That night, after her bath, Ling Yue didn’t drag her into the wedding chamber like before.
Instead, she carried Feng Ling straight into her own bedroom.
Ling Yue’s bedroom was a full size larger than Feng Ling’s.
As soon as Feng Ling entered, she noticed a black towel spread in the center of the bed, and next to it were two small glass bottles.
One bottle contained a colorless, transparent liquid.
The other held the Magic Crystal Salt from the previous wedding chamber.
And on the nightstand were the disassembled magic artifact remnants from the day before.
“Let’s play something simple today… I’ll apply oil and then sprinkle salt on you. Your only task is to maintain the posture I assign throughout this process.”
Ling Yue had her relax her limbs naturally and lie flat on the towel.
Then she picked up the colorless bottle and poured a bit onto her finger.
Next, using her oiled index finger, she drew a straight line slowly from the center of Xiao Fengling’s collarbone, going down through various places, and stopping right below her lower abdomen.
When the oil touched the skin, a fleeting coolness flashed for an instant, but it was quickly warmed by the skin’s temperature, turning into a thin, slippery film.
Slowly, Ling Yue pinched a small pinch of Magic Crystal Salt and sprinkled it along the oil line, starting from the collarbone.
When the salt grains landed on the oil line, they were immediately wrapped by the thin oil layer, making a faint sizzling sound on the skin.
A sensation of heat spread downward along that straight line, but it wasn’t a sudden scorching heat.
Instead, it advanced slowly, section by section, with each segment alternating between heat in the oil layer and the lingering coolness.
This temperature difference made Feng Ling’s abdominal muscles tighten uncontrollably, one contraction after another.
“Ah… ooh… hah… hoo… hah…”
“Don’t tense your abs. Relax.”
Ling Yue lightly pressed her finger above Feng Ling’s navel, the warmth of her fingertip stopping exactly at the midpoint of the oil line.
“The more you tense your abs, the easier the salt grains will slide to the sides. And if they slide to the sides, it won’t be a straight line anymore, so we’ll have to start over… Xiao Fengling, you don’t want to spend an extra two hours on this straight line tonight, do you?”
Hearing this, Feng Ling bit her lower lip and tried hard to relax her abdominal muscles.
That line, both hot and cold, now stopped exactly three finger-widths below her navel, like a fine needle slowly rolling across her skin.
But within the pain, there was also a kind of accumulating numbness building up.
Then, Ling Yue sprinkled salt onto the old bite mark.
After Feng Ling had steadied her breathing, she sprinkled another small pinch of new salt grains.
This time, without oil as a medium, the salt grains directly touched her skin.
The individual salt grains had almost no sensation when first sprinkled, until Ling Yue lowered her head and licked up the salt grains bit by bit.
Her tongue tip traced along the edge of the bite mark, slowly circling most of the way around.
As she licked, Feng Ling felt herself being pulled by both heat and suction at the same time.
The skin around the bite mark was licked into a small red patch.
“Ah… mm…”
Feng Ling’s fingers clenched tightly into the towel beneath her, and her heels rubbed against the bedsheet.
After that, Ling Yue licked off the salt grains still not fully melted that clung to her lips.
“The collarbone area is indeed much more sensitive than other places. The salt melts here twice as fast as on the belly, which means your skin temperature has regional differences here~”
“You… you’re using me as an experiment?”
Feng Ling’s eyes widened.
“It’s an experiment, but also a game~ OK, now I’m drawing the second line for you.”
This time, she drew it on the side of the left ribcage, starting from below the armpit and going downward.
After saying this, Ling Yue poured a little more oil onto her finger.
This line was a smooth curve, naturally arching along the contour of her ribs, extending all the way to the upper edge of the hip bone.
As the Magic Salt was sprinkled along the curve, the heat also spread along the arc’s curvature.
Moreover, the heat was more concentrated at the curved sections, while the middle of the arc was relatively mild.
“Curved places are hotter than straight ones… Are you testing the response of my skin curvature to heat distribution?”
Feng Ling asked again.
“That’s right~ Last time, the back of your knee was more sensitive than the front of your thigh, so I guessed it was related to skin curvature. Today, I’m verifying it. The side of the ribs has a large curvature, so heat concentrates; the belly is flat, so heat disperses evenly. When designing gameplay in the future, I might use this data~”
After speaking, Ling Yue added another small pinch of salt at the end of the arc.
Then she used her index finger to knead the salt grains and oil together until the oil and salt were completely mixed into a pale white paste.
Then she slowly spread this paste downward along the curve of the hip bone.
“Ah—haah!”
The moment the salty oil paste touched Feng Ling’s waist, her body jolted sharply, almost shaking Ling Yue’s finger off the arc.
If the ribs were a precise stimulation, then the nerve ending distribution here was completely different from the rib surface.
It was more like a dull, deep impact that spread all the way toward her upper thigh.
“Mm, this place is more sensitive.”
After that, Ling Yue pressed her clean finger above Feng Ling’s hip bone, feeling the frequency of the muscle spasms beneath the skin.
