The late-autumn night was very cold. The room, without the slightest trace of light, was pitch-black and very quiet.
The sound of his heartbeat was very clear. Mr. Dragon could distinctly feel her breath spilling over his chest, but his heart gradually calmed.
Because of the Blue Star Grass fruit Madam had cultivated, which contained a trace of special spiritual energy, and because of the intermittent spiritual energy supplements during this period, Mr. Dragon had successfully connected three fragments of his shattered core. The cultivation technique circulating within his body resisted part of the curse.
Back then, if the abyssal demons had not suddenly ambushed him while his core was shattered, perhaps he would not have fallen into such a miserable state now.
But perhaps this defeat was also a fortunate thing.
His divine consciousness swept past the spirit stones placed beside his ear, then gently brushed over Mu Wanwan’s face before dispersing into the air.
Mr. Dragon withdrew his divine consciousness and began looking inward at the curse inside his body.
The most vicious curse spread from his rotting tail all the way through his limbs and bones, binding his meridians. From bone to skin, throughout his entire dragon body, aside from the small relatively clean area around the fragments of his core, only the blood at his heart remained pure.
To a dragon, the reverse scale was their bottom line, the horns were their dignity, the tail was a weapon of battle, the core was where energy was stored, and the blood from the heart was where talent and life condensed.
Taking a dragon’s heart’s blood could be used to refine precious pills that extended life. It could also serve as a medicinal catalyst to cultivate the witch clan’s most powerful puppet warriors. Dragon meat was also very nourishing. Although the blood from other parts of the body was not as useful as heart’s blood, it was still a decent material for medicine refining.
As an orphaned dragon who, from childhood, had been unable to transform perfectly and had no one to protect him, Mr. Dragon had encountered far too many people in the first several decades of his dragon life who wanted to kill him and take his blood. So many that he could no longer remember them all.
But none of those people had ever succeeded.
Now, however, he was willing to endure the pain of having his heart pierced.
Only, right now, he needed a little power that could temporarily suppress the curse.
The spirit stones Madam had brought back this time could allow him to suppress the curse for a few minutes. The price was falling unconscious for a week.
Without the slightest hesitation, Mr. Dragon calmly made a decision. In the next instant, the mid-grade spirit stone Mu Wanwan had placed beside his pillow rapidly shrivelled at a speed visible to the naked eye. Along with it, the two nearby low-grade spirit stones also turned into misty spiritual energy and drilled into his body.
Half a moment later, Mr. Dragon’s eyelashes trembled lightly. The black-red markings on his face seemed as though they were coming alive, flashing with ferocious red light and making Mr. Dragon’s expression look somewhat frightening.
He wanted her to see him at his best. He wanted her to see him in human form.
His scales began showing signs of cracking, and his dragon tail began trembling unnaturally. Mr. Dragon’s entire dragon body began giving off a faint golden glow, dazzlingly bright in the night, making Mu Wanwan, who was in a deep sleep, very uncomfortable.
She struggled in discomfort and moved twice, trying to make her pillow behave, but before she could finish protesting, she felt a heaviness at the bend of her knees and on her shoulders, as though something had pinned her down onto the bed.
Mu Wanwan opened her eyes slightly in dissatisfaction. What entered her sight was a pair of pupils as brilliant as flowing gold, like two beams of firelight in the darkness, set within long, narrow eyes and staring straight at her.
Mr. Dragon opened his thick, honey-like phoenix eyes. He had not expected her to suddenly open her eyes, and his long, curled eyelashes trembled twice in embarrassment.
His ink-black hair fell behind him, with two strands hanging beside his ears. His nose bridge was high, his thin lips were pressed together somewhat shyly, and the tips of his ears were a little red.
He could finally see her with his own eyes, even if only for a few short minutes.
Mr. Dragon gazed at her earnestly. His greedy gaze slid from her forehead, damp with cold sweat, over her eyelids and the tip of her nose, then stopped on Mu Wanwan’s somewhat dry and cracked lips.
He was even a little unable to help himself. He wanted to kiss her, just as he had once imagined in his mind.
But before Mr. Dragon, whose night vision was very good, could put that into action, he saw Mu Wanwan reveal a pained expression the moment she saw him. Her eyes even narrowed as though they had been stabbed by light, and faint tears gathered at their corners.
Could it be?
Had he made her cry from ugliness?
Mr. Dragon froze for a moment. Feeling wronged inside but cold on the surface, he slowly changed his pair of brilliant golden pupils back to normal black, stopping his childish display behaviour.
But although he had changed back, Mu Wanwan’s tears could not stop.
How could she have been made to cry by Mr. Dragon’s ugliness? She had not even seen Mr. Dragon’s appearance clearly.
