"Impossible! There is absolutely no way I would ever do something like that!"
Yaxiu practically wanted to swear to the heavens. "Some utterly sinister villain must be trying to frame me and ruin my lifelong reputation! I would never be so disrespectful to women!"
Felix raised an eyebrow and shot him a sidelong glance, tempted to spit right into this trash can's water cup. *Of all the people I've ever met, you're the most disrespectful to women. Even if other men are profligate and promiscuous, at least they only toy with people's bodies, letting them go once they grow bored, and they usually offer compensation like money or resources. But you—you cheat them out of both body and heart, you fall for so many yet refuse to let go of a single one, and you even need the girls to shelter you... Compared to you, even my father doesn't look like such a scumbag.*
*A scumbag like you deserves to have his selfish true colors exposed to everyone, to be bitterly abandoned, left to curl up alone and wretched under an overpass, where at most a kindhearted noble young lady might take you in as a butler, whereupon you ought to devote your heart entirely to that beloved mistress, turning over a new leaf and never straying again...*
Even as she cursed Yaxiu viciously in her heart, she used nail clippers to trim his nails. "Actually, you didn't harbor any malice. It seemed like you were trying to heal them."
"Heal?"
"Mhm. To break through the Water Coffin, under Sister Vichy's hypnotic guidance, they detonated their soul fragments together and suffered severe damage to their soul bodies," Felix explained. "Their injuries were horrific. Purplish-blue cracks appeared across the surfaces of their bodies, making them look like cracked porcelain on the verge of shattering."
"You had already passed out on top of them, but then, for no apparent reason, you gathered Sword Princess into your arms, looked at her scars, muttered, 'You took a bad fall,' and proceeded to extend your tongue and lick the crack on her neck."
Following Felix's words, the memory gradually resurfaced in Yaxiu's mind. Even his tongue recalled the sensation of Sword Princess's collarbone.
"Did it work?" he asked.
Felix nodded affirmatively. "Sister Vichy analyzed it later. You seem to have used her soul Wonders to repair everyone's bodies. But at the time, your source energy was practically drained and your mind was delirious—even she couldn't figure out how you managed to transform two lethal Wonders into healing Wonders."
"So I was only trying to treat them, which was why my behavior overstepped just a tiny bit, right?" Yaxiu pressed his hands together in prayer, asking with desperate hope, "Now that everyone knows the reason, they've forgiven me, right?"
Felix's lips twitched as she turned her head away. "It wasn't just 'a tiny bit'..."
"While you could mend their soul cracks, you seemed only capable of using contact therapy—basically just your tongue and your hands. And their soul cracks covered their entire bodies..." She spoke with great delicacy. "To facilitate the treatment, you 'had no choice' but to undo Sword Princess's clothing. Though you didn't strip off much, still..."
"And all of this was done under everyone's watchful eyes..."
*I undid Sword Princess's clothes right in front of all those girls?!*
Yaxiu was completely dumbfounded. Stunned for a good while, he suddenly asked in a tone half-accusatory and half-grief-stricken, "Why didn't you pull the others away back then?!"
Felix spread her hands. "We wanted to, but the moment we tried to approach the others, you swatted us away and said you were enough on your own. We were afraid you'd think we had ulterior motives, so we didn't dare intervene by force."
Yaxiu knocked his own head hard a few times, let out a long sigh toward the ceiling, and asked, "What happened after that?"
"After you gave Sword Princess a cursory treatment, next came Witch, Silver Lantern, and Sister Vichy," Felix said. "By that point, they had already regained consciousness and even tried to talk to you. But whenever one of them spoke, you leaned in and kissed her deeply. I don't know if you coated your lips in poison or something, but after you kissed them, each of them wore an expression... one they would never, ever want anyone else to see. In the end, none of them dared to speak."
"Still, by the time you'd loosened all four of their outfits, you'd managed to take care of most of the cracks on their skin along the way."
Yaxiu perked up. "Since the treatment was over, I must have stopped then, right?!"
"Nope." Felix shook her head. "You mumbled something about 'proper convalescence.' You were holding one in your arms, clasping one with your left hand, caressing one with your right hand, and kissing one with your mouth. What's truly commendable is that even with four girls, you didn't neglect a single one. At every moment, you managed to attend to all four."
At this point, the second young mistress of Vosloda looked somewhat puzzled. "Honestly, I was quite astonished. Your technique was remarkably skilled and natural, your movements fluid without the slightest hesitation, as if you truly possessed experience taking on four people at once... Could you actually be a scumbag blessed with extraordinary innate talent?"
*What extraordinary talent? It was all forced by circumstance!* Yaxiu thought to himself.
As Felix recounted the events, those memories gradually surfaced in Yaxiu's mind. Yet alongside the scenes of his uninhibited dallying among the flowers, he also vividly recalled their faces: Sword Princess biting her lower lip, Witch blushing a crimson so deep it seemed about to bleed, Silver Lantern looking helpless and resigned, Vichy completely expressionless...
