Early morning—Su Ling'er passed through the long corridor and arrived at the door of the young madam's bedroom.
Just as she was about to push the door open, a beautiful rabbit-eared maid tiptoed out of the room. A blush still lingered on her face, her ruby-like eyes carried a moist sheen, and her soft rabbit ears and cotton-candy rabbit tail looked all rumpled.
"Good morning."
The rabbit-eared maid lowered her head guiltily, as if she'd done something bad, and after murmuring a good morning, scampered off bashfully.
"Morning."
Su Ling'er, well used to this, politely returned her greeting.
Then several dog-eared maids filed out of the bedroom hand in hand, wagging their fluffy tails of varying lengths, and greeted her brimming with energy:
"Good morning!"
"Sister Ling'er, why didn't you come last night?"
"I love Sister Ling'er's scent, woof!"
Su Ling'er blushed a little, and without responding to the dog-eared girls' enthusiastic invitation, pushed the door open and went straight in.
She thought she'd walked into a zoo.
A cat-eared maid pricked up her ears and stared at her with slit pupils, her gaze alert yet languid; the twin fox-eared maids slept soundly, hugging each other's tails; a wolf-eared maid straightened her trim, taut waist, yawned, and bared her sharp fangs.
"Ah, this…"
In the end Su Ling'er couldn't help covering her face and shutting her eyes.
When the eldest miss came back and discovered that of the hundred-some maids throughout the mansion, every single one of them, had had a fling with the young madam... someone would end up dead, right? Someone was definitely going to end up dead, right?!
Fortunately…
Su Ling'er gently lifted Eva, who was lying on the young madam's belly, away, then scratched the fair, delicate stomach with her fingertips, the motion as practiced and natural as petting a cat.
"Mmh…"
Li Fei didn't open her eyes, merely letting out a long, nasal sound decadent to the bone; her graceful, supple waist arched upward, and the patterns on her abdomen surfaced as if by instinct.
Thanks to her day-and-night cultivation, plus the inherently lofty rank of the [Partial Transformation — Succubus Empress] ability, Li Fei had already mastered [Charm Mark Reconfiguration] to a fine art, able to control the patterns' shifts at will, even letting the Charm Marks roam to any spot below the collarbone and above the ankles... As long as she kept up this effort, perhaps before long the Charm Marks would be able to move freely across her entire body.
At this moment, over a thousand Charm Marks, like velvet, formed two symbols on the snow-white skin of her abdomen—not, of course, occult symbols, but the very straightforward [↓] and [口].
—Eldest miss, I've let you down so…
Biting her lower lip, Su Ling'er carefully began counting the number of patterns.
"One thousand and twelve, one thousand and thirteen."
After confirming the final number, Su Ling'er let out a long breath.
After choosing to go all out sprinting for Sequence 7, in a mere three weeks Li Fei had completed the Ascension Ritual.
And of these 1,013 Charm Marks, the fairies born from Summoning Magic contributed thirty percent; the in-depth companionship at the aquarium accounted for five percent; other people's Secret Gardens made up twenty percent; the contract maids that came free with the purchased villa, ten percent; and for the rest, she had to thank the good sisters of the Golden Kumquat Tavern, along with their friends, family, and lovers, for their all-out support of Miss Top Courtesan.
Perhaps from now on the young madam would restrain herself a bit... probably?
Su Ling'er thought, half pleased and half worried.
"Sister Ling'er, did you have a nightmare last night? Why are you knitting your brows so early in the morning?"
The young madam had woken at some unknown point and, coiling around her neck like a snake, asked into her ear in a lazy, alluring tone.
"It's, it's nothing."
Su Ling'er answered vaguely.
"I've finished my cultivation... Tonight I'm inviting Miss Grace over to celebrate. Will you join us, Sister Ling'er? We could talk by candlelight late into the night and sleep foot to foot—wouldn't that be lovely?"
Li Fei smoothed out the space between her brows, speaking gently and softly.