His eyes had been so bright, and Mu Wanwan was only a first-rank cultivator. After being in the darkness for so long, suddenly seeing something so bright had stimulated her eyes into producing physiological tears. Her vision became hazy, and with her head hurting too, her tears suddenly would not stop.
Moreover, although Mr. Dragon had woken up, in the eyes of the delirious Mu Wanwan, it was only that the pillow in her dream had suddenly turned into a villain. Not only was it no longer properly keeping her warm, it was also pressing down on her, making her very uncomfortable.
Mr. Dragon stiffened. Mr. Dragon was hurt.
He knew it. Those dragon-seducing behaviours he had secretly seen in dark alleys before were all lies meant to trick dragons. What nonsense about the purer the colour of one’s pupils, the better one’s bloodline talent, and how many dragons would be willing to lay eggs for him—sure enough, it was all fake.
Now look. He had finally managed to wake up for once, yet not only had he failed to leave a deep impression on Madam, and not only had he failed to deceive Madam with his face that was supposedly still considered handsome before he was cursed, he had instead made her cry from ugliness.
Mr. Dragon felt bitter inside. Seeing her tears roll down from the corners of her eyes like strings of pearls, he was at a complete loss.
“Be good.” His fingertip gently wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes. Mr. Dragon used his hoarse throat, unused for so long, to make a sound almost like a low murmur.
Only, Mu Wanwan could not hear it.
Keeping her eyes open was uncomfortable, so she simply closed them.
Mr. Dragon: “…”
A low, quiet laugh came from the darkness, more like a helpless sigh.
His rough fingertip pressed against her soft lips. Thinking of what was about to happen next, his cheeks burned.
He was going to feed her the blood from his heart. That did not count as taking advantage… right…
But before falling unconscious, he still wanted to look at her a few more times.
Mr. Dragon almost greedily gazed at her weak face in the darkness, looking again and again. Only when less than two minutes remained did Mr. Dragon slowly withdraw his gaze and gently close his eyes.
In the next instant, his face suddenly turned deathly pale. The black-red cursed markings that had originally been suppressed and unable to surface suddenly appeared. Even the little secret he had always been unwilling to let others discover was exposed.
But at this moment, Mr. Dragon did not know just how wretched and miserable he looked.
He carefully cut out half a drop of heart’s blood, escorted it all the way with spiritual energy, and held it on the tip of his tongue. Then he slowly bent down. Not daring to open his eyes, he only followed his senses and moved close to Mu Wanwan’s lips.
Their breaths mingled.
He still did not have the ability to kiss her. He only gently pinched her chin and, using the little spiritual energy he had left, guided that half drop of blood into Mu Wanwan’s mouth.
Mr. Dragon’s face was pale, yet his ears were very red. He even felt a little dizzy and light-headed, more stimulated than when he had taken a sixth-rank spiritual pill in the past.
The curse inside his body gradually began to counterattack. Together with the weakness caused by losing heart’s blood, Mr. Dragon’s complexion became terrible. He forced himself to lie back down, and almost the moment he returned to his previous position, his straight, slender legs immediately turned into a long, slightly rotting dragon tail.
The broken horns he had carefully hidden also appeared. Even beside that pair of broken horns, a pair of fluffy white ears grew out.
Although he was in great pain, Mr. Dragon, whose heart was still full of sweetness because he felt he had finally done a little something for Madam, had no idea that the secret he had never exposed in front of others after reaching adulthood, the secret he had even kept suppressed after being seriously injured and falling unconscious, had been exposed just like this.
After all, he had never lost heart’s blood before, and did not know there would be such a side effect. (￣︶￣)
Mr. Dragon became excessively weak and fell unconscious. Wanwan’s situation was not much better.
Her body had originally only been at the early first rank. During this period, she had been constantly overdrawing her spiritual energy. However, she was not cursed, so she could slowly absorb some spiritual energy from heaven and earth to replenish herself. These days, her cultivation had also risen to the middle first rank.
But the middle first rank was only slightly stronger than an ordinary mortal. There was still an enormous distance between that and absorbing half a drop of Mr. Dragon’s seventh-rank heart’s blood.
Although Mr. Dragon had already stripped out his own attributes and even forcibly removed most of the energy, making that half drop of dragon blood contain no violent energy, it still made Mu Wanwan somewhat too weak to receive such nourishment.
Though it was only somewhat.
