Eric exhaled a rough breath and spoke with forced calm.
“If you want to walk out of here alive, Lady Emelline, you’d best untie me. You’re right—I came here tonight to meet Her Highness. And she—”
“She nearly returned to the royal palace without ever uncovering the truth about the Duke of Orléans. If not for me.”
I shook the parchment, shimmering faintly with hidden script only visible in the right conditions.
I realized it last night, just from the look in Eric’s eyes.
He had stolen the documents—but he hadn’t known how to
reveal
the secret ink within them. That meant the princess he was working with likely didn’t know either.
But what if
I
brought this truth directly to her? What if I suggested that Eric had
intentionally
kept it hidden from her?
“Wouldn’t it be quite the mess if you don’t start cooperating with me now? Don’t you think?”
I widened my eyes innocently as I spoke.
Eric fell silent. Then, wearing a look of utter humiliation, he answered in a tone that tried and failed to sound indifferent.
“In the end, you still need my help, don’t you? Whether it’s money or something else—untie me and we’ll talk. I’ll take you seriously.”
Hooked a big one.
I’d set my sights tonight on catching a fish, but what I reeled in was far greater than anything I imagined.
I nodded and approached the bindings on Eric’s wrists. His crimson pupils followed my every move. He glared at me like a beast ready to snap, but I didn’t flinch. Instead, I climbed onto the bed, placing one knee beside him.
Eric’s face twisted in disbelief.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Well, your body’s kinda big, so—”
“Are you seriously climbing over me?! Just hand me the key. I’ll—”
Despite his protests, I managed to straddle over him safely. Eric coughed awkwardly and turned his head away.
I placed my hand atop his. He looked at me, clearly about to protest.
“Smile.”
“What?”
“I said smile. I need you to look good in the picture.”
Click.
I pressed the button of the small device hidden in my palm.
Flash!
A blinding white light burst before us.
Eric shouted, “What the hell was that?!”
I sweetly pointed to the camera resting against the wall. I also held up the remote I’d been hiding.
“I told you, didn’t I? The capital sells
everything
. Even remote-controlled photo artifacts. Dirt cheap, too.”
With a satisfied hum, I pulled the film from the camera and slid it into the enchanted safe embedded in the hotel room wall.
Eric didn’t even look angry anymore. Just stunned. His still-bound hands twitched helplessly.
Sorry. I never actually planned to let you go.
“What is going on in that head of yours, Emelline Wedgwood?!”
“Whatever it is, it’s certainly more than what’s rattling around in yours.”
I tapped my temple with a smirk.
Chapter 3: The Dark Basement of Bluebeard
Eric was still bound to the bed, the restraints secure around his wrists.
He glared down at the bindings, his jaw clenched.
“Where in the Nine Hells did you
get
restraints like these?”
“I bought them just outside,” I said with a grin. “While you were unconscious. I sold a few of the gold buttons from your uniform to cover the cost—”
“My jacket? You sold the
buttons
off my jacket?!”
Only then did Eric glance toward the sofa, where his formal cultivation robes lay folded.
I nodded with a casual wave.
“Don’t worry. I got a fair price.”
“I just think of it as a donation. I heard you make regular offerings to orphanages for underprivileged commoners. Well, turns out I’m
very
underprivileged. Seriously—pitiful, even.”
The gold button bearing the sigil of House Orléans had been expensive—expensive enough to buy a spiritual-sealing artifact like this one.
…So envious. Truly.
I smothered the bitter qi of inferiority that stirred in my core and continued.
“Alright, let’s have a proper talk.”
“A
talk
? While I’m like this?”
Eric pressed a hand to his forehead, clearly trying to suppress a surge of internal energy—most likely frustration.
But there wasn’t much he could do. A few moments later, he asked for something to wear. I tossed him a jacket.
As he threw it over his shoulders, I clicked my tongue in mock regret.
“You actually looked better without it. Shame, real shame.”
“Keep thoughts like that in your
mind,
” Eric said through clenched teeth, spiritual energy rippling faintly in his meridians as he suppressed his rage.
