The top courtesan tilted her neck back, mouth stretched wide with some effort, as several pale and slender fingers wielded a peculiarly shaped instrument and worked it around the inside of her oral cavity.
"Lift your head a little higher."
The client gripped Li Fei's tongue with one hand and used a syringe to inject a carefully prepared solution into the soft pink mucous membrane of her mouth.
It felt sour and swollen.
Saliva was already threatening to spill out.
The top courtesan fixed Aurora with a deeply aggrieved look, as if to say: Are you almost done or not?
"Almost there, I promise."
Aurora smiled sweetly.
It was only an hour ago that the top courtesan had learned of an unwritten rule at the Golden Kumquat Tavern: after a newly initiated Witch chose her complimentary esoteric art, Lady Gneia would personally cover the cost of the required materials, and the Witch sisters would volunteer their time to guide the new Witch through her practice.
Aurora, through means unknown, had emerged from among dozens of competitors to claim the volunteer slot of "helping the top courtesan practice [Venomous Kiss]." And being the obscenely wealthy woman she was, she had gone ahead and booked the top courtesan's entire work shift for the evening as well.
After the seventh round of "almost there," Aurora produced a rose she had prepared in advance, drove its stem through the triangular skull of a viper, and completed the final step of the ritual — marking the modification as complete.
The top courtesan could finally close her mouth. She rubbed her lips with relief, then lifted her glass of juice and took a sip to moisten her parched throat. She was just about to swallow — when it suddenly hit her: this lady's mouth is now full of poison. She looked down and spat the juice right back out, not even daring to swallow her own saliva, and turned a pitiful gaze on Aurora.
"Nothing to worry about."
Aurora gave Li Fei's cheek a gentle pinch and launched into a detailed explanation of the mechanics behind Venomous Kiss. "Saliva is produced by multiple glands distributed throughout the mouth. The ritual and the solution only modify a small section of tissue beneath your tongue."
"The primary purpose of the modification is to grant you the ability to secrete venom, and to enhance the sensitivity of the surrounding musculature."
"Under normal circumstances, there will be no toxic components anywhere in your mouth. To produce venom, you first need to concentrate a small amount of mana beneath your tongue — using that mana as a catalyst to trigger secretion — and then consciously control the underlying muscles to push the venom out."
"Besides, you've only undergone the most basic tier of the Venomous Kiss modification. Even if you accidentally swallow some, the worst you'd feel is a brief full-body numbness."
"O-okay..."
Li Fei swallowed a tiny amount of saliva with extreme caution, held her breath, and waited. After a long moment with no sensation whatsoever, the tension in her chest finally, slowly eased.
"One more thing — whenever you have a free moment each day, make sure you drink a little of your own venom."
Li Fei: ?
This scheming woman — is she trying to do me in and reclaim the top spot?
Under the top courtesan's suspicious gaze, Aurora explained in a warm, even tone:
"We Witches possess an extraordinary capacity for adaptation and evolution — the higher the Sequence, the more pronounced this becomes. At the same level, no other race can match a Witch's adaptability."
"What that means is: if you consume this venom regularly over time, your body will develop a corresponding resistance — until you are completely immune to it."
"That actually works?"
Li Fei stared, jaw slack.
"That's nothing remarkable at all."
Aurora lifted her wine glass, eyes warm with amusement. "In fact, there is a formidable Witch by the name of Mami who severs her own head every single day, training herself to resist the death condition of decapitation."
"The result is that when certain adversaries go through tremendous effort to finally cut off her head, they discover to their horror that the Witch's headless body can still raise its finger and press a Death Touch with perfect precision to the center of their brow — while her head, having rolled behind them, opens its mouth in the same instant to breathe out a demonic exhalation, catching them in a front-and-back pincer." ①
Li Fei quietly took a sip of juice to steady her nerves.
"Come on, then — give it a try."
Aurora regarded Li Fei with the encouraging look of a distinguished teacher calling on a student to answer in class. Her pale palm turned upward, cool fingertips resting lightly beneath the top courtesan's chin.
