Su Feifei shivered again, a coldness spreading out from inside her, and she edged instinctively closer to Ye Tianxie. Because whether it was the aura the two of them were putting out or the words they were saying, what she heard in them was cruelty.

And all of it simply because someone had taken Ye Tianxie’s name.

Tian Moxie… That man, foremost among Huaxia’s three great gaming legends, styled the Undefeated Evil Emperor — was actually Tianxie!

“Enough. There’s no need to be angry. It’s just as well; existing under another name feels rather good.” Ye Tianxie smiled it off.

Forcing down the killing air in his chest, Zuo Pojun laughed. “Heh. True enough. I hadn’t expected the man impersonating our leader to actually have some skill — clawing his way to second on the Level Ranking. He might yet provide us with a good deal of entertainment.” He paused, then cut a glance at Su Feifei out of the corner of his eye and asked, lowering his voice and treading carefully, “Second Brother, a question… Have you, ah, been in contact with Big Sister recently? She seems to already know about you and Miss Su… ahem… living together.”

“Living together? Hey! Don’t say things like that. We’re only — only — Tianxie is only protecting me, we live in the same house and that’s all, we haven’t — we don’t sleep together, don’t say things like that!” Su Feifei took a step forward and shot it back angrily. The pink on her face, however, could not have been more obvious.

“Yes, yes, I know.” Zuo Pojun was sweating profusely. In fact he’d already investigated the reason for Su Feifei’s residence thoroughly, including the three hundred million a year. But a man and a woman were nonetheless under one roof — and given that Ye Tianxie had never in his life let anyone through his door, and had now allowed Su Feifei to move in, and given the intimacy the two of them had been radiating that a blind man could have seen… was it possible they really were—

Ye Tianxie let out a soft breath. “Pojun. How is Big Sister lately? Is she well…? It’s been a long time since I saw her. I wonder if she blames me.”

“Big Sister, she—”

“Hee! Little Brother Tianxie, so you do have a conscience after all — you still remember to ask after your sister. All that time I spent worrying over you and grieving wasn’t wasted, then.”

The voice came like a warm spring wind, soft and bewitching to the bone, raising ripples across the sea of the heart that would not settle. Three men wore three different expressions on hearing it, and all three turned toward the source at once…

A woman in simple, plain clothes came walking slowly toward them, a light smile on her face, her steps as though she were treading on cloud. As she drew near, a face of a beauty capable of toppling the world came into view — a face of surpassing loveliness, matchless and radiant, so entirely deserving of the phrase nation-toppling, city-toppling that anyone seeing it for the first time would lose their soul in an instant and wonder if they were dreaming.

Hair like a waterfall, skin like snow and cream. A graceful smile curved at the corner of her mouth, while her crescent brows and phoenix eyes drew up an endless enchantment. Her lips, faintly upturned, were pink and fine as fresh petals — a single glance at them was enough to break a man’s guard and bring desire in on the tide… Truly, every part of her was exquisite and without flaw, God’s most perfect work. That charm, bewitching as a spirit’s and mysterious as a dream, was enough to drive every man in the world mad.

The plain novice’s clothing sat rather tight on her, pressed close against a proud chest and hips, both of which seemed on the verge of announcing themselves. A simple silk sash was tied lightly at her waist, tracing a willow-slender line, and the whole of that blood-stirring shape was laid bare in an absolutely perfect S-curve… This was a woman with an astonishing figure. Look at her once and you understood what people meant by a full bosom and ample hips, what they meant by a devil’s figure. Her chest was full enough to push the fabric high, to a degree that made one faintly afraid the seams would give at any moment. Her hips were round and lifted, and yet her waist was so very slender — and the combination, far from being ill-matched, radiated an allure that was frankly terrifying, the kind that snatches the soul out of a man.

And as she came slowly nearer, the ample lines of that body rose and fell with the movement, making curves that were already devastating more devastating still…

An enchantress. This was a woman like an enchantress out of legend.

When a woman with an excellent face and an excellent figure sees a woman more beautiful and better-figured than herself, her first reaction is—

From the first glance, Su Feifei had been comparing herself to her… and however much she didn’t want to admit it, she had to admit it. Against a woman like this, she had lost outright. Even the bosom she ordinarily took some pride in was thrown into shadow by those breakers one couldn’t drag one’s eyes from. She surreptitiously straightened her back, doing what she could to sit higher. In front of the man she loved, how could she possibly lose to another woman?

And when the face came clear in her vision, she froze — and then a name came to her at once. A name that shocked her all over again.

