Yueyang left the Jade Domain’s affairs alone.

Bi Lv made no formal public announcement claiming the title of Jade Domain Lord either — she simply released a statement to the outside world announcing that the traitor had been eliminated and the Jade Domain had been reclaimed.

Yu Qianjun, who had spent all this time undercover in the enemy camp without ever truly betraying anyone, was appointed by Bi Lv as Grand Commander, managing the domain’s affairs. The loyal retainers who had fought on through everything were each given important posts to help oversee the Jade Domain. Even the Black Wind City Lord — who had been given a thorough beating by Yueyang and fled in disarray — was welcomed back by Bi Lv without a word of recrimination, invited to serve as Deputy Commander under Yu Qianjun on the political side of things.

He had more experience, after all.

And a decent network of connections.

As for Lima the Minotaur, his combination of raw ability, cunning, and absolutely unparalleled shamelessness had earned him the position of Head Guard.

The moment the Jade Domain was reclaimed, both the Lion Heart King and the Wilderness King sent envoys to offer congratulations — ahead of even Qianhu, who was still scrambling to compose his.

In the Heavenly Realm, everything came down to power.

Once you had power, everything became simple. Nobody cared about judging the rights and wrongs of the loser, and that went doubly for someone like Pang Pei — a man who had betrayed and murdered his own liege lord and had a reputation that preceded him with infamy.

Jade Sky Pool.

About fifteen kilometers from Jade Castle, an extinct volcano from the distant past sat quietly on the landscape.

Atop it, fed by ten thousand years of accumulated snowmelt, lay a natural sky pool — cool in summer, warm in winter, its water clear enough to see the bottom. This had been Bi Lv’s favorite swimming spot as a child. With the manor still being scrubbed clean of bloodstains, she suggested they come and enjoy the pool for a while.

Yueyang had initially meant to decline — swimming with a beautiful woman at night was wonderful in theory but dangerously easy to lose control of, given that his self-restraint wasn’t exactly his strongest quality. But then he caught Lieyan sneaking a look at him from the side, and the moment he turned his head toward her, she quickly looked away, pretending to have been doing something else entirely.

What on earth had gotten into this giantess today?

She’d never been this oddly fidgety about swimming in the Sky Stairway hot springs.

It was just swimming. And he was a man — why should he be the one anxious about losing out? Besides, Bi Lv had a figure that was genuinely spectacular. Swimming together wasn’t going to be unpleasant to look at.

Yueyang nodded his agreement.

He swam several energetic laps of the cool, clear pool, then returned to the lounge chair prepared for him on the bank to rest.

Glancing over idly, he noticed Lieyan still hadn’t gotten in — she was just sitting at the edge with her feet dangling in the water. “Aren’t you swimming?” he asked.

Lieyan looked down and said nothing.

After a long pause, she answered with uncharacteristic gravity: “I’m thinking about something.”

Yueyang very nearly told her that given her borderline-passing intellectual capacity, complex problems were better left alone — the answer would just refuse to come. He caught the words before they escaped. Full and content, he waited, and when he saw she was still deep in thought, tried again: “What is it? Say it out loud — maybe I can help.”

The giantess hesitated for a long time. “It’s a very complicated problem. I’ve been thinking about it for days and can’t make up my mind.”

Yueyang laughed in spite of himself. “That makes me genuinely curious. What kind of complicated are we talking?”

Lieyan didn’t answer directly. Instead she asked, tentatively: “Do you think Bi Lv is beautiful?”

“Beautiful.” Not just Yueyang — anyone with functioning eyes would have answered the same.

“And do you like her figure?” Lieyan pressed.

“Beautiful and like are actually two different things. Though, alright — I like it. But my ‘like’ is the kind of appreciation you feel toward something beautiful. Beautiful figures come in many forms, and hers is one of them. Ahem — though honestly, you’re not bad either. That hair of yours burns like flame — ordinary women can’t touch it. The rest of you is… also fine. It’s just not quite the direction of my specific aesthetic — I have fairly standard human preferences. The ancient dragon blood you’ve inherited needs time to fully integrate. The process takes a while, but after Nirvana Flames purify it, you’ll gradually evolve toward something more refined. A’Man went through the same thing.” Yueyang had forgotten momentarily that Lieyan was a giantess, and got ahead of himself, then scrambled to smooth it over with the encouraging example of A’Man’s successful transformation.

“Good. I understand now.” Lieyan gave a nod.

“Good — now tell me what the complicated problem was!” Yueyang was genuinely curious. What could have had this giantess puzzling for days?

“It’s not important anymore.” Lieyan stood, stepped down into the water, and swam away toward the far end of the pool.

Yueyang broke into a cold sweat.

“Come swim another lap with me!” Bi Lv surfaced from the water like a mermaid, waving a pale hand in invitation.

“Are you sure? If I catch you, there’s a certain punishment involved.” Yueyang figured that swimming together with a beautiful woman like this wasn’t going to stay at just swimming.

Before Bi Lv had time to react, he executed a smooth, clean dive and slipped into the water.

Bi Lv let out a startled cry, turned, and fled, her swimming form elegant and swift as she put distance between them.

Yueyang watched and felt a very particular stirring of enthusiasm.

A little lamb who had practically swum into the wolf’s den — even if he couldn’t do more, he could certainly try his luck.

