The awards ceremony came to a pause. Li Fei casually brushed off the petals and tassels the spectators had scattered over her, then hefted the exquisitely crafted medal in her hand.
Its golden luster and solid heft made her loath to put it down—solid gold, no doubt about it.
Of course, a medal weighing a catty was merely the appetizer. The nine members who had made it into the finals were now gathered together in a hall, waiting for the real rewards to be handed out.
The champion, runner-up, and third-place teams would receive rewards of five thousand, three thousand five hundred, and two thousand credits respectively, with each member also getting one piece of Full Moon grade equipment; on top of that, the champion team would also receive exploration access to a Folded Space, as well as a free-grab opportunity in the Treasury, and more.
"This belongs to you."
Nicole lifted away the red silk cloth, and nine pieces of Full Moon grade equipment lay arrayed in neat rows upon the display stand, glittering brilliantly.
Full Moon grade equipment, worth a fortune, was enough to make a mid-Sequence Transcendent's eyes go green with envy—setting aside the Dawn-grade Gem of True Sight, the Blazing Sun-grade Stone of Deceit, and the Mythic-grade Black-and-White Pendant, even Li Fei herself possessed only four pieces of Full Moon grade equipment.
The swirling radiance of the treasures symbolized wealth, carrying a suffocating visual impact. Li Fei, suppressing the pounding of her heart, strode forward without the slightest hesitation, as was only fitting.
The champion team picks first—that was the rule.
[Song of Thorns]
[Protection of the Benevolent]
[Stone-to-Gold Gloves]
It had to be said, the Magic Academy really was loaded and lavish. Every piece of equipment laid out was top quality—selling any of them off would fetch at least twenty thousand gold coins to start.
Among them was a short bone staff whose attributes had Li Fei practically drooling; she suspected it had been prepared specifically for her.
But Li Fei's gaze hardened, and without the slightest hesitation she gave up on the one "most suited to herself" and chose the most expensive one instead.
She seized an ivory-shaped horn, and seeing her Wealth Points surge upward by seventy thousand, the corners of her mouth curled.
[Horn of Focus]
Equipment Rating: Full Moon
Attributes: Strength +5, Stamina +10
Enchantment Effect: Focus (Lv1)
Focus (Lv1): Wherever the sound of the horn reaches, allied units gain +10% physical resistance.
For Li Fei personally, the Horn of Focus's attributes were rubbish—forget comparing it to Full Moon grade equipment, even New Moon grade equipment could utterly crush it. But this thing counted as a "legion-grade item," and its selling price was at least three to five times that of equipment of the same grade. Cash it in, and what good thing couldn't she buy?
Not to mention, this piece of equipment was something Li Fei had obtained through her own ability, so it could be counted toward her Wealth Points.
After a bout of hesitation, Lilith took [Protection of the Benevolent], a pure-white bracelet; Grace, for her part, chose an ice-colored ring.
Besides those, the [Stone-to-Gold Gloves] and the staff [Bloodweep], which Li Fei had been rather eyeing, fell into the hands of Klein and Kova respectively. She planned to seek to buy them from the pair once she'd collected her gambling debt and converted the [Horn of Focus] into cash.
"These are the tokens for opening the Treasury."
Once everyone had finished choosing, Nicole personally handed three bronze-colored keys into the little mage-maidens' hands, instructing them: "Now don't go losing them."
"Mm-hmm."
Li Fei's expression was demure, yet as she took the key, she lightly scraped her fingertips twice across Nicole's palm and gave a wink, carrying a hint of allure.
The meaning was obvious:
Where's my private reward?
Nicole still wore that elegant, intellectual air of a mature woman, unhurriedly delivering words of encouragement—yet her moisture-laden voice was carried by magic right to Miss Top Courtesan's ear:
See you tomorrow night.
The [Twilight Clay] in the copper basin had completely dissolved, dispersing into the water—which also meant that the three-hour-long [Witch Sickness Suppression Ritual · Single-Use · Kong Wanying Edition] had come to its end.
The delicate young wife sank into a deep sleep, the skin of the one beside her pillow flushed red, the ends of her hair dripping wet—yet the eyes gazing up at the ceiling were brimming with vigor.
Struck it rich!
Her Wealth Points, which had plummeted to fifty thousand after she'd purchased the Third Heaven of Furnace Battle-Qi, had climbed back into six digits!
