Refining Drip-Flame ore was, for most people, an incredibly difficult thing—a whole month might not be enough to smelt a single block.
Purifying it into Drip-Flame liquid gold was already the absolute limit for many warriors of the Heavenly Realm.
To then refine that liquid gold into the Drip-Flame Crystal Gold state, with every last grain flawlessly purified—that was a downright impossible task. Of course, for Yue Yang, who possessed the Nirvana Flames, this counted as child’s play. In his eyes, only the Black-Flame Soul Crystal dug out of the Black-Flame Lord’s body—that kind of energy crystal branded with a fierce will and a soul imprint—posed any real challenge.
As for a marvel-flame of the Heavenly Realm like the Ground-origin Yin Flame—ordinarily placid, but the instant its balance was broken it would erupt in an earth-shattering explosion—now that was truly thorny.
If he graded the difficulty by the standards of his old world back on Earth, refining Drip-Flame ore rated a G-class difficulty at most—trivial, a flick of the wrist. Purifying Black-Flame Soul Crystal wasn’t much harder, barely a D-class. But a monstrous flame like the Ground-origin Yin Flame—if Yue Yang wanted to absorb and refine it, the difficulty was at least AAA, only a hair below the S-class difficulty of a divine-grade item like the Fire God Soul-Tempering Herb… And what’s more, if he failed to refine the Fire God Soul-Tempering Herb, at worst he’d just fail and try again—but if he failed to refine the Ground-origin Yin Flame, he’d be facing an earth-shattering explosion!
Absorbing and refining the Ground-origin Yin Flame inside the laboratory of the Heaven’s Web Imperial Palace was out of the question.
Once it went off, the entire palace would likely be flattened. Apart from the buildings inside the Mirage Palace’s protective layer, nothing else would be left—everything utterly reduced to ash and smoke.
Risk-taking was in Yue Yang’s nature.
If he’d brought it back just to sit around as an ornament, Yue Yang would never have given himself such a headache over it—it had to be useful, or he wouldn’t care for it at all.
The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady suggested trying to refine it in the void ruins on the fifth level of the Sky Stairway. That place had been wrecked anyway when the Night Empress invaded, so blowing it up a little more was no great loss.
“Kitty, you really should keep your distance—even if I fail, I’ll be fine,” Yue Yang urged her again and again to leave. But the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady insisted on staying, her reasoning being: “I’m staying—that way, you won’t fail! That’s right, this is my way of motivating you! Remember back in the Black-Flame Canyon, when a certain someone lied to me that it’d take at least half an hour and scared me half to death—it was in exactly that kind of do-or-die, high-pressure situation that I broke through…”
“I’m nothing like you, though. I’m very level-headed—I won’t be like you, all boobs and no brains—ah, my mistake, I meant impulsive! Don’t get me wrong, that was a slip of the tongue just now, no, it wasn’t my true feelings at all, it really was a slip!”
“Anyway, you can’t stand the sight of me, so even if I get blown to bits it’s no big deal to you!”
“Don’t be such a tsundere, Kitty!”
“……”
A day went by, and our classmate Yue Yang very unfortunately failed three times, his whole body blasted charcoal-black, leaving only a row of white teeth and the two whites of his eyes.
He collapsed into the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady’s arms, panting nonstop.
Even though this was a heaven-sent opportunity—to roll around in such a broad, generous bosom, what a blessing that would be!—it was a shame he was too exhausted, so worn out that even his pinky fingers were cramping and he hadn’t the strength to blink, wasting this superb chance.
Every time, he’d been just a hair short.
Yue Yang had been ever so slightly off from finding the balance point, but in the end he’d failed every time.
Because the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady had stayed by his side, not only could he not flee, he also had to protect her the instant things went wrong—so he got blasted especially badly…
“You’re not dead, are you?” the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady suddenly asked.
“Almost.”
Yue Yang let out a soft sigh.
If he could just stay forever in this broad, generous bosom, then even if he truly suffocated to death, it would be a happy way to go!