“I’m thinking
way
worse things in my mind,” I replied with a smirk.
Eric exhaled—an exhale filled with exhaustion, not defeat.
Truth be told, he probably had more questions for me, but I was the one who needed to act quickly. In just 48 hours, my mother’s wedding would begin—and with it, the tragic fall of our entire family line.
I placed the scroll of documents between us on the table.
“To be honest, I’m not that interested in things like righteous retribution,” I said.
“Well, I
am
,” Eric replied flatly. “And if you had to pick between good and evil, Emelline, we both know where you’d land.”
Tell me something I
don’t
know. I wasn’t even fazed. He wasn’t wrong.
So, ignoring his jab, I continued with my prepared words.
“That’s why I’m thinking of conveniently ‘forgetting’ everything I know about the House of Orléans’ little secrets. All in the name of the Duke’s eternal honor and your future prestige.”
Eric tried to play the calm, long-suffering tutor to a misbehaving child, but the strain in his voice betrayed the qi storm churning within.
“Lady Emelline. Even if you take that account ledger, you can’t prove its origin—”
“Oh, and don’t worry. I won’t leak the film reels in the safe behind me to the gossip cultivators, either.”
I pointed my thumb at the vault.
Eric’s brow twitched.
He was doing his best to maintain composure, but his spiritual aura had clearly been shaken. After a few coincidental encounters recently, I’d come to understand: Eric was transparent.
Righteous. Naive. Arrogant. In short, the total opposite of me, my mother, or that snake Philip. Our spiritual cores were entirely misaligned.
I stared into Eric’s crimson eyes.
But still… he looks so much like him.
Whenever I saw Eric’s eyes, it was as if the Duke of Orléans’ own blood-colored gaze loomed just behind.
“The price is simple,” I said. “You stop my mother’s wedding to the Duke. You don’t even want the union, do you?”
Eric’s expression told me I’d struck his vital meridian.
“And besides, it’s not even that hard for you to interfere. You hold stakes in half the Duke’s enterprises. And the collateral branches of the family? They probably already resent this marriage. All you’d need is a little extra scandal—say…”
I narrowed my eyes and lowered my gaze to Eric’s chest.
“I saw Emelline Wedgewood last night in the Moonlit Rose Garden… with some unsavory men. What a wicked woman she is. I couldn’t possibly accept her into my family. Then you spread the rumor.”
I licked my lips.
“And when I get cornered, I’ll cry. Just a little. Enough to make it all feel true. After that, the Duke will have no choice but to heed the words of his son and the collateral branches…”
Once that was done, I’d quietly inform the Duke that the coastal land wasn’t ours after all, then gather my family and return to the southern provinces.
Truly, wasn’t that the best cultivation path for everyone involved?
And if Eric handed over the hundred thousand gold he promised, we could set up a humble stew shop and live righteously from now on.
Eric wouldn’t have to deal with a disgraceful older sister. The Duke of Orléans could continue living like the devil himself, cultivating evil till the day he dies. Everyone wins. In a way, perhaps this
is
the natural course of the heavens.
“Wait a moment,” Eric said slowly, as if struggling to grasp the full meaning. “You’re saying… your condition is… to break off the marriage between your mother and my father?”
I nodded without hesitation.
But his expression only grew more bewildered.
“Wasn’t the entire scheme behind your mother becoming the Duchess of Orléans so that the two of you could suck the ducal estate dry, like leeches?”
My eyes widened in mock surprise.
“So you
did
know?”
Eric looked at me like he was growing sick of my shamelessness.
“Of course I knew. That’s what your mother’s done through her last
four
marriages, hasn’t she?”
Four marriages, he said.
He wasn’t entirely wrong. But he wasn’t completely right either.
I muttered bitterly, “And during those four marriages, don’t you think there were
things
those men did to Helena too…?”
Eric’s gaze fixed on me, his tone sharp.
“What exactly did they do?”
Chapter 16