Ice Arrows had always been the darling of mages, prized for their solid lethality and frost effect.
The moment the Ice Arrow shattered against her body, Li Fei felt the full brunt of the pain — and the white mist enveloping her was absorbing heat at an astonishing rate.
Even though the lingering swelter of high summer hadn't yet dissipated, Li Fei's hands and feet went ice-cold and her whole body shivered. Could this world get any — no wait, wrong line.
With just a single pulse of battle-qi, qi and blood surged within her, and Li Fei's body temperature began to climb back rapidly. The white frost creeping across her skin quickly turned to vapor and dripped away — like an ice cube tossed into a fireplace. Furnace Battle-Qi truly lived up to the name "furnace."
Clearly — thanks to her exceptional constitution, her cultivation at the second level of Furnace Battle-Qi, and the extra resistance bonuses on her mage's long robe… Li Fei, a triple-school cultivator, was far tougher than your average same-rank mage girl.
Especially the Combat-school special knowledge [Intermediate Resistance], which she'd traded three potential points for. Its effect was outstanding — and this was one of the great fundamental reasons mages, even in the mid-to-high Sequences, had so much trouble matching warriors:
Intermediate Resistance:
Resistance +60%
Although special knowledge was notoriously hard to master, the percentage-based buff effect was absolutely staggering — the higher one's constitution, the better the effect. Even at the introductory level it was enough to deliver an immediate, visible boost, supporting warriors in pushing back against the tide of spells, sweeping all before them.
Faced with a Tier-2 spell whose lethality had been heavily blunted, the damage Li Fei took was far lower than she had expected.
While Li Fei was absorbing the damage, Grace hadn't been idle either. Mana flickered across her black-and-red longbow, and a single arrow forced out Lucoa's mage shield, while Lilith dropped a beam of holy-light healing onto her teammate, completely repairing the minor damage.
Whoosh —
The bald monk moved like an ape, closing the distance to Li Fei in just a few extra-long strides. A single staff strike, wrapped in a thousand-jun of battle-qi, swept aside the ice mist as he tried to confirm the result and follow up with a killing blow.
But within the churning, broken ice mist, what he saw was Li Fei — deep-red battle-qi blazing across the surface of her skin.
"Been waiting a long time for you."
Li Fei flashed a radiant smile, revealing snow-white, pointed fangs. The mage robe draped over her body was abruptly thrown open, and a sword-glare swept upward in a counter-thrust — like a flood dragon bursting out of the sea.
Her battle-qi is even more refined than mine!
The thought flashed through his mind. Palmer didn't even have time to suck in a cold breath — instinctively, he whirled his long staff, conjuring up layer upon layer of whistling staff-shadows that drove straight at Li Fei's vital points.
Clang!
Amid the teeth-grating, crisp clash of metal on iron, a massive force traveled up the staff into the tiger's mouth of his hand, leaving his arm numb.
Meanwhile, Lilith finished her second round of casting and dropped an "Invigorate" on her teammate. The battle-qi vortex inside Li Fei abruptly accelerated to forty revolutions per second, the wild burst of output letting her swing her blade even faster. The storming, raging-rain offensive was just like Lady Zhihua last night — the one who had grabbed the young madam by the ankle and hung her upside down — its terrifying aggression making Palmer feel like he couldn't breathe.
"Move!
Matthew, whose gold coin had turned into a streak of light to keep Grace pinned, sensed the situation was about to spiral out of control. Decisively, he tore apart a Spell Scroll in his hand, and a pillar of light suddenly came pressing down on Li Fei.
— Finally willing to drop your ultimate, huh.
Facing a Tier-3 spell, Li Fei didn't choose to hard-tank it. She yanked Lilith — who had long since closed in to her side — over to her, and the latter, far from panicking, activated the [White Radiance Stone Necklace]'s shield in perfect tacit coordination, shattering the menacing pillar of light to pieces.
Matthew's heart gave a "thud," sinking slowly.
According to tournament rules, each Noble-school Transcendent was allowed, per match, to use: one Tier-3 Spell Scroll, two Tier-2s, and four Tier-1s.
It looked like a modest quota, but in reality plenty of mages couldn't even complete a single spell-cast before being knocked straight off the stage!
Luckily, there were also restrictions on scroll types — things like "Lightning Curse," a Spell Scroll capable of insta-killing ninety-nine percent of all students, were strictly banned.
