Chapter 60: Chapter 59
The master courtyard was peaceful, quiet, and completely suffocating.
Yan Shuo sat perfectly still on his heated jade cushion, wrapped tightly in his absurdly thick Cloud-Fox cloak. He stared blankly at the perfectly manicured bonsai tree across the garden.
"I will be back in exactly two hours, Husband," Tantai Zhi said, her voice filled with a mixture of fierce determination and deep reluctance.
She stood by the heavy wooden doors, already dressed for travel. She had traded her usual majestic crimson robes for a slightly more practical, form-fitting red martial outfit. Her crimson sword hung at her waist, humming with eager, bloodthirsty energy.
"Are you sure you need to go, Zhi’er?" Yan Shuo asked, his tone perfectly mild. "We have enough spirit herbs in the treasury to last a mortal lifetime."
"Herbs are not enough!" Tantai Zhi insisted, her golden eyes narrowing with absolute focus. "The fox intercepted a merchant report. A Nine-Tailed Golden Spirit Deer was spotted in the northern frostwood forest. Its bone marrow is a legendary tonic for nourishing sealed meridians. I must harvest it while it is fresh!"
She walked quickly back over to him, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss to his forehead.
"Do not take off the cloak," she ordered strictly, her sweet voice carrying a heavy warning. "Do not pour your own tea. Do not circulate your Qi. I have instructed the sect elders to activate the grand defensive barrier just in case a stray leaf blows into the courtyard and startles you."
"I will be as still as a stone, Wife," Yan Shuo promised with a flawless, lazy smile.
Tantai Zhi beamed, thoroughly satisfied. She turned around, her crimson aura flaring, and shot into the sky like a brilliant red comet, disappearing over the mountain peaks in a fraction of a second.
Yan Shuo waited exactly ten seconds.
He extended a microscopic thread of his spiritual sense, confirming that her world-ending aura had completely left the Azure Sword Sect’s territory.
"Miss Su," Yan Shuo called out smoothly.
The heavy wooden doors creaked open, and Su Mei cautiously poked her head inside. Her fox ears twitched wildly, scanning the sky.
"Is she... is she gone, Lord Yan?" Su Mei whispered, looking terrified that the Saintess might suddenly drop from the clouds.
"She is currently crossing the second mountain range," Yan Shuo replied, his lazy, pampered demeanor vanishing in an instant.
He smoothly stood up from the heated cushion. With a casual flick of his shoulders, he let the outrageously thick, suffocating Cloud-Fox cloak fall to the grass. He stretched his arms, feeling the satisfying crack of his spine.
"Ah, freedom," Yan Shuo murmured, a dark, genuinely arrogant smirk touching his lips. He looked at the fox maid. "Did you bring what I asked for?"
Su Mei hurried into the courtyard, pulling a heavy, black spatial pouch from her sleeve. She placed it carefully on the stone table.
"Yes, My Lord. Three blocks of supreme-grade Abyssal Iron, a jar of refined star-sand, and the core of a Late Core Formation shadow beast," Su Mei listed off, taking a respectful step back. "But Lord Yan... the Saintess explicitly said you are not allowed to circulate your Qi! If she finds out you are forging—"
"She won’t find out," Yan Shuo interrupted calmly. "She went hunting a Nine-Tailed Golden Spirit Deer. Those beasts are notoriously fast and incredibly elusive. Even with her speed, tracking it through the northern frostwoods will take her at least two hours. I only need thirty."
Yan Shuo stepped up to the stone table.
He wasn’t just bored. The Heavenly Dao curse was sealed within a cage of Tantai Zhi’s pure Yin ice, but the seal would break in exactly five years. If he spent the next five years eating peeled grapes and letting his physical vessel grow soft, the curse would instantly annihilate him the moment the ice melted.
He needed to slowly, secretly siphon tiny amounts of the curse’s energy to temper his meridians. To do that, he needed an array disk capable of filtering Heavenly Dao energy.
