“Ah… Master… it’s so, so hot…”
“It feels… like I’m about to catch fire…”
Inside the dim ship’s cabin, Gu Qingying whimpered intermittently, her voice on the verge of tears, pleading with a trembling tone.
Beside her, Gong Shangyu’s situation was clearly even more intense.
“Ugh… Master… slower, please…”
“I really… can’t take it anymore…”
Gong Shangyu’s eyes shimmered, her breaths rapid.
Her usually gentle voice had turned husky and sweet, mixed with an unbearably delicate, plaintive tone.
“Ah… I can’t…”
“I can’t control it anymore… oh…”
Gong Shangyu felt her consciousness growing hazy.
The sensation of every limb and bone being forcibly filled and assailed by domineering power, the way that force surged and unblocked, mixed the ache of swollen Meridians with the strange pleasure brought by spiritual energy flowing through.
All together, it created a deeply contradictory, explosive experience inside her.
“Shut up! Endure it! It’ll be over soon!”
Lu Li bellowed, then poured the last of his spiritual energy from his palm into the two girls’ bodies, forcibly expelling the Pill Poison that had accumulated from their past medicinal intake.
Obviously, due to the cognitive modifications set by Gu Qingying, Lu Li failed to notice anything unusual about the two girls.
He simply thought his two disciples, pampered as they were, couldn’t handle the hardship of Body Refinement and clearing the Meridians.
Thus, faced with their alternating, strangely tinged pleas, Lu Li’s brows drew together as he sternly rebuked them.
“Hmph! Nonsense! The path of cultivation is no child’s play! If you can’t bear this bit of pain from cleansing the Meridians, how will you face the perils of Apotheosis in the future?”
“And besides, you are men—how can you cry out and shout like that? What a disgrace! All of you, endure it for your Master! Calm your minds and silently guide the medicinal power!”
With that, he channeled his spiritual energy even more intently.
Relying on the top-tier alchemical knowledge and experience the system had just bestowed upon him, he precisely located the subtle Pill Poison accumulated from improper pill use or cultivation in his two disciples, as well as the sluggish points within their Meridians.
He wielded his own spiritual energy as a chisel, forcibly dredging and stripping them clean.
Such a process, to the one enduring it, was nothing less than a blend of torture and ecstasy.
Those stubborn, blocked points, once forcibly cleared, brought razor-sharp pain—but after the pain faded, there followed an unprecedented feeling of ease and lightness.
Lu Li’s spiritual energy seemed to possess a kind of magic: every time it coursed and maneuvered, it teased and broke open the most sensitive, secret nodes in their Meridians.
As Lu Li’s spiritual energy surged, it suddenly burst through a crucial acupoint within Gong Shangyu’s body.
She couldn’t help but let out a sharp, piercing cry, her body convulsing so violently that she nearly collapsed backward, only for Lu Li to catch her just in time.
Gu Qingying fared no better.
As Lu Li helped her expel the last stubborn trace of Pill Poison, her whole body softened and slumped into her seat, gasping heavily for breath, her violet eyes shimmering with tears, her gaze even growing somewhat unfocused.
Looking at the two girls, sweat-soaked, faces flushed as if they’d just emerged from water, with streaks of black Pill Poison on their skin, Lu Li opened the apprentice-acceptance system.
He glanced at Gu Qingkong’s cultivation, which he’d forcibly raised to the ninth layer of Qi Refinement, and at Shang Baiyu, who was on the verge of breaking through to the middle stage of Foundation Establishment.
Satisfied with his series of “devil training” methods, and now regarded by the two girls as the true Devil King, Lu Li nodded approvingly.
He withdrew his hands, sensing that his own spiritual energy was almost entirely depleted, but his heart brimmed with accomplishment.
Hehe… if I keep training them like this, I’ll reach Golden Core in less than three days!
Hmph…
System!
You want to kill me?
No way!
Wiping sweat from his brow, Lu Li spoke in an unusually calm tone to the two girls.
“Mm, not bad. That’s enough for today’s training.”
“Baiyu, Qingying, you’ve exhausted yourselves and need to digest the medicinal power within. Stay here to recover and stabilize your Realm, and cleanse your bodies.”
With those words, Lu Li turned and left the ship’s cabin.
He, too, needed to hurry and meditate to restore his energy, and refine the Condensing Pill Powder that Gong Shangyu had given him earlier in preparation for the coming Core Formation.
The instant Lu Li rose and left the cabin, casually closing the spirit vessel’s door, the previously limp and flushed Gong Shangyu’s eyes suddenly flashed with a sharp, dangerous light.
Unable to restrain her body’s instincts, she activated her time-stop ability the moment Lu Li closed the door.
The entire cabin was instantly plunged into absolute stillness—even the air itself ceased to move.
“Oh my… haaa… I’m going to die!”
A sound, utterly different from before, filled with intense satisfaction and release, with a long, shuddering gasp and a drawn-out moan, suddenly burst from the depths of Gong Shangyu’s throat.
Gong Shangyu instantly collapsed from her seat, boneless, slumping onto the carpet, her body trembling faintly, the blush on her cheeks even more brilliant than the evening clouds.
“Hmph~ Hehe…”
Next to her, Gu Qingying—who’d experienced something similar with Lu Li atop the Severed Emotions Peak before—though limp as a rag, was clearly much more clear-headed.
Watching from a distance as Gong Shangyu utterly lost her composure, Gu Qingying couldn’t help but let out a series of gloating chuckles, her voice hoarse and lazy with post-event satisfaction.
“Hehe… So, how was it, dear Second Disciple?”
“Wasn’t it absolutely heavenly having Master personally clear your Meridians just now?”
“Hmph… That’s what you get for laughing at me earlier and refusing to help~”
Gong Shangyu’s breath came in ragged, uneven pants, and it was a while before she finally recovered.
When she finally raised her eyes to glare at Gu Qingying, her gaze was indescribably complex—shame, annoyance, even anger, but deep in her eyes there burned a different kind of flame: excitement.
Gong Shangyu gave a low snort.
Instead of retorting, she stuck out her tongue and seductively licked her dry, rosy lips, as if savoring something.
Her voice, still trembling slightly, was tinged with a strange undertone.
“What do you know… you little brat…”
“Ah~ This exquisite blend of agony and pleasure…”
“So this is what you sword cultivators enjoyed in your previous lives…”
“No wonder Eldest Senior Sister confessed to Master first. If I were treated like this every day, I couldn’t hold back either!”
“Sigh~ Too bad I was such a blockhead in my previous life, always shut away refining pills, ignorant of the world. If I’d known you all had this kind of ‘benefit’ with Master…”
“Pi li hei… gu mi wei wei.”
Gu Qingying glared at her disdainfully, unable to suppress a silly grin as she took in the dazed expression on Gong Shangyu’s face.
“Don’t make it sound so misleading! This was just a pure cleansing of the Meridians, that’s all!”
“Mm… yes, yes~ cleansing the Meridians~ but I really wish Master would touch me again…”
Gong Shangyu’s eyes were dreamy, her fingers unconsciously tracing the spot on her back where Lu Li’s palm had just pressed, as if she could still feel the dominating yet gentle touch, sending another subtle shiver through her body.
Gu Qingying watched her in this state, and the gloating on her face gradually faded, replaced by astonishment and a faint, inexplicable chill.
“This Gong Shangyu… could it be that Master has awakened some strange attribute in her?”
The thought sent a shiver down Gu Qingying’s spine.