Chapter 131 - To Join a Harem

In a soft dark space, Feng Xi stirred at the feeling of lacquered nails tracing gently over the smooth skin of the arm she'd draped across Ao Wen. Blinking her eyes, she first saw Ao Wen, still in bed with her but dressed in a strange crimson and gold sleeping robe. Beyond Ao Wen, however, another woman lazed on the large bed, looking curiously at Feng Xi from half a meter away. "Feng Xi I presume," the woman purred, somewhere between a question and a statement. Dark eyes gleamed like bottomless pools that drew Feng Xi's gaze in until she managed to shake herself free, her cheeks flushed and her heart racing.

"You, who are you?" Feng Xi said, her first instinct to draw away and her second to find a way to shield Ao Wen from this woman who had… had what? This wasn't their bedroom, it was no place she'd ever seen. Was it a dream? Had this woman invaded their dreams? 

The dark-haired beauty smiled, stretching languidly as she rolled herself to the edge of the bed and stood, the short cut of her sleeping robe revealing a hint of the graceful curve of her buttocks even as the front of her robe strained to contain her voluminous assets. With every centimeter of her being she radiated a palpable sense of seduction and temptation, as though sin had been poured into a living vessel and draped in fine black silks. "I've been called many things, had many titles but owned few names," she said. "Most famously, I'm known as the Dark Desire Immortal Empress Qi Yue. You, however, can call me Big Sister Yue. Come," she said, gesturing to a small table nearby. "You can serve tea and we can talk."

Feng Xi's mind froze. Immortal Empress! Someone like one of Ao Wen's previous lives? What was such a powerful being doing here? Wait, Qi Yue? "Are you… Are you Cong Daiyu's Senior Sister Qi Yue?" Feng Xi said, still clinging to Ao Wen only now realizing that a faint purple cloud of energy also clung to Ao Wen, surrounding her like a gentle perfuming mist, barely discernable in the dim light of the strange bedroom. 

"The very same. If she's told you that much then you should know that I mean no harm to the lovers of my treasured flame," Qi Yue said, taking a seat at the low table and gesturing for Feng Xi to join her. "Please."

Slowly, Feng Xi slipped out of bed, finding herself dressed in an elegant white sleeping robe with silver embroidery of bamboo. At the low table, she found a delicate jade tea set, with water already heated to steeping temperature. Moving slowly and with one eye always on the other woman, Feng Xi prepared tea, pouring a cup of each of them before offering the first cup to Qi Yue. "If it pleases you," she said politely. 

"Good," Qi Yue said with a slow smile as she took the measure of this young woman. "Are you like Ao Wen? Are you also a Spirit Folk with some kind of extraordinary bloodline?"

"I am," Feng Xi said hesitantly. "My family is descended from the Emerald Tempest Heron."

"Ah, that explains it then," Qi Yue said slyly, eyes twinkling with mischief, her lush lips curling in a slight smile. "Do try the tea, it's very good," she purred as she pressed her soft lips to the jade cup, inhaling the fragrance of the tea before taking the slightest sip. 

Feng Xi gulped. So this is what Ao Wen had meant when she said that Qi Yue was desire itself. And Ao Wen had lived with this woman for nearly three years without taking a single kiss? If such a woman was constantly at her side… Feng Xi shook her head out of the fantasies that tried to form after that notion. "Is my bloodline interesting to you," she asked, attempting to cover her awkwardness by taking a sip of hot tea. The tea wasn't just 'very good,' she found, rather it swept through her being like a gentle rain on a summer day, calming her nerves and soothing her scattered mind. 

"Mmm, that's better," Qi Yue murmured with a slow smile. "It's not so much that I'm interested in your bloodline," she continued. "It's that you have stunning legs, long, elegant, perfectly shaped with thighs that cry out to be used as pillows," the bewitching woman said with an appraising look and a mischievous gleam in her dark eyes. "You do this without becoming a rail-thin waif of a girl and I'm left wondering if my darling spends her days with her head nestled to your bosom or resting in your lap. I think I could spend hours pondering the question myself," she said, leaning across the table to stare deeply into Feng Xi's emerald eyes. "But that will have to wait until the two of you find your way to the real me."

"I, what?" Feng Xi asked, finding herself once again sinking into the depths of Qi Yue's gaze. The whole world seemed to fade away until there was nothing left in her sight but the vision of perfect femininity seated across the table from her. Where would she place her own head if she were to lay down with this woman? Bosom? Thighs? Was that the question she was supposed to be answering? "I, I'm sorry, Im-imortal Empress," Feng Xi stammered, her face heating as she realized where she'd been staring. What was she thinking!?

"I told you to call me 'Big Sister Yue' didn't I?" the older woman teased. "Right now is your time with her all to yourself. I expect you to be appropriately debauched every moment that you can until you start discovering the people you'll have to share her with."

"People like you?" Feng Xi asked, a premonition building in the pit of her stomach. 

"There's no one like me," Qi Yue said gently with a self-assured smile. "In the harem of the Myriad Paths Immortal Empress there is only one Queen and you sit before her now. But there are others, like you, who found her and loved her in the days that she and I were apart," Qi Yue said directly, lest Feng Xi misunderstand. "You'll meet your other sisters in time but right now, while I'm healing our love's cracked soul, I wanted to pull you into this space and give you the advice a Big Sister should."

"Cracked soul? Is it because of her fight with Long Ma? Did he hurt her somehow?" Feng Xi's voice became louder as she asked each question, quieting abruptly at the end as she realized she might disturb Ao Wen. "Tell me what happened to her," Feng Xi pleaded.