Yan Shuo extended his bare right hand over the blocks of supreme-grade Abyssal Iron.
He closed his eyes, carefully reaching deep into his dantian. He bypassed the icy cage of Yin Qi, drawing out a single, thread-thin wisp of his pitch-black Nascent Soul gravity.
CRUNCH.
The sheer, localized weight of his Abyssal Qi slammed down onto the iron blocks. Su Mei gasped, taking another step back as the air around the table warped heavily.
Yan Shuo crushed the blocks using pure kinetic density, shrinking them from the size of bricks down to a perfectly smooth, circular disk.
"The star-sand," Yan Shuo ordered.
Su Mei tossed the jar of glowing sand into the gravitational field. Yan Shuo crushed the jar into dust, forcing the glowing sand directly into the molecular structure of the iron disk, carving intricate, ancient array runes using nothing but his bare hands and the ambient pressure of his aura.
"Almost done," Yan Shuo murmured. A microscopic bead of sweat formed on his brow.
He raised his left hand, preparing to crush the shadow beast core to complete the energy loop.
Suddenly, the grand defensive arrays of the Azure Sword Sect let out a massive, echoing BOOM.
Yan Shuo’s hand paused in mid-air.
Su Mei let out a terrified squeak. "Lord Yan! The perimeter wards just triggered!"
Yan Shuo instantly retracted his spiritual sense. A red comet was plummeting toward their courtyard at a speed that completely defied the laws of aerodynamics.
She’s back, Yan Shuo realized. It hasn’t even been twenty minutes! How did she find the deer that fast?!
He had exactly three seconds.
With a flick of his wrist, the half-finished array disk, the shattered jar, and the beast core were swept directly into his spatial ring. The crushing gravitational field vanished. He spun around, grabbed the thick Cloud-Fox cloak, whipped it over his shoulders, and dove backward onto the heated jade cushion. He instantly retracted every single drop of his spiritual aura, leaned his head back against the peach tree, and closed his eyes.
BOOM!
The heavy wooden doors of the courtyard were violently kicked off their hinges, shattering into splinters.
Tantai Zhi stood in the archway.
Slung casually over her right shoulder, bleeding a glowing golden aura onto the stone path, was the massive, lifeless carcass of a supreme-tier Nine-Tailed Golden Spirit Deer.
"Husband!" she gasped, dropping the two-thousand-pound deer carcass onto the pristine grass with a heavy thud.
She rushed over to the peach tree, dropping to her knees beside his cushion.
Yan Shuo slowly opened his eyes, blinking in feigned, sleepy surprise.
"Zhi’er?" Yan Shuo murmured softly, putting a perfect hint of grogginess into his voice. "You’re back early. Did you forget something?"
Tantai Zhi stared at him. She checked the knot on his fluffy cloak. She sent a microscopic thread of Yin Qi to check the seal on his meridians. Everything was perfectly stable.
The terrifying, world-ending panic in her eyes melted into overwhelming relief.
"I didn’t forget anything, Husband," she breathed out, her voice returning to its sweet, melodic tone. She leaned forward, resting her forehead against his chest. "I just... I missed you. The northern forest was too far away. I froze the whole forest to catch the deer quickly so I could come back to you."
Yan Shuo’s lips twitched. He gently raised a hand from beneath the heavy cloak and stroked her dark hair.
"You are incredibly efficient, Wife," Yan Shuo praised warmly. "I was just taking a nap."
Tantai Zhi smiled, closing her eyes and snuggling happily into his robes.
For a moment, Yan Shuo thought he had flawlessly gotten away with it. The Demon Lord’s acting was truly peerless.
But then, Tantai Zhi’s nose twitched.
She took a small breath. The smile on her beautiful face slowly vanished. She didn’t pull away from his chest, but her golden eyes snapped open.
