The next afternoon, Ling Yue called Xiao Fengling to the wedding chamber again.
“Let’s switch to the fourth level today.”
Ling Yue took a long, thin silver needle and two small clips from the shelf and placed them on the nightstand.
Then she pulled two even smaller silver bells from the drawer, ones that were tinier than the last ones she’d shown.
“Then what’s the third level?”
Fengling swallowed a mouthful of saliva, her heart pounding as she stared at the small bells that jingled faintly with Ling Yue’s movements.
“The third level is skipped. It requires cooperating with your seven-colored ribbon, but Sister hasn’t tied the ribbon on you yet today… The fourth level is very simple. First, I’ll put these on you, and then you start running. Run around the bed in the wedding chamber as fast as you can. For every one that falls off, I’ll add an extra minor punishment.”
Ling Yue held the lower half of the silver needle between her index and middle fingers, smiling as she spoke.
“What if they all fall off?” Fengling asked tentatively.
“If they all fall off, then that’s five extra punishments, plus the fifth level will be unlocked directly today.”
Ling Yue grinned like a little demon.
Fengling looked at the silver needle and the two clips, swallowed again, and continued asking, “Then… can I use today’s right of refusal?”
“You can~ of course you can. But do you really want to use it here? I remember you haven’t had enough breakfast today, right? You only drank one cup of blood earlier, so your stomach must still be hungry. If you say no now, Sister will go back to the kitchen to cook… and postpone this fourth level until tonight.”
“If we play tonight, time will be more abundant. Sister will take the time to turn on all the timing tools in the wedding chamber, making sure each step lasts long enough. What do you think?”
Ling Yue tilted her head, returning the choice to Fengling.
Hearing this, Fengling’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
‘Forget it! Better to die early than suffer later!’
‘If we play tonight, given Sister Ling Yue’s usual style, she’ll definitely maximize the “abundant time” to the extreme.’
‘And I’ve suffered from that before.’
‘Once, Ling Yue said she had time tonight and could take it slow, and that night I was tormented from eight in the evening until five the next morning.’
‘So it’s more cost-effective to settle this now.’
“Let’s play now.”
Fengling said in a low voice.
“Alright.”
Ling Yue beckoned, signaling Fengling to lie down on the bed.
Then, Ling Yue pierced the silver needle into three spots on Fengling’s body, making small pinholes, and clipped the clips onto the skin next to each pinhole.
Finally, she tied a bell to the end of each clip and gently flicked the edge of the bells, making them all ring.
The delicate, crisp jingling was especially clear in the quiet wedding chamber.
And with each ring, the tips of Fengling’s ears twitched slightly.
“Alright, now start running… When the ringing stops, that means the clip fell off. Count how many you have left as you run. For each one that falls, I’ll mark it down.”
Ling Yue retreated to the foot of the bed, crossed her arms, and leaned against the bedpost.
The light from the red light orbs spilled onto her shoulders and the side of her face, illuminating that beautiful half of her face with both gentleness and danger.
Fengling took a deep breath, then ran clockwise around the bed twice.
Her speed was about that of a normal human sprinting.
The clips swayed with the movement of her body as she ran, and the sound of the bells rang in her ears the whole time.
As for the clip on her waist, it was fine during the first lap.
But in the second half of the second lap, just as she turned past the nightstand and suddenly accelerated, the skin on her waist was pulled by the spring of the clip, causing it to loosen from her skin and fall onto the carpet.
The bell bounced on the carpet, let out one last jingle, and then fell silent.
“One fell. Good, keep going.”
Ling Yue said with a smile.
Next, Fengling gritted her teeth and continued running.
The third bell slipped off as she took the fourth turn, falling at Ling Yue’s feet.
Ling Yue bent down, picked up the bell, weighed it in her palm, and then crooked her finger at Fengling.
“Two have fallen now. According to the agreement, that’s four extras~ And the first one is on the collarbone.”
After putting the bell back on the nightstand, Ling Yue took a small hook needle with a silver ring at the end from the shelf and turned to look at Fengling.
“Hiss— hoo… ha…”
The instant the silver needle pierced in, Fengling’s shoulder jerked violently.
Although the needle tip didn’t go too deep—just piercing through the skin surface into the subcutaneous tissue—the spot Ling Yue chose was close to the collarbone membrane, where nerve endings are extremely dense.
With every millimeter the silver needle advanced, her neck involuntarily arched back.
And the clip was still clamped directly above the puncture point, the spring tension pulling the surrounding skin slightly taut.
“Two clips, two extras… That’s the first two~” Ling Yue adjusted the angle of the clip beside the pinhole to ensure it wouldn’t slip off from Fengling’s movements.
Then she stepped back and flicked the small ring with her fingertip.
“The third clip didn’t fall… but you slowed down in the middle of the third lap. Does slowing down count as a voluntary forfeit? The rule says ‘run as fast as you can.’ Slowing down deliberately is a violation. So the third lap counts as a voluntary forfeit, meaning one more extra.”
Huh?
What the hell is this bitch saying?
Isn’t she just finding an excuse to keep toying with me?
Fengling cursed relentlessly in her mind.
Ling Yue took out a second silver needle and spun it lightly in her hand.
“Three extras… This time it’s the ribs.”
The needle tip parted the skin and continued to advance.
This spot was a region that moved slightly with every breath.
