Chapter Index

    Lu Yi was also thinking.

    Could it be that Xie Rong was so eager to tell others he was different, so eager to declare his sovereignty?

    He was so fierce during the day, yet he was harboring such petty thoughts in his heart.

    Lu Yi’s knuckles, resting on the door frame, trembled slightly. The corners of his lips curled up, only to be forcibly flattened by him.

    It must be the love Gu at work, making him taste a hint of sweetness.

    “System, what about the Pain Value?” Xie Rong waited for a long time, and when he didn’t hear the system’s prompt, he grew impatient.

    Host, the protagonist’s Pain Value hasn’t increased.

    Impossible!

    He deliberately let the people from Upper Cloud Capital witness Lu Yi becoming a cut-sleeve, colluding with the heinous villain on the same bed, just to make Lu Yi taste the pain of losing face and having his reputation destroyed.

    How could a righteous protagonist endure being forcibly humiliated and then caught in the act?

    If this matter spread, even before the Emperor, Lu Yi would be convicted. No one would believe Lu Yi was innocent.

    Xie Rong’s fingertips turned white, and he snapped the folding fan with uncontrolled force. His black-purple heterochromatic eyes were dark and deep, allowing no candlelight to penetrate.

    Where exactly did things go wrong?

    Whether it was refining Gu or faking being a cut-sleeve, Xie Rong could grasp it just by flipping through a book.

    But he didn’t understand why cut-sleeves would inevitably engage in intimate physical contact, nor could he comprehend what it meant to be passionately entangled in love.

    The book simply taught him to do this and taught him to do that, so he did it all.

    He didn’t understand what propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame were, or what it meant to be frivolous and vulgar.

    Kissing a man or lifting his robes in front of a man was merely a means to an end.

    Who knows what he’s thinking, hehe. The system added sarcastically.

    Xie Rong got off the bed and walked up to Lu Yi, grabbing his lapel and forcing him to lower his head.

    “I deliberately called him to see,”

    He raised an eyebrow smugly, his red lips opening and closing, every soft word laced with poison.

    “…”

    Lu Yi was silent for a moment, then turned his head, revealing slightly red ear tips, and said dryly, “As long as you’re happy.”

    Xie Rong: “…”

    Xie Rong used brute force, slapped him across the face, then pulled out the long whip from his waist and drove Lu Yi out of the Bamboo Hut.

    “Aren’t you going to scram? Do you want to be like him too?” He pursed his swollen lips, his eyes filled with accumulated frustration. He glanced sideways at Jin Jiuzhou, who was still standing there, and casually flicked his whip.

    Jin Jiuzhou froze.

    Like Lu Yi? Like Lu Yi kissing?

    Jin Jiuzhou’s face flushed crimson.

    This demon truly had no shame.

    “I don’t want to!” Jin Jiuzhou said, then fled in panic.

    The protagonist’s Pain Value is already 69! Host is super amazing!

    The white slime gently rubbed Xie Rong’s cheek.

    Xie Rong was expressionless and turned back to the bed.

    He closed his eyes and finally managed to cultivate a sliver of sleepiness, when he suddenly heard the system prompt.

    Protagonist Pain Value +1

    Xie Rong opened his eyes and waited for a few breaths.

    Protagonist Pain Value +1

    A few more breaths passed.

    Protagonist Pain Value +1

    Xie Rong sat up, frowned, grabbed the white slime beside his pillow, and shook it.

    What was this Lu Yi fellow doing, hurting so much in the middle of the night?

    “What’s going on?”

    The system is definitely not malfunctioning. Whether the protagonist is malfunctioning, the system wouldn’t know.

    Protagonist Pain Value +1! Current Protagonist Pain Value is 73!

    It was a good thing that the Pain Value was increasing, Xie Rong thought, and let it go.

    Perhaps Lu Yi had come to his senses and realized his reputation was about to be ruined?

    Xie Rong snorted coldly, relaxed, and lay down to sleep.

    The system bounced and hopped into his arms.

    In the following days, Xie Rong continued to humiliate Lu Yi as he pleased.

    However, the Pain Value would not fluctuate at all during the day. Only in the dead of night, when Xie Rong was drowsy, would it increase sporadically, little by little.