"Husband," Tantai Zhi murmured. Her voice was no longer sweet. It was dangerously, chillingly quiet. "Why do you smell like compressed Abyssal Iron?"
Yan Shuo’s hand froze mid-stroke in her hair. Oh, hells.
Before he could formulate an excuse, Tantai Zhi pulled back slightly. Her golden eyes, sharp as a hawk, locked onto his pristine white sleeve. Resting perfectly on the edge of his cuff was a single, microscopic, glowing grain of refined silver star-sand.
She reached out and pinched the glowing grain between her pale fingers.
The air in the courtyard instantly dropped to absolute zero. The blooming peach blossoms above them instantly crystallized into solid ice.
Tantai Zhi didn’t look at Yan Shuo. She slowly turned her head toward the decorative rock where a certain fox maid was currently trying to dig a hole to the center of the earth.
"Fox," Tantai Zhi said, her voice vibrating with terrifying, suppressed fury. "Explain."
Su Mei didn’t even hesitate for a microsecond. The intelligence operative’s loyalty vanished the moment her life flashed before her eyes. She popped up from behind the rock, throwing herself flat on the grass, completely selling out the sovereign of the dark path.
"He made me do it!" Su Mei wailed, pointing an accusing, trembling finger directly at Yan Shuo. "The second you left the mountain, he threw his cloak on the ground! He ordered me to bring him supreme-tier forging materials! He used his Nascent Soul gravity to crush the iron! I tried to stop him, Saintess, but he is the Demon Lord!"
Yan Shuo glared at the groveling fox maid, mentally visualizing a hundred different ways to turn her into a rug.
Tantai Zhi slowly turned her gaze back to Yan Shuo.
Her golden eyes were not filled with anger. They were filled with absolute, overwhelming, heartbroken panic.
"You circulated your Qi," Tantai Zhi whispered, her lower lip actually trembling. "You used your gravity. You lied to me. I specifically told you the Heavenly Dao curse is unstable! What if your meridians cracked again?! What if the seal broke?"
"Zhi’er, I only used a tiny fraction—" Yan Shuo tried to smooth-talk, putting his most charming, reassuring smile on his face.
It didn’t work. For the first time, his high-tier Demon Lord charisma completely failed.
"Hand it over," Tantai Zhi demanded.
Yan Shuo blinked. "Hand what over?"
"Your spatial ring," Tantai Zhi stated, holding her pale hand out, palm up. "You are clearly incapable of resting properly when you have access to tools. Give me the ring, Husband."
Yan Shuo stared at her. The absolute overlord of the cultivation world, the Nightmare of the Ancient Era, was currently being told to hand over his belongings by his overprotective wife like a misbehaving child.
He considered refusing. But looking at her teary, terrified eyes, he realized that if he fought her on this, she would literally wrap him in a block of profound ice to keep him safe.
With a deeply defeated, exhausted sigh, Yan Shuo slid the dark Abyssal spatial ring off his finger and dropped it into her palm.
"Thank you, Husband," Tantai Zhi said softly, immediately slipping his ring onto her own finger next to hers.
She stood up, brushing the soot off her knees. The heartbroken panic was replaced by a terrifying, unyielding level of smothering control.
"Since you cannot be trusted to nap alone," Tantai Zhi announced, grabbing the edges of his thick Cloud-Fox cloak and aggressively tying it tighter around his neck, "I am moving my zither, my alchemy cauldron, and my bedroll directly next to your cushion. I am not letting you out of my sight for the next five years. If you even try to circulate a single drop of Qi, I will forcefully feed you a sleeping pill."
Yan Shuo slumped back against the peach tree, completely trapped. He glared at Su Mei, who was quietly trying to sneak out the shattered doors.
The Demon Lord had survived heavenly tribulations, betrayals, and armies. But he had finally met an opponent he could not defeat: an obsessive wife with a strict medical protocol.
"Yes, Wife," Yan Shuo muttered, accepting his total defeat.
