Li Fei slowly opened her eyes, feeling a surge of boundless energy — her vision seemed sharper too, able to pick out the grain of the furniture even in the darkness of the room.
She fished her phone out from under the pillow and checked the time. There was still more than an hour before dawn. Yet despite having slept for barely over two hours, Li Fei felt clear-headed and thoroughly refreshed, the fatigue that had been clinging to her for days swept away without a trace.
She sat up, stretched long and luxuriously, then gave the pillow a satisfied pat of appreciation.
"Having money really is wonderful…"
The [Moon Pillow] she had won at last night's auction was rectangular, entirely snow-white, its edges trimmed with delicate lace. It had an unmistakably girlish charm about it.
The fabric felt something like chiffon, only finer — the interior was stuffed with Moon Flower petals that would neither rot nor lose their fragrance for a century, along with Transcendent creature down that had been processed through numerous painstaking steps to achieve its astonishing softness and resilience. Even a Sequence 9 warrior could drive their fist into it with full force and the indent would spring back within ten seconds.
As a Transcendent item whose value rivaled Full Moon-grade equipment, the pillow was entirely useless in combat — but its practical utility was extraordinary. Its core function was a dramatic improvement of sleep quality: one hour of rest on it was worth ten hours of the finest ordinary sleep. Beyond that, it offered a faint acceleration of mana recovery and gentle nourishment of mental energy.
For Li Fei, whose schedule was growing increasingly packed, this pillow was worth more to her than almost any powerful piece of battle equipment.
The high-quality pillow, the bodystockings, even the oak cultivation elixir Qin Zhihua had once gifted her — these things were all slowly deepening Li Fei's appreciation for just how pleasant the life of the wealthy could be. Unlike herself: if there was any chance of combat in her day's itinerary, she didn't dare wear either of the bodystockings she had coaxed out of Lady Gneia, too afraid of having them damaged.
She got up and turned on the light. Given that she was heading into a Folded Space with Grace today, she had suppressed the restless urge to "flip a tile" last night through sheer force of will. She looked in the mirror and noted her complexion had visibly improved — and rewarded herself with a little blown kiss, looking quite pleased with herself.
After a quick mental calculation, Li Fei abandoned any notion of Meditation and sent Bai Mengtian a chat ping, then picked up her textbook and settled quietly at the desk to read.
Through relentless exploitation of every stray free moment, combined with her exceptional memory, she had already worked her way through most of the thick textbook. It had given her a far more comprehensive and intuitive grasp of common Transcendent creatures and items — an advantage that spoke for itself.
She had barely turned two pages when the phone screen lit up with Bai Mengtian's reply.
Palpitating Warrior: ?
Lifelong Devotee of Converting Straight Girls: Not answering instantly — you've changed. The love is gone.
Palpitating Warrior: Just finished something. Why aren't you asleep?
Lifelong Devotee of Converting Straight Girls: Hehe, look what I just bought.
Lifelong Devotee of Converting Straight Girls: [Tap to load image]
Palpitating Warrior: …mmm… this pillow looks familiar.
Palpitating Warrior: Oh, I remember now. My sister helped me clear out some of my loot a while back.
Palpitating Warrior: The Elven Princess really did have lovely taste~
Lifelong Devotee of Converting Straight Girls: …
Lifelong Devotee of Converting Straight Girls: The pictures. Hand them over.
Palpitating Warrior: [Tap to load image][Tap to load image][Tap to load image]
Her Intelligence attribute — far beyond what any ordinary person could attain — had been gradually allowing Li Fei to multitask with genuine ease. Even while studying foundational material that wasn't particularly demanding, she could hold a conversation and still maintain at least ninety percent efficiency.
Time slipped by with the turning of pages. Before she quite realized it, the sky had brightened. Li Fei unhurriedly closed her book, stood up, and headed out.
The living room was already suffused with the sweet scent of honey. Ram and Honey were in the kitchen, making cake.
"Didn't I tell you to rest for a couple more days?"
Li Fei wrapped her arms around the busy fairy from behind, her voice carrying a faint note of lazy warmth.
"I'm used to it."
Ram smiled her gentle smile — it carried a slightly more mature and thoughtful quality than usual.
"At this rate, I won't be able to do without you, Ram."
Li Fei pretended to groan in resignation, then reached over and ruffled the other fairy's hair. "You're working hard too, Honey."
"N-no, it's nothing…"
By contrast, the chestnut-haired fairy Honey was far more bashful, stumbling over even those few words.
"Don't worry about breakfast for me at home. Just pack up a slice of cake to take with me."
Li Fei gave the instruction, then wandered out of the kitchen and looked around the bright, tidy room. The thought that she would be moving out in a day or two stirred a faint, unexpected pang of reluctance in her chest.
The top courtesan had always been someone who loved new things — and couldn't let go of the old ones either.
With the vague intention of taking a good last look at the place before the move, Li Fei quietly eased open the door to the guest room.
The room smelled of something sweet and metallic. Her daughters were curled up together in sleep, their expressions peaceful and soft.
