Zu An was stunned. When he followed Mi Li’s gaze, he saw that she was looking at Daji, who was sitting next to the medicinal furnace.

Daji had been devastatingly beautiful to begin with. Now that she was just sitting there quietly, her white dress made her look even more like a wise and stunning lady.

“I really find this hard to believe. Such a beautiful woman ended up becoming a simple maid.” Even Mi Li couldn’t help but sigh.

Zu An snapped out of his daze and asked, “The Ki Condensation Pill can be useful for her?”

“You can give it a try.” Mi Li arrived at Daji’s side, her beautiful eyes full of curiosity. After all, she had even wanted to temporarily occupy Daji’s body, but she couldn’t. That was why she was curious as to just what kind of form Daji had.

Zu An stared at the two girls in front of him. One was dressed in fiery red clothes, and the other in fluttering white clothes. The two of them really were incredible.

He walked over to Daji and fed her the Ki Condensation Pill. When he saw her red lips close gently, and then watched her swallow, he couldn’t help but swallow as well. Exceptional beauties really were exceptional! She was still so enchanting, even in this state where she hadn’t recovered her consciousness.

“You beast.” Zu An’s gulp didn’t escape Mi Li’s detection, and she harrumphed in disdain.

Zu An’s face heated up. He was just about to say something, but he suddenly stopped. A row of characters had appeared on the holographic keyboard screen in his head:

Valkyrie skill level up material detected...

Zu An was shocked. He quickly read over the contents and saw that Daji’s three skills, ‘Voice of the Devil’, ‘Fox Charm’, and ‘Nine-Tailed Fox’, were all skills that could be leveled up. They started at level one, but as the skills leveled up, they got stronger and stronger.

“Why does this feel like a game?” Zu An sneered. As a keyboard warrior shut-in, he had played his fair share of games. This was obviously a system he was familiar with.

Each skill had ten levels. Furthermore, regardless of which skill it was, the materials needed for each level up were the same. That was why what he needed to consider was which skill would be the most helpful right now.

Zu An didn’t have enough resources to level everything up at the same time. His past experience playing games had taught him that using resources carelessly was a stupid choice. He carefully looked over the requirements needed to level up the skills, and his expression became strange.

Upgrading a skill to level two needed three types of materials: Two Ki Condensation Pills, four Dragon Scales, and 12,000 silvers.

Zu An cursed. This damn scam of a system! Why does upgrading a freaking skill need silver?!

Even though 12,000 silvers wasn’t too much for his current self, he was sure that as he leveled up the skills, the required amount of silver would only become greater and greater.

He had been scammed by countless games in his past world. Each time, what he lacked was always these resources, and one would have no choice but to spend real money.

As for the four dragon scales, that was quite the easy matter. He might not have other things, but he had more than enough dragon scales. Whether it was that red dragon or the Dragon Race elder he had killed later on his way to the capital, those corpses were still in his Brilliant Glass Bead. He had been wondering what to do with them. Now, there was finally a good place to use them. The only thing he lacked now was another Ki Condensation Pill!

As such, he communicated his discovery to Mi Li. Mi Li thought it wasn’t all that strange that he and Daji had a special communication method. She was instead curious about the skill leveling method. “Hm? Shouldn’t the skills increase with her cultivation? There’s such a simple way to upgrade them? If you could popularize this, what would be the point of cultivators cultivating anymore?”

Zu An smiled bitterly as he said, “I don’t think that’s possible.” After all, he had only pulled Daji as his sole valkyrie. This method was definitely useless to others.

He quickly controlled Daji to continue refining pills. He thought that after his previous success, his experience would make things easier. However, all he got in return were five failures in a row.

What was even more depressing was that, during the fifth failure, black smoke came out of the furnace and it exploded into pieces.

Zu An and Mi Li subconsciously protected themselves, but Daji wasn’t so lucky. Her fair face was covered in black ashes. Zu An subconsciously tried to help her wipe them off, but Daji turned away and cleaned her face herself. Afterward, she continued to quietly sit in place. Mi Li and Zu An were both left speechless.

Eventually, Mi Li couldn’t help but laugh. “You wanted to use this chance to take advantage of her, but she didn’t bite.”

Zu An felt extremely gloomy. “I really only wanted to help her wipe them off.”

He had already tested things out before. Daji would obey his orders and help him fight, but she absolutely wouldn’t engage in any type of physical contact with him. Things had happened too quickly just now, so he had forgotten that.

Mi Li looked at Daji with a strange expression. “That maid of yours really is strange; she’s quite defiant. Should I help you subdue her so she’ll listen more?”