From the moment she swallowed that half drop of blood, Mu Wanwan did not quickly recover as Mr. Dragon had expected. Instead, she fell into a long period of pain. Originally, she had only had a headache. Now, everything from her toes to the tips of her hair hurt. (:з」∠)
It was not the kind of pain of being crushed, but a throbbing pain from the inside out. Her dantian hurt especially badly. The spiritual energy originally stored there had at most been a thin cloud of air, but now it directly expanded, filling the dantian to the brim. It even followed her thin meridians, opening up territory all the way, first roughly stretching open the meridians that were not tough enough, then using its powerful repairing effect to reconnect the torn meridians.
It was as though her entire body had been transformed. If cultivators in the cultivation world saw this scene, they would definitely be extremely envious.
After all, first-rank strength was equivalent to the Qi Refining level. Only by crossing into the second rank could one stand equal to Foundation Establishment cultivators. And the price of a Foundation Establishment Pill was often five high-grade spirit stones or more. The chance of successfully transforming and establishing a foundation was only ten to twenty percent. Most mortals who were still in the Qi Refining stage in their twenties had basically no hope of establishing a foundation in this lifetime.
Their lifespan would only be a little over a hundred years, making them merely stronger and healthier than ordinary people.
As for Mu Wanwan, the original body had no particular talent, and this body was already twenty years old. According to common sense, she might never have been able to break through in this lifetime.
But her soul was somewhat special, causing a change in her spiritual energy. This greatly increased her success rate in cultivating plants, and even the quality of the plants she cultivated was much higher than that of people at the same rank. But this did not mean she could walk very far on the path of cultivation.
For example, this time, simply overworking herself and overdrawing her spiritual energy had nearly cost her life.
In her situation, even if she had money to buy a Foundation Establishment Pill, she might not necessarily succeed in breaking through her shackles.
But Mr. Dragon’s half drop of blood was like a bug-like existence.
This drop of blood was many times better than those Foundation Establishment Pills, which contained impurities, had low success rates, and were absurdly expensive. It directly and forcefully raised Mu Wanwan, who had originally only been at the middle first rank, to the middle second rank.
And there were no side effects.
Oh, that was not entirely accurate. There was still a side effect.
That was: the transformation process was very painful. qwq
From the moment that half drop of blood entered her stomach, Mu Wanwan felt as if she had been tortured, as though someone had placed her on blades and rolled her back and forth again and again. It hurt so much she could not even cry out.
If anyone had seen her, they would have noticed a hazy layer of blood-coloured mist constantly spreading over the surface of her body. As time passed, that mist gradually faded. Only when the layer of mist completely dispersed did Mu Wanwan’s suffering transformation finally end.
From the time she could no longer hold on and collapsed until the transformation ended, more than thirty hours had passed.
…
When Mu Wanwan regained consciousness again, the sky outside was bright. She lay on the bed with her eyes closed.
She felt sticky all over. Her body was no longer as uncomfortable as before, but her limbs were a little sore. An unpleasant stench lingered at the tip of her nose. Before Mu Wanwan had fully recovered, her memories began slowly returning—
She remembered that she had gone to the market before, then accidentally got caught in the rain. Mr. Dragon had developed a fever, so she fed the dragon. Her body had not felt very comfortable, so she went to sleep. In the end, the next day, she felt even worse and kept burning with fever until now?
Mu Wanwan shook her head, always feeling as though something was not quite right.
Would a fever make her body suddenly feel full of strength after waking up? In the past, after waking from illness, she did not recall ever feeling so lively and vigorous. Also, she had noticed from the start—what was this smell in the room? It was truly so foul and unpleasant!
Mu Wanwan wanted to open her eyes, but she felt as though something unknown was stuck over her eyelids. She wanted to raise her hand and wipe it away, but when she clenched her hand, she felt that same sticky sensation on it. Feeling a little disgusted, she raised her hand, but in the next instant, she accidentally hit someone’s arm.
Wait. Arm?
Why was there someone else’s arm inside her quilt?
Mu Wanwan instantly became clear-headed. Her reason returned. Ignoring everything else, she hurriedly stretched her hand out of the quilt and, enduring the stench, wiped away the sticky dirt on her eyelids. Finally, she opened her eyes and saw the current situation clearly—
With this one look, Mu Wanwan nearly shut down.
She somewhat disbelievingly closed her eyes. In her heart, she silently recited that she must have opened her eyes the wrong way. Only then did she open them again, full of expectation.
But Mr. Dragon’s strangely handsome, pale face, which was very close to hers, told her:
No. You did not see wrong.
Mu Wanwan fell silent for a moment, somewhat collapsing inside.
Could someone tell her—ahhh, why was Mr. Dragon so close to her? Why could she touch his arm just by reaching out, and touch his tail just by moving her foot?!
Author’s note:
Mr. Dragon: “My wife cried because I was too ugly. I feel so awful qaq.”
Mu Wanwan: “??????”
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