Outside, the sky over Valenheim had decided to issue its verdict.Lightning tore through the night with almost deliberate violence, and the thunder, deep and prolonged, made the reinforced glass of the Valmont Tower vibrate. It was as if the outside world itself protested something that had happened behind closed doors, as if even the city refused to accept the consequences.
Inside, however, the air was different.Dense. Warm. Strangely still.
Astrid rested against Adrián's chest, the weight of her exhausted body held by a rhythm that was not her own. The fire that had consumed her hours earlier had retreated into a persistent ember: a deep warmth that no longer burned but enveloped. For the first time in her memory, her mind—always saturated with figures, projections, and defenses—was silent.
Or almost.
Adrián's heartbeat thudded beneath her cheek with a regularity she couldn't ignore. A little faster than usual. That tiny, intimate detail sent a sudden jolt of shame through her. She sank a little deeper into the hollow of his neck, as if she could hide there.
What had she done?
She remembered bursting into the boardroom.The frozen stares.The confusion on Adrián's face.
But most of all, she remembered the hunger.
A need so absolute that it erased any trace of the Astrid Roche trained to calculate every gesture, every word, every debt.
My mother was right, she thought with bitter clarity.
From the first day of university, she had known. Adrián Valmont was danger. Too attractive, too powerful, too aware of both. Her mother had always repeated it with a calm learned through hardship:Men like him don't love, Astrid. They collect. They play until the toy loses its novelty.
That was why she had kept her distance.That was why she had built walls of irony and arrogance.That was why she had decided that, if she ever used him, it would only be as a financial instrument. A means. Never an end.
But that morning…That morning her body had asked for no contracts, no guarantees.
It had spoken his name as a plea.
Astrid lifted her gaze just enough to see Adrián's face from that intimate, dangerous angle. He was pale, eyes closed, hair falling across his forehead. Exhausted. Marked. Vulnerable in a way she had never imagined possible.
And yet, he was devastatingly beautiful.
It wasn't just the effect of Li Shen's needle. It couldn't be. Something else had seeped through the cracks of her resistance, something that didn't respond to formulas or rituals.
Astrid couldn't see it, but if a mirror had been nearby, the reflection would have chilled her. Deep in his pupils, almost imperceptible, a pinkish glint was beginning to settle. The poison hadn't just activated his body: it was reorganizing his perception. What had once been calculation was slipping toward something else.
Something more dangerous.
Her fingers brushed absentmindedly over one of the marks she had left on Adrián's shoulder, tracing its outline as if to confirm it was real.
"Adrián…" she whispered.
It didn't sound like an heiress.It sounded like someone who had just found her center of gravity.
She liked it.
No.It was worse.
She wanted him.With a possessive intensity that was beginning to consume even her ambition.
Outside, the thunder cracked again, but Astrid clung a little tighter to him. If the world had to burn—if the Sterlings despised her, if Li Shen realized too late what she had done—none of that mattered.
As long as Adrián's heart kept beating beneath her ear, she was ready to let the fire consume everything.
That same night, the Roche mansion was immersed in unnatural silence, broken only by the patient tapping of rain against the windows.Li Shen was not meditating.
He stood in the center of the hall, motionless, like a statue placed to watch over the night.
When the lock turned, the air shifted.
Astrid entered.
She did not walk with her usual polished hauteur. Her steps were slower, heavier. Her clothes barely disheveled. Nothing obvious. Everything definitive.And on her face, something new. Not exhaustion. Not guilt.
Satisfaction.
Li Shen didn't need to look long. When she passed by him, her body reacted before her mind did.
The scent.
It wasn't just perfume.It was presence.A deep mark, anchored in chemistry, blood, and pulse.
The scent of a consummated union.
The cultivator felt something break inside him.
It wasn't immediate rage. It was disbelief. Then, a slow wave of cold running down his spine.
This was not a slip.It was not a mistake.
Someone from the secular world had marked Astrid.Not with promises.With the body.
Li Shen clenched his fists. Knuckles cracked. His nails dug into flesh until a drop of dense, energy-charged blood fell onto the marble floor.
"Astrid," he said.
His voice wasn't loud.It was deep.Too controlled.
She stopped at the first step, without turning.
"It's late," she replied. "Let me through."
"Who was it?" he asked.
He did not ask for a name.He asked for a truth impossible to undo.
"A man without roots," she continued. "I smell him in you. Gold, ambition, undisciplined desire. A secular who thinks everything can be bought."
Astrid turned slowly.
In the moonlight, Li Shen saw something that froze his blood: a faint pink glint, almost imperceptible, pulsing in her pupils.
"Don't speak of what you don't understand," she said. "It wasn't a contract. It wasn't a debt. It was… necessary."
Each word fell like a sentence.
Li Shen stepped back, as if the world had changed shape.
Necessary.
That was worse than betrayal.
Astrid ascended the stairs without looking back. Her footsteps faded on the upper floor, leaving him alone with the echo of something that could no longer be undone.
Li Shen raised his gaze, breathing heavily.
He didn't know who the man was.Not yet.
But he knew what he was.
And he knew he would find him.
From the folds of his robe, he drew a gold needle, different from the healing ones. Its tip was darkened with a poison that did not attack the body, but the spirit.
"It doesn't matter what your name is," he whispered. "It doesn't matter how many cities obey you or how many masks you wear among men."
He closed his hand around the needle.
"You've touched what was sealed by destiny.And I will discover your name…before I take everything you think you possess."
The air in the hall vibrated.
The Medical Hero was no longer there.
In his place, something more primal, more dangerous, and far more suited to old stories had been born:
An obsessive cultivator, determined to track an invisible enemy…and turn him into a lesson.