Sofia had a sweet dream. In it, both Eva and Li Fei were her vampire brides...
When she languidly opened her eyes, she found her mother-in-law nursing Little Yawen.
Bathed in the morning light, Li Fei looked holy and gentle, motherhood and divinity coexisting within her, beautiful beyond compare.
Seeing Sofia awake, the young and charming mother-in-law even gave her a faint smile, her eyes brimming with tender affection.
In that instant, the young vampire wife's thoughts grew hazy, as if this gorgeous, radiant human woman were her wife—Yawen's mother.
But Li Fei merely, gently, placed Little Yawen into Sofia's arms, then pressed a kiss to her brow.
The [Flowing Silver] and the [Mage's Robe] had already been auctioned off, while the [Ogre's Staff] and the [Intelligence Pendant] had been completely discarded.
Behind Li Fei, Ram gently lifted the black tresses at the back of her head and hung the [Black-and-White Pendant] against her snow-white nape; Su Ling'er, her face full of reluctance, personally cinched the [Belt of Strength] tight for her, then pinned the Silver Brooches of the two great academies and the Honorary Citizen Medal over the young madam's heart.
Sofia knelt on one knee as if proposing, her fingertips gliding along the straight, slender lines of those legs as she slid [Bai Mengtian's Handmade Garter Ring] onto the jade-white thigh. Then she cupped the exquisite ankle—slim enough to grasp in one hand—while with the other she solemnly cradled that pair of soft, silken feet sheathed in a black bodystocking, slipping the rose-red high heels [Heartshatter] onto her mother-in-law's feet.
Even Little Yawen refused to be outdone. First, like a driver hauling at a big wheel, she propped her scallion-tender little fingers on her delicate shoulder, then clumsily picked up [Fairy Whisper] and at last slipped it onto the ring finger.
After that, in perfect harmony and with meticulous care, they fitted Li Fei with her waist pouch, Leather Leg Rings, and armbands—every motion orderly and methodical, utterly focused and patient, carrying an almost devout, ceremonial air.
"Thank you."
In the full-length mirror, Li Fei smiled radiantly. After thanking them, she bent down and personally tightened each of the restraints on her body one by one, then fastened the [Betrayer's Dagger] and [Dark Night] to her leg ring. She tucked the [Stone of Deceit], the [True Sight Gem], the [Natural Spring Water], the [Pocket Residence], and Mana Crystals worth a hundred thousand gold coins all together into the left waist pouch Lady Zhihua had sewn for her; the right side held the potion pouch Lady Zhihua had crafted stitch by stitch, filled with bottles and jars; [Quietsong] was hidden in her sleeve.
Next, she pulled on the [Guardian Mage Robe], concealing her graceful, alluring figure—outlined by the sheer black bodystocking—and the faintly visible snow-smooth skin.
Finally, Li Fei unhurriedly put on the [Midas Gloves] she had purchased from Klein, gripping [Quietsong] in one hand and snatching up the Flying Broom in the other, surging power brimming within her body.
Aside from the [Black Veil] formula and the [Shroud of Destiny], Li Fei had brought along basically everything she could carry, to be ready for any contingency.
After all, a bare, unequipped Transcendent and a fully armed one were on entirely different levels of combat power—the gap every bit as vast as that between paying whales and free-to-play players in an online game.
Li Fei bounced in place a few times, tucking the swaying [Black-and-White Pendant] and [Guardian's Amulet] vertically into the warm, deep valley of her bosom, and only then was she ready.
And after Li Fei had inspected her gear for the third time, Miss Lilith arrived for their appointment at the agreed-upon hour.
Stare.
The instant Lilith appeared, a resentment-laden gaze fixed firmly upon her.
Li Fei knew Lilith's family circumstances all too well. Originally, when Li Fei had dragged her out shopping, she'd intended to grit her teeth and buy her a couple of life-saving items, so she wouldn't lose her wife on a single outing.
And the result!
When Li Fei had taken a fancy to a [Life Amulet] worth ten thousand gold and planned to buy it for her, Lilith had stopped her—and even produced an even higher-grade [Guardian's Sigil], saying she had a spare she could pass along...
[Guardian's Amulet]
Description: Can be triggered with one point of mana to activate a shield lasting 10s, capable of blocking five instances of "V"-rank or lower damage; the amulet is destroyed after triggering.
This was the kind of treasure that even a Sequence 5 Transcendent could rely on to save their life, priced in six figures in the System Store—and yet Lilith actually "had a spare" she could "pass along"!
What's more, she'd fished this thing out of an incredibly expensive spatial ring...
