Shen Mengdie muttered away in a deranged manner, making Su Mirao feel rather helpless. She sneered. “Little Die, I know this isn’t your true body, but you better not think I’m powerless over you. Once I leave this world, I have plenty of ways to track down your main body!”
“No, this is my true body!” Shen Mengdie refuted her immediately. Her eyes that rippled with colours were extraordinarily determined. “Mirao, you can destroy me, but you can’t deny my existence. I am a… beautiful… butterfly…”
Towards the end, her gaze began to drift, possessing a sorrowful sense of beauty, yet also a childish stubbornness.
Even Su Mirao found it rather difficult to do anything to her from the colour. She was just an unimportant clone anyway. Her priority right now was to continue with the wedding and completely tame Li Qingshan.
As a result, she tried to understand the thoughts of a madman as she guided her slowly. “Since you know I’m the true… main character, then stop opposing me, alright?”
Abruptly, Shen Mengdie threw herself on the ground in prostration, praying towards the sky vehemently. “Great lord of the dream, please forgive my ignorant arrogance. I shouldn’t have tried to measure your ever-changing will…”
Su Mirao was taken aback. She had seen her fair share of madmen before, but she truly was unmatched in terms of madness, as the others would go crazy to a certain extent and then die from cultivation deviation. Had she perhaps truly comprehended something?
Suddenly, she jerked back to her senses. No, I can’t let her influence me!
At this moment, when Shen Mengdie raised her head and looked at Su Mirao from behind, a mysterious smile now stretched over her face.
Li Qingshan was still standing in the same place without budging at all. Even his eyes had not budged—even when they clashed—continuing to gaze ahead blankly as if Su Mirao was still standing there.
But at this moment, a slender figure silently arrived behind him.
“Compared to you becoming a slave to others, it’ll be much better if I just kill you!”
Lolth raised her red lips, revealing her sharp, venomous teeth. She bit down on his neck viciously, injecting all of her venom into his body.
Even when she was bewitched, unable to leave the Nine-tailed Fox Empress, it could not stop her from fulfilling the wish she had held for all this time, impelled by her envy—killing Li Qingshan!
“Stop!”
Su Mirao was both surprised and furious. It was very likely for the great threat on his life to make him recover, breaking free from the bewitched state. It was completely impossible for Li Qingshan to die to her either.
“Yes, palace master.”
Lolth’s eyes blanked out. She let go, taking a few steps back, completely unable to defy her orders.
However, she had still injected a large quantity of venom into Li Qingshan’s body. Even when his body was abnormally tough, he did not suppress the venom at all in his dazed state, so his face immediately darkened, clearly poisoned already.
“It’s all your fault!”
Su Mirao looked back and glared at Shen Mengdie. She immediately remembered that it was exactly her who had led Lolth to the Jade palace. Due to her special relationship with Li Qingshan, Lolth had even received her special attention, except due to spending too little time together, she had yet to bewitch her completely. She never expected something like this to happen.
Shen Mengdie snickered. “Mirao, you think I don’t know? Back then, you dealt with me through Si Long’s hand. I had been drifting on the ocean all that time, so apart from a good sister of mine like you, who could understand my weakness so well? This is obviously a debt you’ll have to repay. An accomplice like him is only an add-on to the deal.”
“You’ve been feigning madness the entire time?” Su Mirao called out, refusing to believe she could also be fooled by illusions.
Shen Mengdie blinked her eyes like she had just been wrongly accused. “What feigning ignorance? This mister Li Qingshan is our friend. Even if you’re the chosen main character, I won’t stand on your side.” Suddenly, she launched a tirade at the sky. “You trash, idiot, fool, why don’t you finish me off if you have the balls?”
She was not saying that to anyone, but to the so-called “lord of the dream”.
She shut her eyes after the tirade, acting like she was about to face her death. A while later, she opened her left eye before opening her right eye. “Hahaha, I’m fine!”
“I’ve had enough of you!”
Su Mirao was so furious that she shook all over, finally certain that Shen Mengdie was actually mad! She had actually fallen for a madman’s scheme, which was completely unforgivable. If this continued, she felt like even she would go crazy.
Her hand pierced Shen Mengdie’s chest like a bolt of lightning, grabbing a struggling butterfly. She was about to crush it completely when she suddenly froze.
Su Mirao slowly looked back, meeting a pair of eyes that burned like fire.
Li Qingshan had his arm outstretched, unleashing the Ape Demon Locks the Space. “Fellow Su, please release my friend!”
From the moment the red thread of lovesickness had snapped, he had recovered a sliver of clarity. The vicious assault from Lolth’s venom had set off the spirit turtle’s warnings too, forcing him to make an instinctive response for the sake of survival, which allowed him to recover some more clarity.
He was still calm on the surface, but his fright and fury inside could not be put into words. He was not afraid of dying, but letting someone control his mind and reducing him into a slave, a puppet, was truly worse than death.
He had encountered countless dangers in his life. If it were not for Shen Mengdie today, he almost would have doomed himself while handling such a simple task.
In hindsight, from the moment he entered the palace, the Nine-tailed Fox Empress had already begun making a move against him.
First, she dealt a vicious blow to Si Long to please him and make him lower his guard. Afterwards, she used “beyond the Nine Heavens” to create an opening, taking his mind in a single stroke. She had basically turned him from thoroughly-tempered steel to something that completely wrapped around her finger at her whim.
Su Mirao sighed gently and said softly, “My dear husband, aren’t I enough?”
If she just went for it then and there, Shen Mengdie would definitely die, but it would definitely enrage Li Qingshan, allowing him to completely recover from her bewitchment. Her plan of several thousand years would fall into shambles.
At the very least, there was something she had not been lying about. She had indeed remained in this world to wait for Li Qingshan. She had even sworn a Blood Oath of the Nether River in the past in exchange for many benefits from the lord of the kingdom.
However, if she was willing to just follow the arrangements of others, she would not be Su Mirao. From the moment she arrived in the nine provinces, she began considering how she would swallow the bait and spit out the hook. Si Long was a tool she had prepared, as well as quite a nice toy.
Actually, she had confirmed that Li Qingshan was the person she was waiting for a long time ago. The terrifying aura that had once appeared on the Ice Sword cliff could fool those great cultivators that lacked knowledge and cultivation, but it could not fool her.
It was also exactly because of the aura’s existence that she never found the courage to act recklessly. It also made her slightly hopeful, trying to abuse the loopholes in the oath. After all, as long as Li Qingshan never came to visit her, he could do whatever he wanted, whether it was being butchered by another person or ascending. None of it counted as her violating her oath. By then, she only had to endure a few more years. After that, she would be free from the Blood Oath of the Nether River, allowing her to leave this world easily.
She had never thought that the tool she prepared in the past would instead become the reason why Li Qingshan would come and see her. In the very end, all of the circumstances, coincidences, reasons, and fortunes prevented her from getting away.
