I remained kneeling on the cold stone, the scratchy servant's garb a cheap costume on my skin. The courtyard was silent now, the high drama of the mother-daughter conflict and the matriarch's intervention having dissipated, leaving behind a vacuum thick with unspoken questions. The pages of my "confession" lay scattered around me like fallen leaves, a testament to a battle fought and won, though not in the way anyone had expected.
The central rule of my agreement with Fengue had been violated. Our experiment was to be private, a secret crucible in which to forge her recovery. Zhao Lihua's arrival had shattered that privacy. She hadn't just walked in; she had taken over, read my most intimate, fabricated secrets, and repurposed them for her own amusement and strategic advantage. A lesser man would have felt exposed, humiliated, his power stripped away.
I felt a cold, exhilarating clarity.
This was not a setback. This was a data point. My new partner was a compulsive control freak. She could not abide any variable in her equation that was not under her direct authority. My private "therapy" session with Fengue had become, in her eyes, an unauthorized psychological experiment occurring on her property, involving a key asset—me. And so, she had asserted her control. It was predictable, logical, and utterly unacceptable.
'The queen has reminded the court jester who owns the castle,' the Author's voice noted dryly in my mind. 'She thinks she's just put you firmly in your place, little Barry. Showed you that even your perversions are subject to her oversight. The question is, does the jester hand over his bauble, or does he use it to knock out her teeth?'
I slowly gathered the scattered pages, my movements deliberate. I would not burn them. They were too valuable. They were the proof of my victory today. I stood up, stripped off the demeaning servant's clothes, and put my own fine robes back on. Status was a costume, and I was reclaiming mine. My next move had to be precise. A direct confrontation now would be seen as insubordination. I needed to wait, to choose my own time, my own battlefield.
But first, there was the fallout. The broken girl at the heart of this storm.
I found Fengue back in her guest room. She had not been crying. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at a wall, her expression utterly blank. She was a vessel emptied of its contents—the rage was gone, the grief was muted, the vengeful fire had been extinguished by the cold, dismissive power of the Iron Widow. She was in a state of shock, adrift.
I entered quietly and sat on a chair opposite her. I did not speak for a long time, simply allowing my presence to fill the silence. Finally, she stirred, her empty eyes slowly focusing on me.
"She… she just dismissed me," Fengue whispered, her voice a hollow echo. "Like a child. After everything… she just… ended it."
"Yes," I said softly. "She did. Because in her world, emotions are a liability, and your pain was inconvenient to her new agenda."
"And you," she said, a flicker of the old anger returning, but it was weak, like a dying ember. "She read your confession. She knows what you are. And she smiled. She liked it."
"Powerful women are often drawn to complex, dangerous things," I replied, my voice neutral. "Zhao Lihua saw what she wanted to see. She saw a tool she could control."
I leaned forward, my tone shifting from analytical to something warmer, more personal. "Fengue, what happened out there was not part of our agreement. The humiliation was meant to be yours to command, a private catharsis. It was violated. For that, I am truly sorry. That was my failure. I miscalculated your mother-in-law's—forgive me, your mother's new partner's—need for absolute control." I corrected myself deliberately, to subtly reframe Zhao Lihua in her mind.
A single tear traced a path down her cheek. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I tried to hurt you, and it just… made things worse. I have nothing left."
"That's not true," I said, my voice firm but gentle. I moved from the chair to sit on the bed beside her, creating a space of shared intimacy. I took her cold, limp hand in mine. "You think you have nothing left because your entire world was built around one man. A man you loved, yes. But a man. Not a god. Not the sun. Your world feels empty because he was the only thing you allowed to be in it. It's time to start building a new world, Fengue. A bigger one. One with you at the center."
I squeezed her hand. "You have your mother, who loves you more than you can possibly imagine. She was ready to fight your entire family for you today. You have a home, safety. And you have… well, you have a very complicated, morally ambiguous, and incredibly intelligent man who has sworn to help you heal, and who is, for the moment, contractually obligated to do whatever you say for the next five days."
A tiny, ghost of a smile touched her lips, the first I had ever seen. It vanished as quickly as it came.
"I don't know what to do," she whispered. "The anger is gone, and there's just… this. A hole."
"I know," I said. And in that moment, I did. I reached out and pulled her into a hug. Not a sexual embrace, not a possessive claim, but a simple, human gesture of comfort. I held her as she began to cry again, but this time, the sobs were different. They weren't the violent, raging tears of before. They were the quiet, heartbreaking sobs of loss, of acceptance. I held her, stroking her hair, murmuring nonsense words of comfort, letting her feel the simple, uncomplicated warmth of another person holding her while her world fell apart. I was the monster who had killed her lover, and now I was the only one there to comfort her in her grief. The irony was a bitter, beautiful poison.
Later that night, I sought out Zhao Lihua. I found her not in her opulent study or her grand hall, but in a place of pure, practical power: the main forge. The air was hot and thick with the smell of coal, sweat, and hot metal. Half-naked, heavily muscled blacksmiths hammered away at glowing pieces of common iron, their bodies slick with sweat, their rhythmic strikes a symphony of industry. It was a masculine, brutish world, and she moved through it like a goddess, the men bowing their heads as she passed, their raw power utterly subservient to her commanding presence.
She was examining a newly forged sword, her delicate fingers tracing the patterns in the folded steel, her expression one of intense, critical concentration. She was in her element.
