Yue Yang, for his part, came back with his tail between his legs.

Everyone looked at him.

Even Yue Yu found it odd. If the two of them had said what was in their hearts, then the thing should have been settled. Why was he back here?

It was Sick Beauty, as usual, who caught the detail: there was something wrong with the boy’s lip, as though it had been bitten open. Could it be… And in one moment everyone understood. So that’s what happened. The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady put up a thumb and openly commended Yue Yang, for his part, on his fearless forward advance — to lay hands on a girl as far out of reach as Yingluo, the Freedom Queen, and kiss her by force was overbearing presence leaking out at the seams, and lust bold enough to swallow the sky. Princess Qianqian rolled her eyes without much good humor. That’s what comes of the lot of you spoiling him. If it had been me — hah. He’d have gotten a fist for it.

“Get some proper rest.” Yue Yu hurried to comfort the little brother who had been thrown out the door the moment Yingluo gave him that sweet smile. With the main thing accomplished, the rest could wait. Presumably the Freedom Queen had noticed a great many people eavesdropping outside, and being thin-skinned and embarrassed, had thrown him out.

Whap. Princess Qianqian, who had been pretending to read, stood up and rapped him on the head with the book.

“Tiger girl, what was that for?” Yue Yang broke out sweating.

He had noticed something off about her a moment ago. She hardly ever reads. Why was she suddenly taking after Xue Wuxia?

So that was it — she wanted a book to hit him with. What kind of attitude was that? It was going too far. He was going to have to assert some husbandly authority, or this tiger girl would be up on the roof pulling the tiles off next.

Princess Qianqian’s explanation was delivered with total conviction. “I was reading just now, and I came across some passage about happiness and grinning like an idiot, and it put me in a bad mood. You tell me — how is there anybody stupid enough to write language that hateful…”

Well, that was that. He had shouted at Yingluo too loudly and this tiger girl had heard the whole thing.

Yue Yang, for his part, broke out sweating again.

Still, if she wanted to object, she could say so straight out. Why the business with the book?

The transmigrator, whose face is thicker than a city wall, adjusted quickly, deployed his ultimate technique — the great shifting of heaven and earth — and shifted the whole subject at once. “Hey, hey. You can be in a bad mood without hitting people.”

“Did I hit anybody just now?” A certain tiger girl is not only savage but, on occasion, utterly shameless — though she learned that particular move from Yue Yang, for his part.

“It rather seemed so.” The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady was the only one who gave her little husband even token support. Nobody else lifted a finger to save him.

“Oh.” A certain tiger girl showed no sign whatsoever of reflecting on it.

“Never mind an apology — you have to give me a reason at least?” Yue Yang, for his part, felt this was a real injustice.

“Does hitting people require a reason?” A certain tiger girl opened a pair of tiger’s eyes capable of killing the transmigrator’s Sovereign Intent stone dead.

“It doesn’t?” Yue Yang, for his part, shrank down all over on the instant, dropped his head, tapped his two index fingers together in front of him, and asked it back in a very small voice.

“Does it?” A certain tiger girl was thoroughly pleased with herself. Keeping a certain great lecher in line at home is one of the greatest achievements of her life, and apart from a certain snow girl there is nobody in that house whose weight of presence comes near hers. She looked over the whole room in contempt and ignored the pitiful little lecher entirely. “I hit when I feel like hitting. It’s that simple.” If she hadn’t felt it would spoil the image, she would have thrown her head back and laughed three times.

“Fine.” Yue Yang, for his part, heard that and acted on it immediately. He pinned an entirely unprepared Princess Qianqian across his knee, raised a palm, and delivered three loud smacks to that extremely pert backside of hers.

Yue Yu, Sick Beauty and the rest watched with their mouths open.

What was happening?

Was the boy overturning heaven today?

Not only had he laid hands on Princess Qianqian, the tiger girl herself — he was spanking her, humiliatingly, in front of everyone?

This was — this was — this was unbelievable. Nobody was going to believe this scene had happened… The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady and the others were all rubbing their eyes, thinking their sight had gone.

Princess Qianqian, pinned down and smacked, was gaping too. She had no time at all to react, and by the moment her mind came back and she had the Tiger-Prison Divine Sword out and ready to cut somebody down, Yue Yang, for his part, was gone faster than a rocket — one whoosh and no trace of him, with a single sentence left hanging in the air. “You said it yourself. Hit when you feel like hitting. I was only carrying out your wishes to the letter.”

Ashamed and furious, mortified and enraged, Princess Qianqian stood there scarlet to the ears with both hands shaking around the hilt of the Tiger-Prison Divine Sword.

Her silver teeth came near to shattering. “When I catch you, you are dead.”

Yue Yu and Sick Beauty were quietly delighted.

They were used to watching that haughty tiger girl bully the boy. As the saying goes, go up the mountain often enough and you will meet a tiger — and now it had gone the other way, and she had gone up the tiger often enough to meet the mountain. The tiger girl had finally been hit, and hit on the backside in public, which you could call a considerable reckoning.

“Ahem. He was very wrong. I’ll be sure to tell him so.” Yue Yu held the laugh in and went to comfort a Princess Qianqian who was shaking with rage.

“You’re all right, though? It didn’t look very hard.” There was a certain relish in the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady’s remark.

“Not very hard? You try it!” Princess Qianqian was furious.

It had not been hard.

But the humiliation of it. Hit in private would have been one thing — but in front of everybody. It was too much.

