Hooking Up
From the touch of her hand in mine, she was thinner than I expected for somebody blessed with the body of a seductress. Instead of letting her “weapons” distract me, I gently raised her hand to interlock our fingers, fingers raised toward the ceiling.
“What… is this about?” I could see the thin silver needle that was as visible as the moon in the dark room between our index fingers.
Unbothered, she frigidly, yet dimpling, replied, “How do I know if I can still trust you when you’ve been gone for so long? For all know, you might’ve switched sides.” The suspicion and aloof – perhaps condescending – tone was obvious to me.
Ah Neath’s idea had a fatal flaw: she didn’t know her Princess Consort and Baimu’s secret communication method. It was only natural for the Princess Consort to be alarmed when I welcomed myself into her room. Of course, I went along with the suggestion for my own reasons as well as because I disagreed with Ah Neath’s conjecture that her two enemies weren’t familiar with each other.
Ah Neath was oblivious to her Princess Consort’s plots for so many years. Therefore, the information she acquired, in addition to how she acquired it, had room for error.
Judging from the Princess Consort’s attitude toward Baimu just now, I confirmed they weren’t intimate to the point that they could unconditionally trust each other, but they weren’t as distant as Ah Neath assumed.
Taking a guess of how Baimu would respond, I flicked a villainous grin. “I could never bear to harm you.”
She let me pull her in close by the waist. Notwithstanding her barely-there attire, she maintained her regal demeanour. Her condescending attitude was the type that’d ignite a man’s desire to conquer her so that he could prove himself. As opposed to calling it a trap waiting to be sprung, it would be more apt to consider it a trap that actively baited its prey in.
When I instinctively stopped my hand, her lips preened. “You’ve grown more audacious, I see. Looks like it’s true that a man’s opponent can change him. Your brother’s return didn’t just scare you off and but also made your brain leak? You want to lay your hands on me now?”
“I don’t want to hear about him unless you want everyone in the palace to talk about Baimu leaving your residential palace tomorrow,” I grouched.
“You would dare speak to me in that tone?” Princess Consort narrowed her eyes.
I maintained a firm stance: “Say what you want, but don’t mention Feng Xue to me.”
It was acceptable for people to be beside themselves when angry, so she nodded gently. “I beg your pardon. Now, it’s time for you to explain why you came in without having someone notify me beforehand.”
Based on her tone, she and Baimu were pretty much superior and subordinate, respectively. If the two were subordinates, then they had to be serving the same individual. To speak more plainly, someone had been driving the contest for power in Baimu state from beginning to end.
“Why aren’t you answering?”
“I need reinforcements… Heisina Tribe is too strong.”
“What?”
“In spite of my efforts, my campaign to squash Heisina Tribe has been unsuccessful.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” She probably couldn’t have been any more disillusioned than that. “Heisina is trivial; Beussent is the important one. Heisina Tribe will stop clamouring to raid Nieyao once Beussent is dead. Just kill him. Why can’t you complete such a simple task?”
I analysed the response in the shortest time feasible and then questioned, “Why Nieyao? I don’t understand why a ruin is so important.”
“You don’t need to understand,” she asserted authoritatively. “It’s His Eminence’s orders. We’re merely hands and feet. Our job is to carry out his will. Just bear in mind that Nieyao is important to him.”
I still couldn’t name what was the connection between Nieyao, the beast dwelling within and this machination. What I just heard was important intelligence, nevertheless. If nothing else, I learnt that the powerbrokers of Nanjiang hadn’t just tossed Nieyao out of their minds. By the sounds of it, they had been eyeing it. Rather, they were planning to take the power inside of Nieyao for their own ends out of ignorance and imprudence.
“Regardless, I need reinforcements. Beussent’s new ally has bolstered his forces beyond the threshold I can handle.”
“An ally? Who? … Don’t tell it’s Heavenly Swordsman.”
Luo Ming? Why is he the first one to come to mind?
She looked certain about her guess, so I pandered to her. “It is Luo Ming. I can’t beat both of them. You should know now why I returned. This is urgent.”
“… I need to report this to Wanyu Peak. If Martial Paragon and Heavenly Swordsman are both here, they might ruin our plans. Ah Neath is only growing older by the day. If she finds out the truth behind Baimu, she may pardon Heisina Tribe. His Eminence wouldn’t want that. Leave now. I must change.”
I had achieved more than I bargained for. Howbeit, I still had something to confirm, so out came a salacious grin. “Can’t let me watch you change?”
She quickly switched from exasperation to a prolonged stare: “Feng Gu, again? You’re the one who refused to be my puppet. I don’t mind giving you ‘attention’, but you know what that implies.” While she didn’t change her visage, her gaze did start oozing uncontainable lust.
While others may not be privy of what she was alluding to, I understood. My gut feeling was on the dot. “You people of Autumn Water Sword Sect really are tigresses who eat people whole.”
Baimu’s Princess Consort, also known as Autumn Water Sword Sect’s matriarch, Qiushui, pursed her upwardly curved lips. “Sounds like you haven’t forgotten how scary I can be.”
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