They swam for a good while longer. Yueyang made the most of every incidental opportunity available to him throughout — until he noticed Bi Lv’s playfulness flagging and her expression growing a little tired, at which point he pulled her toward shore with him. Lieyan had lit a campfire and was roasting a whole lamb, and had laid out a broad mat covered with food and drinks — apparently fully prepared for spending the night outdoors. Yueyang usually rested inside the Grimoire World and rarely slept outside, but seeing both women in high spirits, he went along with it.

They ate well. He and Lieyan matched each other drink for drink through several dozen cups of wine in fine, boisterous spirits.

The wine didn’t intoxicate him — but he felt satisfyingly content.

Yueyang lay back with his hands behind his head, looking up at the star-filled sky, and thought that a life like this, enjoyed occasionally, was really not bad at all. Cultivation required sustained dedication — but the occasional moment of rest for the body and mind was its own form of wisdom. Tension and release, in the right balance, was the best way to keep moving forward.

Bi Lv and Lieyan, thinking he had fallen asleep, fell to talking quietly between themselves.

Yueyang didn’t try to listen — he let himself drift toward rest, body and mind both unwinding. Occasionally, amid Bi Lv’s soft laughter, he caught fragments: appearance, body, change. Between women, the topics of looks and figure were apparently universal constants — giantess Lieyan included. As sleep finally pulled Yueyang under, he faintly heard Bi Lv’s voice, low and encouraging: “Eat it — my father spent years searching for this, trying to restore my mother’s lost beauty. Unfortunately, my mother never got to receive it — she was already gone by the time he found it. It’s completely useless to me, so eat it. Nothing could ever compare to…”

And at the very edge of consciousness, he thought he heard Lieyan say something about: does it matter if we look exactly the same?

He wasn’t sure how long he slept.

It felt like a century.

When he opened his eyes, he sensed something was different.

Something was covering his eyes. As he reached up to remove it, he discovered two warm, soft bodies lying against him on either side — each using one of his arms as a pillow. When he stirred, both responded: the one on his left trembled. The one on his right was considerably bolder, stopping his mouth with her lips before he could speak, seizing his hand to stop him removing the blindfold, while the tip of a soft, sweet tongue pressed past his lips and into his mouth.

Yueyang inwardly laughed.

With the Heavenly Eye and his perceptive abilities, did they think a strip of cloth could actually hide anything from him?

But if they wanted to maintain the mystery, he wouldn’t look — it would only lead to embarrassment.

What truly baffled him was: if the bold one was the mermaid beauty who hadn’t exactly resisted him in the water, then who was the one on his left? And how were there two who seemed identical? And if the mermaid had produced a double of some kind — what had become of the giantess who’d been agonizing over her complicated problem for days? Where had she gone?

As though afraid he might start guessing or lose his nerve, the bold one grew even more forward.

She lifted his large hand and placed it against the curve of her waist — and the skin beneath his palm was smoother than silk, more delicate than warm jade, utterly unimpeded by anything. Before he could form a single word, the bold sprite on his right pressed herself close in the most daring way imaginable.

The one on his left kept trembling.

But when the bold one on his right took Yueyang’s other hand and placed it against her, the trembling one didn’t resist — she only trembled harder.

Yueyang gently stroked the shoulder of the trembling one, trying to determine by feel whether the long, soft hair there belonged to someone familiar. She immediately sensed what he was doing and pulled his hand away from her hair — pressing it firmly elsewhere instead.

Just who was who?

The question was starting to make his head spin.

And the bold one on his right made clear thinking essentially impossible — the moment he tried to gather his thoughts, she leaned down and took matters entirely into her own hands, even pressing the trembling one down alongside her.

Yueyang decided he didn’t need to know the truth.

Wasn’t the temptation of darkness more interesting anyway?

With these two beside him, he felt an urgency he hadn’t felt before. He stopped caring about answers, reached out, and pulled one of them beneath him.

The battle began.

What followed defied description.

He didn’t count how many rounds he went through — he simply gave everything he had, and the two sprites seemed well aware of what they were in for, doing their best to keep up. When they finally and genuinely couldn’t manage anymore, they took turns using their newly learned — if a bit clumsy — technique to serve him instead, until at last Yueyang found his release in the bold one’s mouth.

The next morning, Yueyang opened his eyes.

The blindfold was long gone.

Giantess Lieyan was roasting meat over the campfire.

Bi Lv sat beside her, whispering — and occasionally glancing over toward Yueyang. They were talking quietly and laughing loudly, clearly the keepers of some shared secret.

Everything looked exactly as it had the evening before, except that night had become morning.

Yueyang scratched his head. What should he say?

Ask directly? Or just go over and act?

But the two sprites from the night before didn’t seem to have any intention of revealing anything — would saying it outright make things awkward?

“Good morning!” After going back and forth in his head, he settled on leaving the question unasked. Some things were simply better kept as mysteries — more interesting that way, more full of possibility.

“Morning!” Bi Lv’s smile bloomed like a flower.

Yueyang found his thoughts, unbidden, drifting back to the bold sprite from the night before — and he remembered very clearly how it had ended.

Bi Lv behaved as though nothing whatsoever had happened. She stepped carefully into the water, turned back to wave at him just as she had the previous evening, and with bell-like laughter sent a sparkling splash of water toward him. “Hey — want to come swim together?”

Yueyang laughed.

His smile was brighter than the morning sun. “Are you sure? If I catch you, there’s still a spanking involved.”