"This is a farce."
Liu Erlong's voice was a low, furious hiss that cut through the quiet, crimson-lit cabin. She was on her feet, the chair she had been sitting in scraping loudly against the living grass floor. Her beautiful face was a mask of pure, unadulterated rage, her crimson eyes blazing with a fire that seemed to match her magnificent Martial Spirit.
"Why should I continue this pathetic negotiation?" she snarled, glaring at the calm, amused young man who sat opposite her on his throne of living vines. "You know who I am. You know I am from Shrek Academy. You would never share your secrets with me. With your enemy."
She took a step towards the door. "This was a trap from the very beginning. A game to humiliate me."
Zhang Tian just watched her, his expression unchanged. He didn't move. He didn't raise his voice. He simply took a slow, deliberate sip of the fragrant tea that had materialized on the table beside him.
"I told you to sit down," he said, his voice a quiet, almost gentle sound that was somehow more intimidating than any shout. He set the teacup down with a soft, precise click. "I am getting annoyed. Do not make me repeat my command a third time."
"You can command me to hell!" she spat, her hand reaching for a sword that wasn't there, her warrior's instincts screaming at her to fight, to resist.
He just smiled, a slow, cold, and incredibly dangerous expression. He gestured with a single, elegant finger to the living walls of the cabin around them.
"By all means," he said, his voice a lazy, amused drawl. "Try. You currently possess the strength of a mere Spirit Grandmaster. I am very curious to see if you can break through the walls of my Blood Silver Grass before they crush you into a fine, red paste."
The vines that made up the walls of the cabin seemed to pulse, to writhe, and a low, menacing hum filled the air.
Liu Erlong froze.
She looked at the chains on her wrists, a cold, heavy reminder of her own foolishness, of her own powerlessness. She looked at the crimson, living walls, which now seemed less like a beautiful marvel and more like the coiled muscles of a colossal, waiting predator. And she looked at him, at the calm, absolute certainty in his blue eyes.
'He's not bluffing,' her mind screamed. 'He would do it. He would kill me right here, and no one would ever know.'
Her rage, her pride, her fierce, unyielding spirit… it all just evaporated, replaced by a cold, hard, and deeply humiliating pragmatism. She was trapped. She was at his mercy.
With a low, guttural growl of pure, impotent frustration, she turned. She walked back to the chair and sat down, her movements stiff and jerky. Her magnificent, curvaceous buttocks settled back onto the soft grass cushion, a silent, unwilling act of submission.
"Good girl," Zhang Tian purred, his smile widening. He leaned back into his throne, a king who had just effortlessly brought his rebellious subject to heel.
"Now then," he said, his voice returning to its calm, conversational tone. "Where were we? Ah, yes. The pills."
He steepled his fingers, his expression that of a lecturer about to reveal a profound, world-shaking truth.
"Tell me, Vice-Dean," he began, his voice a low, analytical murmur, "what do you believe is the greatest obstacle for a Spirit Master after they have reached the higher realms? The Spirit King, the Spirit Emperor, even the Spirit Saint realm?"
Liu Erlong stared at him, her mind still reeling from her own humiliation. The question was so unexpected, so academic, that it momentarily threw her off balance.
"Bottlenecks," she answered automatically, her decades of experience speaking for her. "And the purity of one's spirit power. The higher you climb, the harder it is to advance. And… the affinity of one's Martial Spirit."
"Precisely," he said with a nod, a flicker of genuine approval in his eyes. "And those are the exact problems my new pills are designed to solve."
He began to speak, and with every word, he dismantled Liu Erlong's understanding of the world, piece by painstaking piece.
"For a Fire Attribute Spirit Master, such as yourself," he said, his gaze lingering for a moment on the fiery red of her hair, "I have developed the Magma Spirit Pellet. It does not just increase your fire power. It fundamentally changes its nature. It grants it the viscous, unstoppable, and intensely formidable temperature of the Ultimate Fire as the lava itself."
He saw the flicker of shock in her eyes and continued, his voice a low, mesmerizing current.
"For a Water Attribute user, there is the Tidal Spirit Pearl. It allows one to control not just water and create crushing pressures and whirlpools of immense power."
"For a Light Attribute user, the Radiant Dawn Pellet. It purifies their light, granting it a powerful, holy properties that would be useful for healing and some even for some offensive methods."
"For a Darkness Attribute user, the Midnight Eclipse Pill. It allows their Spirit's darkness attribute to even stronger and they would be able to merge their bodies with darkness and conceal their presence and become a true creature of the night, invisible, untouchable."
He paused, a faint, almost cruel smile touching his lips as he saved the best for last.
"And for a Lightning Attribute Spirit Master," he said, his gaze piercing, knowing, "there is the Stormbolt Spirit Pill. A pill that can enhance the user's lightning, making it faster, more potent, and more… controlled."