Honestly, the moment she saw the [Guardian's Amulet], Li Fei's thoughts flew straight to that mysterious half-month Lilith had vanished for, and she assumed her stepdaughter had followed in her own footsteps, making certain trade-offs and compromises for money...
At this, the ill-intentioned stepmother felt an unprecedented heartache and fury, chilled to the bone by the betrayal—damn it, just how dim-witted a rich sugar mommy had this kid dug up, to gift her such a huge spatial ring?!
The key point being: with such a sweet deal going, she hadn't even called for her mother to join in! Even just to lend a hand on the side and skim a little tip money would've been fine!
What an ungrateful wolf!
And to think I, your stepmother who treats you as my very own, was willing to give myself to Dean Nicole, sacrificing my chastity, just to solve your tuition problem...
But soon the stepmother—nearly blinded by jealousy and visions of rich sugar mommies—calmed down, reason reclaiming the high ground and overturning this absurd conjecture.
Gone for half a month—even doing sugar-baby work, she couldn't possibly have earned this much money. Even Miss Top Courtesan hadn't dared to set her price that high!
But clearly, Lilith's secret was bigger than imagined; otherwise she couldn't have suddenly struck it rich.
Under Li Fei's sharp, piercing gaze, Lilith looked a little guilty.
Her inheritance was rather secret, but for someone close enough to her, it wasn't entirely impossible to divulge a few vague, general hints.
Yet whenever she recalled that dreadful Ascension Ritual, Lilith instinctively grew flustered, unwilling to speak with her stepmother about the [Life Reaper] inheritance.
"W-why are you looking at me like that..."
Lilith stammered, her face flushed.
"Aiya, my daughter's all grown up—keeping her own little secrets now."
Li Fei turned snide and needling.
"It's nothing... I just obtained an inheritance."
Lilith said evasively.
"Hmph hmph. Did you bring everything?"
Li Fei stopped teasing her and turned to business.
In any case, Lilith's growth was a good thing for Li Fei. At the very least, with the spatial ring around, the Transcendent materials Li Fei had originally planned to lug along in a bundle could now all be stored with Lilith.
Not to mention, a priest who possessed an inheritance and was armed head-to-toe with Full Moon-grade equipment offered a sense of security in a completely different dimension from an ordinary priest.
"Mm, I checked twice."
Lilith nodded.
"Good. Come eat."
Li Fei casually tossed the Moon Pillow and the Halo Broom to her, then pulled her over to the dining table.
Today's breakfast was no cheap affair—takeout ordered from the Golden Tangerine Tavern. The ingredient costs alone ran into the thousands of gold coins; it was mostly harvested from Transcendent creatures, and though the portions were small, it could grant Transcendents abundant vigor.
After Lilith put her things away, she too began nibbling at her breakfast in dainty little bites.
Li Fei polished off her meal—nutritious, though not as tasty as usual—a step faster, then set her restless little hands to poking all over Lilith, using her outstanding knowledge, her seasoned eye, and the tiny, negligible hints from Miss System to spy out her equipment.
A plain, unadorned moon-white robe, incredibly smooth and soft to the touch—only a notch below Angel Velvet—formed the Full Moon-grade [Benevolence Set] together with the ring, white cloth boots, and necklace. Its attributes—spell level, Life-type spell effects, maximum mana, and so on—made Li Fei practically drool.
Miss Top Courtesan now counted as someone with a bit of insight, and by rights, this sort of set could only be obtained by core members of the Life Curia through their contributions.
Beyond that, the [Twilight Staff] granted hefty bonuses to both Life- and Death-type spells; even among Full Moon-grade equipment it ranked as a supreme treasure, its price definitely towering above the [Blade of Joy].
And what's more! Even that pair of seemingly opaque white stockings was Full Moon-grade [Leg Equipment]... Intelligence and Charm bonuses were nothing unusual, but it was the first time Li Fei had ever seen something that boosted [Morality Value].
Of course, Li Fei didn't believe a mere Full Moon-grade piece could override the three big words "irreversible" handed down by Miss System; if she wore it herself, it would probably just be wasted.
And Lilith, dressed all in pure white, looked even more innocent and enchanting than usual. The calves beneath the hem of her robe were slender and well-proportioned; even wrapped in flesh-hugging white pantyhose, they didn't look taut but rather had a soft, squishy feel, smooth and tender to the touch.
"That's enough out of you!"
Lilith puffed out her cheeks and slapped her stepmother's hand away.
"Look how you've grown a spine."
Li Fei wore the gratified expression of a doting old mother, then crooked a finger at Lilith's spatial ring, spread out her palm, and said with a beaming smile: "Let me check it over for you?"
