"I know you might not be willing to accept my gifts... but what if I wore garter socks?"
Watching Yifalin hike her long dress up to her thighs, revealing a fair, enticing absolute territory, Yaxiu—dressed in a steward's uniform—remained entirely unmoved. He simply kept vigorously wiping the windowpane.
"Look, even if you want to use a honeypot trap, don't stand on the other side of the glass. With this pane between us, how is this any different from looking at lewd pictures?"
"What if you actually tried to cop a feel without the glass?" Yifalin curled her lip, brought out a notebook, and jotted down: "When confronted with garter socks, Yaxiu Heath's gaze locked, heart rate spiked by 13%, and his resistance was slightly lower than against black stockings. Should be classified as a Tier 0 fetish... That's plenty of intel gathered. I'll have an illusionist produce an action film starring you and Annan right away, packed with every element guaranteed to make your heart race. You'll definitely buy it."
To Yaxiu, it felt like a bolt from the blue. "Are you threatening me?"
"This is clearly seduction!"
"What if the Eldest Miss finds out? Besides, she isn't even my favorite type!"
"Is that so? But in yesterday's beauty survey statistics, your heart rate reacted most noticeably when you saw Annan. Perhaps she really isn't your preferred type, but given your current relationship and standing, she is precisely the type most liable to get you worked up. After all, the desire of you males is conquest... Wait, does that mean you're interested in me too?" Yifalin lightly clapped her hands, her eyes brimming with amusement. "If you're willing to be kept by me, I wouldn't mind giving you a chance to pursue me."
"Ugh, please spare me such sickening jokes. I still have windows to wipe."
"Tsk." Yifalin's expression abruptly shifted. The eye sigil on her right eyelid fixed Yaxiu with a cold, piercing glare that sent a shiver straight down the cult leader's spine.
She opened her Book of Gospel, flicked her right wrist, and plucked a tomato out of the void, slamming it viciously against the glass. Alizarin juice worth several hundred Gospel points smeared across Yaxiu's field of view.
"Don't mention it. Since you love wiping glass so much, take all the time you need."
With that, Yifalin strutted off with her chin held high, looking every bit like a spoiled brat who had just pulled off a successful prank. Staring at the mess before him, Yaxiu had no choice but to dampen his rag and deal with this unprovoked malice. He cleaned the window, mopped the floor, dusted the lampshades... After toiling for two to three hours, the cult leader finally finished thoroughly cleaning the corridor.
At eleven o'clock, lunch break began. Putting away his cleaning tools, Yaxiu headed down to the basement dining hall. Dozens of servants were already eating inside, and they were merely a fraction of the staff assigned to the main building.
Word had it that Berdette Manor employed a staggering eighty thousand servants. Across the manor's forests, snowy mountains, wilderness, and Hell, there were servant dining halls everywhere, each offering distinct menus. The main building's servant cafeteria was considered only middling in quality, whereas the dining hall built above the molten lava in Hell received rave reviews from many, prompting an unusually large number of servants to request duty in that sector.
None of that had anything to do with Yaxiu, however. Approaching the serving counter, he took in the dazzling array of dishes on display: bursting-roe giant mantis shrimp, basil red clam meat, charcoal-grilled razor clams, Eden Type-0 Lalafell, teriyaki Dragonborn... Yet while these dishes possessed soul-snatching aromas, their prices were equally heart-stopping; not a single plate cost less than three digits in Bei points.
Yaxiu took out his Book of Gospel, which had already been integrated with a Berdette Manor Card. A morning of hard labor had earned him a mere thirty Bei points. These could be spent anywhere within Berdette Manor and served as the estate's sole accepted currency—neither Gospel points nor gold and silver coins were of any use here.
Regular servants could eat and drink their fill without worrying about the bill, but Yaxiu had to pinch every penny. Of course, he could have thrown caution to the wind and ordered recklessly if he wanted, since the Manor Card had long since activated the 'Huabei' credit service for him; whenever his spending exceeded his balance, it automatically drew against his credit line.
And the maximum limit Yaxiu could borrow from Huabei was... one hundred million Bei points.
Zero interest, with repayment deferred up to ten years. In other words, Yaxiu could splurge completely without restraint. Ten years down the road, never mind Mengfeila, whether he would even still be in Gospel Country was an open question. No matter how formidable Yifalin was, she couldn't very well traverse time and space to collect her debts.