Wealth Points: 131,007
This included the 5,000 credits, the Horn of Focus, and the earnings from her enterprises and work over this stretch of time.
Because one of the complex calculation rules for Wealth Points is "it isn't safe until it's in the bag," the Academy Treasury keys and the gambling debt Lannister owed had not yet been counted into her Wealth Points total. Only once she'd personally gone to the Treasury and collected the gambling debt would her Wealth Points swell further.
The beautiful and kind-hearted Miss Kaname Madoka had given Lannister a full 24 hours to sell off his ancestral home; as for the worry of him welching on the debt, there was no need to fret at all, because Loxibrook—rounding up, you could say it was surnamed Li now, hee hee.
Li Fei shifted her body, leaning back against the headboard, in one hand a post-cuddle cigarette, the other gently toying with the ends of Lady Annie's hair, as she began to calculate how to make use of the resources in her grasp.
Once the gambling debt was in hand and the Horn of Focus cashed out, the cash alone in her grasp would exceed a hundred thousand.
Top priority, of course, was… setting up a reusable Witch Sickness Suppression Ritual in the villa!
And one at Lady Annie's place too!
One! On! Each! Side!
Next, customizing a Sequence 7 witch class.
Then after that, the Fourth Heaven of Furnace Battle-Qi… no wait, she couldn't afford it!
Li Fei knit her brows, discovering that matters were not so simple.
After a bit of sorting through, she realized that if she only set her sights on the low Sequences, the cultivation resources she possessed could be called more than ample—she could steadily ascend to Sequence 7, outfit herself with a full set of divine equipment, and pick out several tier-three knowledge books she fancied… Moreover, with her special-admission student privileges, she could also apply to the Magic Academy for resources like the [Tier-One Chaos Altar] in a Folded Space similar to D-07, mastering even more spells.
But the moment the mid-Sequences came into play, the Wealth Points gap became absurdly large. Whether it was customizing a Sequence 6 class or the Fourth Heaven of Furnace Battle-Qi, she could only gaze across the ocean and sigh—not to mention the all-encompassing tier-four knowledge books and higher-grade equipment…
"Ah… my head hurts."
Miss Top Courtesan sighed, wearing an expression that yearned to be kept as someone's mistress.
Knock, knock, knock…
A knocking suddenly came at the door. Seeing Lady Annie slowly stirring awake, Li Fei propped herself up and called out with a touch of displeasure: "Studying a foreign language here. Do not disturb."
But the one knocking was relentless, accompanied by Lilith's voice:
"Ram came to tell you, Eva's about to give birth."
"Ah, this… I'm going to be a grandma?"
Having hurriedly kissed Lady Annie goodbye and rushed back home, Li Fei was a tangle of mixed emotions.
The birth of a new life should, by rights, have been a happy thing.
But the problem was, the young madam who was about to be cradling a granddaughter wasn't even eighteen yet…
Whatever Li Fei may have thought, amid the sweet and clear "goo-goo, ga-ga" cries, the half-blood little fairy was, in the end, born.
"This is our child…"
The vampire Constable Sofia trembled as she cradled her daughter, her cold and noble bearing no longer to be found, hot tears welling up in her eyes.
A child conceived by two different races would inevitably also be female, with the bloodline determined chiefly by the mother who carried her. This meant that—forget vampires—even if a true mythological creature, an angel, united with a Sequence 9 fairy, the offspring born could only be a fairy carrying angelic blood.
And Sofia, wholly absorbed in cradling her daughter, did not realize that—after the little fairy was born—the sweat-drenched Eva's first glance went not to the just-born daughter, nor to herself, but to the Mother of Fairies, Li Fei.
In this moment, Sofia, weeping with joy, embraced her daughter, yet never noticed that her wife Eva and her mother-in-law Li Fei were exchanging a gaze across this mother-and-daughter pair, everything understood without a single word.
And of course, there was also Lady Zhihua, standing to the side, taking it all in.
Before such a tableau, even the White Album seemed a touch too gentle.
Qin Zhihua stared blankly at Li Fei and Eva, who gazed at each other in silence, and suddenly clutched at her own belly.
Surging True Qi kept welling up; her dantian could scarcely contain it any longer, so it leaked out, drifting loose about her abdomen, leaving Qin Zhihua with a faint, ghostly stomachache.