All except one.
The purple-haired fairy huddled alone at the foot of the bed looked utterly wretched — a jarring contrast to all the others.
Sasha was, by any measure, the most beautiful of the fairies. As the former leader of the Secret Garden fairies — a wild SSR — she outshone every other fairy in looks, save perhaps Eve and Ram; her figure was equally the most graceful and enchanting of all, like a scale-model version of Lady Gneia. She carried herself with a languid, commanding air that had left a strong impression from their very first meeting.
And yet right now, this gorgeous, proud fairy queen was a picture of dishevelment. She slept with her mouth hanging open, her violet hair tangled in every direction, her snow-pale skin mottled with bruises, and even her translucent butterfly wings looked like a sheet of paper that had been crumpled into a ball and then smoothed out again — creased and crinkled, stripped entirely of their former proud elegance.
Apparently, the innocence and gentleness of fairies was relative. No matter how docile and sweet-tempered they acted in front of the Mother of Fairies, the wild and aggressive Transcendent blood still ran through their veins. Under Li Fei's tacit permission, Sasha — who had been brought to heel but stripped of her authority — had been paying a considerable price for her beauty, subjected to the attentions of the single maidservants during their off-hours, passed around in rotation.
Not that Li Fei wasn't tempted herself. But she was, after all, only a Sequence 9 Witch. No matter how resilient a Witch's bloodline was, at this stage her body still had vulnerable points. If someone drove a blade through her eye socket into her brain while she slept, death was certain.
To prevent Sasha from doing something mutually destructive in desperation, the Mother of Fairies had decided to let her daughters help sand down the sharp edges first. Once those edges were worn smooth — once Sasha was truly broken in — she would finally allow her into her own bedroom.
Shortly after, Li Fei stepped out the door with a freshly baked slice of cake in hand.
---
A stout woman with a waist nearly as broad as her bust was bustling between customers in the lively restaurant, occasionally casting a sidelong glance at the suspicious figure lurking near the entrance in a dark cloak.
Though most of the face was hidden in the cloak's shadow, Mrs. Roslyn could still tell this suspicious character was probably a young girl — because the cloak's hem, still bearing scorch marks at the edges, did absolutely nothing to conceal two very trim, very fair little legs beneath it. The toned lines and pale, luminous skin gave off an impression of youthful, lively beauty; and the cloak, wrapped tight around the body, traced out the shape of a slender, delicate waist.
The girl in the cloak was scanning the surroundings without pause — like a deer drinking at a stream, watching for wolves that might spring from anywhere. Her teal eyes were dense with wariness.
Mrs. Roslyn hesitated for a moment, then abandoned her initial thought of going straight to the town watch and walked over instead.
"Excuse me — is there something I can help you with?"
The moment Mrs. Roslyn spoke, the girl jumped like a startled rabbit, and the cloak slipped from her face — revealing a fine, sculpted set of features and skin just as pale and luminous as those legs below. Mrs. Roslyn caught a full look at both.
"I'm fine. I'm waiting for someone."
Grace glanced over at the generously built Mrs. Roslyn, registered that there was no threat, and let out a quiet breath of relief. Her reply came in her characteristic flat, nearly expressionless tone.
"Ah, alright then—"
Mrs. Roslyn had just begun to say something else when a bright, cheerful voice rang out, growing closer by the second.
"Landlady!"
Li Fei hopped off a flying broomstick with a grin, waving her hand. "It's been so long!"
"Fei?"
Mrs. Roslyn clapped her hands over her mouth in astonishment. "You — you…"
In the radiant, black-haired beauty before her — luminous as the morning sun, and yet far more breathtaking than any sunrise — Mrs. Roslyn could just barely make out the shadow of the young girl who had once worked a month in her restaurant. Familiar, and yet utterly transformed.
"Oh come on — barely a month and you don't recognize me anymore, Landlady?"
Li Fei put on a wounded expression.
"You've changed so much." Mrs. Roslyn shook her head with a rueful smile.
She genuinely couldn't wrap her head around it — the girl who had once shown up penniless and lost on a foreign street had vanished for less than two months and come back as a different person entirely.
"Does that mean you're saying I've gotten prettier? Landlady, you always did have a sharp eye."
Li Fei covered her smile with a hand, then waved over at Grace. "Good morning."
"Morning."
The poker-faced young woman remained as sparing with words as ever.
"Landlady, this is my classmate. I brought her along to give your place some business."
Li Fei rubbed her stomach. "I have to rigorously test whether Uncle Alan's cooking has gotten rusty."
"Ha, no problem — though no employee discount this time around," Mrs. Roslyn said with a good-natured laugh, ushering the two pretty girls inside. She led them through the noisy main hall and back out to the courtyard, where a round table sat in the center — the one the staff used for meals.
"Welcome back, Restaurant Flower."
Roslyn personally brought out bread, fried eggs, bacon, and more, loading the table until it was nearly full before settling down beside Li Fei.
"After you left, quite a few regulars came asking after you, you know."
