The forge was a pocket of hell, a symphony of percussive violence. Hammers rang against anvils, the air so hot it shimmered, thick with the acrid tang of coal smoke and the coppery scent of cooling metal. The half-naked blacksmiths, giants of muscle and sweat, moved with a primal rhythm, their world shrunk to the glowing heart of the steel they were shaping. They were a backdrop of raw, masculine power, and in their midst, I knelt on a floor of soot and iron filings, performing an act of utter subservience.
Zhao Lihua stood before me, a goddess of shadow and flame, her form silhouetted by the fiery maw of the main furnace. Her spiritual pressure had created an invisible bubble around us, a cone of silence and ignorance. To the smiths, we were simply a quiet, unmoving tableau. Within the bubble, the world was ours.
"You called me a goddess," she murmured, her voice a low, dangerous purr that still managed to cut through the din. She extended her foot, shod in a fine leather boot hardened for the forge. "Then begin your worship at the foundation."
I smirked internally. Lip service, my dear Lihua, is the cheapest and most effective currency a villain possesses. I had called her a singularity, a goddess, the sun to which all others were pale moons. It was a beautiful, poetic, and utterly pragmatic lie. In my true philosophy, every woman was a potential sun, a unique star with her own gravitational pull. But this one, this proud, powerful, and deeply insecure queen, needed to believe she was the only one in the sky. My words were the fuel for her ego, and her ego was the key to my freedom and her resources.
"As you command, my queen," I said, my voice pitched with a theatrical reverence that I knew would stroke that very ego.
I lowered my head and pressed my lips to the toe of her boot. The leather was tough, scented with polish and the faint, metallic dust of the forge. My tongue darted out, tracing the seams, the heat of my mouth a stark contrast to the cool material.
"Is this truly what you desire?" I murmured against the leather, my voice a sarcastic whisper meant only for her. "To have your brilliant new partner, the architect of your future empire, slobbering on your footwear like a common cur? It seems a rather… unimaginative use of a revolutionary asset."
Her leg tensed, and the heel of her boot pressed firmly against my cheek, not with enough force to cause pain, but with a clear assertion of dominance. "The asset will perform the functions I require of it. Your 'revolutionary' thoughts are for the boardroom. Your tongue is for my boots. Do you find your duties… demeaning?"
"Oh, profoundly," I purred, licking a slow, deliberate path up the side of her boot. "The humiliation is almost unbearable. I can feel my very soul crying out in protest. In fact, if you listen closely, you can probably hear it sobbing. It's the high-pitched one."
A sharp, unladylike snort escaped her. I had surprised her, broken her stern composure with my insolence. She enjoyed the submission, but she was finding the sarcastic commentary that came with it an unexpected, intriguing spice. This was not the silent, broken worship of a true slave. This was a game, a performance, and my refusal to be mentally cowed was a challenge she was beginning to relish.
"Silence your soul and continue with your work," she commanded, though a ghost of a smile now played on her lips.
I obeyed, my mouth and tongue working their way up her leg, over the fine fabric of her robes. I was a connoisseur of my own debasement, each lick a calculated move in our complex dance. This wasn't just sex; it was a negotiation conducted on a primal level. With every act of submission, I was mapping her boundaries, her desires, her triggers. With every sarcastic remark, I was reminding her that while my body might be kneeling, my mind was not.
When my mouth reached the hem of her robes at her knee, I stopped. I looked up at her, my face smudged with soot, my expression one of pure, theatrical devotion. "Permission to proceed to more sacred ground, my goddess?"
"Permission granted," she breathed, her voice a little huskier now.
She lifted her robes, and I rose with them, my mouth following the hemline up her thigh. The skin was smooth, toned, the muscle beneath hard as ironwood. I continued my slow, meticulous worship until I reached the juncture of her thighs. I buried my face in her, inhaling the intoxicating scent of a powerful, aroused woman.
