The heavy jade vial felt like a lead weight in Liu Erlong's hand. It was a tangible, physical representation of her hope, her humiliation, and the dangerous, uncertain path she had just agreed to walk. She looked at the calm, handsome young man who sat before her, at the faint, amused smile that played on his lips, and a wave of pure, unadulterated hatred washed over her.
"Is that all, Mister Zhang Tian?" she asked, her voice a low, tight sound, each word laced with a barely concealed venom.
He simply nodded, a gesture of casual, dismissive finality. "For now. You may leave." He leaned back in his throne of living vines, a king dismissing a lowly courtier.
"The chains," he added, his tone a lazy, offhand reminder, "will unlock automatically once you are a sufficient distance away from my domain. Be sure to store them safely in your spirit tool. They are a… unique, custom-made item. I will not meet with you again in the future unless you are wearing them."
The final, casual insult was a twist of the knife in her already wounded pride. She gritted her teeth, the sound a soft, grinding noise in the quiet, crimson cabin. She wanted to scream. She wanted to rage. She wanted to summon her Fire Dragon and burn this entire, cursed clearing to the ground.
But she couldn't. She was helpless.
With a slow, reluctant nod that was a testament to her profound self-control, she turned. She walked out of the living cabin, her back ramrod straight, her posture a mask of proud, defiant indifference.
She did not look back.
She walked for what felt like an eternity, her steps heavy on the silent, crimson grass. She walked until the strange, beautiful, and eerie clearing was a distant memory. And then, with a soft, metallic click, the heavy, spirit-suppressing chains on her wrists fell away.
She stopped. She looked down at the cold, dark metal lying on the forest floor, and a single, hot tear of pure, unadulterated rage and humiliation traced a path down her cheek. She quickly, angrily, wiped it away.
She picked up the chains, their weight a sickening, tangible reminder of her submission, and stored them in her spirit tool.
Then, she began her journey back to Shrek Academy.
The two-hour walk was a blur. Her mind, which had been a raging storm of humiliation and fury, slowly began to change. The initial, bitter taste of her defeat began to fade, replaced by a new, intoxicating, and dangerously hopeful flavor.
She clutched the jade vial in her pocket, the three small pills a cool, hard promise against her thigh.
'I did it,' the thought was a giddy, triumphant whisper in her mind. 'I actually did it.'
A slow, brilliant, and slightly unhinged smile spread across her beautiful face. She had succeeded. She had endured the brat's arrogance, his games, his humiliation. And she had emerged with a prize beyond measure.
'Pills,' she thought, her mind racing with the incredible implications of what she had learned. 'Not just simple spirit-boosting pills. Pills that can enhance one's talent. Pills that can change the very attribute of a Martial Spirit. Pills that can trigger an evolution.'
Her thoughts immediately, inevitably, turned to him.
'Xiaogang,' her heart ached with a sudden, desperate love. 'When he hears this… when he sees these… he will be so happy. So proud of me.'
She began to fantasize, her mind a beautiful, sun-drenched landscape of hopes and dreams. She pictured herself returning to him, not as a failure, but as a hero. She would present him with the pills, with the knowledge. She would watch his face, see the shock, the disbelief, the dawning, brilliant light of hope in his sad, weary eyes.
This would be the key. This would be the thing that finally, finally, broke through the walls he had built around his heart. He would see her, truly see her, not just as his lovesick cousin, but as his partner, his equal, the one person in the world who could give him back his dreams.
And then… then he would finally, truly, accept her. His vague, fragile promise, the one that had been her only nourishment for two long months, would finally blossom into a beautiful, tangible reality. They would be together.
She completely, willfully, pushed the memory of Zhang Tian's indecent proposal from her mind. It was an unpleasant, irrelevant detail.
She thinking to herself, 'Hmph. Even if he uses all sorts of his evil schemes, I would never, ever agree. I am a woman loyal to my dear Xiaogang. I would never let a perverted, arrogant rascal like that touch a single hair on my head.'
She clutched the vial tighter. 'And besides, I won't have to. These three pills… they are a free trial. A sample. If they work, if they truly have an effect on Xiaogang's spirit, then his genius will surely find a way to replicate them. He is the Grandmaster! The greatest theoretical mind in the world! Once he has a sample to study, he will be able to decipher its secrets. We will not need to go back to that brat. We will not need his charity. Or his disgusting… price.'
The thought of it, of the sexual deal he had proposed, still sent a wave of pure, nauseating rage through her. But it was a distant, manageable rage now. She was in control. She had a plan.
She had won.
She arrived at the new Shrek Academy in the late afternoon. The place was… familiar. The buildings were new, the grounds were larger, but the energy, the feeling of a raw, chaotic, and ambitious youth, was the same.
She noted, with a flicker of professional interest, that not much seemed to have changed in the two months she had been gone. But as she drew closer to the main training field, she could feel a new, more intense energy radiating from it. The students were stronger, their coordination more polished.
Her first stop was the Dean's office. She found Flender behind a large, cluttered desk, his face etched with new lines of stress and worry. He looked up as she entered, and his tired, weary face broke into a wide, genuine smile of pure, unadulterated relief.
"Erlong!" he exclaimed, his voice a happy, booming sound. He rushed around the desk and pulled her into a tight, brotherly hug. "You're back! Gods, it's good to see you! We were all so worried!"
"I'm fine, Flender," she said, returning the hug with a genuine, if slightly distracted, warmth. "Just… busy."
