"It's me."
A voice that seemed to melt into the night wind sounded inside the room.
Then a graceful figure stepped through the cold moonlight and appeared in Li Xiang's room, as though she had passed straight through the bounds of matter.
It was Haitang.
Li Xiang looked up at the figure beneath the moonlight. Even his Dao Heart, tempered through countless trials, faltered for the briefest instant.
Haitang wore only a nearly transparent veil of plain gauze. Moonlight flowed across it like water, revealing and concealing the curves beneath.
Her bare feet touched the wooden floor without gathering a speck of dust. It was as though lotuses bloomed beneath every step.
The face she usually kept behind a black veil was fully revealed. The edge of violence had left her eyes and brows, replaced by a bewitching allure that could captivate all living things and stir desire even in gods and Buddhas.
Had Li Xiang not known who she was, he might truly have taken her for a fairy from the nine heavens who had descended on moonbeams and strayed into this mortal slaughterhouse.
Have I fallen under a Courtesan Cultivator's illusion?!
Alarm bells rang in Li Xiang's mind.
Without hesitation, he hid his left hand in his sleeve and dug his thumb into the joint of his index finger.
The sharp pain of a displaced finger bone shot straight to his brain, tearing through the dazzling veil of beauty before his eyes.
The beastlike instinct of Monkey Mind, Horse Will stirred, cutting down every stray thought that had just begun to rise.
What fallen fairy? What peerless beauty? Just a lovely skeleton draped in human skin, Li Xiang warned himself.
Beauty was the sharpest blade for scraping bone in the world. One more glance, and his draw would