She had wanted to enter Daji’s body previously. No matter how proud she was, she still had to admit that Daji was beautiful, and that she was someone worthy of possessing. However, she had actually been actually blown back by a mysterious force, leaving her quite upset. That was why she wanted to get back at her.

Daji subconsciously cowered when she heard Mi Li’s words, although it was unclear whether her movements were a trick of the imagination. Still, there was a bit more vigilance in her eyes.

Zu An shook his head. “Stop, I’m not that much of a pervert! Furthermore, she already helped me with a lot of things recently, so she’s a comrade and not a servant.”

Since these valkyries were designed such that he couldn’t touch them, there was definitely a reason for it. Forcing such a thing might instead cause unpredictable results. Furthermore, he had never been the type to use force. Wasn’t it more fun to slowly improve their love meters?

Daji turned around to give Zu An a look. Her expression didn’t didn’t change in the slightest.

Mi Li sneered, “Tsk, this girl is nothing more than a leather bag. You’re wasting your time.”

Zu An shook his head. He didn’t want to continue bickering over this issue. He asked, “By the way, why is the success rate for this damn pill so low? I’ll end up wasting a ton of resources at this rate.”

After all, he had already used up most of his materials from all of the trials. Some of the ingredients were actually quite expensive. But the outcome hadn’t brought him many pills at all!

Now that they were talking about important matters again, Mi Li put away her playful smile and stared at the broken medicine furnace. “I watched the whole thing. You didn’t make too many mistakes, so the issue is probably with this medicinal furnace. This furnace is just an ordinary furnace for making medicine. When refining pills, you need one specialized for it. Find a good pill furnace and it should solve your problem.”

Zu An asked, “Where would I find one?”

Mi Li rolled her eyes. “I’ve been sleeping the whole time, so how could I possibly know? But judging from what you’ve said, the Royal Academy in the capital probably has one.”

Zu An thought of something. He remembered Jiang Luofu, as well as the Xie clan’s siblings. He wondered if he could get a pill furnace through his connections.

However, those eyes filled with endless depth appeared in his mind again. He immediately became serious. He still didn’t know why the other party had let him off so easily. He voiced his doubts, but Mi Li couldn’t figure out the empress’ objective either.

“It’s useless even if you try to think about these things. The difference between you is too great. You should focus on the things you should be focusing on right now.” Mi Li dragged him back to reality. “Bring out the information you obtained from selling your body to that vixen.”

“What do you mean, selling my body? Both sides were getting what we needed, okay?” Zu An replied gloomily. The way she put it just made him seem as if he had suffered a lot because of Liu Ning.

He took out a booklet Liu Ning had given him. It included the oral confessions of the servants and guards who had ‘seen’ him and the crown princess together, as well as the results of the investigation.

The two of them looked through the information together. He discovered that all the earliest witnesses had disappeared mysteriously. Most of the others had only rushed to the scene after they heard the news. According to the information, even Shi Jun had only arrived after he received news midway.

“Could it be that I made a mistake?” Zu An frowned. If the one behind the scenes wasn’t Shi Jun, then who could it be?

“Hurry and look over here.” Mi Li pointed at something in the booklet.

“Hm?” Zu An moved over. He suddenly smelled a faint fragrance. What the heck? She’s a soul body, right? Why does she smell so good?

Zu An subconsciously tilted his head to the side. Mi Li’s side profile seemed as if it had been drawn with a brush, sleek and fine. Because her head was lowered, some of her beautiful hair had scattered down. Paired with her perfect appearance, it really was a stunning scene.

“I’m going to gouge your eyes out if you stare any further,” Mi Li said coldly without turning around.

Zu An jumped in fright. He quickly shifted his attention to the booklet. “What…”

He had already seen this before, but he hadn’t paid too much attention to it. However, now that Mi Li had gotten his attention and pointed it out again, he noticed that something was strange. There was one common point linking all of the missing people, which was that they had either been stationed near Xuanwu Gate, or they had visited Xuanwu Gate not too long before.

Zu An immediately realized something. No one in the palace could find Xin Rui’s corpse, and yet there were no records of her leaving the palace in the records. He had thought that Xin Rui might have been brought out through the other gates and somehow managed to pass the inspection.

But now that he thought about it, it seemed he had overlooked something. Had Xuanwu Gate’s Ou Wu colluded with Xin Rui? He was in charge of guarding the Xuanwu Gate, so he obviously had a chance to falsify the records. That way, everyone else would be misled by the investigation.

He couldn’t wait any longer when he thought of that. He put on his Embroidered Envoy mask and quickly rushed out. But as soon as he left, he bumped into a soft body.

The other party let out a cry of alarm. “Ah!”

“How dare you?!” came a shocked and furious voice berating him. The sound of all sorts of weapons being drawn could be heard.