Reborn to Save the Obsessive Villain - Chapter 3

Xiao Jingzhe carried me back to his sleeping quarters and threw me onto the bed again.

I sniffled. “Xiao Jingzhe, I’m the Demon Lord’s daughter. My name is Gu Xiaoyuan. You can ask my dad for a ransom. He’s loaded. Five million spirit stones would be no problem.”

“Gu Xiaoyuan.”

He repeated my name. For some reason, it sounded especially lovely when he said it.

“How old are you?”

Awkward. “Eigh… Eighteen,” I said guiltily.

“Hmm?”

“Twenty-eight. Older women are better!”

Xiao Jingzhe had made his name at fourteen and become master of Xuanguang Sect at sixteen.

He was only twenty-one this year. When I first slept with him, he’d just turned eighteen.

He touched two fingers to my forehead, revealing the Eight Characters of my birth date and time.

“You’re already seventy-nine… I could give you an eightieth-birthday celebration.”

Now I was angry. No woman in any of the three realms could accept being called old.

“Demons don’t come of age until a hundred. But if Sect Master Xiao wants to call me Grandma, I won’t object.”

He let the subject drop. Sitting cross-legged beside me, he entered meditation to stabilize the spiritual energy I’d disrupted.

In my previous life, he’d received a fortuitous opportunity at twenty-one, and his cultivation had soared.

After that, I wouldn’t be a match for him.

I’d already missed one opportunity. I didn’t have much time left.

Relying on my considerable arm strength, I quietly crawled off the bed.

There I was, crawling along furtively.

Suddenly, Xiao Jingzhe turned his spiritual energy into threads. They sank into every limb and bone in my body.

I became his marionette, crawling back to his side in a furtive, contorted heap.

“Xiao Jingzhe,” I whined, “what I did these past three years was wrong. I know that now. Can’t you let me go?”

“No.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Stay beside me until the day I’m willing to let you leave.”

“Ha! Can’t bear to part with me. I knew you were madly in love.”

He looked at me without emotion. “Gu Xiaoyuan, I need you to help me overcome romantic attachment. Passing that trial is cultivation too.”

“How does that work? I keep using dual cultivation to stir your vital essence, and if Little Jingzhe doesn’t respond, you’ve passed?”

I was deliberately teasing him. I expected his ears to turn red, just like before.

They didn’t.

Xiao Jingzhe withdrew the threads controlling my hands.

“That will do. Begin.”

I was so shocked I sprouted a double chin.

He’d grown up. He wasn’t so easy to bully anymore.

My fingers traced from his chest to his abdomen as I cast a spell to stir his vital essence.

Eyes closed, he sat in meditation, resisting desire.

But he couldn’t keep it from his eyes.

I leaned to his ear and said smugly, “Little Jingzhe still likes me very much.”

He caught my wrist, interrupting the spell.

“Try again. Without magic.”

My face turned scarlet. “That costs extra!”

After I was paralyzed, Xiao Jingzhe controlled me with threads, then made them invisible.

To outsiders, I seemed to move freely.

In reality, if he wanted me to go east, I couldn’t go west.

The bastard made me sweep floors, wipe tables, grind ink, and pour tea.

He insisted that I do things he could do himself.

And things I could do, he insisted on doing for me.

He particularly liked changing my clothes, combing my hair, and painting my brows.

One small comfort: his threads helped me repair my spiritual meridians.

So I behaved myself around him.

Once my meridians were repaired, I’d find a way to take his cultivation again.

The sect was a quiet, peaceful place.

I liked a bit of excitement. After a few uneventful days, I was itching all over.

“Xiao Jingzhe, I’m so bored. Could you get an opera troupe to entertain me?”

He sat in meditation and ignored me.

“Hmph. You’re too dull. I can’t live with you.”

He opened his eyes and ordered a disciple to find an opera troupe.

The disciple stared at him in shock, apparently convinced their aloof sect master had been possessed.

Singers warbled onstage amid clanging gongs and beating drums. It was wonderfully lively.

Xiao Jingzhe and I sat below the stage to watch.

He withdrew the threads from my hands and the back of my neck, allowing me a tiny bit of freedom.

I held a pastry to his mouth. “Xiao Jingzhe, stop spending every waking moment pursuing immortality and the Dao. Enjoy life a little. Then you won’t have lived for nothing.”

He glanced at me and ate the pastry from my hand.

“Mm. You’re right.”

I froze. His tongue had brushed my finger.

Remembering our three years of dual cultivation, I felt my ears grow warm.

Not far away, Zhou Ling’er watched me with her arms crossed and contempt in her eyes. Her expression practically shouted, “That demon woman is at it again, seducing my innocent, kindhearted senior brother who’s never been in love.”

I loved teasing these earnest sect people.

I blew her a kiss and pitched my voice high and sweet. “Sister Ling’er, have you heard? Among demons, two women can do dual cultivation too. You’re so beautiful. I wouldn’t be opposed.”

Blushing, Zhou Ling’er flew away on her sword. It wobbled and shook in the air, hardly flying straight at all.

I pounded the table with laughter.

Xiao Jingzhe made me stand and took me away.

“Don’t go! The opera isn’t over!”

“Someone escort the troupe down the mountain.”

“Why? How can you change your mind so fast…?”

He abruptly tugged a thread. I plunged into his arms.

“Gu Xiaoyuan, flirt indiscriminately again and you’ll spend the rest of your life paralyzed in bed.”

“All right, all right, I was wrong. Don’t be mad.”

Not only was the opera gone, he also punished me by making me copy the Dao De Jing a hundred times.

Sure enough, I couldn’t live with this man.