Even so, Yaxiu only ordered a bowl of curry mush for ten Bei points and a portion of bread for five. Carrying his tray, he quickly spotted his companions—hardly a surprise, since in a dining hall surrounded by exquisite delicacies, their small group eating gruel stood out like pariahs among the servants.
"Where are the Eldest Miss and Banjie?" Yaxiu asked as he sat down.
"Annan was reassigned to the grasslands sector, and Banjie to the snowy mountain sector. Supposedly two lucrative positions that pay heaps of Bei points popped up," Igola said. "Looks like Yifalin intends to pick us off one by one."
"Uncle Harvey," Lisi asked, "is that little bit really enough for you?"
Harvey's meal was even more pathetic than Yaxiu's: just a bag of bread crusts and a glass of water. He was slowly pecking at a crust like a pigeon.
Igola grasped the situation in an instant. "Harvey, what did you buy from Yifalin?"
"...A skull."
"A skull?" Yaxiu paused. "Once we get out of here, you can just knock on any random grave and borrow one. Did you really have to buy one from Yifalin?"
"You don't understand!" Harvey said earnestly. "That is the most textbook human skull I have ever seen. The palatine torus, superciliary arches, supraorbital margins, infraorbital fossae, anterior nasal spine, nasal cavity, alveolar processes... Not a single flaw, never injured, never cosmetically altered, brimming with a harmonious, holistic beauty of death. I truly haven't seen such a gorgeous skull in all my life. If I had encountered one like that in the past, it would have saved me at least a month of study!"
"Back then, I would have gladly paid ten gold coins for it. Now it only cost fifty Bei points. I simply couldn't talk myself out of it!"
"And so now you're reduced to eating bread crusts." Igola's face was extremely sour. "Thank goodness you can still work. Otherwise, the rest of us would have had to support you."
Although Harvey's waist had been cleaved through by the red-haired female sorcerer, leaving him virtually unable to exert strength from his midsection, he could manipulate his own body the same way he controlled a corpse. Outwardly, it didn't seem to hinder his daily life or work.
"Harvey is useless now. Yifalin has already pinned down his weakness. At best, he won't touch Huabei, but we can't count on him to save any points for an emergency." Igola turned toward the other two. "You two haven't been squandering points these past few days, right? You've saved some Bei points?"
Yaxiu and Lisi exchanged a glance and fell silent together.
Igola had a bad feeling. "Were you tempted by Yifalin too?"
Hesitantly, Lisi opened her palm. Embedded in the palm of her fingerless glove was a mirror that she could knead and fold at will without it shattering or deforming. "Sister Yifalin said this is a flexible mirror glove made exclusively by their company. You can't get it anywhere outside. Selling it to me for just fifty Bei points was practically giving it away..."
Knowing how vital mirrors were to Lisi and her sisters, Igola let out a heavy sigh, then turned to Yaxiu. "And what did you buy?"
Yaxiu casually ate a spoonful of mush. "I... I haven't actually bought anything yet."
Though it was called mush, it wasn't lacking in ingredients—mashed potatoes, carrots, and beef, plenty enough to fill his belly alongside the bread.
"'Yet'?" Igola pinpointed Yaxiu's unspoken implication with pinpoint precision. "Yifalin has already figured out your tastes and is tailoring a temptation you won't be able to refuse?"
Yaxiu proclaimed with utmost righteousness, "Rest assured, Igola. No matter how Yifalin tries to seduce me, I'll never fall for it. I'm not some coquettish, cheap sellout like Harvey."
"Of course you aren't coquettish. You have no charm whatsoever; you're just cheap."
Igola looked utterly helpless. "So what you're saying is that all three of you have been completely cleaned out of Bei points..."
"I haven't bought anything yet!"
"I believe in you, Yaxiu. When it comes to disappointing people, you never disappoint." The Swindler pressed a hand to his forehead. "And you actually had the gall earlier to tell me to trust you guys, to discuss things with you when trouble arises... You bunch of idiots!"
The three of them shuddered. Hearing the Swindler forgo his usual passive-aggressive sarcasm in favor of a direct verbal beating, they all knew that Igola was genuinely furious this time.
"Aunt Bogin, I only spent my savings! I didn't use Huabei!"
"Yeah, I still saved a few Bei points for bread crusts. If worst comes to worst, I have no problem eating grass."
"Igola, could you make it plural next time you curse at us? Doing it like that makes me think you're only scolding me."
Igola let out a long sigh. "Do you even understand our current situation? Do you honestly think that just by refusing Yifalin's gifts and staying away from Huabei, you can escape the contamination of her Dominance Faction?"
Chapter 385