"How is it?" Feng Xun asked as he landed before Xie Xuan.Xie Xuan frowned slightly, pondering which matter he referred to. Meanwhile, Feng Xun had already sheathed his sword and said in a deep voice: "I will ask King Chujiang of the Frozen Hell to come and teach you some magic."
"King Chujiang?" Xie Xuan hadn't yet collected her thoughts. Who was King Chujiang?
"Li Wen. I sensed he came to Fengdu just now. You should have already seen him." Feng Xun turned to the side, his gaze falling on Xie Xuan, noting her pale lips and clothes soaked through with sweat.
Xie Xuan was stunned for a moment, thinking to herself that Feng Xun had sent Li Wen to give her a hard time. Did he believe that would make her obedient?
She pursed her lips and remained silent, withholding the truth from Feng Xun while placing all blame upon him.
"I've seen him." Xie Xuan turned around and walked straight down from Fengdu's high city wall.
"Why are your clothes so wet?" Feng Xun noticed something amiss and asked: "Is it because King Chujiang made you nervous?"
"No," Xie Xuan denied, and quickly found a scapegoat while spreading King Qin Guang's embarrassing story: "King Qin Guang cried."
"I've heard about this. I heard that King Qin Guang cannot help but visit the mortal world every now and then, only to feel sorrowful in secret." Feng Xun caught up with Xie Xuan's pace. In the entire expanse of Fengdu, only Xie Xuan would treat him with such an indifferent attitude, yet he still preferred to remain by her side.
Ultimately, he seemed to be just a youth under twenty, and he preferred others to treat him as a peer.
"He used my clothes to wipe his tears." Xie Xuan said indignantly: "Feng Xun, the magic you taught me is useless."
Feng Xun had forgotten that Xie Xuan had mistaken his embrace for magic last time, and his tone carried slight doubt: "I didn't teach you magic."
It wasn't that he was unwilling to personally teach Xie Xuan magic, but rather that the magic he possessed required a divine body as foundation, and most of it was of pure and bright nature, making it extremely effective against demons and ghosts. Xie Xuan was an evil ghost, and practicing his magic would be tantamount to self-immolation.
"I learned it by stealing," Xie Xuan said smugly.
She stopped in her tracks, turned around, and pounced into Feng Xun's arms in a sneak attack. She moved so swiftly that Feng Xun couldn't dodge in time—or perhaps, he didn't wish to dodge.
Halfway to the city gate, their intertwined figures were reflected in the dark bricks of Fengdu's city wall. When Xie Xuan rushed forward, she could feel Feng Xun's heart pounding faster.
Feng Xun froze and didn't move, but Xie Xuan was puzzled. So... why did it only work on him?
"Why... only you?" she murmured to herself, raising her head to carefully observe Feng Xun. Even with the ghost head mask covering his face, she could still discern that he possessed a handsome face that transcended the ordinary. He could attract most people in the world with his appearance alone, but not Xie Xuan.
In Xie Xuan's eyes, he was nothing more than two eyes, a nose, and a mask.
Her cold, almost icy eyes held a straightforward question, and this pure expression of emotion made Feng Xun blush again. You see, she clearly wasn't thinking about anything improper, yet he himself was flustered.
Feng Xun thought that although she looked foolish, she was somewhat endearing.
He held a sword in one hand and slightly raised the other, his fingertips touching Xie Xuan's hair.
"Xie Xuan, you don't listen to a single word I say. This embrace isn't magic." Feng Xun didn't push her away; he simply straightened his back and answered seriously.
Xie Xuan didn't believe it. She had just successfully launched a sneak attack and he hadn't moved. How could that not be considered miraculous spell work?
She hugged him even tighter, like grasping her prey, and looked up at Feng Xun, staring intently, demanding explanation: "Feng Xun, if this isn't magic, why did you suddenly stop moving?"
Feng Xun's thin lips pressed tightly together. He turned his head to the side, his Adam's apple bobbing. As he moved, the tips of his ears, hidden by his dark hair, were revealed—tinged with distinct blush.
Seeing his reaction, Xie Xuan pressed on: "Feng Xun, tell me."
Feng Xun was too embarrassed to speak, and he himself didn't know why he grew so nervous when she embraced him—perhaps because, apart from her, he had scarcely had any contact with other women since childhood.
"I don't know," he said, his body rigid.
Xie Xuan speculated that this might be the Achilles' heel of his race: "So, I've discovered your weakness?"
Feng Xun figured there wouldn't be any harm in simply admitting it, so he nodded.
