Chapter 166

She stopped a few inches short of him.

Her tone was cool and level.

"Since you're unhurt, this becomes much simpler."

"It saves me having to shoulder the blame for butchering Kain and Azel on your behalf."

Soren had listened in on everything she said to Orathis earlier.

His impression of her was surprisingly good.

She had built an outfit called the Spirit-Hunting Mansion for the express purpose of hunting native Spirit tribes to eat, granted. She had also never once interfered with his operations or made trouble for him.

Soren smiled.

He liked this woman. The face and figure were part of it, but so was the fact that under all that temper she looked after Orathis and cared about him.

Which was why the idea of bringing her into his harem, ahem, into Black Dragon Mountain, came to him naturally.

She had been dragged into this mess. It wasn't right that she carry the ending of it alone.

Whether or not she was the one who killed Azel and Kain, the Kunpeng Beast Tribe's investigators would put her on their list.

And when that tribe came back for revenge, they would come back properly.

Whoever they sent next would be considerably worse than Azel.

Getting her cultivation back to a level that could stand against Azel was already a mountain of work, never mind Three-Turn or Four-Turn Ancestors or whatever else they had waiting.

"Do you want to come work for me?"

Soren put the offer on the table.

Liana tilted her head slightly, watching him.

She didn't refuse. She didn't nod either.

Instead she asked something else entirely.

"I only want to know one thing. When that lotus went off, what exactly did you do?"

Hearing the question, Orathis came sprinting back from the middle distance with both hands clamped over his bruised backside.

"Yeah, yeah, Master! What exactly did you do?"

Soren answered like it was nothing.

"The plan was to absorb the energy the lotus put out."

"It would have been a little demanding, but with my Ancestor Technique awake, manageable."

"Then I changed my mind at the last second."

"I decided to let the thing blow me up along with Kain and Azel."

Orathis and Liana had no words.

Is this man out of his mind? He changed his mind and decided to die on purpose?

He wasn't lying.

He had wanted a field test on the limits of the Human Path Demonic Form. An explosion like that was a rare and perfect opportunity.

What Soren wanted to know was simple. If his body were destroyed down to a scrap of tissue, or one drop of blood essence, could he still come back whole?

The result was in.

Coming back whole was not a problem.

His clothes, however, had gone up in the blast.

His clothes did not come back.

Which was why, when he walked out of those demonic flames, he had been wearing nothing at all from the waist down, and Liana had been frightened into a statue.

Orathis slapped his thigh with a crack.

"I get it!"

"I finally get it!"

"Master died just now!"

"Ah, no, that's not quite right. It's more accurate to say Master let himself get blown into a state of fake death!"

Soren nodded slightly, unbothered.

"That's not entirely wrong."

"The results came out differently from what I expected, though."

"I assumed standing in the blast radius would reduce me to a puddle of blood essence. It only managed everything below my waist."

Both of them had a twitch going at the corner of one eye.

They were beginning to seriously suspect Soren was just showing off.

To deliberately let the World-Destroying Demonic Lotus blast him into red mist.

Is he even a demon? Is that a thing a demon does?

Lunatic didn't cover it.

So Liana huffed and delivered a single word.

"Pervert."

Then she changed the subject, her cold voice carrying a faint scent of orchids.

"I have no intention of joining your faction."

"I'm used to living as I please. Being tied to another person's rules would be worse than dying."

She leaned in suddenly, lips close to his ear, and dropped her voice.

"That little brother of mine has been trouble since he could walk."

"If you truly don't mind his nonsense and you're willing to shelter him, then I'm grateful."

"But, Soren."

"The business between you and me is far from over."

Soren found Liana interesting. Explosive temper, no give in her anywhere.

She had the face of a celestial fairy and carried herself like a demon queen, and the second thing came through louder than the first.

He had put a generous offer in front of her. She hadn't appreciated it. She had turned around and threatened him.

Soren wasn't built to eat a loss quietly.

The urge to make her pay arrived at once.

His arm swept out and pulled Liana into his chest.

Slamming up against a chest that felt like tempered steel, Liana's mind simply stopped working.

She stared up at him without a single usable thought in her head.

When it finally landed, those eyes, normally glacier ice, lit up with humiliation and fury at the same time.

And something in his demonic power had her body locked. She couldn't move an inch.

Soren knew how to handle a woman like this.

Underneath, her temperament ran close to Victoria's. The strategy would have to be different, but the principle held. She was built to be the one doing the dominating, and no man had ever laid a hand on her. So an offensive this sudden and brazen shorted her out and took her reflexes with it.

"You bastard!"

"You dare humiliate me?"

Liana's eyes went bright and wet with rage. Her pupils shook.

She had never imagined a man with a death wish this specific existed anywhere in the world.

The fury coming off her didn't move Soren at all.

He raised his free hand and tipped her chin up, slowly, taking his time about it.

"Kain and Azel picked the wrong target and dragged you into this. That's between you and them. It has nothing to do with me."

"But I saved your life. That happened. You can't argue it away."

"And since I saved it..."

"...whether you feel like repaying that or not, you will repay it."

"Those are my rules."