He let his words hang in the air, a silent, beautiful, and incredibly tempting lure.
Liu Erlong just stared at him, her mind a screaming vortex of disbelief and a dawning, desperate hope.
'Pills that can change the very nature of an attribute?' her mind screamed. 'That can trigger an evolution? Impossible! Such a thing… It's like gaining a treasure trove from ancient ruins!'
She thought of the rumors, the stories that had been spreading through the city like wildfire for the past two months.
"If… if you have such things…" she stammered, her voice a choked, disbelieving whisper. She began to mutter to herself, her thoughts spilling out into the quiet room. "The Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect… their power has been growing at an unnatural rate. Everyone is talking about it. A dozen of their Spirit Saints have suddenly broken through to the Spirit Douluo realm. And Ning Fengzhi himself… to break the curse, to reach Level 86 in a matter of months… if they have been secretly consuming these pills…"
Zhang Tian just smiled, a calm, casual expression that confirmed her every fear. "Oh, yes," he said, his voice an offhand, almost bored tone that was more devastating than any shout. "The sect is growing very rapidly. A few of the older Spirit Douluos are already touching the bottleneck of the ninetieth rank. With a bit of luck, and a few more of my pills, the sect should have three or more Titled Douluo within the next few years. It is a very exciting time for my family."
The confirmation was a physical blow. Liu Erlong felt the air leave her lungs, a cold, hard knot of despair and envy forming in the pit of her stomach. The power he was describing was not just a matter of individual strength. It was the power to create an army of high-level experts, to change the very balance of power on the entire continent.
And then, a new, cold, and terrifying understanding dawned in her eyes.
She looked at him, her expression no longer one of shock, but of a cold, hard, and deeply angry suspicion.
"You knew," she said, her voice a low, flat statement of fact. "You knew who I was from the very beginning. From the moment I sent that letter."
She stood up again, but this time, it was not with the fiery, impulsive rage of before. It was with the cold, deadly calm of a predator that has just realized it has walked into a perfectly laid trap.
"This was never about my loyalty," she said, her voice a blade of ice. "This was never just a simple negotiation. You accepted my invitation to meet for some other reason. What is your plan, Zhang Tian? What do you truly want?"
Zhang Tian just rolled his eyes, a look of profound, theatrical boredom on his handsome face. He let out a long, weary sigh.
"My plan?" he echoed, his tone dismissive. "I had no plan regarding you, Vice-Dean. You seem to be forgetting the sequence of events. You were the one who approached me. You were the one who came to me with a pathetic, transparent lie about being a common mercenary."
He leaned forward, his calm facade cracking to reveal the cold, hard contempt beneath. "You were the one who planned to get close to me, to gain my trust, and then to betray me. To steal my life's work and give it to your companions. To that worthless theorist Yu Xiaogang and that money-grubbing Dean Flender. And for what? So they could use my own creations to strengthen their students? To strengthen that castrated little hypocrite Tang San, so he could one day use that power against me, against my fiancées?"
He shook his head, a look of genuine, pitying disgust on his face. "You are the one with ulterior motives, Liu Erlong. Not I."
She gritted her teeth, her face flushing a deep, furious red. She was angry, humiliated, but she could not speak. Because he was right. Every word he had spoken was the cold, hard, undeniable truth.
He saw the look on her face, and his expression softened, the cold contempt replaced once more by a calm, business-like tone.
"But," he said, his voice a low, promising murmur, "that does not mean we cannot still conduct a transaction. I will not be giving you my pill recipes. That is out of the question. But the pills themselves… I am willing to sell them to you."
A flicker of hope, so bright it was almost painful, ignited in her eyes. "Sell them?" she breathed, her voice a hopeful whisper. "What is the price? I will pay anything."
He smiled, a slow, cold, and incredibly predatory expression. "Oh, I know you will," he purred. "But my price… it is not something that can be paid with gold coins, or spirit bones, or any other such triviality. I have no need for those things."
He stood up and walked towards her, his movements a slow, deliberate, and deeply intimidating dance. He stopped just before her, his tall frame looming over her seated form.
"The only thing you possess that I have any interest in," he said, his voice a low, intimate murmur that sent a shiver of a completely different kind down her spine, "is you."
He leaned down, his face just inches from hers, his blue eyes burning with a dark, possessive fire.
"This is my offer," he said, his voice a whisper of pure, unadulterated temptation. "I will provide you with three pills of your choice, every single week. You can have the Stormbolt pills for your lover. You can have the Magma pills for yourself. Or even the Mystic Water Pills or their upgraded versions. Basically, any pill that I have concocted that you want. But only three of them per week."
He paused, letting the magnificent offer hang in the air.