The Tier-3 Spell Scroll, sold for thousands, lay in tatters, drifting out from between Matthew's fingers — declaring that his most powerful attack option had failed.
Matthew's expression turned grave; he had a vague sense of how this match was going to end.
Palmer was still putting up a fierce struggle. Face dark, he raised wave after wave of staff-shadows; battle-qi poured out of him like a waterfall as he tried to turn the tide.
But under the pile of premium-quality teaching resources lavished on her, Li Fei was no longer the same Li Fei as before. Relying on her dramatically advanced close-combat techniques and her sheer attribute-suppression, one woman with a single sword pressed him until he could barely catch his breath.
As for Grace, she didn't say a single word from start to finish — endlessly nocking and loosing arrows. Each shaft sliced through the air with a lethal aura, blanching the color from the senior's lovely face and locking Matthew down tight.
Lilith, completely unbothered, hid behind Li Fei to cast, layering one Life-school buff after another onto her stepmother.
This left Li Fei fighting more and more fiercely, while Palmer felt like he was walking on thin ice. Under the increasingly ferocious offensive he broke out in sweat after sweat, like a man dancing on a wire — every inch of muscle in his body wound taut.
When the pressure exceeded a certain critical point, the rope in his mind called "reason" snapped. Palmer let out a roar — heedless of his battle-qi expenditure — and savagely, madly whirled his long staff, briefly forcing Li Fei back. Seizing the chance, he peeled away and opened the distance from his opponents.
"Whew…"
With the pressure suddenly gone, Palmer got a moment to breathe, and a smile instinctively rose to his face.
But the next instant, reason flooded back into his head, and he realized he had just made a very stupid decision.
"I… opened up distance from three mage girls?"
He stared at Li Fei in despair — but what filled his vision wasn't that nation-toppling, city-wrecking face. It was a fireball even bigger than his own head.
"Heh."
Matthew gave a bitter laugh and crushed his last Tier-2 Spell Scroll.
Just hoping for some kind of result.
Grace did not disappoint. About one-third of the blue circuitry on her combat suit began to flow, precise and orderly as mechanism-gears, and even more fluid than before. A glowing blue halo wrapped around her entire body, easily blocking the Ice Arrow.
Victory and defeat — there was no longer any suspense.
"Lilith, pour me a cup of water."
After the modest "made-it-through-the-elimination-rounds celebration banquet" wrapped up, Li Fei rubbed her little belly — currently housing three bowls of tomato-and-beef-brisket rice — and slouched lazily against the couch, her tone listless and limp, like the young mistress of some house bought up by a female warlord.
"Go yourself."
Lilith replied with the back of her head.
"Eh?"
Li Fei rested her chin on Lilith's shoulder and whispered in a languid, teasing voice into her ear: "You still want that little sister or not?"
"Drop dead, drop dead, drop dead…"
Lilith's face flushed instantly red. She grabbed a throw pillow off the couch and unleashed a barrage of hits on Li Fei from head to toe.
"Mutiny, mutiny — the unfilial daughter is devouring her mother."
Li Fei covered her head defensively, still muttering under her breath.
While the two of them were tussling, the blonde wife and Miss Pokerface — who had just finished clearing the dishes — emerged from the kitchen.
Lady Annie, watching the sight of her girlfriend and daughter playing around so affectionately, felt her eyes inexplicably grow warm.
This home hadn't had that kind of warm, harmonious atmosphere for many, many years.
She wiped the corner of her eye and gently chided them:
"You just ate — stop roughhousing."
"She started it."
At the speed of light, Li Fei struck a prim, well-behaved sitting posture and tattled.
"You—!"
Lilith jabbed Li Fei hard, opened her mouth to speak, then stopped — her gaze finally settling on her mother and Grace.
It had to be said, group living, training camp, and shared baths really were the perfect tonics for deepening relationships. As a teammate and a senior who had soaked in the same hot tub together, Lilith's impression of Grace was actually quite good — the "quiet but reliable" type. A certain amount of genuine affection had grown between them as well.
However, after boarding at her stepmother's house for half a month, she now had a crystal-clear understanding of all of Li Fei's funny business.
