Chapter 42:
Harem
THE ENTIRE DEMON PALACE was lavishly decorated, even the guest rooms.
The maidservant led Mo Tianliao to a guest room near Shidi’s rear palace. A walkway with upturned eaves stretched across the front of the room, offering him a panoramic view of the courtyard garden.
“Please rest well. If you need anything, just call for the maidservants outside your door.” The maidservant showed Mo Tianliao in and left.
Mo Tianliao surveyed the room’s furnishings. A dark red carpet covered the entire floor. Positioned by the window was a low and wide canopy-less bed with thick bedding and comfortable cushions—the kind of bed Shidi liked. The burly man disliked sheer curtains because he felt they were bothersome and effeminate. Every bedroom in the palace had this kind of low bed, where you could simply lie down and sleep.
Seeing the large, soft bed, the little fluffball sprang onto it and looked around for any strange smells or hidden weapons. Once satisfied, he lay down in the middle of the bed. As a precaution, Qingtong didn’t intend to change into human form, even if it was just the two of them here.
Mo Tianliao inspected the entire room but found no other arrays except for the defensive one at the entrance. He placed a few small magical artifacts in the corners of the room and erected an additional protective barrier at the doors and windows. Then, at last, he sprang onto the bed and buried his face in that snow-white fur.
With deadly accuracy, the white cat bit down on Mo Tianliao’s eyelid without even looking.
“Yeowch!” Rubbing his bitten eyelid, Mo Tianliao moved his face away pitifully and nuzzled up to the cat. “Pawpaw…”
The cat swatted him. Insolent disciple, what are you calling me?
“Shizun,” Mo Tianliao corrected himself, accurately reading the cat’s mood. “There’s only one bed tonight, so you’ll just have to put up with me.”
The cat flicked his tail and slept on, paying him no heed.
Is that an agreement? Mo Tianliao wondered with a grin as he moved onto the bed and gathered the cat into his arms. The little furball immediately sprang out of his arms and settled down again with his butt facing him.
“Still angry?” The thick-skinned Mo Tianliao snuggled up to him and poked the cat’s back with his nose. “We always kissed when you were little, and you didn’t ignore me then.”
Insolent disciple! How dare you bring that up! The cat glared at him. You took advantage of my young age to take liberties with me. Now that I’m no longer the naive youngster, I cannot allow you to—mmm…
His light eyes widened as Mo Tianliao gave his tiny, furry mouth a light peck.
“I didn’t mean to take liberties with you. I just like you too much.”
The cat had been about to bite him again, but now he looked up at him slowly, taken aback. Those deep, dark eyes, with a snow-white cat reflected in them, looked back at him with tenderness.
…Damn it, I’m not your pet!
And so, Mo Tianliao’s face was clawed to shreds again.
Mo Tianliao had learned his lesson. He kept his hands to himself and lay down obediently while His Feline Lordship climbed onto him and used him as a cushion.
A spirit beast could soothe an agitated or restless divine soul and suppress a cultivator’s inner demons, and the effect was far more potent if an evolved spirit beast was used as a vessel. Most spirit beasts were attractive in their human forms, besides. Some unorthodox cultivators were known to dual-cultivate with their soul beasts. These unorthodox cultivators followed their hearts, with some even openly embracing their proclivities in public without holding back. The hypocrites of the orthodox path, however, looked all prim and proper on the outside, treating the soul beasts they had signed blood pacts with as servants or attendants, but who could say whether they could resist the allure of the evolved spirit beasts in private? What really happened behind closed doors was another matter entirely.
Mo Tianliao gazed at the soundly sleeping cat on his chest with a conflicted expression. He’d claimed he’d only acted out of anxiety on the flying ship, but did he really have no ulterior motive? Those light, cool, thin lips… Just thinking about it made the sweet taste return with a vengeance. His heart fluttered.
He stroked the little cat on his chest, then smacked himself on the head. What was he thinking? Time to sleep!
Danger lurked everywhere in the demon palace, so Mo Tianliao couldn’t really fall into a deep sleep. Instead, he closed his eyes, regulated his breathing, and unleashed his divine sense to monitor movements within a third of a mile radius. The divine sense of a cultivator at the soul transformation stage could easily monitor the entire palace, but he couldn’t extend it too far, or he’d risk being discovered by Shidi. After all, he was just a foundation establishment cultivator who wouldn’t survive a punch from Shidi.
✦ ✦ ✦
THERE WERE NO UPDATES for a couple of days after Shidi left Mo Tianliao in the guest room, but Mo Tianliao wasn’t worried. Information he could buy with spiritual stones wouldn’t be hard for Lord Shidi to uncover. His fish had taken the bait, and there was no escape.
Mo Tianliao brewed a pot of tea and settled down at a stone table in the garden to watch his cat frolic.
Shidi was a boorish man with a taste for things he saw as refined and cultured. This garden was exquisitely designed, featuring stone tables and stools sculpted from fine white jade. The garden was filled with exotic flowers and plants, interspersed with century-old medicinal herbs. The small paths among the flowers were inlaid with round, shiny stones that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be spiritual stones.
It was like those wealthy landowners in the mortal world who built an exquisite garden of the sort you found in the households of the literati, only to completely defeat the purpose by paving the floors with copper coins for decoration.
The cat climbed to the top of a laurel tree and looked around, noticing a black figure slowly approaching from a short distance away.
Shidi was busy handling affairs, and Nightmare, feeling bored, had come over to look for the cat. It had been three centuries since they’d last met, and for all these years, he’d been the only lion in the palace. Occasionally there were other spirit beasts that Shidi gave to his subordinates as rewards, but they were all silly animals who were no fun to hang out with. Seeing the tiny ball of white on the branch, the lion promptly crouched low and hid among the dense flowerbeds. He inched forward slowly, closing the distance.
Mo Tianliao sat drinking his tea, although his divine sense wasn’t idle—he’d detected the lion long ago, but he wasn’t worried, considering his cat’s cultivation level. Feigning ignorance, he continued to sip his tea and gaze at the flowers.
“Mreoooow—” The cat, standing atop the tree, threw his head back and let loose a long yowl. Startled, the lion stumbled. With a shake of his fur, he sprang to the foot of the tree. The cat looked down at the lion from above and flicked his tail. The lion cocked his head and slowly extended his two paws forward before setting his head on his paws in a show of submission.
Mo Tianliao watched with curiosity. He knew Pawpaw wasn’t afraid of the demon lords’ soul beasts. He’d always thought that soul beasts with blood pacts simply didn’t harm others and had good tempers; he’d never known this was how they interacted with one another. A ten-foot-long lion lowering his head with paws outstretched to a palm-sized cat was an amusing sight no matter how you looked at it.
The cat leaped from the tree, landing precisely on the lion’s thick mane, and climbed up atop the lion’s head. Nightmare stood up and shook his body.
“Meow!” Pawpaw cried out—he was probably saying “giddy-up” or something, because the lion bounded out of the flowerbeds and trotted on with measured steps, ferrying the cat around.
The sight left Mo Tianliao dumbstruck.