Out of deep trust and affection, Lilith subconsciously handed over the immensely precious, deeply private spatial ring, opening [Access] to Li Fei.
You see, storage items like spatial rings were bound to the owner's soul through enchantment effects; unless the owner permitted it and "unlocked" it with their spirit, no one else could easily peek at or remove the items inside.
Of course, there were always more solutions than problems. Transcendents could forcibly crack storage items through specific spells and rituals to seize the wealth inside, or certain [Reconnaissance-type] master thieves and thief kings could forcibly deploy certain enviable-yet-infuriating techniques to steal the contents of a storage device without anyone the wiser.
If one lacked the above abilities, there was also a simple, efficient method: kill the owner, and the binding would naturally dissolve, turning the spatial ring into an "ownerless object"—the kind of thing the brutes loved doing most.
With Lilith's permission granted, Li Fei's consciousness sank inside, and with a "Whoa!" she gave Lilith's thigh a slap, making the tender flesh sheathed in white stockings quiver.
Li Fei truly hadn't expected that this unremarkable-looking spatial ring had a capacity of over a thousand cubic meters—nearly rivaling Lady Zhihua's sachet!
The stepmother's spirit swept once around inside; the materials for five Witch Sickness Suppression Rituals and the [Displacement Crossing Ritual] were all there, none missing. Besides those, there were also all the essential items the two of them had prepared last night for exploring the Folded Space.
And among Lilith's neatly folded changes of clothing, there were a few white silk stockings and undergarments that looked rather familiar to Li Fei.
Suffice it to say, while Lilith was away from home, Li Fei had—right in front of Lady Annie—with a seductive gaze, unhurriedly changed into these garments, all the while performing various fiendishly difficult dance moves, showing off a flexibility more astonishing than a yoga master's. With her Agility broken past a hundred, plus a Transcendent body that had evolved more than once, Li Fei could already turn herself into a semi-fluid, her very bones bending like springs.
Of course, the lights couldn't be turned off during the dance performance, and she had to face the wedding photo at the head of the bed. After the performance, she also had to—before that silver-haired bride whose face overflowed with a sweet, doting smile, upon the bride's own wedding bed, wearing that bride's daughter's intimate garments—humbly consult the bride's wife on foreign-language questions, such as, "How do you say 'who's more amaaazing, me or big sis Diana?' in Chaotic-alignment Common Tongue?"
The effect was no less potent than a Level 10 Sensitivity Aura.
—She just wondered: in the future, if the audience became her daughter Lilith and the outfit switched to Lady Annie's sheer silk stockings, would big sis Diana leap out and beat her up?
Li Fei gazed at those garments, sweet and tender memories mingling with beautiful reveries of the future welling up together in her heart, and a happy smile couldn't help but curl at the corners of her lips.
"Hm?"
All of a sudden, she noticed that among the stacked books were several exquisite illustrated albums, their covers printed with pretty girls.
In the spirit of pursuing knowledge, Li Fei focused her consciousness on those albums.
Some were tangerine-stepmom literature, such as The Days I Lived Alone with My Stepmother, Her Her Fell in Love with Her Her, and The One She Likes Isn't My Mother, But Me?... For the widely-read Li Fei, these were quite normal.
But a few struck Li Fei as rather odd.
Among them were more than a dozen albums whose cover women couldn't be called merely very similar to Li Fei—they were identical. After all, now that Miss Spell Encyclopedia had shot to fame, it would be strange if no fan-doujin albums of her existed at all.
Worth mentioning: after that first batch of fellows who dared make BG albums using Bai Mengtian's likeness had their legs broken and were shipped off, boatload by boatload, to the Grand Shang Imperial Court to serve as "special talents," the kind-hearted City Lord Elizabeth—to keep more artists from crossing the taboo—not only destroyed Bai Mengtian's portraits but also issued certain demands to the law-enforcement squad.
For instance, going door to door to speak with artists great and small, kindly reminding them: "Drawing tangerine pictures is no problem, but creating albums of any other theme without first obtaining the subject's consent would break the law—and the penalty is being sent to the Eastern Continent for labor reform, the specific assignment being to serve the emperor."
Li Fei thought this method quite ingenious, deserving to be promoted across the whole continent; and if it was merely tangerine-themed, Miss Philanthropist didn't mind playing the model worker for once, for the good of the masses.
But the problem was that among these picture books starring Li Fei as the heroine, there were some very strange elements.
For instance, ones bearing tags like #Kova#, #Miss Spell Encyclopedia#, and #Belly Strike#.
