Demoness's Art of Vengeance

Jun Xiaomo reassessed the situation before her. She had originally intended to feed this half-man, half-beast fellow with a Heart Purging Pill. However, now that it became clear that the first prince was not here to create a ruckus, she decided to shelf that thought.

Given the first prince’s condition, a Heart Purging Pill would only suppress the symptoms, but it would not cure the root of the problem. Unless the first prince could completely absorb and subjugate that demonic core’s energies, the effects of the Heart Purging Pill would only be temporary. In fact, once the Heart Purging Pill loses its effects, the backlash to the first prince might even worsen his condition.

Jun Xiaomo attempted to move her arms and her body. However, as soon as the first prince sensed this, he hugged Jun Xiaomo even more tightly. The heat radiating from the first prince made Jun Xiaomo’s face flush with a burning sensation – it was partly from embarrassment, and partly from anger.

She attempted to regulate her thoughts with some self-hypnosis – This is only a humanoid with animalistic instincts. This is only a humanoid with animalistic instincts…

Having recited that mantra several times, the flush on Jun Xiaomo’s face somewhat subsided. However, this did not change the fact that the first prince was hugging her so tightly that her limbs were beginning to feel sore and numb. If this went on, her limbs might even suffer from the loss of blood.

Squeak squeak! Her little packrat grew maddened. It stood up on its hind legs as it furiously squeaked at the first prince –

Forget Ye Xiuwen for now. After all, he was Jun Xiaomo’s martial brother, so they would naturally be closer to each other. Given its appearance as a little packrat right now, it couldn’t do much even if it wanted to. Therefore, it could only watch on silently on the sidelines as Jun Xiaomo drew closer and closer to Ye Xiuwen.

But who was this person who had just popped up out of nowhere? On what basis did he think he could hug Jun Xiaomo so tightly like that?!

This caused the little packrat’s fury to reach its boiling point – how it wished it could bite that first prince to death right now!

Despite this, the first prince lazily raised its eyelid and glanced nonchalantly at the little packrat. This glance was filled with disdain, contempt, and other similar emotions. The little packrat’s fury once again raised to new heights, even as the first prince shut his eyes apathetically.

Jun Xiaomo: …… Did this person really lose all rationality of thought? Why is it that his present actions seem to suggest otherwise?

The little packrat continued to squeak at the first prince indignantly. However, the first prince seemed to treat the little packrat’s annoying peeps as nothing more than a melodious tune and shrugged it off completely.

After a while, the little packrat grew tired of squeaking as well, and it slumped onto the bed in dejection.

It knew that it wasn’t its place to attack the first prince either. If anything, yesterday’s altercation had told it that it was absolutely no match for the first prince.

On the other hand, Jun Xiaomo was also so exasperated that she was reaching her breaking point. If she could, she would have kicked the first prince away long ago. However, she simply did not have the strength to resist him.

Her present predicament was akin to that of a prey that had been captured and tightly bound by the Demonvine. The only difference was that the first prince did not suck her blood like a Demonvine would. At best, the first prince simply treated her like a pillow or a bolster.

Do I really have to spend the entire night like this? A dreadful notion flashed across Jun Xiaomo’s mind as she stared vacantly into the air.

Jun Xiaomo continued to stare at the ceiling with her tightly restrained body. Slowly, slowly, with the gentle crackling of the flame in the center of the room, and the heaving and sighing of the first prince and the little packrat’s breaths, Jun Xiaomo’s eyelids began to droop and grow heavy. Finally, she fell into a deep slumber.

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It was dawn. Jun Xiaomo was jolted awake by a suffocating sensation. An immense pain emanated from her neck, as though something were clamping down hard on it right now. Jun Xiaomo felt completely devoid of any energy to struggle.

Jun Xiaomo reflexively sought to pry away that object clamping down on her neck, but that vice-like grip around her neck only seemed to grow tighter and tighter. Finally, in that moment when Jun Xiaomo was about to lose her consciousness, she mustered all of her energy and ferociously opened her eyes. Instantly, she saw a pair of cold, frigid eyes staring back at her.

