With the vial of enchantment water gripped tightly in her hand, Xiangniang felt fully confident and returned to the courtyard with her head held high.
In the courtyard, Xiao Mo was sitting cross-legged on the stone bench with his eyes closed in cultivation, the Dao resonances flowing around him in gentle currents, his clear and handsome features looking even more striking in the evening light.
"One has to admit, this man really is quite good-looking."
Xiangniang thought privately to herself, then swayed the abundance of her figure forward and spoke in a sweet, coaxing tone.
"Sir, you work so hard at your cultivation every day, all in the hope of advancing your cultivation level, is that not right? I have a much better method here that would let you advance far more quickly. Would sir like to try?"
"Many thanks for the kind thought, but there is no need." Xiao Mo shook his head, his tone mild and distant.
"Tsk." Xiangniang clicked her tongue inwardly, but showed nothing of it on her face.
Go ahead and be stubborn.
By tonight, I will see how long you can hold that position of yours.
He would probably be throwing himself at her day and night and she would not be able to push him away.
Without quite noticing, the day eventually passed.
After dinner, the sky gradually darkened, the dusk settling in and enveloping the whole small courtyard.
Xiangniang bathed herself carefully in a tub of fragrant flower-scented water, letting her every inch of skin soak in the floral sweetness, then changed into a diaphanous light dress and stepped gracefully out of her room.
She prepared a cup of tea for Xiao Mo, and at a moment when he was not paying attention, quietly tipped the enchantment water into the tea and gave it a gentle swirl.
"Sir, have a cup of tea."
As she always did, Xiangniang carried the cup forward with small, graceful steps to where Xiao Mo was sitting, a soft and bewitching smile on her face.
Xiao Mo accepted the cup, glanced down briefly at the clear tea, then raised his head and looked at Xiangniang calmly.
A faint unease stirred in Xiangniang's heart, and she wondered whether he had noticed something, but she kept her smile fixed and said with affected ease, "What is the matter with sir? You are not worried that I have put poison in it, are you?"
"That would not occur to me." Xiao Mo raised the cup and drained every drop.
Watching Xiao Mo drink the entire cup without leaving a single drop, Xiangniang curled her fist quietly with barely contained satisfaction. Half of it was already done.
"Sir should get some rest early. Xiangniang will go back to her room now." She gave a small bow, turned, and walked back to her room in her graceful, swaying manner.
In her room, Xiangniang pressed her eye to the gap in the door and watched Xiao Mo out in the courtyard without blinking, waiting quietly for the effects to take hold.
About one incense stick's time later, she saw Xiao Mo begin drinking water repeatedly, his complexion flushed, his expression suggesting he was burning up with heat, even the tips of his ears gone pink.
What made Xiangniang's heart race even faster was that she noticed Xiao Mo looking furtively in the direction of her room from time to time.
That look was like a wild creature starved past its limit, staring at meat in the kitchen with a hunger it could not conceal.
Xiangniang knew it was time to make her entrance.
"Sir..." She pushed the door open and walked out.
At that moment Xiangniang was wearing nothing but a thin gauze dress, the pale skin beneath it showing in shifting glimpses in the moonlight, lending her an alluring, dreamlike quality.
"What exactly did the young lady give me to drink?" Xiao Mo raised his head, his gaze burning as he looked at Xiangniang, his voice low.
"What else could it be? Something wonderful, of course, something that will bring sir the greatest of pleasures."
Xiangniang smoothed her gauze dress, barely thicker than cicada wings, and settled her full figure lightly onto Xiao Mo's lap. Her soft hands wrapped around the back of his neck, her lips parted slightly, and a warm, fragrant breath drifted forward, her expression hazy and intoxicated as though she had been submerged in spring water.
"Sir does not need to do anything. This one will take good care of sir."
Before the words had fully settled, Xiangniang began to draw Xiao Mo's robes slowly away. Her soft lips pressed forward, her snow-white skin pressed tightly against his body.
The thin gauze dress had somehow already slipped from her shoulder at some point, revealing a wide expanse of smooth, fair skin, pooled loosely around the slender waist beneath.
And Xiao Mo's hands had come to rest around her impossibly smooth waist.
…
Reality.
The Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox Kingdom, deep within the imperial harem, in a particular courtyard.
The air was thick with the deep, rich fragrance of alchemical medicine.
In the alchemy chamber within the courtyard, a young woman in snow-white palace robes was kneeling upright before the pill furnace.
Behind her, nine snow-white tails swayed gently in the breeze like nine drifting clouds.
Threads of cold and ice condensed without cease into the furnace, regulating the flame within with precise control.
The young woman had been refining pills for a full four months. Every ingredient had long since been placed inside the furnace, and the final stages of completion were now underway.
Sensing that the moment had arrived, the young woman lifted her pale and lustrous chin, her lips parting slightly, and a snow-white demon core flew slowly out from between them, hovering steadily above the furnace.
The instant the young woman's Ascension-realm demon core appeared, spectral visions of celestial foxes suddenly materialized throughout the sky above the entire palace, and a tide of demon energy as vast as a boundless sea swept outward in all directions.
The lid of the furnace began to open of its own accord.
Drawn by the demon core's influence, the pill inside finally rose out from within.
A thunderous boom.
The very instant the pill appeared, layer after layer of dark tribulation clouds gathered above the furnace.
Whenever a celestial-grade pill came into being, a pill tribulation invariably followed, to prevent the myriad races from claiming the gifts of heaven and earth for themselves.
"Get out."
The young woman did not truly open her mouth to speak, and yet her voice rang out like thunder across every corner of the palace.
In an instant, the tribulation lightning clouds were shattered and scattered.
The young woman extended those flawless hands of hers, and the freshly emerged pill flew lightly into her pale and slender palm.
The Ascension-realm demon core was then swallowed back inside her.
"Does Your Majesty truly intend to give this pill to Ten Thousand Swords Sect's sect master, Jiang Qingyi?"
Inside the alchemy chamber, a bewitching young woman stood with both hands clasped before her, standing quietly beside Tushan Jingci but her form was transparent, apparently without physical substance, nothing more than a surviving soul.
"Of course I will give it. Why would I not?" Tushan Jingci turned her head and looked at the woman, her voice calm yet carrying a stubborn edge. "If he cannot remember, and I simply kill him, what would be the point?"
As she spoke, Tushan Jingci gave a faint smile. That smile was so beautiful, and yet so solitary, and so without hope.
As though her heart had been pressed down beneath a darkness too deep to have any bottom, hearing no sound, seeing no light.
"If he cannot remember."
"How am I to ask him, why he destroyed my entire Tushan clan, yet chose to leave only me alive?"
"Xiangniang, what do you think?"