Xie Xuan immediately released him. She quickly learned to exploit Feng Xun's weaknesses for leverage: "Fine, give me some money. I want to eat vegetarian noodles in Fengdu City tomorrow."
Feng Xun was surprised that this girl, who had seized such a tremendous weakness of his, only made this request. He nodded: "I'll take you to eat. Don't you have any money from the mortal world?"
Xie Xuan raised her delicate eyebrows: "What is the silver money burned from the mortal realm?"
Feng Xun then remembered that the heavy snow in Fengdu had never fallen upon her. She had come to the underworld utterly alone, and no one missed her.
"The living in the mortal world miss the dead, so they burn paper money. The ashes that fall into the underworld will also bring the currency and other things that the deceased needs back to the underworld." He explained as he walked back to his residence.
Xie Xuan followed him like a shadow. On a whim, she suddenly leaped onto his back and began to ambush him again.
"I'll treat you to vegetarian noodles tomorrow, so please don't do this again," Feng Xun reminded her, yet still instinctively picked her up and carried her on his back.
Xie Xuan hadn't expected that her sneak attack would fail, that he would seize control of her movements. She could only lie upon his back in exasperation.
"No one in the mortal world will burn anything for me!" she shouted. "I 'ate' her, and died not long after I took over her body. Perhaps one or two people will remember her, but no one will remember me."
Feng Xun knew her identity, but when she revealed it herself, he couldn't help but be stunned for a moment.
Xie Xuan asked smugly: "Are you afraid of me? Feng Xun... the Ghost King of Fengdu, didn't you say from the beginning that you knew what I was?"
"You are her inner demon, her second personality hidden in the darkness, Xie Xuan." Feng Xun paused and said. The inner demon is naturally not human, which is why she is ignorant and naive, like a newborn child.
Xie Xuan lay upon his back and sneered, uttering cold, mocking words: "She's cowardly and loves to cry. If it weren't for me, she would have died even earlier than me."
"Yes," Feng Xun patiently agreed with her.
"Why aren't you afraid of me?" Xie Xuan asked, grabbing his ear.
Feng Xun raised his eyes and smiled gently. Why should he fear a little evil spirit? Besides... she appeared rather endearing.
The next moment, Xie Xuan shattered his untimely thought. She conceived a wild idea and lowered her head to bite his shoulder.
It didn't hurt that way, but Feng Xun worried she would use this trick on others again.
He turned his head to the side, supporting her with one hand, and reached back with the other to lift her chin.
Feng Xun said solemnly: "Once King Chujiang teaches you orthodox ghost cultivation techniques, I will not allow you to do this anymore."
Upon hearing this, Xie Xuan realized that it was Li Wen whom Feng Xun had found. A flash of hatred appeared in her eyes, and she bit his finger tightly.
"Xie Xuan, let go," Feng Xun said patiently in a gentle voice.
"Waaah—" Xie Xuan protested, wondering why Feng Xun possessed such thick skin that she couldn't even bite through his flesh.
Feng Xun could only slowly pull his fingers from her mouth, but her tongue still lingered around his knuckles, and a fine, ticklish sensation spread from his fingertips to his heart.
He then realized just how ambiguous their actions were, and a flush rose to his cheeks, so intense that even the cold, ghostly mask couldn't hide his blush.
"Xie Xuan!" he cried out in alarm, and with a bit of force, he managed to pull her off him.
"You're not allowed to do that again—" he said.
Xie Xuan didn't think anything of it. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and thought to herself that she should do this more often in the future.
The moment her eyes darted around, Feng Xun knew what mischief she was plotting—she always did the opposite of what he desired, but he couldn't bring himself to say that he would welcome her doing this more often in the future.
So he could only turn around, grasp the sword hanging at his waist, and walk swiftly forward.
Xie Xuan wanted to torment him a little more, treating it as a hunting game, but when she drew close to him, she was repelled by an invisible current emanating from him.
This time, she silently retreated a great distance. How could she discover his weakness when Feng Xun was deliberately on guard against her?
Xie Xuan became unusually quiet once she fell into thought. At this moment, snow began to fall from the sky, and night was about to descend.
When Feng Xun heard that Xie Xuan hadn't moved for a long while, he turned around and looked at her in the mansion's courtyard. He saw Xie Xuan standing alone to one side, her eyes appearing somewhat lonely and forlorn.
Even though he knew that Xie Xuan, that evil spirit, would not be saddened by his rejection and estrangement, Feng Xun still stopped in his tracks.
"Come here," he said softly, looking at her.
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