She was not a passive recipient. Her hands tangled in my hair, gripping tightly, directing my movements. This was a woman who was used to taking what she wanted, and she wanted this with a fierce, desperate hunger that had clearly been starved for years. She used me, abused me, her hips bucking, her low moans a counterpoint to the ringing of the anvils. She rode the waves of her pleasure with a wild, untamed abandon, and I was the vessel for her release.
When it was over, she stood panting, her body trembling with the aftershocks. She pushed me away, not roughly, but with a definitive finality. The game was over. She straightened her robes, her mask of the untouchable matriarch slowly sliding back into place, though her flushed cheeks and swollen lips were a testament to the fire that had just raged.
I remained on my knees, looking up at her. "Was the asset's performance satisfactory?" I asked, my voice dripping with mock servitude.
"The asset's performance was… adequate," she replied, her voice regaining its usual icy composure. She looked down at me, at my debased position on the forge floor, and then a new thought seemed to strike her. "You truly enjoy this, don't you? The humiliation."
"Enjoy is a strong word," I lied smoothly. "Let's just say I find a certain… philosophical purity in the act of absolute surrender to a superior power."
"Hmph," she grunted, though her eyes held a new, calculating light. She knew. She knew I enjoyed it, and that knowledge was a new, dangerous weapon in her arsenal. She now knew she could have me whenever she wanted, not through coercion, but through my own willing perversion.
I decided it was time to change the subject, to pivot from the personal back to the profitable. I stood up, brushing the soot from my knees as if nothing had happened. "Speaking of superior power," I said, gesturing to the glowing pile of slag near the furnace, "we are wasting it."
She blinked, momentarily thrown by the abrupt shift. "The slag? It is waste. Useless."
"There is no such thing as 'useless', Matriarch," I said, my mind clicking back into the familiar, comfortable realm of science and industry. "Only resources you haven't figured out how to monetize yet. In my homeland, we had a name for that stuff. Slag. It's the impurities from the ore, fused with the limestone flux. On its own, it's brittle trash."
I walked over and picked up a chunk of the still-warm, glassy rock. "But, if you grind this into a fine powder, mix it with sand, gravel, and a precise amount of water, you create a liquid stone. A paste that you can pour into any shape you desire, and which will then harden into a material with a compressive strength rivaling granite. We called it 'concrete'."
Her eyes widened. "Liquid stone?"
"Think of it," I said, my own excitement growing as I explained. "No more need for painstakingly cutting and fitting quarry stones. No more reliance on expensive spirit-wood for construction. We could build anything. Stronger, faster, and cheaper than ever before. We could build new forges, new refineries, aqueducts to bring water to them, roads to transport our goods. We could build fortifications that could withstand a siege for months. We could pave the streets of this entire city, transforming it from a grimy industrial town into a modern metropolis. And the best part? The primary ingredient is something you are currently paying men to haul away as garbage."
I had just handed her a second revolution on a silver platter. First, the optimization of her primary industry, and now, a complete upheaval of architecture and infrastructure.
She stared at the piece of slag in my hand as if it were a priceless diamond. She looked back at me, her mind clearly reeling with the possibilities. "You… are a terrifying man, Lu Bing."
"I aim to please," I said with a smirk.
The next few days were a whirlwind of productive activity. I drafted preliminary designs for a new blast furnace. I wrote out chemical formulas for the optimal concrete mixture. Zhao Lihua, for her part, was a ruthlessly efficient partner. She assigned her most trusted engineers and alchemists to my command, and they followed my bizarre, alien instructions with a mixture of skepticism and awe. We were building our empire, brick by theoretical brick.
During this time, I made it a point to spend my evenings not with the matriarch, but with Mengue and Fengue. I was balancing my portfolio of relationships, a delicate and necessary act.
My sessions with Fengue continued. The raw, vengeful fury was gone. The second day, after the "confession" debacle, she had been quiet and withdrawn. On the third day, she came to me with a new command.
"Teach me," she said.
"Teach you what?" I asked.
"Everything," she replied, a new determination in her eyes. "You talk about strategy, about knowledge being the real power. I have spent my life learning sword forms and cultivation, and it left me helpless. Teach me what you know."
