Chapter 20: From now on, you will warm my bed every day.

Shi Zhiyan’s words struck deep into her heart. Indeed, the accident when she was six years old was by no means a valid excuse for her to wallow in self-destruction!

She could not allow herself to remain a waste—a beast-taming failure on this continent, a good-for-nothing who could do nothing but suffer humiliation and bullying, a wretch who nearly lost her life in a single encounter with a magical beast! She had to find a way to regain her ability to cultivate!

As for how she had cultivated into a spirit in her past life, she remembered it vividly—

It was five hundred years ago, during the Ming Dynasty in China. When the imperial family went hunting in the mountains, they killed a giant python and extracted a primordial elixir from its belly. Mingxi and Feng, who were merely ordinary white foxes at the time, had set their sights on the elixir. They trailed the royals, and before the party even descended the mountain, they seized the opportunity to steal and divide the elixir between them. Thus, they gained the ability to take on human form, their power increased exponentially, and they spent the next few centuries drifting through the human world until the twenty-first century.

If that was the case... then perhaps she could...

"Miss Mingxi? What are you thinking about?" Seeing her suddenly drift off, Shi Zhiyan hurried to pull her back to reality.

"By the way, child's father, do you know where to find a Serpent King? I mean the kind of thousand-year-old Serpent King?" Mingxi asked seriously. Although in her memories, such spirits had long been replaced by magical beasts, there had to be a tiny remnant of them still existing on the Xuanling Continent!

"A Serpent King? What for?"

"I need to find a Serpent King’s primordial elixir to restore my spiritual power! I don't care how my previous power vanished, but I am certain that as long as I have the elixir of a Serpent King, I can recover my ability to cultivate!"

Mingxi spoke with firm conviction, failing to notice that her words had left Shi Zhiyan stunned in his tracks.

Shi Zhiyan reached out to touch her forehead, his lips twitching. "Your fever has broken, so why are you still so delirious? You want to go find a Serpent King and demand its elixir? You aren't joking, are you?"

"I am perfectly serious! This is my only way!" Mingxi sat up on the bed, chin held high, staring resolutely at Shi Zhiyan. He hesitated for a second, then sat down beside her, his gaze dropping to her waist and lingering there for a long time.

Seeing him stare at her body with such an expression, Mingxi’s face flushed crimson. She hurriedly pulled at her hem and asked, "Why... why are you looking at me like that?"

Shi Zhiyan chuckled without answering. Catching her off guard, he jabbed his brush hard into her lumbar spine. Mingxi felt a sharp, piercing pain and let out a howl, "Ouch! That hurts like hell! What are you doing?!" She clutched her waist, instinctually retreating to the back of the bed, and looked at him in confusion. To her surprise, Shi Zhiyan could no longer hold back and burst into laughter.

"I say, Miss Mingxi, your wounds haven't even healed, and your vertebrae haven't fully mended, yet you want to go hunt a Serpent King? You’d better focus on recovering, unless you want to end up paralyzed and have your son spend his whole life serving a bedridden master thief!"

"..." Mingxi stayed silent, bowing her head for a long moment.

"What? Are you angry? I didn't mean to hurt you just now, but you should know the state of your body. If even a Soul-Eater Beast could nearly finish you off, do you really think... you’d come back alive if you went looking for a Serpent King?" Shi Zhiyan wasn't mocking her; he genuinely felt this girl was far too reckless. She had been nearly crippled by a Soul-Eater Beast last night—was that not enough of a lesson? And she already wanted to challenge a high-level spirit like a Serpent King?

Mingxi finally relented. With her current injuries, rushing out would do her no good. She might very well end up as cannon fodder for the Serpent King, just as Shi Zhiyan said, and be stuck in bed for the rest of her life!

"Fine, I’ll just go back to sleep and wait until I’m healed enough to get out of bed." Mingxi pulled the quilt over herself and lay down to sleep. Shi Zhiyan’s gaze, however, fell upon the table, resting on the "Divine Oracle" book she had stolen.

"Miss Mingxi, this book you stole—could I borrow it? This 'Divine Oracle' seems to be a manual on cultivation. It might even be a secret tome of martial arts."

"If you like it, take it. It’s useless to me anyway."

"Then thank you, Miss Mingxi!" Shi Zhiyan was quite curious about the worn-out book. Seeing his interest, a wicked thought crossed Mingxi’s mind. She smirked and said, "However... there is a condition!"

"Huh? A condition? I’m your savior, remember? And you’re setting conditions for reading a book?"

"Of course there's a condition! I risked my life to steal this! You can read it, but the condition is—from now on, whenever I go to sleep, you have to sleep with me and warm my bed!"

What?! Warm the bed?!

Shi Zhiyan turned to stone. He stood there frozen for a long time, unable to move!

"Don't be shy, Godfather! You’re my dad, she’s my mom, it’s perfectly normal for you two to sleep together!" Little Tong added with a triumphant grin.

"Fine! I’ll sleep with you, then! But once you’re asleep, I’m reading the book." Shi Zhiyan had no choice but to climb into bed, defeated. Mingxi smiled smugly, marveling at how this silly, adorable, and wealthy godfather had finally fallen into the trap set by her and her son.