Li Fei set down her glass, held her breath, and steadied herself. As she guided her mana toward the underside of her jaw, her chin and lips moved in small, deliberate twitches as she strained to control the muscles beneath her tongue. Nearly ten seconds passed before a faint scent of almonds bloomed through her mouth.
Then, cheeks slightly flushed, she lowered her head — and slowly let the saliva laced with paralytic venom drip into Aurora's jade-white palm. She watched as the fingers — a fraction of a centimeter longer than Zhihua's, she noted distantly — contracted slightly.
"Ahem."
Aurora cleared her throat softly. What the top courtesan had just done was, frankly, a little too devastating — even the former holder of the top position found it difficult to keep her composure.
Feeling the warmth against her palm and the damp sensation between her fingers, Aurora tested the effect of the venom with practiced nonchalance:
"Quite exquisite... oh, what I mean is — roughly one gram of this is sufficient to lock up most Sequence 9 Transcendents for two to three seconds. Against Sequence 8, it won't last more than a second — but if your follow-up is clean, that's more than enough to be lethal."
Li Fei steeled herself, squeezed her eyes shut, braced — and swallowed the almond-scented liquid.
The mana-catalyzed venom acted swiftly. Almost the very instant it entered her esophagus, Li Fei went limp all over and slumped bonelessly onto the sofa. A moment later her strength returned, and she slowly straightened up.
The effect lasted under two seconds — partly thanks to the Constitution boost from her System, and partly to her Witch bloodline, which gave her a natural resistance to toxins well above that of an ordinary Sequence 9 Transcendent.
And having experienced the effects of [Venomous Kiss] firsthand, the top courtesan's scheming little mind began to stir.
If she could accumulate enough Witch Points to redeem the advanced version of [Venomous Kiss], and then cross paths again with that Siren who had once hunted her to the ends of the earth — she wouldn't have to fight for her life. Just a honeytrap, one sharp enough blade, and a well-aimed... the dead stay dead.
And that wasn't all. The upgraded Venomous Kiss could produce a wider range of functional compounds — which meant that when the top courtesan found herself spending the night at some other woman's home, she could pat her chest and declare with perfect sincerity: "I will do nothing more than kiss you, I absolutely will not take things further on my own initiative" — and then, after secreting a high-concentration aphrodisiac compound, conduct herself with the utmost propriety and restraint, a woman of her word who simply waited for the fish to take the bait.
Just as the top courtesan's imagination was running gloriously off the rails, cool, soft fingers pried her lips apart, parted her tongue with practiced ease, and used the pads of index finger and thumb to pinch the delicate strip of muscle between her tongue and lower jaw.
"You're too slow. You need to secrete the venom within half a second to meet the baseline standard."
Aurora's fingertips worked with patient precision, her voice coaxing and unhurried, like someone guiding a small child: "Can you feel it? Right here — this muscle. Come on, follow my rhythm..."
It... it was squeezed out...
Li Fei shot Aurora a glare — and then bit down on her finger.
Even Lady Zhihua has never touched this part of me!
I swore an oath of absolute faithfulness to Sister Zhihua...
Wait — did I actually swear that?
Never mind, then.
The top courtesan promptly shed her moral qualms and, under Aurora's "expert guidance," spent the next stretch of time familiarizing herself with her newly acquired skill.
Half an hour later, the top courtesan was huddled in the corner with both hands clamped over her mouth, shaking her head frantically, eyes wide with horror — telegraphing in no uncertain terms: I am completely and utterly drained.
"Two seconds is still a bit slow. You'll need to practice diligently on your own going forward."
A flicker of genuine regret passed through those ice-colored eyes. Aurora withdrew her hand with visible reluctance, then cleaned her fingers the way someone might after finishing a bag of chips.
"This esoteric art is absolutely inhumane — so much effort for something this finicky..."
Li Fei was still pressing both hands over her mouth, cheeks puffed out, grumbling with feeling.
"Don't be greedy, Fei-bao."