After Madam Zhihua went away on business, under the young madam's all-pervading enchantment, Su Ling'er had already been led astray—each round of hide-and-seek, she would take part, guilt-ridden, then deeply reflect on it afterward; only because she was on her period had things quieted down a bit this week, and now, reckoning the time, she could once again eat, drink, and make merry together with the young madam.
As for Miss Poker Face, she could accept Su Ling'er, with whom she was close, and perhaps in the future she'd also accept Madam Zhihua, Lady Annie, Lilith... but with girls she wasn't familiar with, she would silently keep her distance, alone.
—As expected, restraint was simply impossible.
Su Ling'er sighed mournfully; part of her hoped the eldest miss would come back soon to discipline the young madam, while another part inexplicably felt that... the eldest miss coming back a bit later seemed, sort of, probably... not entirely unacceptable either.
This tangled, contradictory frame of mind left Su Ling'er restless.
"What's wrong?"
"Thinking of the eldest miss's great kindness, I feel deeply ashamed."
"Then... will you come tonight?"
"…"
Su Ling'er lowered her eyelids, her long lashes trembling, and murmured in a voice as faint as a mosquito's: "Mm."
No. 48 Canary Lane, the offices of the Sparkfire Charity Organization.
Even at the midday meal hour, the flow of people here was unceasing. On the open doorway, a red heart stood out conspicuously—this was the emblem of the Sparkfire Charity Organization.
On the wall of one of the offices, the second hand of a wall clock ticked around; the calendar beside it was turned to "November 12th."
"I'm very sorry, but after evaluation, your shop does not meet our funding criteria."
With an apologetic look, Yusura conveyed the "Sparkfire Charity Organization's" decision to the respectably dressed gentleman across the desk.
Yusura was draped in a long robe, his tone gentle, with the air of a kindly and learned old man, exuding a trustworthy approachability in his words and manner. As he listened to the flattery in his ear, his thoughts inexplicably began to drift, and the philanthropist miss's deeds these past days quietly surfaced in his mind.
On the evening of November 1st, Li Fei held a charity auction, announcing the founding of the Sparkfire Charity Organization.
Over these ten-some days, although the pace of donations was no longer as fervently high as in the first two days, the love offered by kindhearted people from all walks of life still trickled in like little streams, converging from a hundred rivers into the Sparkfire Charity Fund.
Yesterday, the charitable donations raised totaled 52,584 gold coins, 63 silver coins, and 19 copper coins; as of the small hours of yesterday, the total amount of donations the Sparkfire Charity Fund had gathered had already broken through to 3.04 million gold coins!
There were also large quantities of supplies, valued at around eighty thousand gold coins.
Yusura estimated that the daily amount of donations raised would continue to drop over the next few days, until Li Fei achieved some kind of result.
Judging from her performance during this period, the philanthropist miss was actually quite devoted to the Sparkfire Charity Organization.
Although she had done no shortage of outrageous things, such as:
Immediately diverting 700,000 gold coins, and, through the Thieves' Guild's connections, at the cost of 5% of the donations, hiring an accounting team that was warm and enthusiastic, friendly and cheerful, professionally outstanding, and of whom—were they all dragged out and beheaded—there would not be a single wrongful case.
The philanthropist miss had let slip to Yusura that these fellows came from the "Black Gold" organization; its personnel were not only highly capable but also skilled in dressing up accounts, forging statements, and the like, and were very tight-lipped—more than one member of the Black Gold organization, after committing a sensational financial fraud that got exposed, would always destroy the evidence and poison himself to death at the first instant, so as not to implicate his patrons. Very reliable.
With this team holding down the Sparkfire Charity Fund, plus City Hall's "connections" leaving the organization entirely unsupervised, so-called financial transparency became an utter joke, and the financial statements made public were just like Miss Top Courtesan captured alive by wild fairies—to be toyed with however one pleased.
Yet while lining her own pockets, the philanthropist miss did also put forward some genuinely pioneering and constructive ideas.
For instance, she gave money to certain restaurants, including Aunt Roslyn's restaurant, launching a "charity meal" campaign—as long as a customer said the passphrase "There's true affection in this world" to the front desk, they could enjoy, free of charge, a steaming bowl of noodle soup with shredded meat and egg.
