The storm of Fengue's fists finally subsided, her energy spent. She collapsed against my chest, not in an embrace, but in a heap of exhausted, shuddering sobs. I held her, not as a lover, but as a pillar, an unmovable object that had weathered her tempest. Her tears soaked the front of my robes, hot and cleansing. For a long time, the only sound in the guest courtyard was the raw, ragged sound of her grief.
I let her cry until the sobs turned into hitched, shuddering breaths. I was bruised, my lip was split, and my jaw ached, but a strange sense of calm settled over me. And beneath that calm, a spark of pure, unadulterated amazement.
Holy shit, it actually worked.
The thought was so loud, so clear, it was a wonder Zhao Lihua hadn't heard it from her cultivation chamber. My grand theory, my "scientific cultivation," the foundation of my entire partnership with a Golden Core master, was a complete and utter fabrication. It was a half-remembered jumble of high-school physics, late-night Wikipedia binges on thermodynamics, and, most importantly, plot points shamelessly ripped off from a dozen different wuxia novels I had consumed in my past life. I had no idea if meridians resonated with sound waves. I had no clue if a 4-7-8 breathing pattern could harmonize with Earth Qi. I had thrown a fistful of pseudo-scientific bullshit at a magical problem, and by some cosmic fucking joke, it had stuck.
I had bluffed my way into a breakthrough with one of the most powerful women in the region. The sheer, exhilarating terror of it was more potent than any drug. If she ever found out I was just a software engineer from a world without magic, that my grand "theories" were the equivalent of a fantasy nerd trying to explain warp drive with a Star Trek technical manual… she wouldn't just kill me. She would invent new, excruciating ways for me to die over the course of a century. The stakes were impossibly high, and it was the most thrilling thing I had ever experienced.
'Faking it 'til you make it, a time-honored tradition for con artists and corporate middle-managers everywhere,' the Author's voice chimed in, its sarcasm a comforting familiarity in the midst of my internal crisis. 'Our boy just leveraged the plot armor of a thousand forgotten web novels to score a partnership and a potential demigoddess. It's either genius or the stupidest thing I've ever seen. The jury is still out.'
Fengue finally pushed herself away from me, her face a mess of tears and smudged dirt. The fiery rage was gone, replaced by a vast, hollow emptiness. She looked broken.
"It doesn't help," she whispered, her voice hoarse. "Hitting you… it doesn't bring him back. It doesn't make the pain go away."
"No," I agreed, tasting the blood from my split lip. "It doesn't. Catharsis is a temporary relief, not a cure. The pain is still there. The grief is a poison in your soul. And you have two choices. You can let it fester, let it turn you into this… a bitter, weeping ghost, haunting the memory of a man who is never coming back. Or, you can find an antidote."
She looked at me, her eyes filled with a weary, hopeless anger. "And I suppose you're going to offer me one?"
"I am," I said, my tone shifting from gentle comfort to that of a clinical theorist. "I am going to offer you a proposition. A psychological and physiological experiment. For one week—seven days—I will be yours. Utterly. You can command me, hurt me, humiliate me, use me in any way you see fit. I will be your servant, your slave, your punching bag, your test subject. There are only two rules: you cannot try to kill me, and this remains entirely between us. No one else, not even your mother, will know."
She stared at me, her brow furrowed in confusion. "Why? Why would you do that? Is this another one of your sick games?"
"It is a demonstration," I corrected her. "You are grieving for a man you believe you loved. 'Love', Fengue, is not some mystical, fated connection. It is a powerful, complex biochemical reaction. It's a cocktail of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and norepinephrine. It's your brain's survival mechanism, designed to create bonds, to ensure procreation. Yang Kai made you feel safe, desired, and excited. So, your brain flooded your system with that cocktail, and you labeled the resulting addiction 'love'. It's a beautiful, powerful addiction. But an addiction nonetheless."
I took a step closer, my voice low and compelling. "The grief you feel is the withdrawal. The poison. I am offering you a new cocktail. Over the next seven days, I will give you something Yang Kai never could. I will give you absolute power. I will give you control. I will give you a target for your rage and a tool for your pleasure. We will replace the chemicals of romantic love with the chemicals of dominance, of revenge, of raw, unadulterated carnal satisfaction. I am not trying to sully the memory of your dead lover. I am offering you a controlled clinical trial to prove that you can let him go. I will prove that your heart, your body, and your soul can and will respond to new, more potent stimuli. When this week is over, you will not have forgotten him. But you will understand that he was just one chapter in your life, not the entire book."
I had laid it all out. The cold, brutal, and strangely logical framework of my offer. I was offering to heal her grief by replacing it with a fetish. It was the most villainous, twistedly pragmatic form of therapy imaginable.
Fengue looked at me, her mind reeling. I could see the war in her eyes. The idea was monstrous, perverse… and deeply, undeniably tempting. He had taken everything from her. Her lover, her mother, her future. The chance to reverse that, to have this confident, powerful, world-breaking man utterly at her mercy, to make him the victim… it was a siren song to her shattered soul.
A slow, dangerous light began to kindle in the depths of her empty eyes. It was the light of a new, darker purpose. "Anything?" she whispered, the word a serpent's hiss. "I can do… anything I want to you?"
"Anything that doesn't kill me," I confirmed, a thrill of anticipation shooting through me. While I preferred dominant women, the raw, untamed potential in a young, vengeful beauty like Fengue was an entirely different kind of delicacy.
