The Matriarch had hidden herself. Nanya had no way of knowing in which part of the astral passage the mighty cultivator’s simulacrum now crept.

But according to the matriarch, her oh so infuriating mother dearest, it was necessary, and definitely not because Nanya had defeated her in a verbal crossing of blades!

Otherwise, the invasion of void qi from the lost plane would grow strong enough to sever the astral passage itself. If that happened, then Nanya would really be in trouble.

As would her relationship with Yung. Since the deception might then turn into reality, too late for her to salvage Yung’s heart.

Nanya didn’t want to, but she had to grudgingly accept her mother’s reasoning as the truth.

Why must she be so condescending when talking to us? Still, the vixen couldn't help but tut.

A powerful cultivator of death, perhaps today’s fiasco was nothing more than a play to Nanya’s mother. Yet the weak had their own stages. So what right did the matriarch have to criticize Nanya’s heartfelt efforts? Especially when she was using the matriarch’s greatest dao, the Dao of Death, to prove her very serious point?

In fact, Nanya had thought her mother would take her side here. Praise her brilliance as was her right, and shower her with hugs and kisses on the forehead.

After all, Nanya had plotted her plan with her mother’s needs in mind. It was all to appease this picky matriarch, yet here she was being so ungrateful.

How maddening she is!

Nanya failed to dodge a sabre in time and was bisected in half. Whether she lost her guts because her mother teased her too much or she was literally cut apart, she had not the will to consider.

Yes, it hurt, but not as much as her mother’s blindness to the reasons behind Nanya’s actions.

Because, was it not her mother who told Nanya that Yung had to pass the Gauntlet of Foxfire if he wished to earn her approval? Nanya had set up the perfect substitute. Nay! For her substitute to the Gauntlet of Foxfire was even more cruel, heartbreaking, and sadistic.

There was no way her mother did not understand that fact. Perhaps that was why the matriarch had, at the end, accepted Nanya’s bargain?

Certainly, the Gauntlet of Foxfire was the traditional method one must take if they wanted to truly be a part of the Su Fox clan, more so if it was to romance and wed a Su lad or lass.

It was devious, such was the evil of the past fox matriarchs. They were vixens after all, every last one of them! The ones who had their love lost were especially cruel according to the scrolls, and they certainly proved the scrolls right by how the Gauntlet of Foxfire was designed, each generation of matriarch adding new and creative treacherous sections.

The tests for Su aspirants, combined, was called the ‘Gauntlet’, yet it was in actuality an artefact and a world upon itself. Once a challenger entered, the artefact would create illusions of the most regretful wishes, deepest fears, and foremost of all, perverted desires of the subject.

They held a tangibility that could not only terrify and madden the unwary, but also seduce!

A thousand unplucked virgin maidens of one’s most steamy wet dreams? It is but for the taking, whether you want to defile or cherish them.

A harem of herculean men ready to nail you like sticky, sentient hammers taking turns? Certainly, ladies almost as graceful as her toe had fallen.

Whispering sweet love to a Su girl yet wishing to trick her for political advancement? Why, perhaps that was the easiest yet most common scheme to unearth.

For the Gauntlet of Foxfire was a Harmonious Heaven 3rd Grade artefact, an Epic Class mystical one at that, alive with its own spirit and will.

It was fiercely loyal to the Su. And worse of all, it was sadistic in judging those who wished to join the clan of mighty foxes.

It would create every conceivable scenario, one after another, to push the challenger to betray the Su Fox clan, to betray their fox lover, with the challenger none the wiser that it was merely an illusion.

Riches, pills, fiendcores, artefacts, women.

Prestige, slaves, delicacies, power, and revenge.

What price would be enough? How many times should the pot be honeyed?

The mystical artefact would batter the challenger’s soul for an infinite amount of time until it was satisfied.

It would not kill the challenger in case of failure.

Merely, it would torture them.

With the destruction of their belief. In themselves, their love, and their dao.

And with a shattered willpower, not only would the challenger lose the chance to join the Su, but perhaps the hope too to ever to progress in their cultivation.

While never fatal, the Gauntlet of Foxfire was truly the product of evil, of wronged love. It was said that indeed a past vixen sage immortal had crafted it out of the heart of a dead mortal plane after her husband had left her for a village girl named Cinnamon.

The gauntlet was simply too vile for the current Yung.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Yung was too rational for it. His love, while true at the moment, was too calculated. After all, he had smartly considered many pitfalls in his path to wooing Nanya and judged the risk worth it. But smart people, those who were realistic about love and lust, were the easiest to trick according to the artefact’s spirit.

One needed to be blindly emotional in their loyalty to pass it.

Nanya should know. She had braced herself and went through it thousands of times while waiting for the return of her heart. Former heart!

Because, We had wished to know.

To know if her past love was still true. If it was wise to slap away the hands of so many righteous monarchs and heroes, each more eligible than the last, in their bid for her own hand in marriage.

She had passed the trials of hundreds of handsome hunks, her heart held bare for all to see.

Only to be met with her heart’s harem.

Disgusting.

Her mother definitely saw the parallel between the Gauntlet and the ‘scenario’ Nanya had crafted today. That’s why she agreed to accept Yung in case the boy made the right choice.

Nanya should already be happy about that.

But it was the manner in which the matriarch accepted the bargain, as if she did so grudgingly and unwillingly, that pissed Nanya off so much!

Su Nanya, such righteous a princess, was obviously in the right here. So why must her mother act as if Nanya was not only tricking the Su Fox clan, the Planar Consciousness, but also her adorable boyfriend Yung for her selfish motivations?

She was not!

She merely wished to know if her choice in Yung was proper. It was no trickery.