Many destitute, famished customers, as they ate, found their tears falling into the noodle broth.
Of course, the next day the philanthropist miss once again made the front pages of all the major publications. Under headlines like "Eating Without Paying the Bill? The Heartwarming Reason Behind It" and "Just Say These Few Words and Eat for Free?", the illustration was Li Fei's gentle, sincere expression, issuing an appeal:
"These charity meals are provided for those who truly need help... Everyone may enjoy them for free, but if you have the means, please remember, after experiencing a charity meal, to pay the bill."
This too set off a wave of enthusiasm; many people went out of their way to the restaurants publicized in the papers, ate a charity meal, and at checkout paid several times—even dozens of times—the price, entrusting the shop to donate it on their behalf to the charity organization…
This maneuver forcibly pulled the donation pace, which had fallen to 110,000, back up to 130,000 the following day, though it couldn't reverse the overall downward trend.
Another example was "charity milk": the Sparkfire Fund donated to the major educational organizations, so that every underage student could receive, each morning, a paper carton of milk stamped with the red heart emblem—this did not include the War and Magic Academies, but rather the ordinary academies oriented toward commoners, which taught skills like accounting, cooking, and farming.
One can well imagine what kind of feelings this batch of commoner students, raised on charity milk, would hold toward the Sparkfire Charity Organization.
Yet another example: forming the "Sparkfire Volunteer Team," three hundred of whose members were, strikingly, the fairy daughters Li Fei regarded as her very own. They took not a single coin of wages, devoting themselves to providing free care services to lonely, suffering elders and end-of-life comfort to the dying; besides this, there were fairies wearing the Sparkfire Charity Organization uniform, with a conspicuous red heart printed on the chest, shuttling back and forth through the streets, giving people directions and handing out free drinks.
Of course, the organization also provided them daily with rewards like fairy fruit, which nicely eased Li Fei's everyday expenses. And after seeing the sweat-drenched, Beautiful and Kind-Hearted little fairies, no one would question the rewards.
Not only that, the philanthropist miss placed great emphasis on publicity. She repeatedly stressed that "doing a hundred good deeds in obscurity is not worth one successful marketing campaign," and she called many times for more volunteers to serve the public good and jointly create a harmonious Loxibrook—as of now, the number of registered volunteers had reached as high as seventeen thousand.
The newborn organization could not, of course, digest so many volunteers in one go; the philanthropist miss promised to arrange, in batches and selectively, for the volunteers to undergo training, so as to bring appropriate, high-quality charitable services to disadvantaged groups.
Which meant that the accounts could reasonably show another training expense, while the freeloaded human tools would, with their own sweat, earn the philanthropist miss even more donations.
In short, Li Fei's series of jaw-droppingly brilliant ideas could always exchange the smallest investment for the most outstanding publicity effect!
What did noodles cost? What did milk cost? Yet the reputation gained from it was truly an intangible asset not to be traded for ten thousand gold!
In today's Loxibrook, who, hearing the philanthropist miss's name, wouldn't give a thumbs-up and a word of praise?
And Yusura, too, had been appointed by Li Fei to the Sparkfire Charity Organization's core management, mainly in charge of the support business for small and medium commercial enterprises—the specific task being to provide funding to commercial organizations of outstanding qualification, so that talented entrepreneurs and promising technologies would not be buried, thereby promoting industrial prosperity, expanding employment, and adding bricks and tiles to Loxibrook's economic construction.
"You all... did not depart this world with grievances."
Recalling Li Fei's breathtaking operations over these days, Yusura lowered his gaze and sighed silently for his clansmen beneath the Yellow Springs, then, with a kindly, benevolent expression, looked toward the gentleman before him:
"Shall I pour you a little more tea?"
This was a polite way of showing him the door.
"Could we... be a bit accommodating?"
The gentleman, his face wreathed in smiles, handed over an envelope.
Yusura took it without the slightest reservation, opened it, and found inside a goldsmith's note in the denomination of one thousand.
