"Becoming a witch was never her intention."
After a silence neither long nor short, Lady Annie sighed softly, her tone tinged with melancholy. "Back then, she didn't mind that I was married with a daughter. So I should understand and accept her nature, even if it has been warped.
"In fact, she asked if I'd thought of moving... I just wasn't mentally prepared to share a home with other people.
"But if the one I'll be living under the same roof with from now on is you, Miss Grace, that doesn't seem so hard to accept."
As she spoke, she ruffled the hair on Grace's forehead.
—What if it's Lilith, then?
Miss Poker Face thought, saying nothing.
Lady Annie took another sip of coffee and voiced the question that puzzled her.
"But lately she's been acting a bit strange... Is something wrong with her cultivation? Or is it..."
Or was it because she'd gotten tangled up with Lilith in some strange romantic mess?
Lady Annie bit her lower lip lightly and swallowed the second half of the sentence.
"She probably accidentally took some Transcendent material that makes one's personality cold. She'll go back to normal sooner or later."
Miss Grace offered her own guess.
"That's a relief."
Lady Annie let out a breath, then moved on to her daughter. "Actually, Lilith seems a bit off too. I wanted to talk to her, but... the atmosphere wasn't right for a conversation."
Hearing this, Grace's little face instantly twisted with distress.
In this very bedroom, only a few dozen hours ago, she had fought side by side with Lady Annie's daughter. She had even witnessed the horrifying truth of Lilith pouring the potion that kept her belly from growing out the window.
Yet she never imagined that the one who'd actually face Lady Annie's interrogation would be herself...
Grace's heart was full of bitterness, and for a moment she couldn't speak.
"Does she... have someone she likes?"
The girl's increasingly pained expression made Lady Annie's heart sink.
"I promised her I wouldn't reveal this."
Dragged into a tangled family web, Miss Grace, her survival instinct erupting from deep inside, sold out her teammate to a certain degree, but not entirely.
Miss Poker Face's look of weary resignation only made Lady Annie more certain of the truth she'd already guessed.
Her daughter and her girlfriend had really become love rivals!
Lady Annie's mind was in utter turmoil.
Lilith was her sweetest angel, and now the little angel seemed to have a secret crush on her own mother's girlfriend's girlfriend...
No way. Absolutely not!
If Miss Grace hadn't been sitting right there, Lady Annie would probably have let out a series of faint whimpers.
—But what could she do to settle every one of these problems for good?
Lady Annie unconsciously began rubbing her wedding ring, and a bold idea slowly took shape in her mind.
Seeing her guest so anxious and uneasy, Grace thoughtfully refilled her cup.
Smack.
Lady Annie seized Miss Grace's wrist.
Under Grace's puzzled gaze, the palm grew steadily hotter and began to sweat, her grip tightening more and more until her nails dug slightly into the flesh.
"You..."
Lady Annie spoke a single sentence in a voice so low that even a Transcendent couldn't make it out.
In her extreme nervousness and shyness, she didn't even notice that the indentation beneath her wedding ring was itching and burning.
"What?"
Grace leaned her head closer.
"Tomorrow, she'll come to study a foreign language again."
Even Lady Annie's ears had begun to burn. "Could I ask you... to stay the night too?"
"..."
Miss Grace's eyes went hopeless.
She still couldn't work out what Lady Annie was thinking, but she realized that no matter what, she was going to be dragged into this disastrous mother-and-daughter tangle.
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