Imperial Treasure

She didn’t know how much time had passed before Li Luo slowly drew back her Inner Strength. A fine sheen of sweat beaded her forehead, but you wouldn’t notice it unless you looked very closely—after all, it was only under the blaze of lamplight. Yet she could clearly feel, beneath the other woman’s clothes, that slender back, could almost feel her supple bones and the chill of her skin.

—Only at a time like this could she truly feel this person’s fragility.

Feel it from within Li Luo’s own identity.

Li Luo withdrew her hand; Sui Yi had already fallen into a deep sleep.

Why had the High Priest’s separation from her body hurt her so badly this time?

Was it because of this infant?

Li Luo felt something was off, and her heart grew faintly resistant to that box.

"I didn’t think it through. If I had known the thing in that box would harm her so much, even if it is ancestral law, I still wouldn’t have done it."

The Mage offered an apology. To Li Luo it was better than nothing, but at least the man truly wasn’t evil. Li Luo’s face stayed cool as she said, "What she doesn’t want, no one can force upon her. The outcome is naturally hers to bear; you’re not to blame. But her condition isn’t very good right now—could you arrange a room?"

The Mage quickly arranged a room. The wooden house was small, but it still had two rooms, one up and one down. The Mage usually slept downstairs; upstairs there was a guest room, though it was seldom used.

But it was very clean. Of course, how could the dwelling of someone with dominion over wind and sand be dusty? With just a thought he could command all the motes of dust.

Tidy and spotless.

The bedboards were quite spacious as well.

The Mage lit the oil lamp and left. Naturally, he didn’t place that box at Sui Yi’s side again.

Li Luo laid Natasha and Sui Yi both on the bed.

Sui Yi’s constitution wasn’t human; she couldn’t take her pulse to determine anything. Natasha, however, she could.

Her fingers pressed for a time over the meridians at Natasha’s wrist. When she drew back her hand, her expression was a little startled, a little strange.

How could this person’s pulse gate be...

Was it that she had misread it?

Li Luo—setting aside her ninth life—had, even as Zhou Zhiruo, undergone the most orthodox Martial Arts conditioning. In that era, everyone engaged in martial arts practice had at least one skill in pulse-taking. It wasn’t like the Martial Artists now, who only had empty postures. Moreover, Li Luo had spent years in the temple in quiet cultivation, with Xiang Yutian secretly and openly teaching her; her Martial Arts inheritance in fact far surpassed that of Shi Feixuan and the others. So she considered her pulse-reading ability far from weak. Yet that pulse gate just now had truly startled her.

For the moment she couldn’t decide what to make of it. She merely glanced back and forth between Natasha and Sui Yi, her expression wavering. In the end she simply stopped thinking about it, sat cross‑legged on the rug, and closed her eyes to cultivate.

Outside the window it was still night, and a fine drizzle seemed to have started.

The patter of rain was washing the dust of this world clean.

Yet there was a place that remained so still, so tranquil.

A silver‑white heaven, a snow‑white palace.

Not the Empty Court, not the Royal court.

What place was that?

She saw herself in the mirror again, the youthful softness faded, the colors lifting between her brows. And she saw, behind her, that eternal, undying figure slowly approaching.

Time, to her, was the finest vintage; every sip she took made her more beautiful than before.

She had never seen anyone whose beauty rivaled her elder sister’s in sheer shock and devastation, as though it would make every other beauty in this world wither.

Even dragon and phoenix in harmonious song could only become melodies at her casual touch.

And this person cherished her as tenderly as the Brow Heart painted between her brows.

Why was she more ill at ease with each passing year?

Was it because she was growing up?

Or because the person in the mirror drew, day by day, closer to her elder sister—that same sort of presence.

"Sister..."

She rose, only to have a hand press down on her shoulder.

Shen Zhiyue’s other hand lightly tapped the air, sending ripples across a pool of space. A faint vermilion red bloomed at her fingertip.

Before she even realized it, that fingertip fell against her brow.

A gentle tap.

She watched herself become almost demonic, sultry, enchanting—an aspect of herself she was deeply unaccustomed to, as if it wasn’t her at all.

Instinctively she reached up to wipe it away, but her hand was caught.

"Don’t wipe it off. I think you look utterly beautiful like this."

Their fingertips laced together; her heart gave a slight shudder. She smiled. "Are you growing impatient, Sister? Ah Yi grows too slowly—she may still need a very long time before her Brow Heart Blood shows, before she becomes a true Primordial Spirit."

Shen Zhiyue sat down beside her, idly lifting her skirt. The long streaming gown rustled as it pooled on the floor; the slit revealed a long leg, loosely crossed, her toes lightly touching the ground, utterly unconcerned with how much allure she exposed.

She merely turned sideways, reaching out with one hand to gather a handful of Ah Yi’s black hair, then casually slipped off a red ribbon from her own wrist to tie back the hair she had always neglected.

Her smile was lazy, careless.

"That’s not what I’m waiting for."

"Eh?"

"You being this simple‑minded your whole life would be wonderful—and yet, not entirely."

"What’s not good about it?"

"I’m afraid you’d be lonely."

Lonely. She savored the word on her tongue and teeth, somewhat puzzled.

"Lonely... I don’t really understand what that word means."

Her elder sister withdrew her hand and patted her head.

"If you ever do understand, it will mean you’re truly lonely."

"Then are you lonely, Sister?"

