A moment later, Ye Ran’s hands were seized, and Lu Li’s hoarse voice reached her ears.
“Alright.”
The single word left Ye Ran unable to process what he meant, and she instinctively thought he was still pretending to be reserved.
But the next moment, Lu Li suddenly lifted her into his arms.
By the time she realized what was happening, Lu Li had already pinned her down on the bed, and his lips sealed over hers.
Their breaths intertwined instantly, and Ye Ran’s constitution fully erupted at that moment, driving her body to seek its antidote.
Fortunately, Lu Li didn’t keep her waiting long before feeding her the cure.
The pent-up restlessness was finally relieved, and Ye Ran’s brow smoothed in contentment. Gradually, she felt as if she were floating on clouds.
She grew bolder and more proactive, and Lu Li did not disappoint her, seemingly possessing an endless reserve of energy.
Neither of them slept that night. It wasn’t until the sky began to lighten that Ye Ran finally lay contentedly in Lu Li’s arms.
Though exhausted from the night, Ye Ran felt refreshed and wide awake.
She looked up at Lu Li and noticed that he, too, was not the least bit sleepy. In fact, his expression still carried a hint of lingering desire.
This reminded Ye Ran of the leather whip she hadn’t had a chance to take out the night before.
She groped around the bed and finally found her storage pouch. Pulling out the whip, she flipped over and pushed Lu Li down onto the bed.
The whip came down on Lu Li’s body right after.
“I forgot to give Senior Brother his reward last night. Consider it made up for now.”
With that, she struck a few more times.
Scratches and whip marks intertwined, creating an unexpectedly alluring sight.
Lu Li’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and a flash of satisfaction crossed his eyes. But just as the whip was about to fall again, he caught Ye Ran’s wrist.
“What does junior sister mean by ‘reward’?”
He had heard the word “reward” from Ye Ran more than once but never understood where it came from. Moreover, Ye Ran seemed to assume he already knew what she meant.
Seeing the probing look in Lu Li’s eyes, Ye Ran grew a bit irritated.
He was still pretending, even at a time like this!
Surely he wasn’t trying to back out?
Luckily, she had brought all those love letters with her when she left.
Ye Ran shook off Lu Li’s grip, pulled a thick stack of love letters from her storage pouch, and scattered them across Lu Li’s chest. Then she leaned down and pinched his chin.
“Stop pretending. I know you like it.”
Lu Li glanced at the scattered envelopes, slowly sat up, and—under Ye Ran’s unwavering gaze—picked one at random and opened it.
The nearly obsessive words in the letter, along with the signature bearing his name at the end, made Lu Li instantly understand what had happened.
He looked back up at Ye Ran.
“Why would junior sister think I wrote these?”
Ye Ran let out a cold laugh. “Don’t bother denying it. Your name is clearly written on—”
Before she could finish, her eyes suddenly caught a calligraphy painting hanging on the wall.
The characters were bold and powerful, very beautiful. But most importantly, the signature at the bottom was also Lu Li’s—and the handwriting bore not a single resemblance to that in the letters.
A flicker of panic rose in Ye Ran’s heart, and her aggressive demeanor softened considerably.
“Did… did Senior Brother write that painting on the wall?”
Ye Ran stared at Lu Li nervously, hoping to hear a negative answer from his lips.
But Lu Li curved his lips slightly at her and then spoke.
“Yes.”
Ye Ran’s body froze instantly, the hand holding the whip trembling slightly.
The love letters… hadn’t been written by him at all!!!
In her shock, Ye Ran caught sight of the marks she had left on Lu Li’s body. It felt as if the sky were falling.
She quickly threw down the whip, frantically gathered the scattered letters, and stuffed them all back into her storage pouch.
“I’m really sorry, Senior Brother. I mistook you for someone else.”
Ye Ran threw on her clothes and prepared to make her escape. But before she could get off the bed, an arm wrapped around her waist, pinning her in place.
The world spun, and suddenly their positions were reversed.