"Alright," she said, her voice gaining a hard, brittle strength. "I accept your… 'experiment'." She took a step forward, and the broken girl was gone, replaced by a fledgling tyrant testing the limits of her new power. "First command. Strip. Now."
I met her gaze, held it for a beat, and then a slow smirk spread across my face. I began to unfasten my robes. This was going to be fun.
I stripped without a shred of modesty, letting each garment fall to the floor until I was completely naked before her. I stood there, letting her look her fill, my body lean and hard from the changes I'd undergone, my semi-erect cock a clear testament to my own perverse excitement.
"On your knees," she commanded, her voice trembling slightly with the sheer audacity of it all.
I obeyed, sinking to my knees on the cold stone floor of the guest courtyard. The power dynamic had been completely inverted. I was the naked, vulnerable supplicant, and she was the fully-clothed, avenging angel of my own creation.
She circled me like a predator inspecting its prey. Her eyes, filled with a mixture of hatred, grief, and a burgeoning, dark curiosity, raked over my body. She was looking for flaws, for weaknesses. She was trying to reduce me from the monster who had destroyed her life into a mere object, a piece of meat.
"You're disgusting," she spat, though her eyes lingered on my cock for a moment too long. "You think you're so smart. You think you have everyone figured out. But you're just a man. Just flesh and bone and pathetic, predictable lust."
She stopped in front of me and placed the toe of her boot under my chin, forcing my head up. "You killed him. For him, I will make you suffer. I will make you regret ever setting foot in this world."
"I am already trembling with anticipation," I purred, letting a hint of the villain show through.
My defiance seemed to stoke her anger. "You think this is a game?" She pressed her boot down harder. "Fine. You want to prove a point about pleasure? Then you will give me pleasure. Until I am sick of it. You will be my dog. You will lick my boots, you will eat from the floor, and you will worship the body of the woman whose life you ruined. You are going to lick me clean, you fucking murderer. You will taste my grief, and you will taste my disgust for you with every single fucking lick."
She walked over to a stone bench and sat down, hiking her leg up to rest her foot on the edge. She lifted her skirts, revealing her bare legs and the dark, curly thatch of hair between them. She was wearing no undergarments.
"Come here, dog," she commanded.
I crawled forward on my hands and knees, the cold stone biting into my skin. The humiliation was a potent aphrodisiac, a thrilling counterpoint to the absolute control I wielded in every other aspect of my new life. This was my private indulgence, a controlled descent into the debauchery I craved.
I reached the bench and looked up at her. Her face was a mask of cold fury, but her cheeks were flushed, and her breathing was shallow. She was not immune to the raw, transgressive power of the moment.
"Lick," she ordered, her voice a harsh whisper.
I buried my face between her thighs. The scent of her, clean and female and laced with the sharp tang of her anger, filled my senses. My tongue darted out, tracing the delicate folds of her labia. She flinched, a sharp hiss escaping her lips.
"I didn't say you could enjoy it," she snarled, her hand tangling in my hair, gripping it tightly. "This isn't for you. This is for him. This is my revenge."
She began to move, her hips rocking in a slow, almost unconscious rhythm as my tongue found her clit. Her tirade continued, a stream of angry, grieving words. "Every time you taste me, I want you to think of Yang Kai… how you took him from me… how you destroyed everything…"
But her body was betraying her. Her hips moved faster, her breath came in ragged gasps, and her grip on my hair tightened, no longer just holding me in place, but pulling me closer. She was trying to fuel her anger, but all she was doing was fueling her arousal.
I decided to fight back, just a little. My tongue became more aggressive, my licks harder, more demanding. I slipped two fingers inside her, feeling the hot, wet slickness of her arousal. She was soaking wet.
"You feel that, Fengue?" I murmured against her skin. "That's not grief. That's not hate. That's your body telling you the truth. That's the new cocktail taking effect."
"Shut up!" she gasped, her hips now bucking against my mouth. "Shut… up… I… hate… you…"
Her words were punctuated by desperate, rising moans. The battle between her mind and her body was reaching its climax. She was losing control, surrendering to the pure, overwhelming sensation.
"That's it," I whispered, my fingers stroking her G-spot, my tongue working in a relentless rhythm. "Let him go. Let all that pain and anger and grief pour out of you. Let me drink it all."
With a final, shattering scream that was her lover's name, her own name, and my name all tangled together, she came. Her body convulsed, her inner muscles clenching around my fingers, her juices flooding my mouth. It was not the clean, sweet release of a happy lover. It was a violent, messy, agonizing exorcism. The taste was salt and honey, grief and pleasure, a perfect, profane alchemy.
She collapsed back against the bench, boneless and gasping for air, her body trembling with the aftershocks. The anger was gone, the grief momentarily washed away by the tidal wave of her orgasm. She was left empty, exhausted, and utterly, terrifyingly confused.
I slowly pulled back, licking my lips clean. I looked up at her, at the beautiful, flushed, tear-streaked face of the woman who had just tried, and failed, to hate me.
"Experiment, day one," I said, my voice low and husky. "Phase one complete. The original chemical compound has been successfully flushed from the system. Tomorrow, we begin introducing a new one."
She just stared at me, her chest rising and falling, unable to form a single word. The first crack had appeared in the dam of her grief. And I was going to enjoy shattering the rest of it, piece by piece.