    Sometimes Xie Rong would be sleeping soundly and be woken up by the system prompt.

    Xie Rong was greatly annoyed and ordered someone to bring the fellow over.

    It was late at night. Xie Rong sat on the bed without his outer robe, his fringe covering half his eyes. His expression was irritable and restless. He repeatedly tied and untied the green snake on his wrist.

    “Valley Master, the person has been brought.” Lu Yi was pushed into the Bamboo Hut. He looked up and saw the figure hidden behind the hanging gauze curtains.

    “Come here.” The person behind the curtains said softly.

    Lu Yi strode over with his long legs, though his walking posture was slightly awkward.

    He walked to the side of the bed and knelt down, suddenly realizing: when did he, who was always neither humble nor arrogant even before the Emperor, become so accustomed to kneeling before this demon?

    The night wind seeped in through the slightly ajar window, blowing open a gap in the gauze curtains. A subtle fragrance also drifted out, wantonly teasing Lu Yi’s nose.

    Lu Yi’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He watched the jade-white hand pull aside the curtain, seemingly about to stroke him. He instinctively leaned closer.

    “You’re very uncomfortable at night?” The hand reached out and gripped his throat.

    Xie Rong’s palm skin was delicate but chillingly cold. The back of his hand was very pale, his fingers slender, devoid of any color in the night. His voice was soft and deliberately lowered, like a banshee coming to claim a soul in the middle of the night.

    Lu Yi’s body stiffened. He suddenly looked up at him, seeming somewhat embarrassed to speak. “How… how did you know?”

    These past few days, he had been relieving himself every night, yet he could never fully resolve the discomfort. During the day, he was constantly provoked and seduced by this demon in public, regardless of the occasion, and he was gradually unable to suppress it.

    He was a normal man, and he had been poisoned with a Gu. Even if he wasn’t a cut-sleeve, who could endure being treated like this?

    “In Miedie Valley, there is nothing I don’t know,” Xie Rong lowered his head, meeting Lu Yi’s eyes, exhaling a fragrant breath. “Tell me your pain. I want to taste it too.”

    The hair at his temples fell, covering his crescent moon birthmark, which only made people want to explore it more, to touch it, to make that crescent moon turn redder.

    Lu Yi’s gaze unconsciously drifted to the crescent moon on his cheekbone.

    Though his neck was still being squeezed, making it hard to breathe, he gradually became mesmerized. He opened his voice hoarsely, “Alright.”

    Xie Rong tilted his head and smiled at him, tightening his fingers, enjoying the sight of the man nearing suffocation.

    Lu Yi’s face was flushed, his pupils dilated. The pain of suffocation gradually dissipated, replaced by a strange euphoria, as if floating on a cloud.

    The joy granted by Xie Rong.

    Just as he was about to lose all hearing, the hand caressing his neck released him.

    Lu Yi collapsed by the side of the bed, gasping for breath.

    “Still uncomfortable?” Xie Rong stroked his head.

    Lu Yi shook his head. Thinking of something, he asked in a low voice, “You know who is uncomfortable in the Valley, and you treat everyone this way?”

    Calling someone to the side of the bed in the middle of the night, two men alone, dressed so thinly, and asking if the other person is uncomfortable.

    When that kind of discomfort arose, was he planning to help treat it?

    “Who allowed you to question me?” Xie Rong said coldly. “From today onward, you will sleep here.”

    This way, he could keep an eye on how painful and uncomfortable Lu Yi truly was, and also ruin Lu Yi’s reputation—killing two birds with one stone.

    Xie Rong lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes to sleep.

    Outside the gauze curtain, the bloodshot in Lu Yi’s eyes did not fade but intensified. While relieving himself, he slowly lowered his head and kissed the back of the demon’s hand through the thin, hanging veil.

    He had been taught since childhood by his father to be upright and honorable, to hate evil like fire, not to bow to the powerful, and to join the Falcon Guard only to bring corrupt officials to justice.

    At this moment, however, he was violating his ancestral teachings, foolishly licking and kissing the spaces between an evildoer’s fingers, just to satisfy his private desires.

    Note