First — her stepmom was secretly carrying on with a stunning, beautifully cultured fiancée behind her own mother's back! Even though it was supposedly a live-in arrangement, Li Fei would often vanish right after bathing, only to sneak back into her own covers in the dead of night, with the faint scent of medicine still clinging to her body.
Second — every one of those women she'd invited over as sparring partners was a stunning beauty, their speech and conduct laced with an ambiguous, suggestive charm — that murky, can't-quite-call-it-anything sort of feeling.
And that was while Qin Zhihua was at home.
When Qin Zhihua wasn't home — oh boy — the "hide-and-seek" games could only be described as utterly outrageous. That completely shattered Lilith's earlier impression of her. There was even one time she was startled awake in the middle of the night to discover that two of the junior schoolmates actually had that kind of relationship with each other!
Only she herself was the outsider.
Lilith had wanted, time and again, to expose her stepmother's secrets to her mother — but out of a complicated psychology even she couldn't quite explain, she ended up keeping the lifestyle issues hidden.
She'd thought she was finally getting used to all of this, but now, seeing Grace come over to her own home as a guest, and seeing her own mother dote on the quiet, taciturn Grace almost like an adopted daughter, Lilith still felt her head start to throb.
Lilith looked at her mother. Her mother was looking at her too.
Daughter and girlfriend were trading some very childish little gestures — you poke me, I'll pinch you — looking exactly like a pair of sisters.
This closeness between the family's old and new members made Lady Annie feel both gratified and content — and also a little strange, but where exactly the strangeness lay, she couldn't put into words.
She walked over, took both of their hands, and made them stop their little antics. In her eyes was an exasperated yet tender motherliness:
"All right, take a break. I feel as if I'm raising two daughters now—"
Halfway through, Lady Annie's voice trailed off — because she suddenly felt that phrasing was even weirder.
"Mm-hmm."
Li Fei went along with the flow obligingly and rose, draping herself around Lady Annie's neck like a sloth, her tone equally sloth-like and listless: "Let's go take a little nap."
"Mm."
Lady Annie laid a hand on Grace's shoulder and said softly: "You must be tired from this morning's matches. If you don't mind, you can rest a while in Lilith's room."
"Eh?"
At those words, Lilith's body went stiff.
It wasn't as if she'd never spent the night at a close friend's place, or invited close friends over to her own house to stay.
At this point, Grace counted as a friend of hers too — and they had a half-month's shared training-camp stay behind them on top of that. Forget just a midday nap; even sleeping side by side wouldn't have been all that unusual.
But the moment she heard that Grace would be sleeping in her room, Lilith just felt — strange. A feeling she couldn't quite describe.
"That's all right…"
Grace softly refused, but before she'd even finished speaking, Li Fei talked her right back into it.
"Aiyah, treat this place like your own home. Don't stand on ceremony."
Li Fei carried herself with all the airs of the lady of the house, her brows and eyes brimming with smiles:
"If you're really shy about it, I'll come keep you company."
— That mansion's got such a huge bed; with only me and Lady Zhihua in it, it's awfully lonely. Sleeping together, everyone all warm and cozy, isn't that nicer…? So please, get used to all of this, my little wings.
Li Fei licked the corner of her lip and, arm linked with Lady Annie's, headed into the bedroom. As the door was softly pulled shut, only Grace and Lilith were left in the living room, staring at each other in silence.
The instant they entered the bedroom.
Li Fei, who'd looked sleepy and out of it just a second earlier, instantly perked up, full of energy as she grabbed a pile of materials off the desk and got busy.
"What are these?"
Lady Annie asked, puzzled.
Today at noon, Lilith and Grace had come over first; Li Fei had arrived a little later, carrying a parcel of things she'd left in the bedroom ahead of time.
"Guess."
Li Fei winked, her hands not pausing for a moment.
The matter of Eva being infected with Witch Sickness had sounded a warning bell for her.
Miss Top Courtesan had made a point of going to the tavern to ask around, and had confirmed: only after a witch ascended to the mid-Sequences would she gain the ability to freely control whether or not the Witch Sickness spread.
And at Sequence 9, the transmission probability was vanishingly slim.
Thus, Sequence 7 was the most dangerous stage — the concentration of witch bloodline reached the peak of the low-Sequences, and yet there was no on-demand control to go with it. Sequence 8 was next.
