Sima Jiao looked at the dying Liao Tingyan in his arms. A trace of blood remained at the corner of her mouth, her whole body trembled, and her usually rosy cheeks were as pale as snow.

He placed one hand on Liao Tingyan’s abdomen, carefully sensing for a moment, his brows gradually furrowing. He knew what this was—he had saved her once before, but that time he thought he had completely resolved it. He hadn’t expected it would return. Generally speaking, his blood should be able to suppress it. Even if it couldn’t, the Moon Shadow Lotus she had eaten later should be enough to neutralize any poison, unless what was in her body wasn’t the demonic poison he had assumed.

The methods of the Demon Realm weren’t as vulnerable as he had imagined. But wasn’t she a Demon Realm spy? How could she be harmed by this thing once, then twice?

Sima Jiao lifted her in his arms and stepped out of the pool. After placing Liao Tingyan on the ground, she painfully curled into a ball, only to be forcibly straightened by Sima Jiao. She couldn’t open her eyes and felt like she was about to die from the pain.

Crash—

Sima Jiao shattered a nearby crystal lamp with one grab. After the transparent crystal fragments scattered, the pale yellow phosphorescence inside instantly transformed into countless fireflies, dancing throughout the hall. Sima Jiao paid no attention to this. He pressed his hand on the broken crystal pieces, then covered Liao Tingyan’s mouth with his bleeding palm.

If a drop of blood couldn’t suppress it, then he would give her more to drink. The flesh and blood of the Feng Mountain clan were the most powerful spiritual medicines in the world. Especially his blood, as one who nurtured the Feng Mountain Spirit Fire, was constantly burned by the spiritual fire day and night, becoming extremely pure. It could hardly be called “blood” anymore, but rather “medicine.” Even when the Feng Mountain clan had many members in the past, his blood was the most precious.

In the past, before he gained powerful abilities and couldn’t protect himself, many people wanted his blood. But he would rather spill it on the ground, giving it to an ordinary small snake, than to those people. Now, he so casually gave it to Liao Tingyan, and not just a drop or two. If Sect Master Shi Qianlü, who had coveted it for so long, knew of this “generosity,” he would probably be heartbroken with envy.

Liao Tingyan’s teeth were clenched in pain, and Sima Jiao couldn’t feed her even with his hand covering her mouth. The fresh blood, tinged with gold, flowed from the corner of her mouth down her neck.

Sima Jiao simply reached out to pinch her jaw, forcibly prying open her clenched teeth. What frustrated Sima Jiao most was not being able to use too much force—if he didn’t restrain his strength, he could rip off her jaw with one pull. In his lifetime, he had only killed people; the few times he had saved someone were all because of her. He found it strange.

Having finally pried open Liao Tingyan’s mouth, wanting to insert his fingers, he found that as soon as he released his grip slightly, she began to struggle. Sima Jiao didn’t have that kind of patience. He directly bit the wound on his wrist, took a large mouthful of blood, sealed her mouth with his, and poured it all in. He fed her several mouthfuls—perhaps too many—as her pale face quickly turned rosy, even excessively so, like someone thrown into hot water and boiled.

Sima Jiao: “…” Saving people was much harder than killing them.

He rummaged through Liao Tingyan’s small sachet, pulled out several petals of the Feng Mountain Blood Coagulation Flower, and stuffed them all into her mouth, pressing her jaw to make her swallow.

His blood was too much for her to handle, so he simply raised her cultivation level, which would naturally solve the problem.

With these simple and crude operations, Sima Jiao not only completely extinguished the bone-corroding poison in Liao Tingyan’s body but also caused her cultivation to surge from the lowest Qi Condensation stage, bypassing Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, and Nascent Soul, directly reaching the Divine Transformation stage. This exceeded her master True Immortal Dongyang’s cultivation by one major realm and six minor realms. A Divine Transformation cultivator, even in a place like Gengchen Immortal Manor, could be the master of a small branch with her level of cultivation.