"The foundation of our empire," I said, my voice cutting through the din of the hammers. "And already, you can see the flaws in the design."
She turned, her expression unreadable in the flickering firelight. "Explain."
"Your smiths are strong," I said, gesturing to the men. "Their technique is… adequate for this world. But their process is inefficient. Look." I pointed to a pile of slag, the waste material from the smelting process. "I estimate a raw ore to refined ingot conversion rate of sixty, maybe sixty-five percent. You are throwing away a third of your mountain with every single batch. It's wasteful."
"It is the way it has always been done," she replied, her tone defensive.
"And 'the way it has always been done' is the anthem of the obsolete," I countered. "With a properly designed blast furnace, using a coke-based fuel instead of raw coal for higher, more consistent temperatures, and introducing a precise amount of limestone as a fluxing agent to separate impurities, I could get your conversion rate to over ninety percent. I could produce better quality steel, faster, and with less waste. This forge isn't a center of production. It's a museum of inefficiency."
I had her. Her eyes lit up with the cold, hard gleam of avarice. I was speaking the language of optimization, of profit.
"We can discuss furnace design tomorrow," she said, setting the sword down. "You did not seek me out in the middle of the night to discuss metallurgy. Speak your mind, partner."
"Indeed," I said, my tone becoming cool and formal. "We need to establish the ground rules of our partnership. Specifically, regarding my sovereignty."
Her eyebrows shot up. "Your sovereignty?"
"My personal affairs," I clarified. "My relationships, my methods, my… proclivities. They are my domain. Tonight, you intervened in an arrangement I had made. You read my private writings. You asserted your authority over my personal interactions. While I appreciate the outcome, the method was an overstep."
Her face hardened. "Everything that happens under my roof is my concern. Your 'arrangement' was a destabilizing influence. I contained it."
"You misunderstood it," I corrected her sharply. "My methods may seem chaotic to you, but they are precise. The situation with Fengue was a delicate psychological operation. Your intervention was the equivalent of sending a cavalry charge into a surgeon's tent. It worked, by sheer luck, but it was clumsy. It revealed your hand and showed me that you do not yet trust my process."
I stepped closer, the heat from a nearby forge washing over us. "Let me be perfectly clear, Lihua. If you want the full benefit of my mind, you cannot put a leash on it. My creativity is inextricably linked to my freedom, and yes, to my perversions. They are part of the same operating system. If you try to control me, to monitor my every move, to make my personal life subject to your approval, the system will lag. I will become a good employee, not a revolutionary partner. The empire I promised you will be replaced by a moderately successful corporation."
I let the threat hang in the air. "Our business, the Consortium, the cultivation methods—that is our shared kingdom. We are co-rulers. My life outside of that boardroom? My relationships with Mengue, with Fengue, or with any other woman I choose to engage with? That is my sovereign territory. You will not interfere. You will not spy. You will not pass judgment. That is the price of my genius. Can you pay it?"
She stared at me, her face a thundercloud. I had not just challenged her; I had drawn a hard line in the sand, demanding autonomy from a woman who had never ceded it to anyone. Her instinct was to crush me, to remind me that she was the Golden Core master and I was the whelp. But her ambition, the empire I had dangled before her, was at war with her pride.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across her face. "You are the most arrogant man I have ever met."
"I am the most valuable asset you have ever acquired," I retorted. "The two often go hand-in-hand."
"And what of you?" she challenged, her voice a seductive purr. "You demand sovereignty over your stable of women. But what of my sovereignty? Am I to simply accept that the man I have made my partner, the co-ruler of my future dynasty, spends his nights with his maids and his broken little toys? Powerful women do not share, Lu Bing. We conquer. We possess. If I am to be your queen, I will not be one of many. I will be the only one."
This was the crux of it. The inevitable conflict. I had foreseen it.
"And you will be," I said without hesitation. "Mengue is my comfort. Fengue is my project. Lu Ren is a distant, political necessity. They are planets, orbiting the sun. But you, Lihua… you are the singularity at the center of the galaxy. They are my women. You, I intend to make my goddess. Does the sun concern itself with the light of the moon? They are not your competition. There is no competition."
I had framed it in the only way she would understand: a hierarchy. I wasn't offering her a place among equals. I was offering her the apex position, a throne so high that the others would be mere specks beneath her.
Her eyes glittered in the firelight. My answer had not just satisfied her; it had thrilled her. It appealed to her vanity, her ambition, her very essence.
"A goddess," she mused, testing the word. "I confess, I do like the sound of that." She took a step closer, her body almost brushing against mine. The heat between us was now more intense than that of the forges. "Prove it. Show me a devotion that is worthy of a goddess. Not just with your mind. Now."
It was a command, a test, a seduction.
I smirked. "Here? In front of your sweaty, half-naked laborers?"
"They will not watch," she said, a wave of her spiritual pressure causing every blacksmith in the forge to suddenly find the floor intensely interesting. "They will see nothing. They will hear nothing. There is only you, and me."
"As you command, my queen," I purred.
I knelt before her on the soot-stained floor of the forge. The gritty floor, the smell of sweat and iron, the rhythmic pounding of the hammers—it was a primal, industrial temple. And in its heart, I began my worship. I lifted the hem of her robes and pressed my lips to her leather boots, my tongue tracing the fine stitching. I would earn my sovereignty tonight, not with words, but with an act of absolute, theatrical devotion that would leave her in no doubt as to who, exactly, was the center of my new, twisted universe.