"And the price," he continued, his voice dropping to a low, husky growl, "is simple. For every three pills I give you, you will perform one sexual favor for me. In that week."
He saw the flash of shock, of rage, of pure, unadulterated humiliation in her eyes, and his smile widened.
"Oh, and do not worry," he added, his voice a soothing, poisonous balm. "I have no intention of having actual sex with you. I know you won't agree to do that. But… you cannot refuse any other order I give you. No matter how… humiliating… it might be."
The silence in the crimson cabin was a fragile, crystalline thing, stretched taut with the weight of Zhang Tian's indecent proposal. For a long, heart-stopping moment, Liu Erlong just stared at him, her mind a screaming, white-hot void.
And then, the silence shattered.
"YOU BASTARD!"
Her roar was not a human sound. It was the raw, unrestrained fury of a dragon, a guttural, primal scream of pure, unadulterated rage that seemed to shake the very foundations of the living cabin.
She was on her feet in an instant, the chair she had been sitting in flying backwards and crashing against the crimson vine wall. Her fiery red hair seemed to crackle with a latent, violent energy, and her beautiful face was twisted into a mask of pure, murderous hatred.
"You disgusting, perverted, arrogant little pig!" she shrieked, her voice a raw, wounded sound. "You think you can buy me? You think you can use your pathetic little pills to turn me into your whore? You can forget it! I would rather die than let a filthy creature like you touch me!"
She lunged for the door, her movements a blur of furious motion. She didn't care about the chains, about her suppressed power. She would tear this living prison apart with her bare hands if she had to.
Zhang Tian didn't move. He didn't even flinch. He just sat on his throne of living vines, watching her, a calm, almost bored expression on his handsome face. He let her vent. He let her scream. He let her exhaust the first, initial wave of her righteous fury.
When she reached the door and began to tear at the interwoven vines with her bare hands, her nails scraping uselessly against the impossibly tough plant matter, he finally spoke.
"Are you finished?" he asked, his voice a quiet, almost gentle sound that was somehow more infuriating than any shout.
She spun around, her chest heaving, her eyes blazing with unshed tears of rage and humiliation. "I will never be finished with you!"
"Then you are a fool," he said simply, his tone one of calm, pitying disappointment. He shook his head slowly. "Calm down, Vice-Dean. And think. For just a moment. Use that brilliant, strategic mind that I know you possess."
He gestured to the chair she had knocked over. "This is a negotiation. A transaction. It is not a matter of emotion. It is a matter of value. I am offering you a prize of immeasurable worth. A prize that I know, with an absolute certainty, is the one thing in this world you truly, desperately want."
His words, so calm, so logical, began to pierce through the red haze of her rage.
"I am offering you a chance to help your lover."
The name, unspoken but perfectly understood, was a key that unlocked the deepest, most vulnerable chamber of her heart.
Xiaogang.
Her fury faltered, the fire in her eyes dimming, replaced by a flicker of something else. A deep, profound, and utterly soul-crushing pain.
Zhang Tian saw the shift, the crack in her armor, and he pressed his advantage, his voice a low, hypnotic, and incredibly cruel murmur.
"Let's talk about him, shall we?" he began, his tone that of a physician dispassionately diagnosing a terminal illness. "The great Grandmaster. Yu Xiaogang. A man who has the reputation of possessing profound theoretical knowledge. And yet… a man trapped because of his foolishness in choosing completely wrong attributes as his spirit rings twice."
He stood up and began to pace the room, his movements slow and deliberate. "I spent months at Shrek Academy, Liu Erlong. I observed him. I studied his Martial Spirit. And I know the truth of his condition. His Luo Sanpao spirit. It is not a simple mutation. It is a defective one. A flaw in his very spirit and also due to his bad choice of spirit rings that has left him trapped at the twenty-ninth rank for his entire adult life. A bottleneck that he can never, ever hope to break through."
Liu Erlong just stared at him, her hands clenching into fists at her sides, a cold, sick dread coiling in the pit of her stomach. He knew. He knew everything.
"You can feed him a mountain of my Spirit Ascension Pills," Zhang Tian continued, his voice a relentless, logical scalpel. "You can give him a thousand Mystic Water Pills. It will not matter. His spirit power will grow, yes. It will become purer, denser. But the bottleneck will remain. Because the problem is not his cultivation. It is his spirit. The very vessel that holds his power is flawed. It is… incomplete."
He stopped pacing and turned to face her, his blue eyes holding a strange, almost pitying light.
"But what if," he said, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper, a sound of pure, unadulterated temptation, "what if that flaw could be… corrected?"
Her breath caught in her throat.
"What if that pathetic, useless pig," he said, the words a cruel, deliberate twist of the knife, "could be forced to return to its origin? To its true potential?"