Or, for instance, one whose cover title was The Mage Girls Squad's Night of Celebration, its illustration depicting Grace and Lilith, their faces steeped in yandere, wicked allure, flanking a hollow-eyed, tear-streaked Li Fei on either side, both of them, as if by unspoken accord, caressing her swollen pregnant belly—which was scrawled all over with unspeakable inscriptions.
Its tags were #Drunk#, #Fallen#, and the like, and the corners of the book, seemingly dampened and crinkled by water, were highly suspicious too.
The author was credited as Lucoa—Li Fei of course remembered this senior schoolmate; she was Lilith's classmate, after all, and from the looks of her, she had extremely abundant "healing capacity," boasting a top-heavy, gravity-defying figure that rivaled Lady Gnaea's.
Of course, among the albums stashed in the spatial ring, the largest share were still Li Fei & Lilith pure-love pieces. Most of the credited names looked familiar, and if nothing was amiss, the creators were basically from Year 2, Class 3—unwaveringly rooting for the blonde class beauty to win over Miss Spell Encyclopedia.
Li Fei even spotted some unfinished sketches, likewise Li Fei & Lilith pure-love themes, the creator's identity needing no explanation.
"Hssss—" Li Fei sucked in a sharp breath of cold air.
Were all the senior schoolmates of the Bride Class this skilled at this particular craft?
—Also, Miss Lucoa, though you sniped their dream of advancing in the elimination round, there's really no need to take revenge like this...
Crack.
Lilith suddenly snapped to her senses, realizing there were things in the spatial ring that absolutely must not be seen, and in her fright she shattered a dinner plate.
She whipped her head around in utter horror, meeting precisely her stepmother's teasing, half-smiling, mischievous gaze.
"Aaaahhh!!"
The petite blonde girl instinctively let out a very loud shriek—even her twintails shot skyward under the overflowing mana; a striking blush surged like a rising tide, spreading at a visible pace from her snow-white neck up behind her ears, before Lilith finally reacted and instantly severed Li Fei's connection to the spatial ring.
But she was a step too late—Li Fei had already pulled out a piece of "incriminating evidence" beforehand.
Lilith's sudden, overwrought reaction hushed the entire living room; even the maids pricked up their furry beast ears, fixing concerned or curious gazes on the red-faced blonde twintailed girl, astonished that a girl who looked so petite, frail, pure, and adorable could produce such a high-decibel scream.
"Miss Lilith."
Eyes smiling, Li Fei pinched the [White Radiance Stone Necklace] she'd given her during the exchange match between her fingertips and dangled it before her stepdaughter's eyes: "You clearly already have better equipment—so why hold on to this necklace?"
Before everyone's watching eyes, Miss Top Courtesan fully enacted the two words "emotional intelligence."
—Sh-she didn't find out?
Then that's a relief...
Lilith let out a breath, yet for some reason, amid her relief, she inexplicably felt a pang of loss.
"I-I just haven't had the chance to give it back to you yet..."
Believing the truth hadn't been uncovered, the stepdaughter put up a stubborn front.
"Ohh—so that's how it is~"
The stepmother didn't expose her lie but instead drew out her tone, putting on an air of sudden enlightenment, then said with a nonchalant look: "Since I've already given it to you, there's no need to return it. If you can't use it, just sell it off—it'll fetch a bit of money, at least."
Then, smiling warmly, Li Fei handed her the necklace along with the transparent case used to seal it.
The case looked exquisite and distinctive, clearly costly in appearance—an item that wasn't especially treasured, meant to be admired at any moment, obviously wouldn't be kept in such a transparent case.
Under Li Fei's mischievous gaze, the crimson that had only just receded a little from Lilith's face came flooding back once more.
However, the wicked-hearted stepmother had no intention of letting her off so easily.
As she passed the necklace and case to Lilith, Li Fei seized the moment to bring her lips close, her alluring lips parting slightly, moist, warm breath spilling onto the flushed, delicate earlobe:
"If you like drawing... I could be your model, you know."
The faint, suggestive whisper of breath seemed to carry magic more wondrous than Medusa's Gaze, petrifying the stepdaughter in her seat in an instant.
The luster in those water-blue eyes was drained away all at once, her pupils dilating and unfocused, looking even more hollow and despairing than the Miss Spell Encyclopedia on the cover illustration of The Mage Girls Squad's Night of Celebration, who bore a pregnant belly on the very verge of delivery.
—Mom, I'm sorry.
—My life... is over.
A single clear tear slid from the corner of her dull, lifeless eye.
Like a walking corpse, Lilith snatched up a dinner fork, pressed it backhanded against her tender neck, and prepared to grant herself a swift end.
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