Lady Zhihua, in the end, couldn't bring herself to see her resolve through.
With every tear the lovely young madam shed, Zhihua's touch grew a little softer. Before the tears had even run dry, Lady Zhihua's heart had already broken.
Qin Zhihua pressed a kiss to Li Fei's forehead and promised she would never make her cry again.
Evidently, so long as you were beautiful enough, you could be forgiven for anything. Li Fei had lost a morality nobler than the starry sky, but in exchange she'd gained charm of equal worth.
"I made congee for you. Remember to drink it when you wake up."
As she gave her instructions, Qin Zhihua slipped into a quiet, elegant white dress, a brooch pinned beneath the collar.
"Mm-hm."
Li Fei opened her tired, haggard eyes and nodded obediently.
The squeezing hadn't gone as far as the noble ladies of the palace had taken it, but that contrast between warmth and ice still left the young madam shaken. It was like spending a calm, lovely dusk alone with your doting childhood friend, only for a wave of dizziness to hit after you drink the black tea she brewed. A shrill kettle whistle pierces your ears, and your childhood friend, smiling warmly, pulls out proof that you've been cuddling other women. The chill of a basement, the unease of being bound in iron chains, the terror of a cleaver laid against your neck—all of it seeped out from her very bones.
Suddenly, Li Fei found Lady Zhihua's brooch familiar. She narrowed her eyes, and a moment later it clicked. Wasn't that a War Academy teacher's badge?
"I'm a guest instructor hired by the War Academy now."
Qin Zhihua answered her puzzlement. "There isn't much to worry about, and the pay is decent. It's a good job."
—Li Fei, ten thousand bonus points!!!
In an instant the young madam's eyes lit up, as if she were looking at a walking credit-printing machine. Even the gloom left over from last night faded a good deal.
Seeing Li Fei so itchy with scheming, Qin Zhihua guessed her thoughts at once. She rapped Li Fei lightly on the forehead and said, exasperated:
"Don't you dare scheme for credits. I'm a teacher, and I won't do anything that violates professional ethics."
"...Hmph. I wouldn't want special treatment from you anyway. I won first place in the exchange tournament on my own ability."
Li Fei puffed out her cheeks and spoke stubbornly.
"Good. I have to get to the Academy. Remember to eat breakfast."
Qin Zhihua combed her slightly tousled long hair into place and smoothed every wrinkle out of her dress before she left for work.
Once the footsteps faded, Miss Tail poked out furtively, nudged the curtain aside, and watched the white-skirted, black-haired woman's back recede into the distance.
Qin Zhihua turned to look back, as if she'd sensed something. Miss Tail shuddered and ducked behind the curtain, and it was a good while before she dared to peek out again.
Once she was sure she couldn't sense Lady Zhihua anymore, Miss Tail finally relaxed and recovered some of her spirit.
"Stop fooling around."
Li Fei leaned listlessly against the headboard and yawned. "I need more rest."
She'd nearly worked herself into illness on the Demon-Sealing Continent. Now, with her vitality not yet restored and Lady Zhihua having just dealt with her, she didn't have the strength to lift a finger.
Li Fei hugged her Moon Pillow and drifted off. Even after she'd slept her fill she refused to get up, and only when the sun stood high in the sky did she roll out of bed and pad barefoot into the rather deserted living room.
Lady Zhihua was off teaching, Sofia was on patrol, Grace had school, Sister Ling'er was busy running the apothecary, Qiao'er was reading, and Wang Yutong had been taken by Eva to play in the Secret Garden...
The goal of leaving no empty room in the villa was getting closer by the day, and everyone had something of their own to do. That was good.
Fortunately, the maids were still there to look after Li Fei. She hadn't even warmed her cushion when Ram brought out lunch.
As the saying goes, dumplings for the send-off and noodles for the homecoming. The first proper meal Li Fei ate at home was chili-oil noodles.
The bowl was big and round, the noodles long and wide. Bright green scallions dotted the glossy red broth, and several fried eggs lay nestled in it.
The chili oil was handmade and fragrant. Together with the scent of scallions, it drifted up on the steam into Li Fei's nose and woke her empty stomach at once. She had drunk plenty of water, of course, but all of that had long since soaked into the sheets, the rug, the walls, even the ceiling...
Li Fei lifted a bundle of noodles with her chopsticks and slurped up a big mouthful. The chewy bounce of the hand-rolled noodles lingered between her teeth and lips, and the rich, savory heat of the broth bloomed across her taste buds, with a distinct beef flavor underneath.
She hummed in satisfaction and buried her face in the bowl, eating with sweet, single-minded gusto.
In the blink of an eye, half the noodles were gone. Li Fei slowed down and pressed a golden fried egg into the broth with her chopsticks. After waiting patiently a moment, she fished it out and, with an "aah-mm," bit the egg, round as a Full Moon, into a crescent.
The golden-fried whites were crisp and flaky, soaked through with savory beef broth, while the yolk was still liquid. It flowed and mingled with the broth in her mouth, building a complex, layered flavor and texture.