The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady scooped him up, slung him over her shoulder, unfurled a teleportation scroll with one hand, passed through the portal, and returned to the little garden on the ground floor. Since all the girls were cultivating inside the World Tree, the manor here by the little garden had gone uninhabited for a long while; only occasionally would a few maids come to sweep away the cobwebs and dust, keeping the place fresh and clean so the masters could return to live here at any time.
She didn’t go into the house; instead she flew toward a lake not far off.
And lowered Yue Yang into the water.
Like a little wife welcoming her husband home from afar, she attentively washed and scrubbed Yue Yang’s body.
This gesture left Yue Yang thoroughly baffled. Seizing the moment as he recovered a bit of strength, he caught her faintly trembling hand: “Kitty, what are you trying to do?”
The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady lowered her lashes, forcing down her bashfulness, and hummed in a voice as thin as a mosquito’s whine: “I know what I want to do. You need help, and right now I’m the only one free—so it’ll just have to be me who does it!”
“Aren’t you the one who wasn’t ready yet?” Yue Yang said, again in disbelief.
“I’m getting ready right now!” The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady suddenly stood up and, bravely, right in front of Yue Yang, stripped off her clothes, baring her perfect, sizzling-hot, snow-white body. When she saw our classmate Yue Yang’s dumbstruck expression, she immediately used her hand to turn his head aside: “No looking, or I’ll change my mind.”
“Kitty, you really don’t have to do this…” Yue Yang’s voice suddenly softened. “We can do that, but it doesn’t have to be for any reason.”
“So much nonsense—I’m not doing it for any reason at all!” A certain Imperial Lady, choking back her embarrassment, once more corrected his head as it snuck back for a peek. No peeking allowed!
“Do you really want to do this, Kitty?”
“Then I’ll put my clothes back on!”
“Don’t—”
When the two of them lay in each other’s arms on the bed, the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady suddenly blurted out: “It’s like we barely even dated—isn’t this moving a little too fast?”
Yue Yang nearly broke into a cold sweat and keeled over.
Bringing this up right when he was about to take the final shot on goal—wasn’t it a bit late for that? The rice was practically already cooked into a meal!
He hurried to talk her down: “Actually it’s not fast at all. The fastest would be hopping into bed the moment you first meet—now that’s fast. Our pace is just right! Besides, if worse comes to worst, we can always fall in love after we’re married!”
On the surface the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady seemed as composed as ever, but inside she was actually very worked up, and very nervous: “Here’s the situation—you’ve seen every inch of my body, and I’ve seen every inch of yours, so we know each other well enough by now. So what next? You tell me. You’re the experienced one, you go first—lay out how the plan gets carried out. But the final say and the right to execute belong to me. If it ends up hurting a lot, then the plan gets terminated immediately!”
“You can make the decisions, but there’s no way you’re doing the executing, because you don’t know how to do a thing…” our classmate Yue Yang proposed. “Let me handle the execution, and I guarantee nothing’ll go wrong.”
“Warning: you have advisory rights only, or else you’ll face a severe punishment!” This time, a certain Imperial Lady didn’t swat away the wolfish hand of a certain transmigrator as it caressed her, the way she normally would—she only warned him, with a slight tremor in her voice, to hurry up and come up with a plan.
“For doing this, you don’t need any goddamn plan at all—just do whatever you feel like!” A certain transmigrator indicated that he was very busy right now and had no time to think.
“So what am I supposed to do?” a certain Imperial Lady, at a total loss, asked breathlessly.
“Try that smother-him-with-your-chest torture of yours!” a certain transmigrator suggested.
“……”
About ten minutes passed, and the lovely prelude made a certain Imperial Lady feel that it wasn’t so bad after all—nowhere near as terrifying as she’d imagined.
At the suggestion of her beloved wolfie, she displayed her loveliness to him to the fullest, and observed his naughty thing from the closest range—she even tried, following his advice, kissing it a few times. She could take his advice and, forcing down her shyness, grip that scorching-hot, heart-searing naughty thing, but she refused to take it in her mouth the way others did. She didn’t say so, but the main reason wasn’t that she feared it was dirty—it was that she feared her poor technique might hurt him with her teeth, or leave him with the impression that she was a clumsy fool.
Full of anticipation, and also of nervousness and excitement.