“Heh heh… Big Sister, you’ve come.” The eldest son of the Zuo family, who could summon wind and rain in Jinghua and set the whole city trembling with a stamp of his foot, adopted a posture in front of this woman that was very nearly ingratiating — whether from too much respect, too much fear, or both. Murong Qiushui’s eyes rippled and he broke into a paean. “Big Sister, some days apart and your radiance still outshines the sun. Even the coarsest rags on earth could never dim that dazzling light—”

The woman covered her mouth and laughed, and she laughed like a branch of blossoms shaken by wind — that snow-white, generous bosom trembling with it, stirring a wave one couldn’t help but watch, that supple waist, at once soft and firm, twisting into a long and sinuous line. Her gaze passed over Zuo Pojun and Murong Qiushui and settled on Ye Tianxie. And whether it was her gaze or the sheer, unmatched charm released by that laugh, something in him lurched — he even felt the urge to turn and flee. But in the end he stepped forward. “Big Sister. It’s been a long time.”

The woman laid a hand against her cheek and stroked it, sighing at herself. “You know it’s been a long time, and still you’ve been heartless enough not to visit me. Am I so very hateful to you?”

Her voice, however one heard it, carried the wheedling of a young girl. That undertone made Su Feifei intensely uncomfortable all over, sourness rising in her — and what she couldn’t help finding astonishing was that Ye Tianxie, of all people, with his temper, had just called this woman Big Sister.

They—

“That’s not it, Big Sister. You’ve always known Second Brother’s temperament. How could he possibly find you hateful?” Zuo Pojun hurried forward to defend him.

Murong Qiushui glanced at Big Sister, then at the visibly tense Su Feifei, then stole a look at Ye Tianxie, turned away, and intoned at the heavens, “At the wrong time, in the wrong place, two people who should not have met have met. Could this be the world’s most savage… romantic catastrophe?”

Ye Tianxie, Zuo Pojun, Murong Qiushui, and the woman they called Big Sister. Four years ago, beneath the moon and with the moon as witness, they had sworn themselves brothers and sister. Big Sister was eldest, Ye Tianxie next, Zuo Pojun third, and Murong Qiushui — fifteen at the time — youngest. And she was Big Sister not merely because she was oldest, already twenty five years ago, but because of a presence that conquered people effortlessly, one that made these three intensely proud men willing to call her Big Sister.

Few people knew her better than they did. And today, whether deliberately or unconsciously, there was an unmistakable note of grievance in her voice, and the faintest reproach. And for a woman who had almost never displayed such an emotion, there could be only one cause: Su Feifei, standing at Ye Tianxie’s side. Though the reasons behind that were, in truth, a great deal more complicated.

“You… is your surname Liu?” Su Feifei spoke up, watching her with astonishment.

The woman’s gaze rippled and she smiled lightly. “I heard long ago that the Su family’s daughter was beautiful beyond compare, and it seems the reputation was well earned… I’m a few years older than you, so I’ll call you Little Sister Feifei… And yes. My surname is indeed Liu.”

“You really are the Liu family’s Immortal Maiden — Liu Qiyue!” Su Feifei’s eyes went wide, one small hand flying to cover her mouth for fear that her own excitement would make her shout.

The Liu family’s Immortal Maiden. In Jinghua City, there was almost nobody who didn’t know that name — nobody who didn’t know the ruinous beauty it named, the one men coveted and women envied. Liu Qiyue. A woman spoken of as though she were no creature of this world, an enchantress of such beauty that countless people had crossed thousands of miles simply to see her face once, a beauty over whom the Son of Heaven and the Son of God of Huaxia had been waging a quiet war for years.

Su Feifei had heard the name long ago. Liu Qiyue’s fame had rung through Jinghua eight years earlier, and as she grew from a green girl into a woman, the allure she gave off increased by the day, and her fame with it. No other woman had ever caused so enormous a stir on appearance alone.

A woman like that, born into an ordinary family, would inevitably have drawn endless disaster down on herself with a face out of heaven. But her lineage made it impossible for anyone to summon the nerve to profane her or to move against her… Her father, Liu Qianjun, was the Second Leader of Huaxia, holding vast military power in his hands. Her mother, Zuo Chuanrong, was the elder sister of Supreme Leader Zuo Zhenhua — Zuo Pojun’s own aunt — and the Seventh Leader of Huaxia, in command of the government’s largest intelligence apparatus.

The union of the Liu and Zuo families had quietly bound them into a single interdependent house. To move against the Liu family was no different from moving against the highest authority in Huaxia.

And today, three people of terrifying identity and terrifying background had gathered in one place for the sake of a single man: Ye Tianxie. Liu Qiyue, Zuo Pojun, Murong Qiushui — each name more staggering than the last. And Su Feifei finally began to understand why her father had been so willing to withdraw every bodyguard and leave her at Ye Tianxie’s side, even at three hundred million a year… Indeed — even if Ye Tianxie hadn’t the strength to truss a chicken, with three friends like these, who could possibly harm him? And by extension, who could harm the person he was protecting?

(End of Chapter 143)