But in the end she still squeezed out a smile beneath her furrowed brows, and wordlessly took Li Fei's hand.
The young madam gave her palm a squeeze in return, then stepped forward and gently took the granddaughter from Sofia's arms.
Unlike the wrinkled appearance of a human newborn, the half-blood fairy was smooth and slick, not yet as big as Li Fei's palm, her soft, limp, transparent saucer-wings pressed against her back, looking a bit like Thumbelina from the fairy tale.
The half-blood fairy was sculpted of powder and carved of jade, her exquisite little face still bearing baby fat, having fully inherited the striking beauty of both her mothers, along with Eva's reddish-brown hair color; and when Li Fei took her, the half-blood fairy abruptly opened her ruby-like eyes, exactly the same as Sofia's.
She wasn't the least bit afraid of Li Fei; on the contrary, she let out a calling cry in that tender "goo-goo, ga-ga" voice, smiling sweetly, and even waved her arms and kicked her legs in the Mother of Fairies' palm.
This was only natural.
If a fairy born of "Summoning Magic" had a loyalty of 100 toward her mother, then their daughters could inherit a loyalty of 80 to 90, the daughters' daughters 70 to 80… As the bloodline continued generation after generation, the close bond bestowed by Summoning Magic would gradually weaken, but no matter how many generations apart, a direct-line descendant would always retain a certain fondness for the "creator."
Not only that, but according to Lady Gneia's "popular-science lecture," Witch Sickness was not transmitted from mother to child—but the daughter born of a Witch Sickness carrier would also harbor an instinctive, fanatical adoration for the witch who had spread the Witch Sickness.
You could say she wasn't sick, but it wasn't entirely true that she had no sickness either.
This meant that, the moment the half-blood fairy was born, not only did the bloodlines of her two maternal families flow within her body, but lingering within her soul was something close to the loyalty of a summoned life toward its master, as well as the better part of a Witch Sickness victim's infatuation with the witch.
And she'd reach adulthood in three months…
"Fei—"
The half-blood fairy waved her arms and kicked her legs, babbling goo-goo and ga-ga for a good while, and astonishingly, in that tender voice, called out this very word—as if it had already been branded into the depths of her soul.
"You mustn't be so rude, this is your…"
Sofia gently chided her, but the latter half of the sentence caught in her throat. She too realized that, even by human standards, her honored mother-in-law was really far too young.
"No need to mind it."
Li Fei wore a gentle smile, and amid soft, tender words she proclaimed the rules from here on out: "We're all one family. She is your daughter, and she's my daughter too."
Once these words were spoken, they were naturally as good as solemnly binding for the fairies. This meant that, from now on, any descendant of a fairy—whether a daughter's daughter, or a daughter's daughter's daughter's… daughter—would, without exception, be in a mother-daughter relationship with the Mother of Fairies. Very good.
For one thing, Li Fei really was still very young, and she didn't want to be saddled in the future with appellations like "grandmother," "granny," or "great-grandmother."
For another, "mother" and "daughter"—such appellations were very "harmonious," but granny and granddaughter… emmm, a person cannot, or at least should not. Although Li Fei's private life had nothing to do with the word "decorum," she still had a certain aesthetic taste—otherwise she'd long since have leapt into the Wish-Making Ritual to earn Witch Points.
"Give her a name."
Eva suddenly spoke up, her voice a little hoarse, yet her gaze still not resting upon Sofia.
"Mm… I think…"
Sofia assumed her wife was asking her, and was just about to say the name she'd thought up for their daughter, when Li Fei spoke first.
"Awan."
The name of Eva's eldest daughter, recorded in the apocryphal Book of Jubilees, slipped out of her mouth. Like Xizi clutching at her breast, Li Fei cradled the half-blood little fairy in both hands: "We'll just call you Yawen."
The name Sofia had racked her brains to come up with went unused, yet she felt no loss or anger.
She stared blankly at Li Fei naming her daughter; her mother-in-law's kindly, gentle, peerless beauty left her a little dazed, and all at once she had the illusion that Li Fei was little Yawen's mother instead.
If she really were my and her daughter… wouldn't that be rather nice too?