For the first time, she proposed: “This does feel pretty good, but you’re worn out—just lie down, and let me do it!”
A certain transmigrator, biting back the laughter deep inside him, asked: “Do you even know how? Or should I do it? This isn’t about being tired or not—I’d gladly work myself to the bone for this!”
Seeing the disdain of her beloved wolfie, she snorted in irritation: “It’s just doing this, isn’t it? So what if I don’t know how—I’ve got a woman’s natural instincts, you think this could stump me? Stop moving your hands, you’re turning me to jelly all over—let me catch my breath and take you down, you little brat… Nobody’s first time is like this, right? Today I’m going to claim this first on behalf of all my sisters!”
Our classmate Yue Yang was all for it—he was just afraid she’d back out if she failed.
He leaned in by her ear, like a military strategist offering counsel.
And gave her a round of pointers.
“It’s hard to get any leverage from underneath—let me be on top instead. You just lie there nice and comfy and enjoy it, this angle should be about the same—oh no, that’s not working, something’s off, don’t look, when you look at me I go all weak, or, let me turn around, that should do it!” A certain overconfident Imperial Lady tried three times, failed twice, and finally—reduced to tears from the pain—at last succeeded in reverse-pushing her beloved wolfie down.
For a full minute she was in too much pain to speak, and the first thing she said once she’d caught her breath was: “Can’t you just make the thing a little smaller, you brat?”
A certain transmigrator broke into a heavy sweat: “The only trick I’ve got is making it bigger…”
Sitting there like this forever wasn’t going to work either, so a certain Imperial Lady with zero experience swallowed her pride and asked: “What comes next?”
“Hm? You’re not in pain anymore?”
“It hurts! But isn’t this to keep you from getting sick? Didn’t you say that stopping and holding still gives you a disease?”
“Who told you that? Never mind—how about I get on top instead. Actually, Kitty, you’ve got a lot, a whole lot still to learn. Let me teach you, nice and slow!”
“Oh, so that’s how it is—this is pretty simple, I can do this too… aiya, not so hard, you’re like a man-eating tiger, oh heavens, I’m dying, don’t do that, I can’t stand it… so this is how fierce it is—how on earth did Wuhen ever endure it? I can’t take it, if you keep going I’ll… aiya, aiya, I beg you, please, just let me get on top, if you keep this up I really can’t hold on…”
“We’ve actually only just begun, you know—this is only a little warm-up!”
“This is still just the beginning? Heavens, looks like I won’t survive—I can’t, let me rest a bit, or I’ll lose my life. My body nearly exploded just now!”
“How could your body possibly explode… this, ah, you’re probably just an especially sensitive type. What happened just now was…” A certain transmigrator softly murmured into a certain Imperial Lady’s ear a stretch of knowledge you couldn’t learn from any book, embarrassing her so badly that she buried herself in his chest, raised her fists and pummeled him wildly, adamantly denying it: “I am not, I am absolutely not that type, who says so, it doesn’t feel good, it just doesn’t…”
The long night passed, and the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady, slow to wake from her spring slumber, opened her eyes to find she’d fallen asleep sprawled across his chest.
This brat was a downright greedy little devil—never satisfied no matter what.
She couldn’t bring herself to hit him, and finally, after hesitating two seconds, she planted a somewhat “resentful” kiss on him. The fierce motion kissed him awake, and he seized the chance to grab her and give her a suffocating, lingering, passionate kiss.
The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady kissed and kissed, then suddenly shoved Yue Yang away with a cry of alarm: “Oh no, we forgot the dual cultivation yesterday! I remembered at first—it’s all your fault!”
Yue Yang burst out laughing: “It’s fine—whatever we forgot to do yesterday, we’ll just make up for now!”
The somewhat dazed Drunken Cat Imperial Lady puzzled over it for a long while before her mind finally came around: now that they’d already consummated things as husband and wife, was she really still worried that mere lovers’-level dual cultivation would fall short? Once it clicked, she shot him a deeply embarrassed glare: “You just want to be naughty, don’t you? No way—yesterday’s doesn’t count, and this time I absolutely have to be on top…”
(End of Chapter 903)