And so began a new phase of our "experiment." I taught her. I taught her the basics of economics, of supply and demand. I taught her the art of negotiation, of finding an opponent's leverage and turning it against them. I taught her psychology, how to read a person's tells, their insecurities, their hidden desires. I was not just healing her; I was arming her. I was taking the broken vessel of her grief and forging it into a weapon, a mind as sharp and dangerous as my own.
Our interactions were entirely platonic, the intense sessions of a mentor and his gifted apprentice. But the underlying current of our strange, violent intimacy was always there. The power dynamic had shifted again. She was no longer my slave or my patient; she was my student. And in her fierce desire to learn, to become strong, she was becoming more beautiful, more captivating than ever.
My time with Mengue was different. It was my sanctuary. It was filled with a simple, uncomplicated warmth. We would share a quiet meal, and I would tell her about my day, simplifying the complex principles I was working on. She would listen, her eyes filled with a quiet pride, and then she would massage my shoulders or draw me a hot bath. She had chosen her role as my caregiver, and she reveled in it. She was the calm harbor to which I returned after navigating the stormy seas of my new life. It was with her that I could let my guard down, where I didn't need to be the villain or the genius, but simply a man. I showed her a tenderness and a gentle affection that was utterly absent from my other relationships. I held her hand. I kissed her forehead. I praised her for the simple, beautiful woman she was.
Zhao Lihua, of course, was aware of all of this. Her estate was her web, and she was the spider at its center. Nothing happened without her knowledge.
One evening, as I was leaving the guest courtyard after a long session explaining the concept of a 'loss leader' to a fascinated Fengue, I found Zhao Lihua waiting for me in the moonlit garden.
"You spend a great deal of time with the girl," she stated, her voice cool and neutral.
"She is a surprisingly adept student," I replied. "Her mind is sharp. She could be a valuable asset to our enterprise one day."
"And the mother?" she pressed. "You seem to spend an equal amount of your valuable time simply… being with her. What asset does she provide?"
"Peace," I answered honestly. "She provides a space where the architect of your empire can recharge his batteries. A necessary function for optimal performance."
She was silent for a moment, her gaze fixed on the perfectly manicured garden. A flicker of something I couldn't quite name crossed her face. "I see," she said. "The girl is your project. The mother is your comfort. And I… I am the forge. Is that it? The hot, dirty, and violent place where you do your real work and satisfy your baser urges?"
The words were sharp, laced with a venom that surprised me. It was not anger. It was something else. Something that sounded almost… hurt.
'Alert! Alert! Unidentified emotional signal detected on the long-range sensors,' the Author's voice cut in. 'Looks like the Ice Queen is experiencing a minor thermal event. Could it be… jealousy?'
This was it. The seed I had unintentionally planted was beginning to sprout. She was seeing the warmth, the care, the genuine human connection I was building with the other two, and it was creating a stark, uncomfortable contrast with our own relationship, which was based entirely on power, intellect, and raw, impersonal lust. She was the goddess, the queen, the singularity… so why did she feel like she was being excluded from the most valuable part of my world?
"You are the one who set the terms, Lihua," I reminded her gently. "Our partnership is transactional. We are building an empire. It is a relationship of power and ambition. I assumed that was all you required of me."
"It is," she snapped, a little too quickly. She turned to face me, her eyes glittering in the moonlight. "I require your mind and your… unique talents. Nothing more."
"Then you have nothing to be concerned about," I said with a polite, infuriating smile.
I made to walk past her, but she reached out and grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong. "Tonight," she commanded, her voice a low, husky growl. "You will not be visiting your 'project' or your 'comfort'. You will be coming to my private chambers. The asset has duties to perform."
I looked down at her hand on my arm, then back up at her face. The look in her eyes was not just lust. It was a fierce, desperate possessiveness. She was trying to reassert her dominance, to remind me and herself that I was her property. She wanted to use my body to silence the unfamiliar, uncomfortable ache that was beginning to grow in her soul.
"As my queen commands," I purred, my mind already calculating the next phase of this delicious, dangerous game.
The slow burn had begun. And I was going to enjoy fanning the flames.