“Cough cough…cough cough cough…” Jun Xiaomo hacked dryly in pain, “Let…go…”

Having discovered that Jun Xiaomo was now awake, that man loosened the grip around her neck ever so slightly. However, he still kept his palm wrapped around Jun Xiaomo’s neck.

“Who are you, and why are you on my bed?”

That man’s voice was an extension of that cold, frigid gaze in his eyes. It was completely devoid of feelings, much less emotions such as warmth and the ilk.

“Let…go…first…” Jun Xiaomo struggled to articulate her thoughts in the fewest number of words possible.

She was going to choke to death if this person did not let go of her neck soon! How was she going to respond to his query when she was dead?!

That man ferociously let go of Jun Xiaomo’s neck, but in that instant which he let go of Jun Xiaomo’s neck, he immediately shifted his hands to restrain Jun Xiaomo’s limbs so that she had no means of resisting him at all.

It was well apparent that this man was proficient and well-accustomed to dealing with such situations of skirmish.

Jun Xiaomo’s chest instantly expanded as she furiously sucked in a breath of fresh air, replenishing her lungs and body with the oxygen that she needed. It was almost as though she had just been given a new lease of life.

Once she managed to catch her breath, Jun Xiaomo immediately glared at the person restraining her, gritting her teeth as she barked, “This place is my room, alright?! You should search your heart and ask yourself instead why you’ve decided to come running over to my room and squeeze with me on my bed last night!”

That’s right. The person restraining Jun Xiaomo was the very same “uninvited guest” who had come calling on Jun Xiaomo last night – that frenetic, beast-like first prince. However, the present first prince no longer possessed that bloodshot eyes like he did last night. Instead, they had now reverted back to their original form. His obsidian-black eyes were now deep, cold and abstruse, and his gaze was filled with distrust and guardedness against Jun Xiaomo.

“I remember you.” Moments later, the first prince indifferently added, “You were tailing me the previous night. Tell me, who sent you?”

Jun Xiaomo was infuriated by the first prince’s response – who sent her? It was the first prince’s own mother!

Had she known that the first prince would possess such a guarded nature and was so difficult to appease, she would have taken the opportunity while the first prince was asleep to return that Blood Jade to him directly! What was the point of getting herself into this mess right now?!

“Would you believe it if I told you that there’s no one instructing me right now?” Jun Xiaomo responded coldly.

The first prince squinted his eyes and grimaced as he continued to stare at Jun Xiaomo silently. However, his taciturn, frigid expression told Jun Xiaomo everything she needed to know –

He did not believe her!

In fact, it was not hard to see why the first prince was so guarded against Jun Xiaomo right now. Under normal circumstances, there was no reason for a stranger to be chasing a target across half an entire county!

Jun Xiaomo didn’t know how to begin explaining things to the first prince. More importantly, she was afraid that the first prince would not believe her even if she recounted the entire truth to him!

By now, the first prince’s mother, Jiang Yutong, had already been missing for several years. It would be peculiar, to say the least, if a stranger shows up suddenly with an alleged keepsake from Jiang Yutong, saying that he had fallen into Jiang Yutong’s cavern and brought this Blood Jade to him under her instructions. Even Jun Xiaomo would find it hard to believe the stranger if she were in the first prince’s shoes.

Furthermore, the first prince was highly sensitive to matters pertaining to his identity right now. He had been labelled as the Inferno Kingdom’s most wanted fugitive, and he could not rule out the possibility that someone might spin tales like this in order to lure him out of his hiding place.

That said, Jun Xiaomo did not have much room to consider other options right now. If she did not speak the truth right now, perhaps the first prince might not let her go unscathed either.

Jun Xiaomo drew a deep breath, suppressed the frustrations welling up within her heart, before she began to recount her experience starting from when she unwittingly fell into the cavern belonging to Jiang Yutong. She left out nothing. In fact, she made certain to apprise the first prince about how her senior Jiang Yutong had made such conscientious preparations in order to ensure that anyone who entered her cave would agree to pass on the Blood Jade to her son. Jiang Yutong had prepared a Heart-Oath Array, requiring the visitor who stumbled upon her cavern to make an oath on it before that visitor was allowed to leave.