Li Fei squinted, dunked the remaining half of the egg in the broth again, and fished it out to send it into her mouth while the soup was at its fullest.
People always said that noodles without garlic lose half their flavor. Li Fei had never agreed. A fried egg was obviously the best partner for noodles, and raw garlic cloves were a minus. She loved the minced garlic in hotpot dip, the garlic vermicelli piled on steamed seafood, garlicky crawfish, and even the occasional cooked clove in braised pork with green beans. Raw cloves were the only thing that didn't interest her.
A few mouthfuls of noodles, one bite of egg. At last Li Fei lifted the bowl and drank the broth down to the last drop, then let out a happy, contented sigh.
Clearly, Ram's cooking would never let Li Fei down. The attentive, patient, thoughtful head maid always focused on cooking exactly what suited Li Fei's taste, and everything, from the seasoning to the bite of the noodles to the doneness of the egg and the amount of scallion, landed squarely in Li Fei's sweet spot.
Even if Ram's cooking couldn't match a top chef's in the short term, she was irreplaceable to Li Fei.
"Ram is turning me into a useless slob... I'm so happy."
Just as one instinctively blows on cold noodles, Li Fei raised a hand and wiped imaginary sweat from her forehead. She planted a kiss on Ram's cheek, then picked up a plate of snacks prepared especially for her and strolled toward the storeroom.
The plate held Serpent-woman scales, prepared with a special technique. They tasted like tomato-flavored corn chips, only thinner and crispier. By now the ingredient was practically a daily necessity for Li Fei, and to keep her from getting sick of it, Ram had gone to great lengths, learning different ways to prepare Serpent-woman scales wherever she could.
Crunch, crunch...
Chewing her snack, Li Fei sat cross-legged on the floor and began counting up the spoils of the trip.
EXP, Wealth Points, equipment, gold and silver, achievements, Transcendent materials, the Sainthood ritual, the Soul-Burial Spirit-Nourishing Grand Array, Charm Marks...
In just over a month, Li Fei had reaped an unbelievably rich harvest. She'd even carted home several thousand female ghosts and left behind a daughter, who was waiting to take over the Great Song someday...
Li Fei munched her snack and hummed a tune, sorting through the pile with one hand, occasionally putting a snow-white foot to use. First she picked out the various materials.
The Great Song had become her wife and daughter's inheritance, so naturally she hadn't emptied the national treasury. She had only picked out a tiny handful of local specialties useful to her.
Most were for her collection or for gifts, and only a small part had real value to Li Fei.
Take the Longevity Fruit. After winning the court over, Li Fei had brought back two of them. It was a life-extending medicine unique to the Demon-Sealing Continent. One she planned to give to Lady Annie, while the other, along with the preserved rootstock, would go into joint research with the Magic Academy and the city hall. With luck, they might solve that damned lifespan problem.
[Vermilion Fruit]. It came from the imperial collection and was just as rare. It couldn't be cultivated in Loxibrook, though a certain amount circulated on the market in the Eastern Continent and a few other planes. It benefited True Qi and battle qi cultivation, and its value was comparable to a high-quality Wisdom Fruit.
Six crystal cores of Innate Demons, mostly obtained from the household confiscations. In Li Fei's eyes they were no different from big blue potions. Once she crossed into the mid-Sequences and her magic power liquefied, potions that restored magic power would become even more precious.
[Thousand-Year Tree Demon's Sap], a fine item that permanently raised attributes. Li Fei's filial devotion to Granny had not been wasted.
The last three items would certainly go to Lady Zhihua to handle, so they could be put to their best use.
Next, she carefully arranged her equipment.
The Demon-Slaying Blade and the great red python robe were wrapped in silk and placed in a wooden box. To her they were symbols of status. She had no use for them, but she had to store them well, and they weren't to be sold for money.
The [Ten-Thousand Ghost Gourd] and [Bound Love], on the other hand, were extremely practical.
One let Li Fei carry an army of thousands with her, and in a pinch the army could merge into mid-Sequence combat power. The other was a Dawn-grade tail equipment, powerful and positively indecent. It amplified all of Miss Tail's attributes and gave major bonuses to binding force, burst power, agility, attack speed and more.
It could be said that with this tail ring, Miss Tail's combat power would surpass even a succubus's biting mouth, and would be no less than the sword in Li Fei's hand.
Of course, the most important piece was the [Blood Demon Scripture].
So far, Abyssal Lava remained Li Fei's most destructive killer move. Before, it had been limited by her insufficient Mana cap, and later she'd been troubled by how slowly it cast, so it had been shelved and rarely used.
But now both restrictions had loosened. Li Fei had a generous blue bar, and the [Blood Demon Scripture] could fix the casting speed...
That meant Li Fei now held a trump pair that could possibly ambush and kill a Sequence 5 Transcendent.
