Back in the present, Mao Shiqi was burning. She felt her uncovered neck scalding in contact with Yin Na’s bare skin.

“My cherished student,” said Yin Na. “I need you to share my burden now, or your master is toast!”

The 1,000 year spirit syrup wine which Yin Na drank was more suited for cultivators in the spiritual realm, around the Foundation stage. He had drunk the entire gourd to wash down his medicinal pills, but he was only a mere Qi Refining martial artist. The fact that he had not combusted yet was because he was forcing Mao Shiqi to share the fire qi with him.

Mao Shiqi was in the mid Foundation stage; her ability to absorb and refine the fire qi that would easily kill a Qi Refining cultivator was effortless for her capabilities. However, she could not do anything about Yin Na’s iron-hot skin, as she felt her breasts pressing against her master’s naked, scorching body while under the guard of the blind but vigilant Spicy Oil Boar runt.

Mao Shiqi breathed hard, trying to regulate her gasps for air as she refined the fire qi in Master’s dantian while suffering the pain of being burnt. She smelled the blood and sweat on Yin Na’s skin cooking under his own internal temperature, it made her want to gag. But she had to concentrate on taking the heat away from him, otherwise, if she failed, death awaited her in the mouth of the Spicy Oil Boar!

Finally, Yin Na let go.

Mao Shiqi collapsed on the ground, feeling like on top of suffering a fever that her skin was crawling with a million fire ants.

Yin Na had drunk the 1,000 year spirit syrup wine, which made his entire body rapidly hot as it boosted his cultivation base. Yin Na then forcefully hugged Mao Shiqi, and despite him not taking any explicit action, she felt violated regardless. His message was clear. The burns on her skin were her master symbolically marking her, punishing her without killing or debilitating her ability to fight for him.

“Hmm, not bad,” Yin Na made weak, tiny flames manifest from his palms. He was now at the middle stage of Qi Refining.

Because he had already learned fire techniques, he did not need a manual or some method to relearn the basic manipulation of fire qi.

“With this rudimentary ability to control fire a little better with my fingertips, learning alchemy should only get easier. Plus, I’m a little stronger than a beginner Qi Refining cultivator now.”

If Mao Shiqi was not around, Yin Na would have had to dug through his void ring for some consumable that had powerful capabilities to cool or stifle fire qi. But he knew her nature, his gambling clearly bore fruit.

“Good disciple,” Yin Na said, as he stroked the top of Mao Shiqi’s hair in an arrogant manner, while playing with her cat ears. She was still gasping for air, her legs a crumpled heap on the cool, green grass.

“You-!” Mao Shiqi’s voice and expression were filled to the brim with utter loathing, her pretty face scrunched up from her gnashing teeth, yet she did not dare to swat her master’s hand away.

Why did Yin Na expect Mao Shiqi inevitably to return to him?

It was because many years ago…

“Once you breakthrough into Foundation Establishment and reach your human form,” said Yin Na to her one fateful night. “I’ll accept you as my Dao partner.”

Her master’s promise implied that he reciprocated her feelings, but since she understood Yin Na’s teachings so well, she knew that Yin Na would never promise something so grand without hiding ulterior motives.

Mao Shiqi was intelligent, but her emotions and desires for Yin Na frequently fluctuated between liking him and wanting to kill him.

True to her capricious cat nature, she had found herself fascinated and baffled by Yin Na’s character from the moment she had been defeated by him and assimilated into his Yao Guai army.

Just moments ago when she, She Liaoji and Lu Jin Be planned their failed ambush on Yin Na, the scales of the balance within her heart tipped overwhelmingly towards her hate-kill wish for her master.

At the very last second, a shred of hope entertained the notion that the severely-weakened Yin Na reborn as a Qi Refining martial artist would be defeated completely and utterly by her; that he would beg her forgiveness…that they would restart the cultivation journey together. Maybe she could be his master from now on; force him to rely on her… and not the other way around!

And yet, when that moment arrived, when Yin Na was a vulnerable mortal Qi Refining martial artist, his Spicy Oil Boar too far to be able to run back and save him in time, his life exposed before her and completely within her power to extinguish, she was betrayed by her curiosity again.

How would Yin Na outlast her luck…how would he outsmart her next…how would he dominate her again? These were all thoughts that dwelled within her Yao Guai subconscious.

It was with these similarly fatal thoughts that she ultimately let herself be deceived years ago.

The moment had arrived when Yin Na provided her with the last of the materials necessary to make a strong breakthrough into the Foundation Establishment stage.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

With her breakthrough, she would be able to enter a human relationship with her master!

The breakthrough materials Yin Na provided to her were tampered with poison and other harmful ingredients.

Did she question Yin Na on his handling of procuring these materials? Did she inspect them intently or reject them tactfully on the grounds that she’d make her breakthrough herself?

No. She accepted them with gratitude, even though she was aware of Yin Na’s nature. She was like a child who put her hand in fire to see if it would burn her flesh.

How could she not burn?

Her breakthrough succeeded, but her Foundation sea became polluted and imperfect. Not only this, but she failed her human transformation.

