After Transmigrating into a Novel as the Master, I Was Forced into Love by the Yandere Villain - Chapter 18
Under the influence of that wisp of purple vapor, Su Yuanyuan slept even more soundly, remaining entirely oblivious to the fact that Song Ling’er had slipped out in the middle of the night.
When bright daylight filled the room, Su Yuanyuan woke up feeling somewhat groggy, only to open her eyes and find Song Ling’er pressed tightly against her arm, sleeping with a peaceful expression.
Though she felt a vague sense of oddity regarding this, she didn’t dwell on it.
For several days running, Song Ling’er moved and acted in absolute sync with Su Yuanyuan. As female cultivators, they shared the exact same hobby: a fondness for acquiring extravagant, luxurious garments that were more flashy than practical, alongside gorgeous sword tassels and decorative hairpins. The two women shopped and bought out the Kuncheng marketplace, completely shoving Fan Chen out of their minds.
Looking thoroughly aggrieved, Fan Chen sat beside Shen Wang at a window-facing table on the second floor. Anyone observing his cloud of towering resentment would have assumed he had just been discarded and abandoned by the world.
“Eldest Senior Brother, tell me, how did the relationship between those two progress at such breakneck speed? Clearly, when they first met, they were at each other’s throats, and I was the one who had to mediate between them.”
Fan Chen’s tone was steeped in grievance. One of them was his childhood companion, while the other was the junior sister he had grown up alongside.
Yet these two individuals, whom he had introduced to one another, had wound up bonding so intimately that it left him with the distinct illusion of being ditched by his best friends.
“The friendships of young women have always been this peculiar. Tomorrow marks the day of the auction, and the millennium-old Frost Flower will be brought out as the second-to-last grand finale item.”
Casting a casual, indifferent glance at Fan Chen, Shen Wang curled his arm, his sharply contoured finger joints tapping rhythmically against the surface of the table.
Though it had only been a few days since he last parted from his master, his longing surged forward like an overwhelming tide, making him yearn to physically bind Bai Qiuluo to his side every single second of the day.
He wondered if his master was sleeping comfortably these nights without him there to warm the bed.
Shen Wang’s thoughts drifted back in time, recalling the period shortly after he had first been accepted into his master’s sect, marked by his probing and sparring confrontations with Bai Qiuluo.
Initially, upon hearing those inner monologues, he hadn’t believed them at all, even suspecting whether Bai Qiuluo was deliberately playing some elaborate trick.
Consequently, he had fabricated a tragic background story though calling it fabricated wasn’t entirely accurate, as it faithfully mirrored the genuine hardships of his early childhood.
He used this narrative to test Bai Qiuluo, only to receive nothing in return except Bai Qiuluo’s gentle, tender care.
The most laughable part of it all was that the warmth he had never dared to even dream of receiving was ultimately found in the embrace of his mortal enemy.
Shen Wang still remembered the first few nights he shared a bed with Bai Qiuluo, when he had deliberately faked the symptoms of night terrors, startling himself awake time and again to test the boundaries of Bai Qiuluo’s patience.
Yet every single time, Bai Qiuluo would patiently and tirelessly pat him gently on the back, soothing him back to sleep.
The tone and demeanor of his master were undeniably cold and detached, yet every action he performed overflowed with an excessive, tender gentleness.
These tender gestures wove themselves into an inescapable prison of nets, thoroughly trapping Shen Wang within.
Emerging from a sea of corpses and a blood-soaked path choked with thorns, the Lord of the Demon Realm had willingly and gladly allowed himself to be imprisoned by Bai Qiuluo.
At that time, the exalted Demon Venerable had even thought to himself: Even if this is an elaborate conspiracy meticulously laid down by Bai Qiuluo, I will gladly accept my fate.
Yet Bai Qiuluo’s unwavering, decade-long consistency completely shattered every single one of his doubts.
It also convinced him that Bai Qiuluo’s inner voice could never be a falsehood. If everything he experienced was fake, then nothing in this world could possibly be real.
“Eldest Senior Brother, if Master sees us bringing back the Frost Flower, do you think Master will treat us with a bit more gentleness?”
Fan Chen gulped down a mouthful of tea, gazing toward Shen Wang with an expression full of hopeful anticipation.
“…”
Shen Wang had no idea how to respond. The gentleness of his master was something he wished to keep exclusively for himself.