"Me?" Her hand slid through Ah Yi’s hair, her lips curving in a smile. "With Ah Yi to keep me company, I am not lonely."

The word "lonely" was mentioned between them only that once. No matter how many years passed afterward, they never spoke of it again.

Not long after, she noticed her hair had already grown a great deal, reaching near her waist.

Everything of one born a Primordial Spirit was bestowed by heaven and earth; every inch of them was heaven‑wrought. The ages of heaven and earth were so long, their growth so slow, and she was naturally the same.

Even ten years of time might not be enough for her hair to grow by so many strands.

Shen Zhiyue once said that when her hair grew down to her waist, that’d be about when she was grown up.

It seemed she was still a little short.

She thought about it without the slightest concern.

Then Shen Zhiyue told her she was going to create a new kind of living being, to fill this world with another shade of color.

She was surprised, because it was hard for her to imagine another Agile existence that could be more spiritual than species like dragons and phoenixes.

"Humans. The species I create will be given this name. They’ll be smart, and also fun, and they’ll make you feel they’re interesting..."

"Me?"

She was a bit surprised, and vaguely felt something was off.

"You need some toys, Ah Yi."

Shen Zhiyue didn’t explain any more to her and drifted away, and after that she never came to see her again.

In the blink of an eye, a thousand years passed.

She finally saw her own hair reaching down to her waist.

Shen Zhiyue brought a box.

A gift.

She opened it.

Inside...

It was like a baby, sad and desperate, was wrapping around her neck and body. Sui Yi felt she couldn’t breathe, trapped in that abyss of pain, unable to extricate herself.

The faint movement made Li Luo open her eyes. As soon as she lifted her gaze, she saw the scene on the bed; with just one look, her expression changed.

It was probably because Sui Yi’s body had been weak earlier, causing her mental control to fail, so the clothes condensed from stone powder had turned into a pile of dust, and that ******** body was just clinging to Sui Yi, whose brows were tightly knitted as if she’d fallen into a nightmare.

A nightmare?

Li Luo’s gaze swept over those two snow-white mounds pressed tightly against Sui Yi’s body, then moved to those long, sexy legs. A head of wavy hair covered half of Natasha’s face. This woman seemed to have only just regained activity not long ago, and was instinctively engaging in normal live-body sleep—just that her sleeping posture was a bit indecent.

Li Luo was silent for a second, flashed to the front of the two women, reached out, grabbed Natasha’s wrist, and had just been about to pry her body away when she met Sui Yi’s open eyes.

Sui Yi had of course seen Li Luo about to "do something" to the nude Natasha.

Her eyes were still a bit dazed; in a moment, clarity returned to her mind, and she said, "Did I interrupt you?"

Li Luo: (#‵′)!

Right at this moment, the tugged-on Natasha also opened her eyes.

First, an ice-cold woman who looked like a real Oriental Beauty was grabbing her hand.

Second, Sui Yi was lying beside her.

Third, she wasn’t wearing any clothes.

Fourth, both of these women were staring at her.

One second of silence, two seconds of brewing, three seconds...

The Queen asked very calmly and sharply, "OK, now you can tell me, I’m the one who slept with you two, right?"

Sui Yi: "..."

Li Luo: "What does ’slept with’ mean?"

Sui Yi: "Uh..."

Natasha: "Sui Yi, you explain it to her."

Sui Yi: "Mm, it’s a verb. You don’t need to understand to answer, Natasha. No."

Natasha: "Then that means you two slept with me?"

Sui Yi: "Also no."

Natasha: "Impossible!"

Li Luo: "Is being slept with a very good thing? Why are you so angry?"

Natasha: "If Sui Yi took off all her clothes and was put on the bed of people like you, you wouldn’t take advantage of her at all? On the other hand, if I’m the one stripped and put on the bed, and none of you slept with me, then it can only prove one possibility—you’re lying."

Sui Yi: "Could you not use me as an example?"

Natasha: "No."

Sui Yi: "Actually, it’s not that you’re not attractive."

Natasha: "Mm-hmm?"

Sui Yi: "I’m just tired of looking at you."

Natasha: "Are you still as weak as last night? The kind of weak where I can punch you a few times?"

She flexed her hand slightly, and flames rose up.

But she herself was the first to be startled.

What the hell.

It wasn’t flame, but a mass of lava.

This destructive power was a hundred times that of fire, easy.

And the most important thing was, its aura was completely under her control.

Sui Yi had known all along that this fellow Natasha, who’d been sealed in the cracks of that Earth Vein Stone, would turn misfortune into blessing, so she roughly explained the situation, making Natasha go through a whole series of Face-changing, and in the end very coolly gave herself a conclusion.

"So, obviously, this is just how it is when you’ve got good karma!"

Why is it that Hell’s Wan Ge went through a similar experience, yet you still insisted on calling her the female Sun Monkey.

"But don’t get cocky too soon. Although this vast earth-vein power can give you reserve energy close to the Void-breaking Level, which you can grasp through hard cultivation, I’ve already told you there are some hidden mysteries in it. You must be cautious."

"I know. Anyway, I’ve gotten stronger and I’m still alive. What price in the future could be heavier than that?"

That did kind of make sense.

Li Luo seemed a bit unaccustomed to Natasha being this cocky, so she very calmly added, "But when I took your pulse last night—you seem to be at the postpartum confinement stage."

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