"I'll say," he said, pulling back and looking her up and down. "You look… tougher. More dangerous." He then sighed, a long, weary sound, and ran a hand through his hair. "A lot has happened while you were gone."
He began to update her, his voice a low, serious murmur. He told her of the students' progress, of their continued training, of the new, more brutal regimens that Xiaogang had designed for them.
And then, he told her of Tang San.
"We… we managed to get him healed," Flender said, his voice a mixture of pride and a faint, lingering unease. "Xiaogang was… insistent. He used a significant portion of the academy's funds, almost all of the money you gave us, to hire the matriarch of the Ye Family."
Liu Erlong's eyes widened. "Ye Ruxue? The Nine Heart Flowering Apple?"
Flender nodded grimly. "The very same. She is a Spirit Emperor, and her healing abilities are… legendary. She worked on Little San for a full week. It was a difficult, painful process for him. But… she succeeded."
He looked at her, his expression a strange mixture of awe and a faint, lingering disgust. "Her spirit abilities… they can regrow flesh. Bones. Limbs. She healed all of his internal injuries, the damage to his arm… everything. She even…" He hesitated, his face flushing slightly. "She even restored his… manhood. He is a complete man again."
Liu Erlong felt a flicker of something, a hint of satisfaction. It was good that the boy was healed.
"Where is Xiaogang now?" she asked, her voice a low, quiet sound.
"In his office," Flender replied. "Designing a new training plan for Little San. He has been… obsessed, since the boy was healed."
She nodded. "I need to speak with him."
She found him in his own, smaller office, a room that was less an office and more a library, its walls lined with shelves that were groaning under the weight of a thousand ancient, leather-bound books.
He was hunched over his desk, a quill scratching furiously across a piece of parchment, his entire being consumed by his work.
She stood in the doorway for a long, silent moment, her heart aching with a familiar, painful love as she just looked at him.
Finally, she spoke his name, her voice a soft, gentle whisper. "Xiaogang."
He looked up, and his expression was not one of warmth, or of relief, or even of surprise. It was the cool, detached, and utterly focused expression of a researcher who had just been interrupted.
"Erlong," he said, his voice a flat, emotionless monotone. He set his quill down and looked at her, his eyes, hidden behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, holding no hint of any personal feeling. "You're back."
He then asked the question that had been the singular, all-consuming focus of his entire existence for the past two months.
"How did the task go?"
A normal woman, a woman who had not waited twenty years, a woman who had not just spent two months living a dangerous, lonely lie for the man she loved, would have been crushed. She would have been hurt, enraged, by his cold, callous dismissal of her own well-being.
But Liu Erlong was not a normal woman. She was a woman in the grips of a love so profound, so absolute, so all-consuming, that it had long since burned away all logic, all pride, all sense of self-preservation.
She did not even register his coldness. She was simply, overwhelmingly, joyously happy to be in his presence again.
A brilliant, radiant smile bloomed on her face.
"It went well, Xiaogang," she said, her voice a happy, excited murmur. "Very well."
She walked into the room, her movements filled with a new, confident energy. She began her report, carefully, skillfully, omitting the parts about her identity being exposed, about the chains, about the true, disgusting nature of the deal he had proposed.
She told him of the pills.
"I found a lot of information regarding his secrets from him, Xiaogang," she said, her voice a low, excited whisper. "The two pills that Ning Fengzhi revealed, the Mystic Water Pill and the Spirit Ascension Pill… they are just the beginning. The tip of the iceberg."
She described the high-tier pills, the ones that could work on Spirit Kings, that could enhance a Spirit Master's talent, that could clear and widen their meridians.
This information greatly shocked Yu Xiaogang that his mind couldn't keep up for a few seconds.
But that was not all.
"He has other pills, Xiaogang," she said, her voice dropping to a near-inaudible, awestruck sound. "Pills that can enhance the very attribute of a Martial Spirit. If an individual consumes enough of them, their spirit… it can actually evolve."
Yu Xiaogang stared at her, his jaw slack, his usual calm, analytical composure completely gone, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated, and utterly earth-shattering shock.
"Evolve?" he breathed, the word a choked, disbelieving whisper. "A pill that can trigger a spirit evolution? That's… that's impossible. It defies every known law of spirit mechanics."
Seeing the look of profound, academic shock on his face, a look she had never seen before, filled Liu Erlong with a deep, triumphant satisfaction.
"I know," she said, her voice a low, proud murmur. "But it is the truth."
She then reached into her pocket and produced the small, jade vial. "I struck a deal with him, Xiaogang," she said, lying with a smooth, practiced ease. "I… I bought these from him. With the gold I earned as a mercenary, and with a promise of my future loyalty."
She placed the vial on his desk. It contained three small, dark blue pills that seemed to crackle with a faint, latent electrical energy.
"He allowed me to choose any three pills I wanted," she continued, her voice filled with a hopeful, loving light. "And I… I chose these. For you."
She looked at him, her eyes shining with an eager, almost desperate, hope. "They are lightning-attribute pills, Xiaogang. The strongest he has. I thought… I hoped… that if you consumed them, that your Luo Sanpao… that it might… evolve."
Yu Xiaogang stared at the small, jade vial on his desk. He looked at the three tiny, dark blue pills nestled within, and then he looked up at Liu Erlong, his face a mask of cold, academic disbelief.
He did not look happy. He did not look grateful. He looked… angry.
~~
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