Then Ling Yue picked up the Seven-Colored Ribbon again.
However, this time she didn’t tie Feng Ling’s wrists.
Instead, she looped the ribbon around the back of her neck, letting the ends hang down to the front of her collarbones from both sides of her neck, then crossed them in the middle of her collarbones, wrapped them behind her back, and tied them into a bow there.
As soon as the Golden Runes on the ribbon touched her skin, they began to work.
“It’s dark red now… which means she’s very nervous.”
Ling Yue pulled one end of the ribbon out of the bow a little, letting the tail end just hang behind Feng Ling’s waist.
Then she opened the transparent bottle, pinched a small pinch of Magic Salt with her fingertips, sprinkled it on her own palm, and smiled.
“The third piece is starting to take effect, okay?”
Then she pressed her palm against the space between Feng Ling’s shoulder blades.
As soon as the Magic Salt touched the tiny beads of sweat remaining on the skin of her back, it instantly began to heat up.
This temperature formed a sharp contrast with the coolness of Ling Yue’s palm itself.
The heat spread from the center of the shoulder blades along the muscle fiber bundles.
Yet Ling Yue’s fingers slowly scraped across the center of the heat.
The skin, additionally stimulated by the Hairpin, quickly responded to this scrape with a dual chord of color and sensation…
At the same time, the ribbon jumped from dark red to bright red.
Feng Ling pressed her face firmly into the pillow.
Most of the strange sounds were absorbed by the pillow, but quite a bit still escaped.
“Ah… Mm… Ha… Ah ha…”
The salt heat on her shoulder blades continuously gathered from the edges toward the center, and Ling Yue’s hand scraped over the focal point of the gathered heat, sometimes lightly, sometimes heavily.
At this moment, her breathing frequency was shattered into three segments.
Then Ling Yue sprinkled a small pinch of salt on the back of her knee, and with her fingers, traced a small circle on the inner side of her knee along the lymphatic direction.
Once the Magic Salt came into contact with the slight sweat, the skin on that circle of knee quickly turned a large patch of red.
Under the combined effects of the heat and the light scraping, Feng Ling’s entire leg spread an undeniable numbness from the back of the knee up to the thigh.
Meanwhile, the ribbon silently jumped to pink during this process.
Then, before the salt heat on her shoulder blades had completely subsided, Ling Yue sprinkled a third pinch of salt on the upper part of her calf, right on top of the most bulging muscle.
And then she used the tip of her tongue to lightly trace over the salt layer, following the rhythm of the salt’s evaporation.
“It’s purple now~”
Ling Yue looked at the ribbon and said softly.
“Your ribbon just jumped to purple in that instant.”
“Wha—what? Jumped to purple?”
Feng Ling turned half her face out of the pillow.
“It only lasted less than a second before jumping back to pink… It seems that the state corresponding to purple requires sustained stimulation to maintain.”
Ling Yue gently tugged at the bow, then turned Feng Ling over.
At this point, the interlaced salt marks on Feng Ling’s back were still faintly warm.
She lay back on the silver-gray bedsheet, panting for a while.
The ribbon bow at the center of her collarbones had already jumped back to orange.
“So what exactly is purple?”
Feng Ling asked again.
“When you can maintain that color for more than ten seconds, Sister will tell you. If I ask now, it’ll scare you.”
After saying this, Ling Yue capped the transparent bottle and placed it on the shelf, then untied the ribbon bow and put it back in the box, and also helped remove the Hairpin from behind her ear.
The moment the Hairpin was removed, Feng Ling felt as though the entire left side of her scalp and neck—like a golden headband that had suppressed her for five thousand years—was finally released at that moment.
Along with the disappearance of the oppressive feeling, a wave of warmth and relaxing comfort surged up.
Then Ling Yue picked her up and headed toward the bathroom.
“Today’s test is complete… All the colors of the Seven-Colored Ribbon have lit up once, and the enhancement effect of the Hairpin is very stable. Next time, we can use a more complex composite arrangement. You take a bath first. I’ll go warm some blood for you.”
“So… after purple lit up, what are you planning to do?”
Feng Ling was still a bit worried about this mysterious purple, because her sixth sense told her it was definitely nothing good.