Others cultivated for three to four thousand years; she only used three hours. In all the years since Gengchen Immortal Manor was established, lucky ones like her could be counted on less than one hand, as people as willful and unconstrained as Sima Jiao were rare.

Every time she woke up after fainting, she would find her progress bar had advanced significantly.

Liao Tingyan sat up on the couch, completely dazed. She discovered a small red flower in her consciousness, very similar to the red lotus, and centered around this small flower was an exceptionally vast space within her body. She tilted her head and found her consciousness could penetrate through the hall and walls to see the scenery outside. She could sense the movements of many creatures around her as if she had suddenly gained thousand-mile eyes and wind-following ears. Not only was she mentally invigorated and physically light, but she also felt she could fly and accomplish many things—moving mountains and filling seas could be done with a reverse of her hand.

How did I become so powerful? Liao Tingyan thought to herself, scratching her head as she looked down at the person lying beside her.

Sima Jiao lay next to her, still with that pale face, but his lips were no longer red. His lips were usually red, except for that time when he bled in the pool to nourish the lotus, and now he looked very similar to back then, probably indicating anemia.

He looked quite uncomfortable, with one hand resting on her stomach. Liao Tingyan saw the wound on that hand and unconsciously licked her lips. Last night she had almost died from pain but hadn’t completely passed out. What happened was hazy to her. It seemed Sima Jiao had saved her, and these strange sensations in her body were all given by him.

Liao Tingyan was silent for a long time, her feelings complex. Having mysteriously arrived in this world, she had always lived one day at a time, considering herself a traveler or visitor. No matter how good or vast this world was, it wasn’t her home. Even this body wasn’t hers, and she felt no identification with this identity. She viewed herself as a vacationer here, scraping by, eventually returning to her world. So for all this time in this cultivation world, she had never properly cultivated, not even trying to eat the flowers from Sima Jiao that would increase her cultivation.

But now with her cultivation surging, she began to feel the reality of being in this strange world.

In the past, she had treated Sima Jiao as her boss half-jokingly, obediently staying by his side. But truthfully, if she could choose, she wouldn’t follow him, as he was a dangerous character. She had seen him kill too many times and maintained a negative attitude toward him. By modern society’s standards, he would be considered a villain, yet in this world, it was this villain who had saved her once, then twice.

Liao Tingyan touched the cold hand on her stomach. The wound on it was casual, completely untreated. For ordinary cultivators, such wounds would heal quickly, but on Sima Jiao, the wound showed no signs of improvement.

“In this world, few can harm me, but due to my special constitution, wounds don’t heal easily,” Sima Jiao said, having awakened at some unknown time.

Liao Tingyan: “…” Why are you telling me your weakness?

The pressure suddenly became greater and greater, feeling as if she had entered the villain camp completely.

Sima Jiao: “Do you know how much of my blood you drank?”

Liao Tingyan covered her mouth. She hadn’t felt it before, but now that he mentioned it, she had indeed drunk human blood. Ugh—

Sima Jiao: “If you dare to vomit, I’ll kill you.”

Liao Tingyan: “Gulp—”

Her face didn’t look good. She really couldn’t understand why human blood could be used as medicine to cure and save people in a fantasy world. According to modern science, drinking human blood directly was useless. But the great demon of the fantasy world didn’t lecture her on modern science. He sat up, moved closer to her, and pressed her chin with his wounded hand: “Your cultivation has reached Divine Transformation. How about it, do you want to kill me now?”

Truth buff, activated.

Liao Tingyan: “No.”

Sima Jiao: “Do you want to increase your cultivation further?”

Liao Tingyan: “No.” To be honest, suddenly becoming such a powerful cultivator was like owning a high-end machine without knowing how to use it, only able to carefully explore, feeling quite nervous inside.

Sima Jiao: “Do you want to leave me?”

Liao Tingyan: “No.”

Three consecutive “no”s.