With the silver needle embedded inside, Fengling could feel the needle body quiver faintly with each inhalation, and the amplitude was just enough to be restrained by the spring force of the clip.
Fengling slowly exhaled.
‘That’s two done. Two more to go, plus that unrevealed fifth one.’
‘Ugh… This punishment game is not fun at all… And it’s completely meaningless! This is just to satisfy Ling Yue’s desires!’
“The fourth and final extra is on the earlobe.”
Ling Yue’s third silver needle first twisted lightly between her fingers, spinning half a turn, before piercing it into the outer edge of Xiao Fengling’s right earlobe.
“Sister Ling Yue! Are you piercing my ears?!”
The thickness of the earlobe was only a few millimeters.
Ling Yue’s needle tip entered diagonally from the outside of the earlobe, just poking through to the inside.
Then, Ling Yue clamped the clip there.
The earlobe itself couldn’t bear much pressure, so the force of this clip was adjusted to be lighter than the others.
But precisely because it was light, the presence of the clip felt even stronger.
Now, with every breath she took, all three implements were pulled simultaneously.
“The extra round is over… Now we enter the fifth punishment round.”
“This is the last and most special one… So be prepared.”
Ling Yue took a black silk scarf from the shelf, covered Fengling’s eyes with it, and tied a knot at the back of her head.
In an instant, Fengling’s vision plunged into darkness.
The wedding chamber wasn’t completely dark.
The light from the red orbs filtered through the scarf, leaving a very faint pinkish glow on her retina.
But she couldn’t see anything specific at all.
Then, she heard the jingling of small metal rings colliding.
‘Is that the fifth tool?’
‘Wait! Where did Ling Yue put it?’
Ling Yue placed the tool right in the center of Fengling’s belly.
The silver needle pierced in three millimeters, and the clip was positioned right over it.
Fengling’s abdomen reflexively tightened, and the outline of her abdominal muscles formed two shallow curves on either side of her navel.
Now blindfolded, she couldn’t see anything; she could only rely on touch to judge Ling Yue’s next move.
But Ling Yue deliberately stopped all contact at this most uncertain moment, even gently holding her breath.
In the wedding chamber, there was only the sound of her own heartbeat, the occasional light jingle of the bells on the clips, and the intermittent crisp collision of the three small rings at the ends of the silver needles as her body trembled.
Fengling wanted to ask where Sister Ling Yue was, but couldn’t say a single word.
‘Is it magic?’
‘Damn!’
‘Thinking about it now, I realize I haven’t been able to say a single word since the start of the game!’
‘So it was this beast of a woman who cast a spell on me!’
‘What kind of sick fetish is this?!’
However, after cursing in her mind for five minutes, an inexplicable fear swept over Fengling.
‘Dark…’
‘So dark…’
‘Everything around me is so dark…’
‘So dark…’
‘So scary…’
Now, Fengling could only shake her head fearfully and helplessly.
But at the same time, she dared not move her body.
She was afraid of bumping into something and angering Ling Yue.
‘Ah!’
‘What is this!’
‘What is Sister Ling Yue doing!’
Fengling felt a hand gently stroking her, and that hand even started to draw slow circles.
She clenched her teeth tightly.
She didn’t know how long passed.
Maybe an hour? Two hours? Half a day? Or a day?
Anyway, when Fengling was frothing at the mouth and on the verge of breaking down, she finally heard the voice she wanted most at that moment—a gentle voice.
“The game is completely over now, Xiao Fengling.”
Ling Yue removed her blindfold, then helped straighten her clothes, and one by one, retrieved all the tools from her body.
“How do you feel?”
“Wah… wah… wah…” Fengling didn’t answer anything, just wiped her tears and sobbed quietly.
Ling Yue rubbed her earlobe that had been clamped and continued, “I’ll make an earring for you later… in the shape of this clip.”
What followed was Ling Yue gently comforting the crying Fengling.
Night fell quickly.
Ling Yue went out to clean up another wave of invaders, while Fengling lay on the bed, pretending to sleep.
But at that moment, her perception field suddenly detected an energy fluctuation different from usual.
It wasn’t like the scouts from the Eternal Blood Prison, nor the foreign magic of the cold, hard texture that had appeared before…
What was this energy?
The next second, her perception image was covered by a layer of pale golden light.
The light wasn’t harsh, but its density was extremely high—even the outline of Ling Yue’s red mist was temporarily obscured for half a second.
Half a second later, the light converged into an extremely thin golden thread, landing about ten meters outside the mountain cavern’s perimeter, then vanishing instantly.
And accompanying this beam of light was a short, slender energy silhouette.
‘Who is this?’
‘There seems to be a hat on their head.’
The castle’s outer barrier wasn’t triggered, and Ling Yue didn’t rush over like she had with previous invaders.
Her perception field only lingered near the golden thread’s landing point for two seconds, then she continued clearing the remaining invaders.
Fengling opened her eyes, staring at the dark ceiling.
‘Someone’s coming…’
‘But not an invader—at least not a hostile one.’
‘The proof is that Sister Ling Yue didn’t put up a guard against that person.’
‘In other words, that person is someone Sister Ling Yue knows.’
‘This information automatically updates a line in my plan to “use external threats to create an escape window.”’
‘I need to watch out not just for enemies, but also for people Ling Yue knows.’
‘If this person appears near the castle when Ling Yue is away…’
‘Could she become an even better window than the invaders?’