Lady Zhihua, of course, was a different matter — her realm was where it was, her resistance was very high, and the chance of her being infected was extremely low. After all, if a Sequence 8 witch could easily spread Witch Sickness to mid-to-high Sequence Transcendents, the "Witches' Coven" would have long since renamed itself the "Witches' Faction" and declared war on the other six great factions…
Miss Grace likewise wasn't much of a concern.
But as for Lady Annie… Li Fei had no desire to force this gentle, older-woman teacher into becoming a witch. Unless she herself wanted that, of course.
So she'd asked around about how to avoid spreading Witch Sickness while still in the low Sequences.
Fortunately, the Witches' Coven did indeed have a ritual for just that — and like [Locked Emotion Blood], the exchange price was just 1 point. Both rituals came from the hand of Kong Wanying, who blessed her sisters with no expectation of return.
Kong Wanying — the witches' Hero!
But there was bad news too: you had to prepare the materials yourself, and they were expensive…
Even just at the Sequence 8 stage, a one-time ritual cost upwards of a thousand gold coins, lasted three hours — basically a by-the-hour hotel arrangement.
There was also a reusable version, but the setup cost ran to several thousand. And each activation required Mana Crystals to power it, with hourly expenses of around two hundred gold coins. In fact, many rituals depended on Mana Crystals for power — and beyond that, Mana Crystals could also help Transcendents rapidly replenish their mana, repair or forge equipment, and so on. Their uses were extremely broad.
Thanks to all that, Mana Crystals had become a common currency circulating among mid-Sequence Transcendents — one tier above gold coins. The value of the things was rock-solid; you never had to worry about depreciation.
Li Fei was methodically setting up the ritual, but when she picked up a chunk of "Twilight Clay" — drab and grey-looking yet ridiculously expensive, the kind of thing she'd have to grind through several nights of selling wine just to earn back — her -25 Morality Value finally caused a small ripple of hesitation in her heart:
How about… taking a gamble?
She might not even hit the jackpot anyway!
After a brief moment of wavering, Li Fei still went ahead and set up the entire ritual honestly, letting out a slightly heart-aching sigh.
Sequence 8 — thousands of gold for three hours!
Sequence 7 — super double!
Incidentally — since being jabbed at her vital points really did hurt, and considering the use these materials were going to be put to, the young madam hadn't dared ask Lady Zhihua to dip into her own pocket to buy them. Instead, she had stealthily gathered them with her private stash during the training camp.
She'd still been missing one ingredient, but she couldn't help that yesterday while shopping with Tingbao she'd happened to spot it. Out of the spirit of "practice yields true knowledge" — the spirit of scientific exploration — Li Fei had tearfully scraped together two complete sets of materials, and now she couldn't wait to try them out. It wasn't that she was that desperate for some snuggle time — she mainly wanted to see whether the ritual was actually useful, and whether she could offer any constructive, actionable improvement suggestions.
Beside her, Lady Annie had originally just been patiently watching Li Fei bustle back and forth, a smile on her face, curious about what she was up to.
But when Li Fei changed into that pink-and-white nightgown, she flushed a little and dissuaded her gently:
"There are guests in the house…"
— The arrow is on the string; it has to be loosed.
Li Fei brushed the strands of hair on her shoulder back behind her, sat down on the edge of the bed right next to Lady Annie, took her hand, and with practiced ease stroked the wedding ring that had been switched onto her little finger.
For the past ten years, this wedding ring had always been worn on her ring finger. The faint mark left at the root of that finger spoke of Lady Annie's faithfulness and stubbornness — no matter how lonely and grief-stricken, she had still considered herself "a wife with a wife," raising her daughter and watching over the home in her identity as Diana's wife, waiting for her beloved to come back.
The little finger, on the other hand, symbolized "divorced or widowed" — and could also be read as "ready to remarry at any time."
For Li Fei, at any given moment, all she had to do was touch that wedding ring and her interest would come bubbling up.
Thank you, Lady Diana!
Li Fei's gaze drifted, her smile sweet and pure-looking — yet carrying a heart-stopping seductiveness:
"Teacher Annie, just now you felt… that Lilith and I really did look like sisters?"
The dewy, wet quality of her voice made Lady Annie's breath catch, her heart inexplicably picking up speed.
And Li Fei, wearing her wife's nightgown, quietly brought her lips up to her ear and breathed, warm and soft:
"Mom, mom…"
____
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