As the first prince listened to Jun Xiaomo’s recount of her experiences, his gaze was filled with complicated emotions. Then, when Jun Xiaomo finished explaining everything, he remained taciturn.

“Do you mean to say that after you fell into my mother’s cavern, and under the instruction of her final will, you’ve come to hand over this piece of Blood Jade to me?” The first prince indifferently summarized the essence of what Jun Xiaomo had been saying. The first prince’s voice was detached and aloof, and he did not let his roiling emotions reveal themselves through his words.

In fact, he spoke with such disinterest as though her mother’s final wishes hardly meant anything to him.

“That’s right.” Jun Xiaomo responded curtly, bitterly disappointed with the frigidity of the first prince’s heart. After all, senior Jiang Yutong had been thinking about her own child, even on her deathbed; yet the first prince seemed completely unmoved by this fact.

But she was an outsider, and she knew that it was not in her place to condemn the first prince.

“There’s something else.” Jun Xiaomo recalled uniqueness of the Blood Jade as she continued to expound, “The Blood Jade would glow with a red light whenever you’re close by. This was the main reason why I’d chased after you two nights ago.”

The first prince furrowed his brows, yet he responded with a distant voice, “Let me see that piece of Blood Jade.”

Jun Xiaomo gestured to the first prince to loosen his restrain on her. The first prince did so, but he only allowed Jun Xiaomo to move one of her arms.

Does this person really need to be so guarded against me? Jun Xiaomo complained in her heart.

She had already been bound and restrained since the beginning of last night. Yet this morning when she woke up, she was once again restrained by the first prince, albeit in a different fashion. Right now, Jun Xiaomo’s arms had already grown numb. She stretched her loosened arm, before promptly retrieving the piece of Blood Jade from her Interspatial Ring.

The Blood Jade was extremely exquisite-looking. It was flawless and limpid, and when it was placed under the illumination of the sunlight, it even reflected a whole spectrum of colours around it.

Yet at this moment, the piece of Blood Jade knew that it had found its owner, and it glowed with a bright, red light. This light was so bright that it even lit up the dim room they were in.

“Do you believe me now?” Jun Xiaomo gritted her teeth.

The first prince grew taciturn. Moments later, he queried again, “Am I right to say that if you don’t hand this piece of Blood Jade to me, your oath will remain unfulfilled and the Heart-Oath Array will remain in effect?”

“That’s right. Therefore, will you please take it from me quickly?” Jun Xiaomo earnestly pleaded with the first prince.

Then, the first prince suddenly smiled mischievously. When the mischievous smile was superimposed on the first prince’s suave and charming appearance, the resultant look even exuded a slight tinge of villainy.

In fact, the present look that was on the first prince’s face was a complete match with the appearance of the first prince in the portrait. Of course, the first prince’s smile in the portrait displayed his carefree attitude then, as though he held the entire world in the palm of his hands. However, this expression of his was now replaced with a frigid, abstruse expression.

One could only imagine what the first prince must have gone through to have resulted in such a stark change in his personality.

Even then, the smile on the first prince’s charming appearance was still an expression that warmed the heart.

However, Jun Xiaomo was hardly given an opportunity to admire the first prince’s rarely seen smile. This was because the first prince’s next words dashed all her hopes of fulfilling the oath she had sworn on the Heart-Oath Array –

“Since that’s the case, I’ll entrust this Blood Jade to you for now.” The first prince smirked as he remarked with a tranquil voice. Yet the contents of his words were anything but tranquil.

“What?!” Jun Xiaomo’s eyes widened as she stared at the first prince in shock, “Why?!”

“I don’t know whether this Blood Jade is truly from my mother as you have alleged. Thus, I’ll leave it with you first.”

Jun Xiaomo: ……

She wanted to beat the first prince’s face into a pulp to wipe that smirk off his face right now. However, she had to possess the ability to do so first.