Ning Rongrong went still.
After a while, she pulled her face out of the pillow and opened her eyes a crack. She saw a figure crouching by her bed and made out his outline through her blurry vision. Then... she buried her face again.
"Mm... just a dream after all. How could Wang Xiaoming be here..."
Wang Xiaoming fell silent.
He picked up Ning Rongrong's slipper, aimed at the raised spot, and smacked it down.
"Wah!!"
Ning Rongrong sprang up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, the blanket slipping off her. She stared wide-eyed in fright, opening her mouth to scream.
Wang Xiaoming was quick to react and clapped a hand over her mouth.
"Don't scream, it's me!"
Ning Rongrong's eyes grew even rounder.
She recognized his face, but with her mouth still covered, she could only make muffled noises.
Her gaze sharpened slightly, and she bit down on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.
Wang Xiaoming hissed in pain and let go.
Ning Rongrong gasped for breath, her hair sticking out in a tangled mess.
Wang Xiaoming had given her quite a fright.
How had this guy appeared in her room like a ghost?
"You, you..."
Ning Rongrong stammered for a while but couldn't get another word out. Her head was still a little muddled from being woken so suddenly.
"What about me? Never seen a handsome man before?"
Wang Xiaoming rubbed the faint tooth marks on his hand and spoke without a change in expression.
"That's not what I wanted to ask! How did you get in here?!"
Ning Rongrong kept her voice down, but every word came through gritted teeth.
Even if Wang Xiaoming's sudden visit made her quite happy, who had let him in!?
Was that really all right?
"Don't worry about that. I have my ways. Here, I brought you some pastries."
Seeing Ning Rongrong like this, Wang Xiaoming calmly took an oiled-paper parcel from his Soul Tool and opened it in front of her.
Inside were several flaky pastries, golden and soft-looking, with a dusting of fine powdered sugar on top.
He had made a special detour to buy them at a pastry shop, and their sweet fragrance drifted out the moment he opened the parcel.
Ning Rongrong's mouth snapped shut. She stared at the parcel for three seconds, then asked in puzzlement,
"...Did you come all this way just to bring me food?"
"Yeah. Didn't I promise before that I'd come see you at the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect? I thought I'd also see how your cultivation was going."
Ning Rongrong took the pastries, hesitated for a moment, then started eating.
She chewed twice, powdered sugar sticking to the corner of her mouth, and the killing intent in her eyes visibly dwindled by half.
"Cultivation... is going all right."
"It tastes all right too," she mumbled.
She hadn't expected Wang Xiaoming to still remember that... but she certainly wasn't going to tell him she had fallen asleep after meditating for a little while.
Being confined was just too boring; she had hardly any motivation to cultivate.
As she ate, Ning Rongrong said, "Don't worry. This young lady is a genius. I'll catch up to you soon."
She wasn't making things up, either. She really was close to reaching level ten.
Wang Xiaoming nodded.
It was perfect that she hadn't reached level ten yet.
Wang Xiaoming nodded and took a porcelain bowl out of his Soul Tool.
Inside was a translucent paste with a faint amber sheen. An indescribable smell drifted from the bowl, neither fragrant nor foul, with a hint of seafood.
"Here, I brought you this good stuff too."
Ning Rongrong paused with a half-eaten pastry in her mouth. "What's that?"
"Whale Rubber. It strengthens the body and makes absorbing a Soul Ring much easier after you eat it. It's just..."
Wang Xiaoming hadn't gotten the chance to say anything more.
Ning Rongrong had already snatched the bowl and gobbled down the entire bowl of Whale Rubber.
She smacked her lips twice, looked at Wang Xiaoming, and said, "This doesn't taste good. What's so good about it?"
Wang Xiaoming's mouth was still hanging open in surprise.
He had originally planned to have Ning Rongrong ask someone to bring over a basin of cold water and let her slowly digest it herself.
Although he was touched that Young Lady Ning trusted him so much... he wasn't quite brave enough to watch what was about to happen.
He slowly turned his back on Ning Rongrong while pulling out ice cubes through the Dimensional Wall.
"What are you doing?"
Ning Rongrong had barely asked the question when, the next instant, her face flushed crimson.
She looked as though she had been thrown into a pot of boiling water, an unnatural flush spreading from her neck to the tips of her ears, like a cooked shrimp.
She clutched her stomach and fell onto the bed, kicking wildly without control, bursting with energy. Her legs kicked the blanket straight onto the floor.
"Wang! Xiao! Ming!"
She forced the words out through her teeth, her voice trembling badly. "Is this poison?... You actually tried to harm me!"
"You were the one who ate it so fast. I hadn't finished telling you what to watch out for."
Wang Xiaoming turned around with an ice cube in his hand and popped it into her mouth.
"Hold it in your mouth, don't chew! You'll be fine once you get through it!"
Ning Rongrong held the ice cube in her mouth, one cheek bulging, but the heat inside her was still rampaging through her body.
She was so uncomfortable that tears welled up in her eyes. She glared at Wang Xiaoming with the ice in her mouth, the meaning in her gaze plain to see.
Once I recover, I'll butcher you!!!
Wang Xiaoming sat on the edge of the bed, utterly unafraid of her glare, and fed her ice cubes one by one.
Half an hour later, the heat gradually subsided.
Ning Rongrong was drenched in sweat, her bangs plastered to her forehead. She looked as though she had been hauled out of the water.
She gasped for breath, feeling as though something inside her body had been put back in order, leaving even her limbs a little lighter.
Wang Xiaoming wiped the sweat from her forehead with a handkerchief. "How do you feel?"
Ning Rongrong was still panting, but the anger had vanished from her eyes.
She checked how her body felt. It really was much lighter, and her Soul Power also seemed to circulate a little faster.
She closed her eyes, slowly sat up, and flexed her wrists and shoulders.
Then she suddenly sprang off the bed and sank her teeth into Wang Xiaoming's arm.
"Hiss!!!"
Wang Xiaoming drew a sharp breath and looked down at the young lady hanging from his arm.
Ning Rongrong's teeth were quite even, and she had bitten deep enough that he could feel the force of it through his sleeve.
"Were you born in the year of the dog?!"
"Who told you not to warn me first!!"
"You're the one who ate it too fast!"
Ning Rongrong kept biting for a while before slowly letting go.
A neat circle of tooth marks had appeared on Wang Xiaoming's arm, and a faint trace of blood seeped through his sleeve.
Looking at the tooth marks, Ning Rongrong felt most of her anger fade.
She hadn't expected Wang Xiaoming to have been telling the truth. The marks she had bitten into him were much deeper than before.
She clenched her fist and tested it, finding that she really was much stronger than before, and that her Soul Power also circulated a little more smoothly.
"Um... thank you."
She spoke softly, looking away out the window instead of at him.
"Next time you have something good, can you tell me beforehand? This young lady still has an image to maintain..."