NOVEL NEXT Chapter 34: Essential Course for Becoming a Man
In the blink of an eye, seven days had passed.
As the supervision team advanced, martial masters concealed in the mountains were driven out.
More and more martial masters kept arriving near Danzhou, making the area increasingly bustling.
At this time, some powerful martial masters specifically hunted solitary individuals to accumulate war merits.
The scene became utterly chaotic.
Every day, many people lost their lives.
Just then, a noble son saw an opportunity and, under the guise of offering safety, rallied a group of ordinary martial masters to force them to attack Danzhou City. The sounds of battle cries were incessant.
Gradually, a force consisting of twenty to thirty thousand martial masters formed, led by the four families of Wang, Cui, Xie, and Yang, continually assaulting the city to snatch war merits.
However, though the Huang Tian Sect had little Martial Mechanism and the Disciples' cultivation was often not high, they were very adept at using talismans and Array Formation.
The martial masters of the Jing Luan Assembly, as attackers, hardly gained any advantage and even suffered severe casualties.
Regardless of the external chaos, Shen Qing and others, enclosed and isolated by the Formation, remained safe and undisturbed, living a life resembling a utopia, starkly out of place in this turmoil.
Even when the supervision team passed through this abandoned village, they could not discover any trace of Shen Qing and his group.
Everything developed just as Shen Qing and the others had initially anticipated.
A Da and others inadvertently relaxed their vigilance; as for accumulating war merits and competing with those noble sons for rankings, they had no such intentions.
Boom!
Being located further south, the weather in Danzhou was always changeable.
Just a few days after clear skies, layers of dark clouds rolled in again.
That night, heavy rain poured down loudly.
Striking the eaves, it made a crackling sound.
Boom!
Another flash of lightning and thunder exploded in the sky.
"Ah!"
Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Shao Hongling was startled and let out a low cry. Images of corpses resurfaced in her mind, making her restless, unable to find peace for a long time.
Hearing the sound of rain outside, she took a long breath, trying to calm her turbulent mind.
Moments later, Shao Hongling stepped down from the bed and walked lightly towards the window.
She gently pushed open the window, leaving just a small crack to prevent the rain from splashing in.
Through this narrow opening, Shao Hongling gazed at the torrential downpour outside.
The rain drizzled down densely, obscuring the distant night, making everything indistinct.
Only the sound of the rain was torrential, hitting the window and the eaves, producing bursts of rapid and forceful sound.
Shao Hongling's gaze wandered in the rain curtain, drifting into a daze.
At this moment, she thought of her parents and siblings far away in Lu'an Prefecture.
She wondered if the county magistrate had made trouble for her family after her departure and if her whole family had been slaughtered like those villagers at the temple. She also wondered about her own fate, whether she could survive and leave this place.
Idle, she couldn't help but let her thoughts run wild, becoming heavy-hearted.
Unbeknownst to her, Shen Qing, who had heard some noise from the next room, walked up behind Shao Hongling.
Seeing her standing by the window, silent, Shen Qing couldn't help but ask, "What are you thinking about?"
Caught in a trance, Shao Hongling was startled again by the noise behind her, causing her chest to quiver slightly.
Now unbound, she became somewhat unrestrained.
"Lord Shen, it's nothing…"
Shen Qing disliked the pitch-black environment, so he raised his hand and shot out a sizzling breath that swept over the remaining red candles on the table.
A faint glow rose up, driving out the darkness in the room.
The soft candlelight shone on Shao Hongling's face, revealing her delicate and appealing features to Shen Qing.
At that moment, she looked pitiful, like a lamb with nowhere to lean, afraid to meet Shen Qing's gaze directly, so she shifted her eyes away.
Amidst her movements, there was a slight sway beneath her loose clothing.
For some reason, this moment suddenly gave rise to an impulse in Shen Qing's heart.
After so many days of being together, they had grown familiar with each other.
Shen Qing did not suppress his thoughts, walked straight up to her, and stretched out his hand to her chin, slightly tilting her face.
As Shao Hongling looked confused, Shen Qing's hands naturally caressed her fair cheeks.
"Lord Shen…" Shao Hongling murmured softly, her voice almost inaudible, "What… do you want to do…"
Seeing that Shao Hongling did not resist, Shen Qing's hand gradually slid down her face toward her fair neck.
Shao Hongling seemed to realize something, her face alarmed, and she quickly stepped back two steps.
Currently, a young man and woman were alone in a room, and both Shen Qing and Shao Hongling were at a vigorous age, some things were understood without saying.
Shao Hongling had imagined this more than once, but now that it was happening, her eyes became inexplicably complex.
She had never experienced this before and didn't know how to handle such emotions. Your adventure continues at empire
Shen Qing, having lived two lives, was not unfamiliar with such situations.
He took another two steps forward, grasped Shao Hongling's soft wrist and said, "You should know what I want to do, you seemed to have said it was worth it at the beginning of the Jing Luan Assembly."
Shao Hongling remained silent, seemingly caught in an emotional struggle.
"If you feel you're not ready, then forget it, pretend I didn't say anything," Shen Qing said patiently, showing no signs of hurry.
He knew that the major couldn't be dictated by the minor and needed to maintain constant clarity to avoid making wrong judgments that could bring trouble.
Hearing Shen Qing's words, Shao Hongling looked up and said, shifting her gaze, "Please extinguish the candle."
"That would make it impossible to see anything."
Shen Qing laughed and approached closer to Shao Hongling, encircling her waist.
The rainy night was long.
A moan echoed through the room.
…
The next morning, just like usual, Shen Qing walked out of the house with an unchanged expression.
Rarely, Shao Hongling was still in bed, not even getting up by noon, and did not perform her daily cultivation, which was very unusual.
Walking in the courtyard, Shen Qing encountered Shang Jin who looked at him with a somewhat strange expression but did not say much more.
To them, it was a matter of time.
It was just a matter of happening sooner or later.
For A Da and Xiao Man, this meant that their miss had truly been accepted by Shen Qing, which was a good thing for her and indeed a cause for joy.
At this moment, when they looked at Shen Qing again, their attitude was somewhat different, treating him truly like a son-in-law, serving him from the heart.
Shen Qing had nothing much to say.
Shen Qing had not trained himself into an eunuch through martial arts, and meat delivered to his mouth was not to be missed.
This was all part of the essential courses of becoming a man.
According to last night, Shao Hongling was initially very reserved.
But she couldn't withstand his vigorous performance; by the later part of the night, she was screaming particularly loud, so much so that Shao Hongling, a martial master, eventually grew exhausted.
It's hard to imagine what a normal person would have turned into.