Yaxiu knew he had truly offended them beyond measure. In fact, had it been any other time, if he had only invited Witch, Silver Lantern, and Vichy to join in such a multi-person co-op battle game, they likely wouldn't have refused. But to fondle and toy with them when they were at their weakest and most helpless, and in front of outsiders like Felix and Daidalos no less—even women with the mildest tempers would have exploded, let alone these four, none of whom possessed a gentle temper to begin with.
This was an insult to their dignity as sorcerers: not permitted to speak, not permitted to resist, having their fates willfully dominated... Even Yaxiu's excuse of healing fell flat, because by that point everyone was already safe, and mere bodily health was not enough to make them cast aside their pride.
He didn't even need to alter his treatment method; had he merely treated them one by one instead of all at once, they certainly wouldn't have been this furious. Yet Yaxiu had insisted on sweeping all four into his embrace, treating them like his private possessions to toy with at will, completely disregarding their dignity... Even Silver Lantern and Vichy, who cared the least about such matters, would undoubtedly feel humiliated.
"...Didn't you guys try to stop me?" Yaxiu asked faintly. "I was clearly out of my mind at the time."
Felix hesitated, lowering her head as she replied, "When you were at your most 'dangerous,' I tried to pull you away. But you grabbed me right back, seemingly using a soul Wonder. My whole body instantly went limp and numb, and then you gave me a full-body examination. Once you found no soul cracks on me, you ignored me, but whenever I tried to pull you, my body had no strength left. So I had... I had to just grab hold of your trousers to keep things from spiraling completely out of control..."
As Yaxiu recalled examining Felix's body, he unconsciously glanced at her. As if pricked by his gaze, Felix clutched her chest, turned her body away, and said in a trembling voice, "If you apologize, I'll cry."
Yaxiu froze. His thoughts were suddenly pulled back to months ago, as the image of the blonde girl before him gradually overlapped with that of another blonde girl... He shook his head and gave a soft chuckle. "Then let's make it 'thanks for the treat' instead."
There was no teasing in his words, only an indescribable melancholy. Felix gave him a puzzled look, then continued, "Nothing else happened after that. Once they were almost fully recovered, you fell into a deep sleep and stayed out cold until just now. The four of them discussed things for a bit, then scattered to scout the surroundings. They should be back soon."
Yaxiu let out a sigh of relief. "As long as they're all right."
"Except when you passed out, your left hand was kneading Silver Lantern's chest, your right hand was reaching under Sister Vichy's maid dress, you were clutching Witch in your arms, and your lips were kissing Sword Princess." Felix spoke in an almost gloating tone. "The very first thing they did once they regained mobility was... Does your face still hurt?"
Yaxiu rubbed his slightly throbbing cheeks, his mouth twitching. "Did they resort to Miracles? This is the face of a demigod, you know."
Just then, both of them in the tent felt a stir in their hearts, sensing a sorcerer's return. Before the person even stepped inside, a sarcastic voice snaked in ahead of her:
"My, my, our savior is awake? Forgive us for failing to rush back in time to cater to your every desire—it's truly our fault." Vichy lifted the tent flap and stepped in, her tone as piercing as her voice. "Your maid is back. Does Master have any orders now? If you need to relieve yourself, this maid can hold you up, you know."
"Vichy," Yaxiu said exasperatedly, "you know my state of mind was compromised back then."
"Hard to say. After all, you rescued us from the angel's clutches. By all rights, we ought to devote our bodies to you; we belong entirely to you, so it's only natural and fair for you to use us however you please." Vichy beamed. "Besides, having narrowly escaped the Star Supreme, using us to celebrate your victory isn't incomprehensible either, right? I personally don't mind. I just wonder if the others are as accommodating and sensible as your little maid..."
She walked over to the bed and extended her hand toward Yaxiu. "Can you return it to me now?"
Yaxiu was baffled. "Return what?"
"I searched your pockets. Nothing," Vichy said expressionlessly. "You must have hidden it in your spatial ring. Though I'm not short of one, I'd rather my belongings not linger elsewhere, lest they become a medium for someone to divine me."
"Hurry up and give it back. As for theirs, I can return them on your behalf."
Looking utterly bewildered, Yaxiu searched through his spatial ring. In an instant, what he found inside sent a shudder through his body. A moment later, his hands trembling, he brought out a pair of panties and a bra. The maid took the panties, bent down, and stepped into them. Yaxiu and Felix stared blankly as the scrap of fabric was pulled all the way up her long, black-stockinged legs, vanishing beneath the hem of her short maid skirt and returning to where it belonged.
Vichy then took the bra, held it up against herself to gauge the size, and the corners of her mouth curved upward in a faint, contemptuous smirk. She turned her head toward the outside and said, "They're back."
Chapter 1107