A voluptuous woman, rounded and lustrous as pearls and jade, leaned against the railing and gazed into the distance.
The wind roared, lifting her lavish, elaborate gown.
Her graceful figure flickered in and out of view.
An utterly flawless face was revealed.
Her skin shone clear as ice, cloudlike tresses brushing cheeks as fragrant and white as snow.
She had neither the worldliness of a courtesan nor the innocence of a girl in the first bloom of youth.
Instead, she possessed the dignity of someone long accustomed to high station.
And the sorrow of someone trapped in desperate straits.
She was none other-
Than the wife of the Southern Pacifying King of the Tang Kingdom, the Princess Consort of the Southern Pacifying King.
The foremost beauty on the Tang Kingdom's Rouge Ranking!
Her beauty and grace were unrivaled.
Moreover, the Southern Pacifying King had died, leaving his consort a widow.
That only drew still more heroes to bow before her charms.
She should have spent her entire life in peace and security at the Southern Pacifying King's residence.
Who could have foreseen that, three years ago, while visiting a temple to pray for blessings,
She would be abducted and taken up the mountain by the Demon Venerable?
She had become a canary kept in his cage.
"Meow..."
A plaintive cat's cry sounded, like an infant's wail, rousing the Princess Consort of the Southern Pacifying King.
Her heart trembled.
She lowered her head.
And met a pair of glasslike emerald eyes.
It was a female lion cat, snowy white all over.
Not a single stray-colored hair marred her coat.
A maid had bought her while the princess consort still lived at the Southern Pacifying King's residence.
She, too, had been captured and brought to the Blood Rain Tower alongside her mistress.
Three years had passed since then.
Over those three years, the lion cat had frequently gone into heat.
She whimpered day after day.
Unfortunately, there were no tomcats on the mountain.
So she could only languish alone in her chamber, her eyes full of resentment.
"If even a cat suffers so, what of a person?"
The Princess Consort of the Southern Pacifying King sighed faintly, biting her lip hard.
At some point, her jade-white legs had twisted together.
Three years ago, when that fiend had brought her up the mountain,
She had already despaired, believing she would be cast into hell forever.
After all, the fiend was notorious, his lecherous tyranny known far and wide.
Surely he would subject her to every conceivable humiliation.
She had even prepared to hang herself with a length of white silk.
Who could have expected... that upon arriving at the Demon Cult's headquarters,
She would simply be imprisoned in a palace?
She had become a caged canary, forbidden to take even half a step outside.
She was not even allowed contact with outsiders.
In three years, the fiend had never so much as laid a finger on her.
Even his gaze held nothing but disgust, as though he were looking at a fly.
She had observed him in secret.
It was not just her; the fiend seemed to look at every woman that way.
At first, she had found it rather strange.
Only later had she learned a closely guarded secret.
It turned out that Fang Yang, the Demon Venerable known to the outside world as the Emperor of Lust, was actually... impotent.
And the problem was psychological.
Even as the Demon Venerable, able to gather miraculous medicines from across the world, he still could not cure it.
His prolonged impotence had gradually warped his mind.
He was consumed by both inferiority and hatred of women.
Yet alongside that hatred, he harbored a strange longing.
As far as the princess consort knew, the Demon Venerable kept a diary every day.
Everything else in his diary was highly credible, but whenever it touched upon relations between men and women,
He entered a realm of fantasy, wildly inventing one falsehood after another.
He imagined himself having affairs with countless women.
She had once glimpsed those diaries by accident.
Those detailed yet absurdly lurid descriptions,
Had turned her pretty face crimson, filling her with shame and fury.
She had wanted nothing more than to tear the diaries apart.
To preserve the secret of his impotence,
The Demon Venerable would seize a woman from the martial world every few months.
He would bring her back to the Blood Rain Tower, and before long, she would mysteriously disappear, her whereabouts unknown.
The only reason he had left the princess consort untouched,
Was that she possessed a secret of some use to the fiend.
But she still refused to remain a caged canary.
She had been desperately waiting for an opportunity.
And now, at last, it had come.
This time, the fiend had undertaken an unprecedented month-long period of sealed seclusion.
Many within the cult were saying that his chances of survival were slim.
And so she had come here, risking his wrath.
Her pale wrist flicked.
A jade-inlaid hairpin slipped out of her sleeve.
Sharp and cold.
The princess consort gripped the hairpin tightly, resolve shining in her eyes.
Three years of imprisonment.
Today, it was time to end it.
Throughout those three years of captivity, she had existed like a walking corpse, drifting through a haze.
By now, she had nothing left in this world to hold her heart.
All she wanted was to perish together with that fiend.
Whether or not his cultivation had gone berserk,
She would make one final attempt.
First, she would feign compliance.
She would pretend to be tender, even act as though she had fallen in love with him.
Then, when he let down his guard,
She would drive the hairpin into his throat.
Since the fiend loathed women so much, he certainly would not take advantage of her anyway.
It was the perfect way to achieve both ends.
Satisfied with this foolproof plan, the princess consort nodded.
Fang Yang emerged from the secret chamber inside the artificial mountain, still recalling the slap he had delivered.
Although his predecessor's cultivation had gone berserk and his power had scattered,
His body had long since been tempered to its utmost limits, so dealing with a servant was still as easy as turning over his hand.
But... he truly had not yet fully slipped into the fiend's mindset.
He lacked the other man's ruthlessness!
If that man had not muttered something that reached his ears...
Before you continue