Her hands were pinned above her head, bound at the wrists with the very leather whip she had brought.
Lu Li’s cool fingers landed on her chin at that moment.
“You guessed right. I do like it very much.”
He truly did enjoy that sensation of pain mingled with a hint of pleasure—especially when that pain came from Ye Ran. It made his very soul tremble.
Even just thinking about it left him craving more, wanting to feel it again and again.
But Ye Ran had no idea what was going through his mind. Believing everything to be a misunderstanding, she thought his words were nothing but a threat.
“S-Senior Brother Lu, this is all a misunderstanding. I didn’t mean it.”
Ye Ran was so nervous she could barely speak.
The next moment, to her surprise, the pressure restraining her wrists disappeared, and the leather whip was tucked back into her palm.
“But I want junior sister to reward me a little more.”
Ye Ran was terrified out of her wits. It never occurred to her that Lu Li’s words were flirtatious. All she heard was, “If you dare touch me again, I’ll kill you.”
She immediately threw down the whip, her expression growing even more fearful.
“Senior Brother Lu, let go of me first. Let’s talk this over calmly.”
Ye Ran raised her hands to push against Lu Li’s chest, but before she could exert any force, he caught her hands and lowered his head to kiss her.
Now panicked and frightened, Ye Ran had no time to think about why Lu Li was kissing her again. Her only thought was to escape this place as quickly as possible.
She struggled harder, and in her flailing panic, she accidentally kicked Lu Li.
His body went rigid, and his kissing halted.
Ye Ran looked up and saw a pained expression on his face—she had clearly hurt him badly with that kick.
Realizing what she had done, Ye Ran’s heart sank even further.
She opened her mouth, wanting to ask if Lu Li was alright, but then it occurred to her that this was a perfect chance to get away.
So, summoning her courage, she shoved Lu Li aside, quickly scrambled off the bed, grabbed her discarded clothes, and fled in a panic through the window.
Ye Ran didn’t dare stop for a moment on the way back. Fortunately, she had taken the small, hidden paths, so no one saw her disheveled state.
The moment she reached her room, she slammed the door shut and added several layers of protective barriers.
Only then did she walk to the table, pour herself a cup of mint tea, and down it in one gulp before slumping limply onto the stool.
“Host, what happened? Why do you look so flustered?”
The system, just waking up, saw Ye Ran’s panicked state and immediately jumped onto the table to approach her.
Ye Ran’s expression turned utterly dead inside.
“System, I’m doomed.”
“What’s wrong, Host? Did you fail last night?”
“No, I succeeded.”
Ye Ran’s voice was eerily calm, yet within that calmness was the serenity of someone who had accepted life and death.
“But those love letters weren’t written by the villain.”
“Oh, is that all? I thought—WAIT?! Host, are you saying the love letters weren’t written by the villain?”
The system’s reaction was even bigger than Ye Ran’s. Its fur puffed up in alarm.
“That’s right. So all this time, I’ve been dancing on the villain’s biggest trigger.”
Because of the love letters, Ye Ran had assumed Lu Li was intensely interested in her, so she had grown somewhat emboldened—even forgetting, in time, about Lu Li’s cruel and bloodthirsty nature.
Looking back, she realized how careless she had been. When she went to test Lu Li, why hadn’t she thought to compare the handwriting first?
So who had been writing her those love letters?
At that thought, Ye Ran pulled another love letter from her storage pouch, opened it, and carefully examined the contents, hoping to find some clue.
It happened to be the letter from the day before, inviting her to meet.
She stared at it for a long time. Though she couldn’t tell who had written it, she did spot a crucial piece of information.
At the very end, the person had written a meeting place—a remote spot in the sect’s back mountain.
She had only read the opening line back then. If she had seen the meeting location, she would have suspected the letter’s authenticity much sooner.
After all, from what she knew of Lu Li, even if he were to ask her to meet, he would never choose such an isolated place.
Ye Ran’s hand, still holding the letter, dropped limply. Her heart was filled with regret and a faint sense of hopelessness.
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