With her head buried in her knees, Esme pondered, ‘Will he be upset?’ Despite her attempts to hide her face, her reddened ears gave away her embarrassment. The events of a few minutes before replayed in her mind, where she had once again pushed Ryuk away after a passionate kiss, unable to fully embrace the moment and ultimately causing him to depart without a word.
‘But….’ Esme bit her lips, which appeared slightly swollen with wetness on them due to their intense kiss.
Her mind was filled with several thoughts about how her attempts to always push him away could lead to a big misunderstanding in their hardly connected relationship.
She knew nothing about him except from what she observed and heard from others, not even where his mother or father were; nothing that he himself told her.
She did not give value to the information about him from Heindal, since he did not reveal complete information himself, nor was she able to tell him about herself.
Rather than both focusing on learning about each other and trying to see through one another, they chose to prioritize understanding each other, leading to a strengthened bond between them.
But this was also a very difficult phase, since all her behavior of always pushing him away could jeopardize everything.
“It’s still five months,” Esme felt frustrated by the slow passage of time, as the conditions needed for the first curse to be useful to that man were still far from being met.
The first curse of the Tenebri bloodline held both an advantage and a bigger disadvantage, prompting her to at least provide the man whom she loved with that particular advantage, which was— Ability sharing.
The higher purity the Tenebri bloodline had, the stronger their ability was transferred to their male partner, and in this case Esme possessed the highest level of purity in this young generation.
There were various factors that contributed to their ability to strengthen, such as their increasing love for each other, mutual acceptance providing a boost, and several unnecessary restrictions.
All the restrictions were only for the positive side of curses, not the negative side. For example, they needed to be intimate when she turned 18 in order to share their abilities.
“Haah, I miss him,” Esme whispered the words with her golden pupils gazing up at the sky, on the verge of tears as she realized the first curse was starting to affect her, like a drug slowly consuming her with feelings of malice until she saw her partner.
“A woman with a weak Qi signature and no power? You’d make for an easier hostage, wouldn’t you?”
As a voice echoed through the air, a hazy energy began to envelop the area surrounding the pagoda’s top, creating a 10-meter radius of isolation around the owner of the voice and Esme.
Esme looked towards the voice with a sad expression and saw a middle-aged woman dressed in black, hiding her face and body in an assassin’s attire. Only her deep black eyes were visible as she gazed at Esme in a predatory manner.
After giving Liu Wei a healing potion laced with a slow-acting poison, the woman went to meet the black-robed man, only to find him being intimate with a feeble woman who lacked the strength to overcome an adult, let alone be considered strong.
Observing how the robed man left politely after being pushed away by the weak woman, it was evident that he had a special regard for this golden-eyed woman.
After all, a king only bows down to his queen.
And she, an elder from the Wei family, was here to capture that queen.
“Now, who are you?” Esme’s eyes took note of the energy dome surrounding her, while the mana in the atmosphere seemed to be behaving strangely, indicating that the woman in front of her possessed formidable strength. However, Esme was not concerned about it at the moment.
She was only contemplating whether her continued distance from him could be harmful.
“It’s unfortunate that I have to send those eyes as evidence to your man, sigh,” Not paying attention to Esme’s words, the woman raised her feet and approached her with nails on her hand growing bigger as if turning into claws. She prepared to first pluck out those golden eyes and then, after presenting them to the black-robed man, witness his helplessness and cries.
Breaking a man was very easy for her, given her experience in how they squirm like a child after losing their beloved.
“M-my m-man?” Esme’s eyes trembled as she heard those words from the woman, instantly blanking her mind as she clasped her hands over her lips. An inexplicable feeling washed over her after learning that instead of using his name, she now had a title to refer to him.
“You are sweet, so I will not make it too painful for you,” the woman said arrogantly.
“My man, hmm, can you tell me other titles as well?” Esme removed her fingers from her lips, feeling enlightened, before she lifted her golden eyes to look at the woman in her black dress.
“How cute, but let’s stop this conversation, or else the young miss will be angry with me,” the woman continued, ignoring Esme’s words and reaching her hand towards her face.
As the woman’s hand reached out to grab Esme’s face with the intent to pluck her eyes, the whole world around her glitched.
It was difficult to describe, but it seemed like the entire world experienced a glitch, with the figure perceiving Esme’s appearance becoming glitchy.
The woman stumbled backward, creating distance by leaping into the air.
“Is he here?” The woman wondered as she executed a backflip in mid-air, thinking about whether the amber-eyed man had returned before she landed on the ground.
“Is that all?” Esme asked, raising her eyebrow as she looked at the woman who was frozen in a trance-like state, lost in her own dream world while under Esme’s illusion.
“My man still hasn’t arrived… How late is he?,” Esme turned her attention back to the sky and noticed that no one had arrived yet. She stood on the roof of the pagoda with a black woman dressed as an assassin. A slight breeze fluttered Esme’s silver hair, revealing her impatient golden eyes.
“So, what to do with you?” Esme turned her attention to the woman who seemed lost in her own world, stuck in a never-ending dream where she repeated everything in an infinite loop, completely unaware of her surroundings.
“Hm, let’s adjust a bit,” Esme firmly held the woman’s face and guided her in the correct direction, aligning it with her target. She massaged her knuckles before delivering a powerful punch to the woman’s face.
“Ouch, ouch, it hurts,” After landing a punch, Esme suddenly knelt down as she felt her knuckles hit something hard instead of the woman’s face. She massaged her knuckles and blew on them to relieve the pain before looking up to see the shape of her punch imprinted on the woman’s face. A trickle of red blood began to flow, but it wasn’t enough to snap the woman out of her trance.
“Where are you? My man!” Frustration overtook Esme, her body instantly teleported behind the woman, and she seized the round jade pendant hanging from the woman’s neck. With a swift motion, she removed it, circled it in her hand, and then struck the woman’s face with it.
Bang!
“I hope he doesn’t come back soon.” As the blood began to drip from the woman’s face, Esme’s hand instinctively pulled back while holding a bloodied jade. With a swift motion, she struck it again at the statue-like woman’s face, who seemed oblivious to the events unfolding around her, prompting Esme to continue hitting. “I can’t show him my ugly side!”