“It seems that the combination of curves plus joints is indeed a level higher in stimulation than the combination of straight lines plus smooth areas… Next time when designing Level 4, I’ll try to incorporate the direction of this arc~”
“What Level 4! The needles last time were already Level 4! This arc experiment isn’t Level 5, is it!”
Feng Ling shouted loudly upon hearing this.
“It’s not Level 5; it’s data collection for Level 4. Today was originally an experiment, and you didn’t refuse, so the data is valid.”
Ling Yue pulled her up from the towel, then picked up the towel and shook it a couple of times, shaking the remaining salt fragments into the trash can.
Then she patted the bedsheet, indicating that Feng Ling could go back to sleep now.
“What a hard life…”
However, when Feng Ling got up from the bed, her legs gave way and she almost fell to the floor.
But Ling Yue saw this, reached out, picked her up, and carried her back to her room’s bed.
Before leaving, the woman lightly bit Feng Ling’s neck again.
And after biting, she also tucked in the corner of the blanket for her.
“Good night, Xiao Fengling… If Tiancan Lili comes again tomorrow, remember to open the door for her~”
With that, she backed out of the room.
Xiao Fengling, whose whole body was too weak to move an inch, could only stare blankly at the ceiling, unable to even play games.
The way Ling Yue bit her just now was the lightest bite she had experienced since becoming a vampire—so light it seemed like just going through the motions.
Either Ling Yue was too exhausted today to bother with a real bite, or something else was occupying her mind.
Between these two possibilities, the second was clearly more likely.
Because earlier in Ling Yue’s bedroom, she noticed that among the artifact remnants spread out on the nightstand, two were connected together.
The fragments of Artifact A and Artifact B were stitched together by Ling Yue with a Magic Thread.
Next to them was a hand-drawn structural diagram.
Although she hadn’t seen it clearly, the diagram clearly depicted a circular Resonance Array.
Resonance Weakening.
A new magical tool obtained by the spy.
This term had been mentioned by Lili when she came last week.
Those Blood Prison people could use it to weaken a vampire’s Perception Field within five steps.
If this thing were used on the battlefield, when Ling Yue engaged an enemy, her Perception Range would be temporarily compressed.
And if the Perception Range was compressed, then Ling Yue’s monitoring of her would have a window of absence for a period of time.
This exactly matched what Lili had said earlier: “three to five minutes.”
After that, Feng Ling placed her hand on her chest and felt her own heartbeat.
Slower than a human’s, but still fast for a vampire.
And she noticed that when she was calculating these things, her heartbeat didn’t change at all.
Neither nervous, nor scared, and certainly not with that alertness of impending danger; instead, she was unusually calm.
Maybe it was because this plan had taken shape in her mind for too long.
So long that it had gone from a few lines on paper to a fixed schedule.
There were only two things she needed to confirm now.
What type of Resonance Weakening Artifact Lili would bring next time.
And also, how large a gap the rune on that door would reveal when the Barrier Core’s energy allocation deflected.
The next evening, another wave of invaders came to the castle’s perimeter.
Feng Ling, curled up on the sofa, activated her Reverse Perception fully.
She clearly detected that this time’s commotion was completely different from before.
The number of invaders hadn’t changed, but one of them was positioned particularly far back, keeping a longer distance than the others, and seemed to be holding something in their hand.
‘Wait… this thing… is it a pulse?’
She noticed that this thing emitted a pulse every nine seconds.
And each time the pulse hit the Outer Barrier, the magic density of the barrier seemed to decrease by a small amount.
This decrease was completely invisible to the naked eye and could only be caught by the Perception Field.
In other words, the thing in that person’s hand was weakening the barrier.
After that, Feng Ling quickly concentrated her mind and temporarily switched her Reverse Perception from Ling Yue to the person holding the artifact.
To be honest, this move was very risky because Ling Yue might notice the shift in her perception.
But the very second she switched, the pulse from that artifact suddenly intensified.
The person aimed the artifact at the outermost layer of the barrier and activated it abruptly.
Then, the perception image of the barrier in her mind shook violently.
The next second, the perception signal from a large area briefly disappeared…
Disappeared.
Feng Ling quickly opened her eyes and sat up from the sofa.
That blind spot just now lasted about six seconds.
During that time, she couldn’t receive any perception signals from that area.
That is to say…
Ling Yue couldn’t receive them either.
Although those six seconds were very short, they allowed her to find the pattern.
After Ling Yue entered combat state to face the enemy, her perception coverage would focus on the combat area, and her perception inside the castle would be relatively weakened.
If multiple artifacts were activated simultaneously at different locations on the barrier, there would be more than one blind spot, and the duration could also stack.
At that time, Ling Yue would be forced to handle multiple blind spots at greater distances simultaneously, and the perception inside the castle would drop to rock bottom…
‘Heh heh…’
If it really came to that point, then the runes on the door should be able to be scratched open by her fingernails.