Aurora pinched the dark-haired beauty's face between fingertips still faintly warm and carrying a trace of almond fragrance. "Other mages have developed esoteric arts with similar effects to [Venomous Kiss] — but their bodies don't adapt the way ours do. For safety reasons, they were forced to have independent venom glands and delivery ducts surgically implanted into the mouth. The cost of the modification procedure alone, not to mention the difficulty of learning to control an entirely foreign organ afterward, runs dozens of times higher than what [Venomous Kiss] demands."
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
The top courtesan huffed.
Seeing Li Fei settle into her signature languid, unbothered slouch, Aurora snapped her fingers and ordered a fine bottle of wine with practiced ease. The moment Li Fei remembered Lady Gneia's promise of a tenfold commission on future drink sales, she snapped back to life like a wilting flower given water.
"Now then — let me walk you through the cultivation requirements for [Enthralling Blood]..."
Aurora kept the conversation flowing effortlessly, and in doing so, kept the top courtesan firmly and expertly in the palm of her hand.
——
Without anyone noticing, the private room had gradually filled with people.
Since Aurora had missed the top courtesan's "Witch Welcome Party" the previous day due to prior commitments, she had decided to make it up tonight by treating the Witch sisters to a full evening of eating, drinking, and merrymaking — with the entire tab covered by the honorable former-top-hostess-slash-heiress Aurora herself.
It was worth noting, incidentally, that since Aurora was the top courtesan's client for the evening, Li Fei was entitled to a commission on every coin spent...
Li Fei cradled a plate of what looked like pasta — topped with thick slices of black-pepper mammoth seared on a hot iron plate, the rich dark sauce coating every strand — and bent her head over it, slurping with great enthusiasm. Five empty plates were already stacked in front of her.
Every plate of noodles she finished put a dozen or so silver coins of commission in her pocket...
She set down her plate with deep satisfaction and swept her gaze around the room. Her mind performed a rapid calculation and arrived at a conclusion:
Between food and drink, the sisters had tonight consumed the equivalent of roughly two hundred and fifty square meters of luxury real estate. That meant she had recouped approximately one percent of her new home's purchase price. Cause for celebration. Truly, cause for celebration.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
A silver-haired Blood Clan girl strolled over on seven-centimeter silver stiletto sandals, unhurried and radiant. A blooming lily tattoo adorned her slender white ankle, wild and bewitching.
"Fei-bao, I know [Venomous Kiss] too — shall we spar?"
Isabella ran her tongue over the tips of her pointed canines, the sweet fragrance of fruit wine drifting between her lips.
"In my entire life, I have never once uttered the word 'afraid.'"
The slightly tipsy Li Fei gave a sharp snort, grabbed the neckline of a black dress — and bit down.
The other Witch courtesans in the room couldn't help but look over — but before anyone could even open a betting pool, it was over.
The top courtesan went in! The top courtesan went down!
Li Fei's eyes rolled back. Her legs gave a single kick. She toppled backward in a rigid, dignified arc and collapsed straight into Aurora's arms, expression perfectly serene. It took quite a while before she came back to herself.
"Sister, you should get some snake-demoness scales to supplement," Isabella said, withdrawing a pink, glistening tongue and licking her lips with evident satisfaction. She patted the top courtesan's face, then shook her head — the implication clear: you're just not quite there yet.
The snake-demoness in question — the one rumored to carry scales with medicinal potency leagues above anything sold commercially — was also in the private room. Apparently she, too, was a member of the Witch Coven.
This snake-demoness Witch went by the name Dasha. She possessed an even more breathtakingly abundant figure than Lady Gneia, her dark blue-black curls cascading down to the line where her waist gave way to a serpentine tail. Her mature, finely shaped oval face wore a soft, gentle smile suffused with deep maternal warmth.
That smooth, sinuous tail — its scales a deep teal — measured roughly three or four meters by estimate, and moved instinctively back and forth across the floor. This did nothing to impede her upper body, which was currently engaged in slowly lowering an entire roasted lamb into her mouth, eyes half-closed in contentment.
Hearing Isabella's remark, Dasha swallowed the lamb whole. Her throat swelled briefly, then smoothed back to its pristine, flawless appearance. Her firm, supple waist — which seemed to possess an impossible degree of flexibility — maintained its slender span without the slightest distortion, as though the entire roasted animal had simply ceased to exist somewhere around her collarbone.