Stuffing the envelope into the drawer, Yusura sighed:
"To be honest, I too think highly of your shop's potential; it's only because of the evaluation rules that... never mind. I really can't bear to see such an excellent shop buried over a funding shortage, so this time allow me to take it upon myself to approve a funding quota of two thousand gold coins for your shop. I'll report this matter truthfully to the organization."
"Actually…"
The gentleman, smiling along, extended his palm, spreading all five fingers: "Our shop's funding gap is a bit large."
"This…"
Yusura knit his brows deeply and said earnestly: "Every copper of donation is a weighty token of love; we must be responsible for that goodwill…"
The gentleman carefully held out a second envelope.
Yusura flicked open the flap with his index finger, glanced inside, then withdrew his hand, leaving the envelope sitting on the table, and said, sitting up straight and proper: "The organization's rules are strict; five thousand is not a figure I can approve off the cuff."
The gentleman's eye twitched. This time he didn't even bother with an envelope, simply pulling out five goldsmith's notes in the denomination of one hundred and pressing them on top of the envelope:
"Our shop's several dozen, nearly a hundred, employees are all waiting on this sum for their wages. Please take the trouble, on our behalf…"
Without a change of expression, Yusura silently pulled open the drawer and, with one swipe of his palm, swept the envelope and the goldsmith's notes together into it, then said in a kindly, concerned tone: "I had no idea your shop's situation was this dire... Never mind—isn't the whole point of our painstaking fundraising to deliver the funds into the hands of those in need? Within two days at the latest, five thousand gold coins will be delivered to your shop... Remember, you must not withhold the workers' wages."
"Thank you, thank you so very much…"
The gentleman thanked him over and over, and the two exchanged a few perfunctory pleasantries before Yusura finally rose to see him out.
With the soft sound of the door closing, the gentleman put on his top hat, and his smile faded.
"Son of a bitch…"
He muttered curses under his breath, feeling waves of distress over the loss.
That black-hearted old thing actually dared to demand a fifty-percent kickback!
This left him indignant, yet unable to help sighing in sympathy for the philanthropist miss.
Li Fei had been a frequent fixture in the papers during this time and had attended quite a few charity events; the middle-aged gentleman had had the fortune of beholding her face—truly beautiful. Were he twenty years younger and without a husband, he'd likely, like the tens of thousands of young people, sign up to join the volunteer team at all costs, just to have the philanthropist miss glance at him once more and shake his hand in encouragement.
And now, though he had dismissed the notion of becoming a volunteer, he had truly seen with his own eyes just how haggard, frail, and heartbreaking the philanthropist miss had been worn down by the aftereffects of her soul injury.
To this day the gentleman could not imagine just how gentle and kind a soul this woman—of peerless beauty and talent unmatched across the ages—must have, to be willing to burn her soul to save people she'd never met, paying with her future and even her life to repel the sea races and sacrifice herself for others; and just how firm and great a conviction she must hold, to, while bearing a soul injury and enormous debt, give up her precious cultivation time and throw herself, without hesitation, into the cause of charity.
In his view, whether the charity meals and charity milk, or the end-of-life care and looking after the elderly, such pioneering feats of charitable work could not possibly be conceived of without a gentle, sensitive soul, without having truly experienced poverty, without an empathetic heart that took others' hardships as one's own.
A pity, though…
No matter how noble the philanthropist miss's character, how clever and meticulous her mind, with her foundations still shallow she was, in the end, isolated and weak at this moment, inevitably letting embezzlers slip into the organization.
A conscience not yet utterly extinguished made the gentleman pause in the corridor, his gaze sweeping over the complaint-and-suggestion box.
The philanthropist miss had publicly promised that she had zero tolerance for corruption and welcomed the broad public to take part in oversight and expose unjust acts; many complaint boxes hung throughout the offices, and she would periodically, in person, review the letters within, while strictly keeping informants' information confidential.
The middle-aged gentleman hesitated a moment, then turned and walked to the washroom, holding a pen in his mouth, and wrote three crooked characters on the toilet paper:
There are vermin!