The sages said that choice is what made the cultivator. But no one said that validating one’s choice, after making it, was wrong.

So was it not only the proper step, to ascertain whether or not one’s heartfelt investment was made in good judgement?

That’s what Su Nanya, such brilliant an intellectual, was so tirelessly doing right now. Putting herself out there, only for the sake of her lov—fondness!

“Eek!” There was a wet squelch.

Nanya misstepped, accidentally stomping on Ziyou Maque’s beheaded main. The head spluttered apart like an overripe watermelon, spraying blood and brain all over the vixen’s supple thighs.

“Oh how annoying this is! You, village headman. Must you not clean the floor after delivering your victims?” Su Nanya pointed a trembling finger at Youjin Fuqiang in wrathful accusation, feeling wronged. If her Yung had witnessed this, would he not be even more hurt at her actions? She had another man’s brain goo on her legs now! Oh how she had fallen.

Even though that is not our purpose! ...mother, were you right? Did we choose the wrong methods? But then, what of it! These are merely some villagers of a backwater farmstead. One death to experience would only do them good. As long as our Yung trusts in us, no, even if he does not, we shall make everything okay in the end. Is that not enough to justify a moment of heartbreak?

“What in the lord’s name are you uttering, corrupted princess who knows no shame!?” Youjin Fuqiang spat, then as if angered further, mumbled even faster about lord this lord that.

And the lost plane’s corruption encroached even deeper into the reality of the cavern.

Nanya felt like she was dredging through sludge, with sinister worms and leeches binding her body from all directions. The air itself smelt of vile, rotten flesh, as though the cavern had turned into a fermentation vat, where she was being ‘cured’ not by brine water but the acidic juices of some unseen monster.

The crown on top of her head flashed, then sparked. The artefact was quite annoyed at being suffocated by the spatial invasion of the foreign, lost plane on the other side of the caves.

We truly do not think we have sinned. For our Yung indeed did utter, he trusts us. He loves us! But… where is he? Nanya tried to convince herself, but she couldn't help but wonder the contrary.

Her crafty plan, oh how devious she was, would kill many snakes with but one throw of a stone. At the end of the evening, everyone would be happy! So then, what did it matter if they were unhappy before the end?

“Kya!” Nanya yelped again as she accidentally stepped on Youjin Linbi’s throat, crushing the corpse’s windpipe like it was made of straw.

Nanya scrunched her adorable nose, then punched out with a clawed fist, her arm elongating like the strike of a viper, her claws biting down on a tired cultist. But the crass man’s comrade struck her hand from the side with a serrated bone sabre.

With a loud clang of metal on metal, her fist was flung away. She pulled back, dodging four arrows and three spears. But her arm failed to retract fully in time.

“Deliver her corrupted head!” The cultists cheered. Because five more arrows had pinned Nanya’s retracting arm to the floor. She still pulled back, her flesh and bones splitting apart like bamboo.

“Ou!” She couldn’t help but say. Although she would heal, it was painful, and her mother’s chatter was no longer here to keep her mind away from the pain.

She swerved in a circle in place, trying to spray the nearby cultists with the gore that showered out of her tattered arm. But they had learned of her tactics by now.

The cultists dodged. And resumed attacking from afar, only going in when she showed a fatal opening.

The corrupted air from the lost plane bore down on Nanya even harder with each portion of essence qi she lost. The Revival Crown’s connection with the Revival Tower, and in turn, the Planar Consciousness of the Last Ascension Mortal Plane, did not come for free after all.

She had to feed it until it was satisfied.

Usually, that meant sustaining the link with whatever qi her ordinal body possessed. Only then could she be immortal. Only then could she come back from death time and time again to smite her enemies.

But now, her qi was there. But the vile aura overflowing from the lost plane acted as a barrier.

A transparent one, but a barrier nonetheless.

Her arm healed, as did her crushed skull and twisted calf. Her artefact shawls reappeared too and once more covered her creamy skin despite the barbarian cultists tirelessly trying to disrobe her for their depraved purposes.

But each time she was wounded, it took longer to become pristine again. The void qi of the cavern mixed in with her essence qi like oil with water, hampering the various Martial Arts she had been circulating.

Cracks remained on her pretty face. Her shawl ripped in unsightly places. Her knees were bruised red. And that annoying blush from overexerting her essence qi would simply not leave her dimples!

How infuriating!

Nanya was supposed to be the most elegant princess of the lands. She had set today’s stage with her masterful wit, yet the villagers couldn’t even last a quarter of an hour against these weak brutes from the other plane.

Of course, they had to die at the end. But could they not have taken out a few more annoying squid-heads before meeting their end?

Nanya gritted her teeth and squeezed her fists hard. She was so annoyed she wanted to stomp, but was afraid another one of her Yung’s friends’ severed heads would magically appear under her feet.

She didn’t want any more brain matter on her thighs.

“It matters not,” the vixen sighed.

Her oh so adorable and mightily fluffable Su Xiya was yet there, hiding behind one of the secret crevices with her Yung’s Silky. If push came to shove, Madam Floofykins was more than strong enough to end today’s tiny ordeal.

Although, it seems like the ordinal body was currently in a barking debate with Silky. Silky wanted to follow in her Yung’s choice, but Floofy chose to wait.

How smart she was, her Su Xiya! Nanya wondered if she was as smart when she herself was but a fox pup.

It would be such a loss of adorableness when Su Xiya recovered and merged back with her original Occultic Foxball. Would she still be willing to be cuddled and snuggled and floofed and smooched?

If not, no doubt her foolish boyfriend would lament the loss.

That was certainly no reason not to recover the Foxball though. It was hers!

So for that purpose, just for the here and now and definitely never in the future, Nanya needed to be naughty.