Was the Good-Hearted Immortal Lord Fooled Today? - Chapter 2

Xie Jingci brought me back to the immortal sect.

For all his cold, stern words, he didn’t actually treat me harshly.

To temper his will, he went without sleep, spending every day meditating on a hard bed of ice. Yet he lined the temporary “doghouse” he’d made for me with layer upon layer of warm, soft quilts.

I tested his limits by refusing to eat fasting pills. He didn’t complain. Every day he took a detour to the disciples’ dining hall to fetch me a meal.

The standard two meat dishes and two vegetable dishes.

I ate the roast drumstick and meatballs and didn’t touch the vegetables.

Xie Jingci tapped the table. “Don’t waste food.”

So I nudged the lunch box toward him with my snout and let him have the chance to practice what he preached.

He looked at the food, then at me. I suppose he couldn’t understand how a creature that had been so hungry she’d thrown herself in his path could now have the nerve to be picky.

Still, when he saw how firmly I rejected the cabbage and radish, he picked up his bamboo chopsticks and ate both remaining dishes himself.

I watched him eat in silence. My understanding of him grew a little clearer.

Stodgy. Rule-bound. Stubborn. But strict with himself and generous with others.

Like that bed of ice, a man like him guarded his principles without a crack. Ordinary temptations would never sway him.

As long as I behaved and did nothing against his morals, Xie Jingci wouldn’t mind feeding me for a while.

But that wasn’t nearly enough.

With a relationship this distant, I’d never get him to give me his spiritual blood willingly before the poison finished me off.

How could I break through his defenses and become closer to him?

I lay in my spacious doghouse, swishing my tail with wicked intent, and searched the dusty corners of my memory. At last I remembered a secret art passed down among foxes.

It let a fox demon slip silently into another person’s consciousness regardless of any gap in cultivation, then magnify and spy on their most deeply suppressed desires.

If I could find a weak spot in Xie Jingci’s heart and use it…

I bared my big teeth in a grin, hopped out of the doghouse, and flicked the tip of my tail across his hand.

Xie Jingci felt no demonic power. The seal on my forehead, which he used to watch me, remained perfectly still. He thought nothing of it and merely plucked two fox hairs off the back of his hand.

“Stop pestering me. Go back to bed.”

I tipped up my face and made two obedient little whimpers before trotting back to my doghouse in tiny steps.

One *shichen* later, Xie Jingci still sat cross-legged on his icy bed like a beautiful jade statue. But his breathing gradually quickened, and his long, thick lashes began to tremble.

The secret art had worked.

Since this art had been handed down through generations of foxes, it naturally wasn’t anything respectable.

Ordinarily, it would briefly hold its victim in its grip. Inside the dream, the person’s self-control would fail, exposing the weakest place in their heart.

For these dignified, restrained cultivators, the desire they suppressed most deeply was usually lust.

Once that desire swelled beyond measure, a fox demon in their dreams could do as she pleased. A crook of her finger would be enough to devour a cultivator who remained chaste and self-controlled in waking life.

After tasting a moment of satisfaction in a dream, they’d crave more. Eventually, they would become playthings in a fox demon’s palm.

Clearly, it was a vicious technique.

Perfect for a villain like me!

Once Xie Jingci was under my control, getting a bowl of blood from him would be easy.

Full of hope for our bright future, I rubbed my paws together and plunged into his dream.

I’d expected to find him tormented by desire, driven to some pitiful, shameless plea for pleasure.

Instead, there was nothing indecent about the scene.

I didn’t even see Xie Jingci.

I saw only snow.

Endless, desolate snow, covering every trace of anything that might have been there.

I shook the flakes out of my fur in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? Is this man actually made of ice?”

Even holy monks and Buddhist disciples who claimed to be free of all worldly attachments revealed their ugliest desires under this art.

Could Xie Jingci really be so spotless, without a single human weakness?

Refusing to believe it, I dove into the snow and dug for whatever secret he’d buried there.

By the time all four of my limbs were numb with cold, I still hadn’t found a trace of him. It was as if, in his own subconscious, he was someone who had no right to exist.

But I did find something else.

A hollow deep beneath the snow.

From the bottomless ice cave came intermittent, shrill noises.

I crouched at its mouth and listened for a long while before realizing that the sounds were insults and reproaches, blurred almost beyond recognition.

An older voice blamed him: “They’re only possessions. If your junior brother needs them, what’s the harm in giving them up? So selfish and greedy. You’ve disappointed your master.”

A young, quacking voice abused him: “So what if you’re talented? A bastard with filthy blood is still a sinner, no matter how high his cultivation.”

Many more voices mingled with them—men and women, old and young, too tangled together to make out.

Suspicion, slander, mockery…not one friendly word.

I froze.

The deepest thing hidden inside the heart of the illustrious foremost disciple of the immortal sect wasn’t a dream of ascending to immortality, or an arrogance that placed him above everyone else. It wasn’t even the carnal desire I’d expected.

It was—a heap—of inexplicable abuse.

Had I braved snowflakes freezing onto my face just so I could get yelled at?

Couldn’t a person have a little more ambition than that?

This fox was furious!

The secret art hadn’t caught Xie Jingci out. It had only brought trouble on me.

When the dream ended, I was still lying in my doghouse in the waking world. I couldn’t hold back a thunderous sneeze.

It was loud enough to draw Xie Jingci’s attention.

I held my breath, clapped my paws over my snout, and played dead.

But he didn’t go back to meditating.

As if he’d noticed something was wrong, he rose with a frown and walked toward me.