She turned her head. Her scarlet, forked tongue flickered out from between full lips, and the vertical pupils of her bright golden eyes regarded Li Fei with a thread of maternal warmth — tinged with tenderness and a hint of sympathetic concern.
Dasha let her tongue flicker again and murmured softly:
"Sss~~ if there's something you can't quite say out loud, you can tell me. Don't be shy."
"I absolutely do not!"
The top courtesan immediately put on a display of spirited indignation, stamping her foot, muttering under her breath about how "it's completely unsporting when your Venomous Kiss level is higher than mine" and "this lady was impaired by alcohol and not at her best" — while the other sisters dissolved into peals of laughter, filling the private room with a warm, raucous atmosphere.
In the midst of all this, more than a few Witches took the opportunity to cozy up to the snake-demoness and pout prettily for scales.
The top courtesan, having slowly righted herself, reached over and snagged a plate of meat-sauce fries. She ate while keeping her ears open.
But before long, she caught the words "running dry" and "half an hour" drifting through the conversation — and let out a private, scornful snort.
Back when I had no experience, I actually believed all that nonsense — online gossip and made-up novels.
Under normal circumstances, isn't it three to five minutes? Sister Zhihua even praised me and said I was wonderful!
Hmph. The rumors about snake-demonesses going for "days and nights" have to be wildly exaggerated too. Nothing that absurd could possibly be real.
One day this lady will personally debunk these myths with her own investigation!
Without noticing, she had finished an entire plate of fries. Li Fei wiped her hands and raised one in the air:
"By the way — sisters, does anyone know a fast way to earn Witch Points?"
The moment the words left her mouth, the lively atmosphere dropped several degrees. Almost every Witch in the room put on some version of the same expression — gentle, resigned, faintly awkward.
Only the heiress's smile remained undimmed. Aurora replied with serene composure:
"Purchase rare materials, then exchange them for points at a Coven gathering... um."
Isabella plugged Aurora's mouth with an enormous fried shrimp. Her voice came out cool and dry:
"What a truly remarkable suggestion, sister."
Judging by the collective poverty radiating from the assembled Witches' expressions, Li Fei concluded that there really was no quick method for earning Witch Points.
In truth, Lady Gneia had already introduced her to several common approaches the previous night:
First, and most direct: join that mountain of citrus-flesh, become part of the "wishing ritual power supply," and feed the ritual with one's own energy. The more favorably the wishing ritual viewed you, the better your output — and fifty percent would be taxed away, with the remainder converted into Witch Points.
Second: complete various commissions — revenge contracts, abduction jobs, intelligence gathering, escort work...
Third: recruit new Witches into the fold. The higher the potential of the new recruit, the greater the referral bonus.
As for how potential was measured — there was an elaborate and precise evaluation system, but in broad terms: the higher the Charisma, the lower the Morality, and the greater the aptitude, the higher the potential score.
As an aside: if you intended to recruit a new Witch, you were responsible for supplying the Witch's elixir yourself. If the Coven's secrets were exposed during the recruitment process, the sisters would handle the cleanup — but afterward, points would be docked proportional to how severe the breach had been. If your balance went into the negative...
A prime seat in the power-supply array was waiting for you. Step right up.
Even by the top courtesan's current Morality score, the first method was something she couldn't bring herself to accept. As for the second and third — both were daunting in their own right. After all, beauties with a Charisma score starting at 100 weren't exactly growing on trees, and even when you found one, you didn't necessarily have the heart to lure her in and make a Witch of her. Li Fei, for instance, could not begin to picture what Lady Qin Zhihua would look like with a Morality score in the negatives...
"Haah..."
As if by unspoken agreement, sighs rose and fell around the room. Every Witch drained her cup in one long swallow.
Life is hard. Even Witches need to sigh.
① [TN: The Witch 'Mami' referenced here is Tomoe Mami from the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica, whose signature in-series death involves decapitation — the joke being that through sheer Witch-bloodline adaptation, she has trained herself past it.]
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