Yao Guai were able to adopt true human forms upon reaching the Foundation establishment— this explained how She Liaoji and Lu Jin Be had human forms, while Liao Ya Shu was still a rat-beast humanoid in the Qi Condensation stage. Yin Na had also promised her that he would take her as a Dao partner if she could finally shed her beast-like cat form, but her breakthrough was corrupted, she still had her cat ears and tail.

When the violence from the lightning had cleared and the outline of her figure solidified through the smoke, she heard her master approaching her.

“Aiya,” Yin Na cried, his facial expression conveying sorrow and panic as he pushed through the smoke. However, his eyes were smiling, as if he didn’t even care about disguising how he was pleased by her failure. “Mao Shiqi, I am glad you are alright!”

Though her eyes were now framed by lovely double-eyelids, her pupils were still a feline emerald. They flashed in the moonlight with venomous understanding, as Yin Na hugged her.

Kill…Kill… Kill! Her killing instincts roared with fury. Kill this human who betrayed her, toyed with her as a cat would a mouse in their Master-slave relationship. And yet, shudders of fear and taboo longing rippled down her now human flesh as she felt her master embrace her hairless body before pushing her away.

“Well, it appears from the outcome of your tribulation that we’re going to need to embark on a whole other ordeal to gather the ingredients necessary to reverse the impurities in your dantian, before you can begin to rewrite your destiny and truly become human.”

Yin Na was beginning to make a long-winded explanation that doubled as a formal apology, but Mao Shiqi wasn’t listening.

Kill him! Scheme against him! Betray him like he betrayed you, take the Dao of benefits Master taught and use it against him! We don’t need his help to cultivate, we’ve been alone for 5,000 years, and with Master only 20. The time you spent with Master would be like a fleeting dream, with only his end restarting the beginning of your cultivation journey. Kill Yin Na or you will never be free!

These were her final thoughts that stemmed from her primal feline beast brain, which drifted into a coma as her human mind developed with the attaining of her new human body, however imperfect it was.

Despite her cat tail and cat-ears, was she still not beautiful? She could hide her tail in her underskirt or wrap it around a leg, and her ears could be hidden with headgear. There were numerous illusion scrolls and talismans that could serve as temporary solutions, too!

But she knew that Yin Na would not love her even if she was one of the ten Fairy beauties. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and in Yin Na’s eyes, beauty was second to usefulness. Yin Na loved whoever or whatever provided him a greater influx of benefits. How could she not know this?

She was the one who listened the closest to his lectures. She understood how Master valued her place in his Yao Guai army. She knew Yin Na valued her only for her intelligence and battle strength, and that she was far more useful as a Yao Guai slave than a Dao partner and lover for him.

She knew this long before she made the corrupted breakthrough into Foundation establishment stage, and when she had attained the human form which all Yao Guai cultivators coveted (in order to make their cultivation journey easier), she had lost her pretext to rely on Master for making the breakthrough into Foundation establishment.

Her resentment and desire to kill Yin Na only grew from that day on, as Yin Na repeatedly deployed her as he always did in missions or combat situations requiring her stealth talents and agile abilities. She did not receive any special treatment upon her half-perfect human transformation among the Yao Guai army, and Yin Na no longer even entertained her with any more flirting thoughts of romance.

Master never intended any other use for her, she was destined to remain stagnant as his pawn for the rest of her life!

Yin Na knew everything about Mao Shiqi’s attitude regarding the injustice of how Master treated her. That’s why he knew that when the day arrived when he was not careful, if he forgot to take Mao Shiqi back into the Azure prison realm within his void ring, or if Mao Shiqi made allies with a third party and sought to defect— when the perfect opportunity arrived, his favorite Yao Guai student would take her chance and try to kill him.

Keep your lovers close, but keep your ex-wives closer! Because Yin Na knew of Mao Shiqi, he was able to predict, gamble and take risks, which ultimately led to his worming himself out of what would otherwise have been a fatal end.

Even better, he had walked out of the predicament having taken his Yao Guai slave back, and even gained a higher cultivation base with untapped resources to open his meridians with!

Mao Shiqi was his cherished student— she knew how to quantify and view things objectively according to the Dao of benefits. There was no way that it missed her awareness that her master had walked away with gains, while she had lost everything, having succumbed back into her humiliating position as a Yao Guai slave, whose cultivation base was infuriatingly higher than her Master’s.

Mao Shiqi was good at hiding her thoughts, but briefly lost herself as she vengefully imagined forcing Yin Na to eat her…

“Shiqi,” Yin Na said.

“En?” Mao Shiqi snapped out of her blood lust reverie.

“Your education is incomplete. You still have a lot to learn, not just of the Dao of benefits, but on the materials and ingredients necessary for progressing on your cultivation journey.”

“...” Mao Shiqi looked at Yin Na coldly and killed the overwhelming desire to just decapitate him with a single blow of her fist. How dare he talk down on her when he was a weak mortal again, when he will need to rely on her abilities to survive for the coming days and weeks!

But the shadow of the Spicy Oil Boar hulked threateningly over her.

Mao Shiqi cupped her hands and bowed.

“Master, what’s on your mind?”

“Given the current situation, my capabilities are limited. It takes a lot of qi for me to activate and take things out of my void ring now. I’m going to take the liberty to revise our Master-Slave contract!”