The auction arrived right on schedule, and holding their invitation letters, the group was escorted to a private second-floor viewing room.
This auction possessed immense scale; simply leaking the preliminary details regarding a few of the treasures up for bid had been enough to draw crowds pouring in from every direction.
The auction house towered grandly at the absolute center of Kuncheng, bearing the bold inscription Tianyi Auction House across its facade.
The Tianyi Auction House comprised three distinct floors: the ground floor accommodated independent itinerant cultivators, the second floor was reserved for private viewing rooms pre-allocated to disciples of major sects,
while the third floor was naturally set aside for venerable elders and supreme master-level powerhouses.
Each individual floor was sealed off by array barriers to guarantee the privacy and safety of the auction attendees.
The second-floor private rooms featured a transparent light curtain through which occupants could clearly observe the items presented upon the stage below.
“Ling’er, just let me know whatever catches your eye; my storage ring is practically overflowing with spirit stones.”
Seated together on a plush bench, the two women flipped through the auction catalog provided by the house. The supreme grand finale treasures had purposely been omitted from the printed pamphlet, requiring everyone to wait with patient anticipation.
The auctioneer presiding over the event was a female cultivator at the mid-Foundation Establishment stage. Possessing a voluptuous, alluring figure, she carefully lifted a white jade bottle in her hands and delicately pried open the stopper, immediately releasing a refined, lingering wave of rich medicinal fragrance into the air.
“This is a tier-three medicinal pill the Clearing Heart Pill. Consuming it allows the cultivator’s spiritual consciousness to achieve crystalline clarity, granting them safe passage through the harrowing mind-demon tribulation of the Golden Age stage. The starting bid is set at thirty thousand superior-grade spirit stones.”
Tianyi Auction House kicked off the event with an immediate showstopper, offering a tier-three Clearing Heart Pill that constituted an invaluable treasure for any cultivator preparing to step across the threshold into the Golden Age stage.
While the itinerant cultivators on the ground floor fought tooth and nail in a bidding frenzy, the private viewing rooms on the second and third floors remained completely silent and unmoved. To disciples belonging to elite sects like theirs, such pills were common commodities within arm’s reach.
“This auction is so dreadfully boring.”
Su Yuanyuan lost interest and withdrew her gaze, noting that auctions depicted in romance novels were vastly more entertaining than this.
When protagonists attended auctions in stories, shouldn’t there invariably be rival factions competing over treasures, escalating bidding wars, or arrogant sect disciples stepping forward to provoke them so the protagonist could deliver a resounding face-slapping triumph?
“I told you repeatedly to read fewer trashy novels. Everyone cultivating in the Daoist world possesses a fully functioning brain; if anyone lacked sufficient wits, they would have long since been murdered and stripped of their treasures by others.”
“How could they possibly fail to recognize who is safe to provoke and who is entirely out of their league?”
Fan Chen offered a helpless sigh of reprimand. His junior sister excelled at everything, but she harbored an incurable obsession with reading mortal fiction.
She never paused to consider that those mortal novels were entirely fabricated out of thin air by idle writers.
Su Yuanyuan’s brows knitted in annoyance, prompting Song Ling’er seated beside her to immediately chime in with a chilling sneer:
“So what if Sister Su enjoys reading romance books? It simply proves that Sister possesses a pure and untarnished heart. Unlike certain people who do nothing but open their mouths to lecture others and ruin everyone’s good mood.”
“Song Ling’er, I am conversing with my junior sister! When did it ever become your turn to butt in and insert your opinion?”
Fan Chen felt things were unfolding in a direction entirely contrary to logic, yet he couldn’t pinpoint precisely where the deviation lay.
“Second Senior Brother, I feel Ling’er-meimei speaks absolute truth. Furthermore, since Ling’er stood up to speak on my behalf, if you have any lingering dissatisfaction, why don’t we step outside right now and settle it with our swords?”
Su Yuanyuan moved to unsheathe her longsword without a second thought. This represented their standard dynamic for resolving disagreements: whoever possessed the stronger fists held the ultimate truth.
If words failed, a brawl would settle it; whoever won the fight earned the right to call the shots.
“Sister Su, you must not! Please don’t fight him on my account, I’m worried you might get hurt.”
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lol. I love the BFF gals causing the two to fight rather than the OG version.