The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady was not offended. She laughed instead. “He does it to me all the time. What of it? Normally he indulges you and treats you like a treasure, afraid he’ll drop you if he holds you and afraid you’ll melt if he warms you in his mouth — he can’t bear to raise a hand to you. Otherwise your backside would have been in flower a long time ago.” What she was hinting at was that Princess Qianqian was too proud by half, and set herself against him in everything, and did not know how to bend. That is your own man. Coax him when he needs coaxing and scold him when he needs scolding, criticize him when he needs criticism and praise him when he deserves praise, hold your ground when you must and give way when you must, and do not go on being single-minded about everything. If a woman will not spare a thought for her own man, who will?

Princess Qianqian was startled by that at first, and then she caught up.

The anger went out of her all at once.

The sword went back into its scabbard.

She was not willing to concede it on the surface, though, and raised a small fist. “How the rest of you do things is your business. Either way, I am not being hit for nothing… Hmph.”

Seeing the tiger girl come off worst and retreat for the first time, everyone was privately entertained. Yue Yang laying a hand on Princess Qianqian’s backside was beyond anything they had expected, but they had all known a day like this would come sooner or later, because he and she are natural-born adversaries and neither is comfortable unless there is a fight on. Everyone expresses themselves differently. Perhaps this simply happens to be how she expresses herself.

Once Princess Qianqian had gone, Luohua seized on a particular point and asked the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady quietly, “Does he hit you there often? Does it feel especially good afterward?”

The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady’s face went red in a rush and she waved her hands in confusion. “No. No he doesn’t. Ahem. Occasionally. Ask Sister Wuhen, she knows best.”

“?” Everyone turned to look at Sick Beauty.

“I don’t know anything. Don’t look at me.” Now it was Sick Beauty’s turn to blush, and she shook her head as well. “He never does it to me. It’s probably Hong and Hailan who get more of it, since their bodies can take more punishment and they play a good deal wilder.”

“Is that so. I’d like to try it too, though I’m a little afraid of the pain…” Luohua was full of boundless longing.

“It doesn’t actually hurt much. Ahem. It feels strange, and I can’t explain it, and would you all stop looking at me like that. I really don’t do it often. Occasionally. I said occasionally.” As the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady spoke she stroked that full round moon of hers without noticing she was doing it. The subject had stirred up certain private things she keeps buried and does not bring out, the sort of sweetness that can only be shared with him.

“I’m sleepy.” Yue Yu had nothing to say. Could we possibly not hold a public discussion of the pleasures of the bedchamber right here?

It was mortifying, and it was very easy to teach the young ones bad habits.

Liuye, sitting in the corner, had both hands over her face.

She was too embarrassed to open her eyes and look at anybody.

Xiayi, sitting beside her, had arranged her small face into an expression of complete indifference — but her whole body was rigid and her fingertips were trembling faintly, and everything about her gave away how tense she was underneath. A discussion of the pleasures of the bedchamber. She may be the Sky Dragon Clan’s holy maiden, pressed into the office by the Heavenly Realm’s dragon-women who follow her, and she may have a marriage contract with Yue Yang, but the relationship has never gone further. They have not so much as kissed or held one another more than a few times. Hearing the discussion arrive at the level of technique hit her hard.

It was fortunate that Bao’er, that mischievous cat, was not there. Otherwise she would probably have produced a line or two of the kind that stops a room, and made it more mortifying still.

Yue Yang, for his part, having smacked Princess Qianqian’s backside, knew this was bad.

If he didn’t get out now he would certainly be hunted down.

He bolted off to find Hailan. The Sea Empress has a grimoire of her own, and unlike Bi Lv and Lieyan she is not in awe of Princess Qianqian, so hiding out at her place to let the wind die down was safe enough. Most important of all, there was somebody else at her place — a mutated fish-girl whose body had been broken to pieces by resisting a curse ten thousand years old. She had been repairing for more than half a year and was close to whole again, but with his most recent rise in level and what he had newly comprehended, Yue Yang felt he could make that body more perfect still, and decided to try. It would also serve as a warm-up run for fusing a goddess body onto Yingluo, the Freedom Queen, later on.

“You hit Princess Qianqian?” When Hailan, the Sea Empress, heard the news, she was astonished too.

“I hit when I feel like hitting.” Yue Yang had ducked into her Grimoire World and put on a show of bravado.

“…” Hailan had been about to laugh at him the way she usually does, and then thought better of it. It was a rare day when her little husband got to be magnificent, so she let it pass, and asked instead with a little amusement in it, “Did you enjoy it? Did it feel good? Princess Qianqian’s temper isn’t much, but her figure — even I’m not confident I could beat it. You must have been quietly pleased with yourself afterward.”

“Feel good?” Yue Yang, for his part, cast his mind back. It really had, in fact. Superb bounce to it. A pity he had been too tense at the time to take it in properly; otherwise it would have been better still.

“If you stripped that tiger girl bare and hit her, it would feel even better.” Hailan egged him on for all she was worth.

“That can wait. Right now I’m stripping you bare and hitting you, Sea Empress.” She had roused him thoroughly. If it came to figures, this Sea Empress is the kind of demon who kills a man dead and pays no fine for it, and in a certain kind of battle she is wild — perfectly matched to him, and willing to please a man in every conceivable way. If Yue Yang, for his part, were not immensely strong, unbeaten one against one or one against many, he might well have lost to her.

“Could we skip the hitting?” A certain Sea Empress begged off. From the sound of her, she did not mind the stripping. Whether or not to hit she was leaving to her beloved’s discretion.

Whap. Whap. Whap.

That was a certain great lecher’s decision.

(End of Chapter 1217)