Chapter 94.1: One Piece of Good News, One Piece of Bad News

As Ning Tao's voice echoed, Qi Yuan felt the game icon's resistance weaken slightly. He even felt as if a pair of invisible hands had gently tugged at him.

Qi Yuan's eyes lit up. "I'm coming!"

He hadn't expected such a sudden turn of events. No matter what, he had to get into the game first.

***

Skyheart Palace, Flowing Wind World.

Ning Tao pulled her fallen shoulder strap back up, tidying her half-loosened black dress. She wasn't actually going to offer herself to the owner of that mysterious voice.

When she was still young and weak, perhaps she had once entertained such thoughts. But now, as a Supreme, she could no longer allow herself that kind of weakness. She had to be in charge.

The Soul-Locking Jade floated, glowing red-hot. Like an overworked power core, it seemed to be pulling at something unseen.

Ning Tao poured her entire cultivation into the jade.

Suddenly, purple lightning streaked across the heavens.

Boom!

The entire sky darkened.

Crack.

One of the three great treasures of the world, the Soul-Locking Jade, shattered without warning.

A flicker of surprise flashed in Ning Tao's eyes. She turned her gaze toward the Demonic Egg beside her.

The Demonic Egg lay quietly, bound by eighteen thick iron chains.

With legs wrapped in silk stockings, Ning Tao gracefully walked towards the egg. Her eyes brimmed with sultry allure.

"Darling, you finally couldn't resist coming to see me."

Inside the egg, Qi Yuan was still dazed.

"Where is this place...?" he muttered, looking up at the girl.

A thin black veil covered half her face, but even the half he could see seemed to radiate the favor of creation itself. High bun gleaming like ink, gaze cold and piercing as frost. Her lips curved into a bewitching smile. Yet, Qi Yuan could sense a trace of resistance behind it.

Ning Tao's black dress was cinched at the waist, with a silk ribbon embroidered with flying birds. Although her visible skin was smooth as jade, it was an unhealthy white. Her long, shapely legs were wrapped in black silk stockings, her bare feet hovering ten centimeters above the floor.

Qi Yuan blinked, glancing down at her feet.

Wait, this world has stockings too? And black ones?

Well, if this world had skirts, why not stockings?

Ning Tao gazed at the now blood-red Demonic Egg, a hint of wariness flickering in her eyes. "Darling, this is the Skyheart Palace, your bridal chamber."

Qi Yuan froze. At last, he understood his current predicament. There was one piece of good news and one piece of bad news.

The good news was that he had successfully entered the game. The bad news? Since he hadn't entered properly, he didn't have a player's status. Instead, he'd become a strange kind of NPC.

In order to enter the game like a normal player, he had considered logging out to raise his soul to the late stage Foundation Establishment. However, he wasn't in a hurry. Since he had sneaked in, he could at least explore the game's lore first.

Ning Tao's teasing voice rang again. "Darling, do you perhaps like me wearing this? Just now, I saw you sneaking a peek at my thighs."

She tugged her skirt slightly higher, albeit not even revealing her knees.

Qi Yuan didn't deny it.

Black silk? White silk? Flesh-colored?

What self-respecting pervert doesn't like tearing silk?

He glanced around at the eighteen heavy chains binding whatever he was inhabiting.

"Can you let me out?" he asked.

"Darling, how would I dare?" Ning Tao smiled pitifully. "If I let you go, what if you ran away?"

Qi Yuan replied calmly, "Don't worry, I won't run."

Ning Tao said softly, gliding toward him. "Darling, I don't believe the things you say... Last time, you said you'd hang me up and beat me."

He fell silent.

Then, Ning Tao rose into the air, hovering above him. She lifted her delicate, silk-wrapped feet, as if about to step on him.

"So this time," she purred, "I'll be the one to hang you up. How about I step on you once?"

The black-silk feet were so close to him. Her toes were small and perfect, pale as snow, almost artistic. If this were Earth, he would've smelled something awful. But here, there was only a faint, sweet fragrance.

Still, Ning Tao thought better of it and pulled her foot back. "No, I can't humiliate Darling like this. That would be giving you a cheap thrill."

Qi Yuan sighed helplessly. He was the fish and she was the knife. "What do you want?"

"Darling, shouldn't I be the one asking you that?" Ning Tao's eyes sparkled dangerously. "When I was still a child, you appeared in my world. Tell me, what was your purpose?"

Her aura surged. The air in the underground palace thickened, suffocating. The eighteen chains clanked and rattled.

Qi Yuan could feel that terrifying pressure, stronger than even a Nascent Soul cultivator's! He stayed quiet inside the Demonic Egg.

Ning Tao's face softened slightly, tinted with memories. "At first, I thought you were heaven's blessing to me. But later, I realized that there are no blessings without a price. Either you harbored ulterior motives, or you shared a fate with me. You existed only as a voice beside my ear. Gentle as the wind, fleeting as the rain. Once in a hundred years, I'd hear you again. I thought I'd gone mad, that I was hallucinating."

"But..." She gazed at Qi Yuan, eyes filled with complicated emotion. "I wasn't sick. You were real. I didn't expect you to truly exist."

Her look was a storm of emotions—fear, awe, longing, and a fragile tenderness.

Qi Yuan's mind whirled.

Is there such a massive time difference?

The first time he'd heard her voice had only been three months ago. Nevertheless, from Ning Tao's words, hundreds or even thousands of years had passed in her world.

"I have a sort of superpower," Qi Yuan said vaguely. "Sometimes, I can hear people talking in other worlds. When I do, I just respond now and then."

Anyway, it would be hard to explain to an NPC.

Ning Tao chuckled softly. "Is that so? To endure for three thousand years without coming to see me, yet you whisper in my ear from time to time. Such patience and calculation... I suppose I can't pry the truth from you. But that's fine. You're here now. So from now on, everything will be under

my

control. I'll seal your memories, then...”

She licked her lips, voice dripping with sensuality. "When you hatch from the egg, the first thing you'll say will be, ‘Mother.’"

Qi Yuan went quiet. After a long moment, he muttered, "You NPCs really have

creative

fetishes."

Ning Tao didn't understand his words, but she didn't care. She rarely understood half of what he said anyway.

She smiled deviously, "From now on, you'll be my golden canary. My little bird."

She stepped closer.

Qi Yuan looked at her and sighed. "Yeah, bye-bye."

Then, he simply logged out.

Ning Tao blinked. "...Where did he go?"

A trace of panic flickered in her eyes before she regained her composure. "Perhaps he is sleeping?"

***

Northern Blood Sea.

A vast ocean of blood roiled endlessly, birthing countless demonic abominations. Suddenly, waves surged as a colossal Demon Crocodile broke the surface, its monstrous head rising high.

A dozen Supremes stationed there immediately took to the sky. "Greetings, Supreme Demon Crocodile!"

The creature opened its mouth, gulping down torrents of blood-sea water. "The Supreme One has decreed, there is a warning from heavens. A Celestial Demon has entered the world. Its eradication cannot be delayed."

One of the Supremes frowned. "What are the traits of this Celestial Demon?"

"A Blood Demon." The Demon Crocodile's voice echoed before it sank beneath the waves again.

After a hundred breaths, the sea finally calmed.

The Supremes looked at one another in confusion.

"What is this Blood Demon?"

"Does it have something to do with the demon spawn?"

They whispered guesses among themselves, but none dared question the Demon Crocodile, let alone disturb the Supreme One deep within the Blood Sea.

The Supreme One was not to be fathomed. They feared his power, not his virtue.