Qiu Tu had struck with all his strength, so after only two blows, the girl yelped in pain.
She was probably truly angry now. Turning around, she glared at Qiu Tu in shame and fury, tears glistening in her eyes. Biting hard on her lip with a pair of tiny tiger fangs, she growled with adorable fierceness, "You're finished! Really finished!"
"I'll have my father kill your whole family! Every single one!"
"I'll have your ashes scattered!"
Hearing this, Qiu Tu laughed in anger. He slapped her firm, perky bottom hard again and shot back tit for tat, "What a coincidence. I'm a man with no attachments. My parents and relatives are all dead!"
"So don't provoke me. If you really anger me, I'll rape you and then kill you, then just run away!"
"I don't care who your father is. Even if your father were the Jade Emperor himself, could he bring you back to life?"
Shen Lingshuang was stunned.
She realized she had no way to deal with this tall agent. Kindness didn't work, and neither did force.
In the past, whenever she invoked her father's name, who didn't treat her with respect? But this man didn't care at all.
He acted as if he weren't from this world, as if he had no idea what it meant to be a Vice Speaker of a sanctuary's Supreme Council.
Was she really going to lose here today?
Shen Lingshuang was lost in wild thoughts. Qiu Tu said nothing, and the room fell silent for a time.
After a while, seeing that Shen Lingshuang had really quieted down, Qiu Tu quietly clenched his reddened hand and said, "What? Chickening out? Come on, then!"
Hearing that, Shen Lingshuang snapped back to her senses.
Her eyes brimming with tears, she looked at Qiu Tu as if on the verge of crying. "Agent big brother, I was wrong. Don't be angry, and don't hit or scold me anymore. Whatever you ask, I promise I'll tell you the truth."
With that, she pouted pitifully and batted her big eyes at Qiu Tu.
Qiu Tu wasn't fooled by her softening.
He still firmly held Shen Lingshuang bent over the chair, then placed paper and pen on her back and said coldly, "Fine. I'll ask. You answer."
"If I'm not satisfied, the punishment won't be as simple as what just happened."
Forced into such a humiliating pose to answer questions, Shen Lingshuang felt both ashamed and angry, but the situation was against her, so she had no choice but to comply.
Soon, Qiu Tu obtained a great deal of valuable information from her. For example:
"After Cataclysm Awakening, everyone walks a different Cataclysm Path?"
"There are six Paths in total? Destruction, Life, Mystery, Immortality, Order, and Chaos?"
"After Cataclysm Awakening, the abilities or traits a person possesses all match their Cataclysm Path?"
"For example, a Cataclysm-user who walks the Life Path has the trait of simply being able to give birth? So she had ten babies in one birth and 107 children in five years?"
"For example, a Cataclysm-user who walks the Destruction Path awakened the ability to devour everything? Soil, rubble, even buildings—all can be gnawed through directly?"
Honestly, listening to Shen Lingshuang's utterly fantastical information, Qiu Tu felt as if he had become last night's Yan Chen.
He felt she was lying, yet everything was logically consistent.
He felt she was telling the truth, yet it was all too fantastical.
Qiu Tu finally understood how infuriating a "liar" could be.
He glanced suspiciously at Shen Lingshuang, who was lying over the chair, and finally decided to believe her for now.
So Qiu Tu first helped her up from the chair, then dragged the table he had moved aside back over. Finally, he took a fresh pair of chopsticks and handed them to her. "Eat."
Shen Lingshuang didn't take the chopsticks. Rubbing her sore arm, which had been pulled, and her swollen bottom, which had been spanked, she looked at him with reddened eyes, pouted, and said aggrievedly, "I'm not eating. It's cold."
Qiu Tu: This girl really has a lot of demands!
Taking a deep breath, he suppressed the inexplicable anger in his heart, got up, and called a Qin family servant outside, arranging for the food to be reheated. As for himself, he lit a cigarette and smoked alone in the courtyard, frowning.
The moonlight was blocked by sparse dark clouds, leaving only a dim, dull glow over the courtyard and draping the quiet courtyard in a cold blue veil.
The cigarette butt in his hand flickered bright and dim like a lonely firefly, but Qiu Tu's thoughts were immersed in the method for making a Cataclysm potion that he had just gotten from Shen Lingshuang.
According to Shen Lingshuang, the recipe for a Cataclysm potion was not complicated. He only needed to follow the Star-Moon King-Minister ratio to produce one.
Star-Moon King-Minister were aliases for the roles that different medicinal ingredients played in secret medicine recipes.
Moon Medicine and Star Medicine referred to two primary medicinal ingredients in secret medicine.
In a Cataclysm potion, Moon Medicine was the primary Cataclysm material, such as Aurora Stone. Star Medicine was the supporting ingredient used to activate the primary Cataclysm material's effect, usually an ordinary medicinal ingredient.
King Medicine and Minister Medicine referred to two auxiliary medicinal ingredients in secret medicine.
Minister Medicine was used to temper the main medicine's effect. It was usually an ordinary medicinal ingredient as well, and depending on the main medicine's effect, it might be one ingredient or several.
As for King Medicine, it was the binding reagent that held the entire secret medicine together and ensured it worked stably, so it required a steady, neutral liquid Cataclysm material.
Shen Lingshuang had also given several examples of steady, neutral liquid Cataclysm materials. Commonly used ones included Ghostlight Insect Blood, Moonlight Tear, and Ancient Tree Sap.
"Moonlight Tear."
Muttering the material's name, Qiu Tu looked at the treasure chest in the upper left of his vision that he had obtained after surviving the last crisis.
Inside the chest was a bottle of sapphire-blue liquid—Moonlight Tear.
"Moonlight Tear: one of the common Cataclysm materials. Once the remaining Cataclysm materials are gathered, it can be used to craft Cataclysm items such as Cataclysm potion, Otherworld Key, and Nat's Codex."
Qiu Tu wasn't surprised that the chest had happened to give him Moonlight Tear. After all, the description of Crisis Sense had long noted, "Rewards are related to crises."
These two treasure chests had come from surviving linked crises, so it was reasonable that the rewards matched.
But what troubled Qiu Tu now was this: he had only this one set of materials for making a Cataclysm potion. Should he really hand them to Shen Lingshuang, who seemed so unreliable, to make it?
And given their current relationship, would she even put her heart into making it for him?
After staring blankly at the sky for a while, Qiu Tu suddenly threw his cigarette to the ground and crushed it out fiercely. "Damn it! There's no one else anyway. I'll only be satisfied if I try!"
At that very moment, just as Qiu Tu made up his mind, something suddenly flashed before his eyes.
The next second, line after line of prompts appeared in his vision.
"Under your forceful suppression, Shen Lingshuang has developed a trace of unusual feeling toward you."
"If you commission her to make a Cataclysm potion, though she is kindhearted and will mock you with her words, she won't deliberately do anything malicious—at most she might spit into the potion after it's finished."
"However, preparing a Cataclysm potion does not merely require following the four essentials of secret medicine. There are also the most crucial fifth and sixth essentials: Heaven's Timing and Terrain."
"Following the four essentials of secret medicine only allows you to successfully make a Cataclysm potion. The fifth and sixth essentials are what determine the effect of this bottle of Cataclysm potion."
"You don't want to know what drinking a Cataclysm potion prepared near Xinjie City in the last three days would do."
As the prompts ended, a three-day countdown hourglass slowly slid into place beside the first hourglass.
Seeing the new countdown hourglass in the upper left of his vision, Qiu Tu couldn't help blinking.
Wait. Was Crisis Sense revealing too much information this time?
Let me sort this out.
Chapter 21