But Ling Yue just blinked and uttered the classic line:
“Secret.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
Feng Ling then buried her face into the foam on the edge of the bathtub.
Over the next few days, the frequency of that “cat scratching a screen” sound that Tiancan Lili had mentioned coming from outside the castle increased noticeably.
It went from once a night to two or three times a night, and sometimes even hit a wave in the early morning.
However, the composition of those invaders didn’t change much.
Most were still scouts from the Eternal Blood Prison, with a few from unknown factions.
Lili hadn’t shown up again since she greeted them last time, but the fragment she left behind was placed by Ling Yue in the studio on the third floor, together with the barrier structure diagrams from before.
Once, when Ling Yue went out to fight the enemy, Feng Ling sneaked into the studio, but she saw that Ling Yue had spread out three different ancient books beside the fragment, and each book was opened to the same page.
The pattern drawn on that page was highly similar to the lines on the fragment.
Unfortunately, before she could read more pages of the ancient books, Ling Yue’s Perception Field began to rapidly contract.
She had to put everything back in place before Ling Yue returned to the castle, then curl up on the sofa as usual.
This afternoon, Ling Yue went out to clean up the invaders.
In the Reverse Perception, Feng Ling saw Ling Yue’s Red Mist silhouette stop about five hundred meters outside the mountain and engage with six energy silhouettes.
These guys were completely different from the previous small fry; their magic power level was at least two grades higher.
Moreover, the Magic Patterns of the three were cooperating with each other, forming some kind of Combined Attack Formation.
Although Ling Yue wasn’t struggling to handle them, she was still delayed.
“This is the small window I’ve been waiting for!”
So, she put down the controller, closed her eyes, and used the minimum Reverse Perception to locate…
Ling Yue was still outside, in the final stage of the battle, probably three or four minutes away from returning to the castle.
Then she quickly took out the bottle of “Original Blood Seal Removal Agent” from the bedside table drawer and placed it on the desk.
She also took out her notebook and flipped to the page with the Magic Circle structure diagram.
One drop of fresh blood from the caster…
She had tried to get blood a few times before when Ling Yue wasn’t paying attention, but Ling Yue’s regeneration speed was too fast; the wound disappeared instantly.
This time, she needed to think of a more direct method.
It couldn’t be a sneak attack, because she couldn’t win a fight…
It also couldn’t be taking blood while Ling Yue was asleep, because Ling Yue would wake up the moment she sensed Feng Ling approaching.
So there was only one option left…
Make Ling Yue willingly give her blood.
Feng Ling put the small bottle containing the golden liquid back into the drawer and flipped through the parchment with the structure plan.
The room on the third floor was marked with the words “Barrier Core,” and in the corner of the room, a small symbol was circled in red pen, with the annotation “Main Control Node.”
If she could enter that room and touch the Main Control Node, she might be able to temporarily disable the barrier defense of the entire castle.
Even if it only failed for a few dozen seconds… that would be enough for her to do many things.
She curled back up on the sofa, picked up the Switch, and continued the shrine puzzle from last time.
But after pushing three rocks, she put down the controller again, went to the kitchen, poured a glass of blood, drank half of it while looking up, and then placed the cup on the coffee table.
The sound of the cup bottom hitting the coffee table wasn’t very loud, but it was unusually clear in this living room, which was so quiet that even the hum of the barrier could be heard.
When Ling Yue pushed open the door and returned, Feng Ling was watching the cutscene on the screen.
“Today was longer than usual, Sister Ling Yue.”
Feng Ling said without lifting her head.
“Today’s dishes just had nine more steps than usual.”
Ling Yue took off her coat, which was stained with battle marks, revealing the pristine white shirt underneath that was always spotless.
Then she sidestepped around the back of the sofa, leaned down, and kissed the top of Feng Ling’s head.
“What do you want to eat tonight?”
“Whatever… Oh, by the way, the red sauce from last time was really too thick. Can you make it a little thinner today, just a tiny bit?”
“Okay.”
Then Ling Yue turned and walked toward the kitchen.
Feng Ling stared at Ling Yue’s lower back for a long time, until a certain moment, then she withdrew her gaze and focused on the screen, where the reset record of the already cleared shrine was displayed.
She silently pulled up her own calendar through the controller.
In tonight’s plan column, she only typed a small line:
“Get fresh blood.”