Forbidden ripples rose upon the lake of her heart, making even a vampire's cold heart tremble for an instant. Then, with a touch of guilt, she clasped Eva's hand.
...
Dinner was very sumptuous. The maids shuttled back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, bringing out exquisite dishes to celebrate the birth of the little life.
After the meal, Li Fei and Qin Zhihua leaned hand in hand at the villa's doorway to watch the stars, while the supermodel-figured Sofia carried her wife and daughter on a stroll, Eva nestled in her embrace, nursing their daughter.
Whatever one might say, a fairy was still a Transcendent being, born of heaven and earth and nourished by heaven and earth; the offspring weren't as fragile as humans, and on top of that, with vampire blood, all manner of Transcendent potions, and life-system magic, carrying her out for a bit of fresh air did no harm—on the contrary, it was all the more conducive to Yawen's Flourishing Growth.
"Sister Zhihua, are you envious?"
A sly glint flashed through Li Fei's eyes as she whispered in her ear: "Shall we have one too?"
Qin Zhihua instinctively glanced at the family of three not far off, and envy did indeed flash through her eyes.
By the cultural notions of the Eastern Continent, bloodline outweighed the heavens.
But in the end she still shook her head, murmuring softly: "No rush."
Li Fei would occasionally prattle on with things like "a gal ought to build a career, not be a full-time wife, or else when her hair turns white she'll surely regret it bitterly," "of course, being kept by Sister Zhihua counts as a kind of career too," "stay a widow? Widow of what—isn't it better to live with some flair?"… Although they were only offhand jokes, and some of the content was truly shocking to the world, there were nonetheless parts that Qin Zhihua found made sense.
Qin Zhihua knew very well that she and Li Fei were at the prime of their youth and ought to be charging boldly ahead; in these next few years they'd likely have no leisure to consider the matter of offspring.
Li Fei's gaze, meanwhile, rested upon the cubic pile of goods still stacked at the doorway, measuring 20m × 20m × 20m, and her head ached a little.
This was the "congratulatory gift" Tingbao had sent her. The densely packed boxes were all crammed with things like puffed snacks, sunflower seeds and instant noodles, carbonated drinks, and the like. To cram them all into the basement in one go would seem a bit crowded.
"Put these in the basement for now. Tomorrow I'll find someone to expand the basement a bit larger."
Li Fei gave the maids an instruction, and went back inside early with Qin Zhihua to take a bath.
Starting tomorrow, everything would return to its proper track—skipping class, selling liquor, making money, grinding experience, and, behind Lady Zhihua's back… Tonight, it'd be best to head back to the room early, and try to get some shut-eye before dawn.
Climbing out of the bath, Lady Zhihua instead helped the water-bead-covered young madam onto the bamboo mat, spreading out her silver needles, evidently planning to personally give her a thorough tuning-up.
"Didn't we just do acupuncture yesterday?"
Li Fei asked, puzzled.
By ordinary reckoning, this business of massage and acupuncture had to be spaced two or three days apart each time, and Su Ling'er was always present to learn as well—yet today was an anomaly.
"Tomorrow I'll be traveling for a while."
Qin Zhihua said in a soft, gentle voice: "No need to worry, I'll be back in a month or two at most."
"Eh?"
The face of her first guest, Shannina, flashed through the young madam's mind. She turned her head to look at Qin Zhihua and asked earnestly: "Is there some trouble? I can come with you."
"No need. It's only a barrier in my cultivation that needs breaking through—this is a matter that will come naturally when conditions are ripe, and there's no risk."
Qin Zhihua's brows and eyes were smiling.
"Oh… all right then."
The young madam's tone carried threads of grievance, reluctance, and unwillingness, yet her body slowly relaxed.
She hated partings.
But if it was only a month or two… her clever little head automatically interpreted the matter as "the wife's going on a business trip," "Lady Zhihua's going into seclusion again," and the faint melancholy was instantly swept away.
Although it meant a little less of the fun of the young madam matching wits and courage with Detective Zhihua, all in all it was still…
Hooray!
The young madam buried her face deep into the pillow, hiding the sorrowful curve at the corners of her mouth.
—No, no good, I can't laugh yet.
—I'll miss you, and I'll do my best to keep myself chaste as jade for you, Lady Zhihua.
Including Li Fei, at this moment neither of the two had yet truly realized the gravity of the problem.
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