Surprisingly, Fei Fei hadn’t come over to find trouble with her. Turning around, her lips connected with something moist and warm. With wide eyes, Baihe stared at the wickedly handsome face — barely a centimeter away; a complacent look glittered in his sapphire eyes, giving an ethereal glow to the perfectly sculpted contours of his face.

Her heart rate sped up dangerously; annoyed with herself — Baihe pushed him away. Just as she was about to curse him out, Fenglong said self-righteously: “Woman, did you want to kiss Benwang that badly? Since you created such an accidental situation just to take advantage of me, I shall generously repay the favor in the future.”

Baihe choked on his words, the curses lodged in her throat. She nearly vomited blood at how he’d turned black to white, making it sound as if she’d eaten his tofu and needed to be punished in kind.

Exercising control over her emotions, Baihe took a few deep breaths before briskly walking away to pluck out medical plants, ignoring the shameless man. After gathering an armful of ingredients, Baihe walked in front of a pill furnace and began to focus wholeheartedly on refining the easiest pill.

Beads of sweat dripped from her forehead down her face, but she had no time to wipe them away. Her hands were slightly black from rotating the fire on the bottom to maintain the correct temperature; she much rather use phoenix flames, but with the bird out of commission, she wasn’t able to borrow his powers and could only manually monitor the fire. Baihe suddenly thought it wasn’t that difficult to refine pills. Unless the mixture suddenly exploded, her first try would most likely be a success.

But reality proved Baihe had no fortune to receive such blessings. As the medical plants blended together with one another, the chemical reactions from the mixing of different properties and attributes began to emit soft, bubbling noises of sizzling sounds.

Boom!

A mini explosion occurred — leaving Baihe with a black face and wild frizzy hair. She stared at the remnants of her failure, looking like neither pills nor medicine, but more like charred heaps of failed dishes.

Nearby, a low chuckle rang in the air; the sound was like listening to a classical symphony — luring the listeners closer. Baihe turned toward Fenglong. It was only at this moment, she realized the bipolar man had done nothing but laid leisurely sideways on the ground with an arm supporting his head; the luxurious royal blue fabric of his robe spread sumptuously across the ground.

The amusement sparkling in his eyes gave birth to stubbornness in her heart as Baihe refused to give up after one failure. If the first time didn’t succeed, then keep trying!

With that set of mentality, Baihe strode forward to gather more medical plants and eliminated all distractions from her mind — completely absorbing herself in the task of pill refinement.

Boom!

Boom!

Trapped within the Old Witch’s formation territory, the fake sky above them had never changed color, but a lively day had gone by with multiple small explosions and Baihe was still solely focused on trying to refine a low level beginner pill.

Boom!

By now, the sounds of explosions were so common that no one flinched nor batted an eye. When exhaustion fully overwhelmed her mortal body, Baihe was left standing covered completely in black as if she had rolled around a bed of ink; her hair had even upgraded to a massive Afro.

She stared at the destruction before her, unable to make head or tail out of the contents within the failed mess. Was Murphy’s Law working overtime just for her? Baihe felt like anything that could possibly go wrong — had gone wrong.

Her bloodshot eyes glared at Fenglong, who was now sitting casually with one knee up as he sprawled lazily against a tall tree — elegant and refined even as lethargy sank straight down to his bones while using those lustrous dark sapphire eyes to gaze at her with deep amusement.

“Pill refinement requires not only knowledge, but also innate talent; otherwise, why would apothecaries be considered so rare?” Fenglong said gently, his chest shaking to suppress the laughter threatening to erupt from Baihe’s unruly appearance.

Baihe really wanted to slap that irksome smile off his handsome face, but she lacked the strength to do so at the moment. How many hours or days had it been since she last slept or ate? With a sullen tone, Baihe asked grumpily: “Then why didn’t you say so from the start?”

“If you never try and fail in order for you to recognize your own limits, would you be satisfied to let the opportunity go with no regrets?” Fenglong asked rhetorically, a tinge of wisdom in those profound eyes.

His last words echoed in her mind as Baihe intentionally crashed down on his legs, using them unabashedly as a pillow. Seeing his pristine clothes now dirty with dust and soot, a ghost of a smile appeared on her face before Baihe drifted off to sleep.

Fenglong felt his lips twitch as he stared down at the woman acting so audaciously with him. Instead of getting angry like he’d expected, a touch of helplessness emerged. At last, he decided to just let Baihe sleep peacefully in her dreamland as he quietly guarded her from any unforeseen danger.

♦

An ear-piercing scream jarred Baihe awake from her deep slumber; her head nearly rammed straight into Fenglong’s jaw. She turned to face the man who had sheltered her from the cold with his warm body — an inexplicable feeling washed over her.

Baihe stared at Fenglong with a complicated gaze as if she were trying to solve the world’s biggest mystery. Perhaps her scrutiny was a bit unnatural, causing a trace of worry to enter his eyes. Abruptly, Baihe got up and walked away before he could ask any questions.

The quiet, steady footsteps following behind her sounded a hundred times louder than usual. Or, was it the heavy beating of her perturbed heart?

In the past, Baihe was only 70 percent asleep and 30 percent awake when she needed to rest her eyes, always retaining a thread of vigilance; but this time she had succumbed to a deep peaceful slumber, greatly alarming her sense of perseverance.

Her footsteps quickened as if she were running away from something and that exact something, or more accurately someone, easily kept up with her pace. The world was a dangerous place, even more so for assassins who’d garnered many enemies. If Fenglong had wanted to kill her then, wouldn’t she be a slaughtered pig by now?

But a soft little voice was nagging in the back of her mind — wasn’t it because the most raw and instinctive part of you had somehow trusted him beyond all logic?

Trust? Baihe felt the urge to suddenly laugh at herself. It must have been a momentary lapse of judgment. Something as treacherous and unreliable as trust could get her killed with a dagger stabbed in her back. Baihe wasn’t ready to trust anyone and she would never be; especially not a bipolar man who was mad at her one second enough to kill and the next…

Her thoughts drifted off to something improper and a faint blush appeared on her dainty face; Baihe accelerated her speed as she tried to shake off the inappropriate rated R scenes in her mind.

Maybe, just maybe…she should fuck him out of her system?

Soon, the two arrived at the initial source of commotion that had awoken her.