He took a step closer, his gaze intense, unwavering. "Your Martial Spirit is the Fire Dragon, a variant mutation of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon. And his… his Luo Sanpao is a different kind of mutation. A failed one. But at its core, its origin, it is still a dragon. A lightning dragon."
He let his words hang in the air, a beautiful, impossible, and incredibly dangerous hope.
'A lightning dragon…' Liu Erlong's mind reeled. The thought was so audacious that she hadn't thought about it.
To cure Xiaogang's spirit? To allow him to evolve? To give him back the dream that had been stolen from him?
It was everything. It was the one thing in the world she would trade her own soul for.
"My Stormbolt Spirit Pills," Zhang Tian said, his voice a soft, hypnotic purr, "are not just simple attribute enhancers. They contain a pure, concentrated essence of the lightning element. If consumed in sufficient quantity, by a spirit with a compatible, if dormant, lightning origin… they can trigger a forced evolution. They can purify the defective mutation, burn away the dross, and allow the spirit to return to its true, powerful form."
He smiled, a slow, confident expression. "They can turn that useless pig into a true lightning dragon. And once that happens… the bottleneck at the twenty-ninth rank will be a thing of the past. He will soar to the thirtieth level. He will become a Spirit Elder. And the path to the higher realms… it will be open to him once more."
Of course, it was all a lie. A beautiful, brilliant, and incredibly cruel lie.
'A lightning dragon?' Zhang Tian thought to himself, a silent, cold amusement in his mind. 'Hardly. The Luo Sanpao is a light-attribute spirit. To force-feed it a diet of pure, potent lightning-attribute pills… the reaction will be violent. Unpredictable. It will not be a purification. It will be a corruption.'
His true, malicious plan was far more subtle, and far more devastating.
'The two attributes will war with each other,' he calculated, his mind a cold, clinical machine. 'It will not create a true dragon. It will create a monster. A pathetic, low-grade lightning serpent, perhaps. A defective, malformed creature with a weak, unstable attribute. It might break his bottleneck, yes. But it will also permanently damage his foundation. It will make him dependent on a constant supply of my pills just to maintain his new, flawed form.'
He would not be healing her lover. He would be turning him into a drug addict. An addict whose only dealer was him. It would give him a permanent, unbreakable hold over her. A perfect, elegant, and beautifully cruel solution.
Liu Erlong, however, saw none of this. She saw only the beautiful, shining promise. She saw the face of the man she loved, no longer etched with the lines of failure and shame, but shining with a new, powerful pride. She saw a future where they could stand together, equals in power, their past a forgotten dream.
But the price…
She looked at him, at his handsome, smiling face, and a wave of pure, unadulterated revulsion washed over her. To let this man touch her? To submit her body to his perverted desires? All for a chance, a possibility?
"Even if… even if what you say is true," she said, her voice a strained, choked whisper, "how can I trust you? This could all be a lie. A trick."
He had been expecting this. He had prepared for it.
"You are right to be skeptical," he said, his tone one of perfect, understanding reason. "Which is why I am prepared to offer you a gesture of… good faith."
He reached into his storage ring and produced a small, elegant jade vial. It contained three small, dark blue pills that seemed to crackle with a faint, latent electrical energy.
"The process of evolving a spirit like his will not be a quick one," he said, his voice a calm, clinical monotone. "It will require dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of my Stormbolt Spirit Pills, consumed over a long period of time. But the initial effects… they should be noticeable almost immediately."
He held the vial out to her. "Take these. Three Stormbolt Spirit Pills. A gift. No strings attached."
She stared at the vial, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"Give one to your lover each day, for the next three days," he instructed, his voice a low, hypnotic murmur. "And watch. If, by the end of the third day, there is no noticeable effect on his spirit, if you see no change, no flicker of a new power… then you can forget this deal ever happened. You can throw these pills away and treat them as my price for having wasted your time."
He paused, his blue eyes locking with hers, a final, irresistible hook.
"But if a change does occur," he said, his voice a low, promising purr, "if you see even a hint of the lightning that lies dormant within him… then you will know that I am telling the truth. And you can come back to me. And we can begin our… partnership."
The offer was a masterpiece of manipulation. It was a wager she could not possibly refuse. There was no risk, and the potential reward was a prize beyond measure.
She looked at the vial, at the three small pills that held the key to her lover's future, to their future. Her mind was a raging storm of conflicting emotions. Her pride, her honor, her love for Xiaogang, her revulsion for the man who stood before her… it all just churned into a single, overwhelming, and desperate need.
She reached out a trembling hand and took the vial.
~~
A/N: Check out my other novels like "Harem Master: Seduction System" and the "Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist" and I hope you like this story and those stories as well.
Check out more chapters on my P.atreon. The P.atreon will have 20+ Chapters ahead for this story. I hope you like it.
The link of p.atreon is: bit.ly/evildragon