Beyond that, the attributes the [Blood Demon Scripture] provided, Spell Damage in particular, were very impressive and still had considerable room to grow. Moreover, as she killed, the scripture would keep repairing itself until it revealed the full brilliance of a Demon Saint's bound treasure.
It was no exaggeration to say that getting the [Blood Demon Scripture] was like a Spectre finally pulling off Radiance, or a divine bull getting its Blink Dagger. Li Fei's combat strength had been completely remade...
Li Fei stroked the hole in the scripture's cover and stared blankly for a moment, then set it down beside her. Her gaze shifted to the neatly stacked "large yellow croakers."
Five full tons of pure gold, piled into a little mountain a quarter of a cubic meter in size. The cold, smooth feel of the metal made her heart pound.
Converted into Loxibrook gold coins, it came to roughly four hundred and fifty thousand. With a bit more shuffling, Miss Lilith's spatial ring could easily have carried away far more, but Li Fei had taken only five tons. She hadn't even taken the armor in the royal inner treasury, which was of little use to her but the most valuable piece there.
She'd chosen this not only to leave the national treasury well stocked so the performance-based system could keep running and the Demon Suppression Bureau, that huge "merit-making machine," could run at full power. It was also because, after pulling off the heist of stealing the whole state in one swap of heaven and sun, Li Fei could no longer earn a single Wealth Point from the court!
Whether it was the treasury, which gave her whatever she asked for, or the gold from household confiscations, none of it counted toward Wealth Points.
This didn't surprise Li Fei, because she'd long ago noticed some key patterns in the complex, intelligent mechanism that measured Wealth Points. For instance, when acquiring new assets, there were three main cases that didn't count:
One, anything that nominally wasn't hers.
Take the night she founded the Sparkfire Charity Organization, when Li Fei auctioned off a damaged robe, discarded weapons and a solid-gold medal.
Had she declared beforehand that it was a "charity auction," the proceeds would have been treated as "donations." They wouldn't have belonged to Li Fei, and her Wealth Points wouldn't have grown.
But Li Fei hadn't announced any "charity auction," so the moment the auction closed, all the proceeds went under her name, and the markup counted toward Wealth Points. In the end she donated the money either way, so whether it had ever nominally been Li Fei's became the key factor in how Miss System judged Wealth Points.
Household confiscations worked the same way.
If Li Fei had looted houses as a bandit, the Wealth Points would naturally all have counted as hers. But she was a court official leading a confiscation team, so the money had nothing to do with her and wasn't counted.
Two, gifts from relatives and friends. She'd discovered that pattern very early on.
Three, farming points. Miss System was extremely strict on this one.
In fact, during her battles of wits with Miss System, Li Fei had tried quite a few ways to "farm points."
For example, she'd used various financial tricks to fake an appreciation in her assets.
Or she'd handed over a huge sum before killing someone, then murdered and robbed them afterward...
But in the end all her efforts came to nothing, and she never found a flaw in Miss System's rules. It was lucky that Li Fei's morality was already low. Otherwise she would have had to sink some Morality Value into those attempts as well.
In short, under Miss System's rules, the rewards Li Fei had gotten from Zhao Bing counted toward her Wealth Points. But once her wife and daughter became the nominal rulers, her fleecing of the court violated the second and third rules, and her Wealth Points didn't budge.
Worse, since the materials for the Witch Sickness Suppression Ritual had run out, Li Fei, forced to improvise in an emergency, had even paid a fair amount for materials out of her own pocket...
"What a pity."
Li Fei sighed with false regret, but as she looked at the System Panel, the delight on her face was unmistakable.
Level: 35
EXP: 21947/98000
…
Charm: 628
Morality: -42
Luck: 25
Leadership: 18
Aptitude: 10
Note: bare-faced stats.
Achievements: Wolf Den Annihilator; Angel of the Solitary Isle; Spell Encyclopedia; Philanthropist; Pseudo-Saint of Merit; Regicide; Gourmet of the Tongue's Tip.
…
Innate Talent:
2. Enthrall Fate:
The more beautiful, the luckier (every 100 points of Charm grants an additional 2 points of Luck) (upgradable)
…
Potential Points: 13
…
Remaining Draws: 12
Next to the level she'd reached, next to the EXP that climbed with every passing second, what did anything else matter? After all, in Li Fei's heart, EXP > Wealth Points > money.
It was no exaggeration to say that even if she'd come back without a single coin, the trip would still have been a huge win. There was the endless EXP, the Innate Talent and Aptitude that had evolved in the Soul-Burial Spirit-Nourishing Grand Array, the three new achievements earned through Sainthood, regicide and cuddling, and the Charm she'd traded her morality for. And that was before counting five tons of gold, hundreds of thousands of Wealth Points, a mountain of rare materials, powerful equipment, four digits' worth of Charm Marks and female ghosts, three digits' worth of local wives, and a single digit's worth of daughters...
"As expected of me!"
In the end, the radiant Li Fei rewarded herself with one more bite of Ram-brand corn chips.
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