Wait, that’s not right—why was the answer to the last question “no”? Liao Tingyan stared at Sima Jiao in surprise, astonished by her last “no.” Could it be… she had already been corrupted by this decadent lifestyle to such an extent?

Sima Jiao also paused, releasing her chin and leaning back against the cushion, his gaze strange. “Are you here to seduce me with your beauty?”

Liao Tingyan responded with absolute decisiveness: “No!”

Good, she had cleared her name. But what had she done to give him such an impression? Liao Tingyan searched her heart and truly had no desire to sleep with him.

Sima Jiao: “That’s good.”

After saying this, he grabbed Liao Tingyan, embracing her like a soft, warm pillow, closed his eyes, and prepared to rest.

Wait, Ancestor, hold on—I said I wasn’t here to seduce you, and you just confidently pull me to sleep? What was the point of asking that question then?

The point was that if she had thoughts of sleeping with him, Sima Jiao would have chosen to kill her. Without such thoughts, he would use her as a pillow.

Liao Tingyan couldn’t sleep. Her spirit was ridiculously good, and as she lay there being used as a pillow, her thoughts began to wander. If an ordinary person daydreamed, it would just be daydreaming, but as a Divine Transformation cultivator, her wandering thoughts meant her consciousness ran outward. It was a novel world—Liao Tingyan could see all the buildings, flowers, grasses, and trees on White Deer Cliff, with every detail clear before her eyes. She saw the flying cranes in the sky, and with a thought, zoomed in completely, as if she were standing right beside the immortal crane, even feeling the wind in the air. With another blink, she was at the waterfall below White Deer Cliff, seeing the orchids growing in the crevices of the waterfall pool, the rainbow in the sunlight, and the splashing droplets.

She saw puppet people walking along the corridors of the palace, saw the big black snake coiled around a pillar outside the hall, sleeping. The pillar was slippery, and as it slept, it kept sliding down, waking up when it reached the bottom and climbing up again—its intelligence clearly lacking.

Liao Tingyan felt like she had received a toy, her consciousness looking up and down all over White Deer Cliff. After a while, she felt like seeing the outside, and her consciousness spread out like a cloud.

Suddenly, she felt a coolness on her face, opened her eyes abruptly, and all her consciousness that had been flying around like the wind instantly retracted.

Sima Jiao’s cool hand covered her face. He still had his eyes closed as he said, “Don’t wander outside. With me on White Deer Cliff, other people’s divine consciousness doesn’t dare to come over, so you can casually flick your divine consciousness around. Once you leave White Deer Cliff, countless divine consciousnesses are eyeing you covetously outside. If you go out in your weak state and bump into any one of them, you’ll immediately become an idiot.”

Divine consciousness? Was that what it was just now? Liao Tingyan obediently answered with an “Oh.”

Since she couldn’t play with that skill, she would play with others. Lying there, she spotted a floating crystal lamp nearby. She blinked, and the crystal lamp floated over according to her wish. She reached out to catch it, excitedly thinking that in the future when lying in bed wanting to eat or take something, she wouldn’t need to get up—with a thought, things would come to her!

She glanced at Sima Jiao beside her, seeing no reaction, and took out her small sachet, retrieving some food from it. She had put many things in there, all prepared by the puppet people. Though she wasn’t hungry now, she wanted to test her lazy secret technique.

Fruits like grapes, the size of fingernails, hovered in the air. Liao Tingyan made them detach one by one from the stem and actively deliver themselves to her mouth. She opened her mouth like a nestling, waiting for the small fruits to drop in. As a small fruit approached her mouth, it suddenly moved sideways, delivering itself to Sima Jiao’s mouth instead.

Suddenly hijacked midway, Liao Tingyan was surprised—didn’t this ancestor not eat?

Sima Jiao bit the small fruit in his mouth, opened one eye to look at her, and said, “You’re a fake Divine Transformation cultivator, aren’t you? Just a casual interception and I can take it away.”