The smile slowly faded from her eyes as she said it — because the reason Li Fei had left wasn't exactly a pleasant memory for either of them.
"You lost an excellent employee, but you gained a loyal customer."
Li Fei winked. "I'll bring classmates by to support the business more often from now on."
"Then this little restaurant of mine will truly be — what was that Eastern phrase — 'graced by an honored presence'?"
Mrs. Roslyn gave Li Fei a pat on the shoulder, smile back in full force. "So — you're a new student at the Magic Academy now? And is that 'Angel of the Isolated Island' in the papers also you?"
Grace, who had been quietly gnawing on her bread beside them, kept her gaze straight ahead — but her ears had pricked right up. She was listening to every word of their conversation without missing a syllable, clearly very curious about Li Fei's past.
"Mm-hm."
Li Fei had stuffed an entire fried egg into her mouth. She gave a muffled nod, a smug little glimmer in her eyes.
"Look at you, all grown up…"
Mrs. Roslyn said admiringly.
"You deserve some of the credit for that, Landlady. Without you, I might have starved to death on the street."
Li Fei swallowed the egg and smiled warmly. "Things have been so hectic lately — it's taken me this long to find a free moment to come by."
"I didn't do anything."
Mrs. Roslyn shook her head, pausing a beat before continuing slowly: "Honestly… it's hard for me to imagine what you've been through this past month."
"Oh, nothing too dramatic."
Li Fei's smile didn't waver. "Found a better employer than the Mettis family, got into the Magic Academy through a lucky break, and narrowly made it out of Viranean in one piece."
"Oh — the Mettis family didn't come around causing trouble for the restaurant after I left, did they? If they did, you have to tell me. I'll deal with it."
"Don't worry about it."
Mrs. Roslyn waved a hand and laughed at herself: "Once the diamond is gone, what's a little place like this worth the notice of nobility?"
"This place has the best braised beef with potatoes in all of Loxibrook, I'll have you know."
Li Fei blinked. "Though naturally, not everyone is fortunate enough to taste it."
"Getting smoother with that tongue every day."
Mrs. Roslyn said approvingly. "Worthy of our restaurant's top salesperson."
"What did the Mettis family… do?"
Grace suddenly spoke up from behind her glass of milk.
— Couldn't help taking the bait, could you?
"Nothing too complicated," Li Fei said, curling her lips upward.
"A noble young lord took a passing fancy to a common girl working in a little restaurant. The way those people do."
"After some intimidation and inducement that went nowhere, the girl — with no power and no backing — found work at the Golden Kumquat Tavern for a little protection."
"The noble young lord, apparently unable to handle rejection, decided that if he couldn't have her, he'd destroy her. He sent people to ambush her outside the city."
"As things stand now — the common girl who was targeted is still alive. The people who tried to kill her, and worse, are not."
Li Fei's voice had gone cool as she said it — then she reached out, brushed the pad of her thumb across the faint smear of milk at the corner of Grace's lips, and softened her tone:
"Is Grace worried about me?"
"Where did they… ambush you."
Grace was quiet for a moment before she put the next question forward.
"Wolf Den, outside the city."
Li Fei looked steadily at the younger sister of Yarman Belikeli — one of the men who had died at her hands during that battle — and spoke as though she noticed nothing unusual about Grace's expression at all.
"That was the first time I ever killed anyone. Even though they had every intention of killing me — and worse — even at the very end, I hesitated. I wanted to let them live. Bring them back to the city. Report them to the magistrate and let the law deal with them properly."
"The consequence of that softness was that I nearly died for it."
"I remember there was one with a bow. After I'd already decided to spare them, he was the first to move — loosed a shot at my back when I wasn't looking. To survive, I couldn't afford to hold back anymore."
"Looking back now… what a waste."
In the quiet that followed Li Fei's soft sigh, Grace lowered her head. Her slender, pale fingertips were pressing into her own palm hard enough to nearly break the skin.
The story Kenneth had told her was a different one entirely — a cold, self-serving woman of ill repute who had leveraged the influence of her patron to extort the Mettis family; who had slaughtered Kenneth's subordinates, her own brother, outside the city walls and used it to force the Mettis family into submission; who had then used underhanded dealings with City Hall to slip through the cracks of the law and walk free…
"Good riddance!"
Mrs. Roslyn brought her hand down on the table with a crack. "Those shameless noble lackeys deserve to rot in whatever hell has them! Always pulling their filthy tricks on common folk, and then using those disgusting methods to smear dirt all over my restaurant—"
With impressive lung capacity, Mrs. Roslyn proceeded to lay out, one by one, every piece of the nobility's dirty history — including the underhanded tactics they had used to sabotage the restaurant's business in order to pressure Li Fei, back then. She finished by assuring Li Fei she should feel "not the slightest bit guilty" and that it was "enormously satisfying."
Mrs. Roslyn's heartfelt words fell into Grace's ears — and landed there like a weight dropping onto one side of a scale that had been trembling in uncertainty. The balance tipped. Grace made her judgment about the truth of her brother's death.
____
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