He thought it over and didn't write down Yusura's name, because the shop really did need that sum to keep its cash flowing; if Yusura fell too quickly, it might well affect the "support funds."
"I'm sorry, philanthropist miss; this is all I'm able to do."
The middle-aged gentleman murmured to himself, carefully clenching the paper in his palm, then put on a relaxed, easy smile before the mirror, intending to find some complaint box and slip it in while no one was watching.
But just as he returned to the corridor, he saw Yusura taking down one of the complaint boxes.
"Is there anything else you need help with?"
Yusura turned his head and asked amiably.
The middle-aged gentleman's heart sank; struggling to maintain a smile on his face, he asked in a curious tone:
"No, I just went to the washroom... and you're, ah?"
"You know, the philanthropist miss has it so hard—enduring her soul injury and striving at charitable work, while also juggling study and cultivation."
Yusura said with feeling: "And so, she entrusted the gathering of complaint letters to me, with a thousand exhortations: I must carefully collect every single letter, and I must hand them to her in person; never allow it to be done by another's hand, never allow anyone else to look them over, never allow an informant's information to leak out—lest those who expose the darkness invite retaliation for their righteous acts."
This refined, genial old half-beast placed emphasis on the word "retaliation."
He stared fixedly into the middle-aged gentleman's eyes, paused briefly, then gave a helpless smile:
"In my view, the philanthropist miss overthinks things to the point of near paranoia, forever nagging in my ear about these 'two musts, three nevers'... And yet, how could the Sparkfire Charity Organization possibly have any bad people?"
"Ha, it seems Mr. Yusura is deeply trusted by the philanthropist miss…"
The sweat-drenched middle-aged gentleman flattered with a smile.
"What else? Surely we're not to rely on those young students at the Magic Academy? You should know, upon hearing of the Sparkfire Charity Organization, I was the very first to express my support to her, and she is most grateful for my help."
Yusura smiled benevolently, then suddenly took a step forward: "You... look very hot? You're sweating a lot."
"Ah, yes, this damned suit, it's so unbreathable."
The gentleman wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead and shrugged.
"Wipe your sweat."
Yusura handed him a sheet of paper and, cradling the complaint box, said meaningfully: "This afternoon I'm to deliver the complaint letters to the philanthropist miss... Is there anything you'd like me to pass along for you?"
"Mr. Yusura is too fond of joking... All right, I must get back to eat; my husband is still waiting for me…"
The middle-aged gentleman gave two awkward laughs and somewhat flusteredly fled from Yusura's deep, seemingly heart-piercing gaze.
Stepping out of the office—the weather today was lovely, the bright sun riding high, the clear sky washed clean.
Yet when he lifted his head, it was as though he saw layer upon layer of iron curtains, and a creeping chill spread from his heart to his spine.
The middle-aged gentleman shivered and left the Sparkfire Charity Organization's offices without looking back, his steps hurried, even somewhat disheveled, as if behind him lurked a demon ready to pick out and devour its prey; only after crossing two streets did he bend over, hands bracing his ceaselessly trembling knees, gasping heavily for breath.
He instinctively pulled out the tissue Yusura had handed him to wipe his sweat, but on closer look, this sheet—whether in texture or in size—was plainly identical to that "complaint letter."
The middle-aged gentleman opened his mouth, but no sound came out, cold sweat pouring like rain.
He froze for a few seconds before pulling out a match, trembling as he tried to burn the toilet paper bearing the three characters "There are vermin"—but the paper, thoroughly soaked with sweat, was hard to light. He gritted his teeth and simply balled it up, stuffed it into his mouth, and, his face contorted, chewed it to bits and swallowed:
"My apologies, philanthropist miss…"
Meanwhile Yusura, cradling the complaint box, ambled leisurely back to the office, on the way even exchanging greetings with a Black Gold organization member whose smile was just as warm.
After closing the door, he casually set down the box, then took the thick stack of goldsmith's notes out of the drawer, and only after carefully verifying the total kickback amount twice did he divide them into two piles.
Ten percent was his own.
The remaining ninety percent was the philanthropist miss's.
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