Early the next morning, faint dawn light spilled over the window lattice of the Waterside Study.
Li Lingyue slowly woke from her dreams. The place beside her was already empty.
She paused, gazing at the vacant half of the bed. A pang of wistful loneliness came first, then something occurred to her, and her lips curved slightly. "That fellow... he must have gotten scared..."
Scared that she would pester him for another two days and two nights.
Still, he was underestimating himself a little.
"He must have secretly learned something indecent!"
Li Lingyue flushed faintly. He seemed to have been reborn, his stamina and techniques advancing by leaps and bounds. Even she, a Fifth Realm cultivator, had struggled to withstand him and begged for mercy again and again.
"Does Guiguzi's legacy include things like that? Shameless old man!"
She spat the words softly, yet there was not a trace of anger in her eyes. Instead, they brimmed with an infatuation unlike anything she had ever known.
If only...
The light in Li Lingyue's eyes dimmed for a moment.
That infatuation was probably one-sided.
Lu Changfeng desired her, but did he love her? Perhaps there was some admiration and trust, but certainly none of the blazing, wholehearted devotion she felt. Their relationship had begun with each taking what they needed. Now they seemed inseparably intimate, yet an invisible barrier still stood between them.
He had drawn a boundary and never took a single step across that forbidden line.
Was this... retribution?
Li Lingyue thought with bitter self-mockery. Proud all her life, she had regarded men as playthings, chess pieces in her palm. Now she had truly fallen for a man who refused to belong to her, longing for what she could not have and tossing sleeplessly in her bed.
As her