Chapter 9: Don’t Move.
The captain had been sitting at the table flipping through documents. At her words, his movements stalled, and he looked up in visible surprise.
Sasha froze for a second. Then instead of getting angry, he burst into laughter.
“Sounds like you’ve got firsthand experience, darling.”
As he spoke, the silver-haired vampire brushed a fingertip across his cheek and gave her a deeply meaningful look.
The moment Su Cheng saw the gesture, she suddenly remembered exactly how she’d touched someone’s chest muscles before. Her whole body stiffened.
The captain probably wouldn’t be mad.
But she still felt a little embarrassed.
Almost instinctively, she turned her head away, only to meet those astonished golden eyes head-on.
Su Cheng: “…”
This was painfully awkward.
“Sorry…”
She hurriedly apologized without even looking at Kai’s reaction before whipping back around to glare viciously at a certain vampire.
“Next time, if we’re discussing curses, then until the topic is over, I don’t want to hear anything unrelated to curses.”
Su Cheng suppressed her irritation with visible effort.
“Otherwise, I don’t think there’s any need for you to participate in the conversation at all. What do you think?”
At the same moment, she felt her palm growing hot.
A black divine mark silently surfaced against her curled hand.
The meeting room fell silent once more.
The three men looked at her with entirely different expressions.
The girl standing beside the table slowly lifted her head. Within those clear amber eyes, faint glowing patterns emerged, lines and triangles interwoven like the balanced trays of a scale.
One on the left.
One on the right.
“Oh?”
Sasha raised a brow slightly, and intense fascination flashed through his eyes.
If everything he’d done before had merely been bored amusement—
Then at this moment, it was like a starving beast catching the scent of blood.
An almost feverish excitement surfaced on his face as those crimson eyes locked onto the girl before him.
“Is this a contract?”
He deliberately stressed the word, as though savoring it between his teeth. His rosy lips curved upward.
“In that case, I can agree to your terms. But you’ll have to agree to some of mine as well.”
Su Cheng said nothing.
The heat in her palm kept rising.
The moment he mentioned a contract, she felt some restrained power begin spreading quietly through the air.
If she nodded now, a contract would truly be formed between them.
And as a blessed follower of the God of Contracts, any agreement she made, whether written or spoken, would carry terrifying binding force.
If either party broke it, whether herself or the other side, the punishment would be unimaginably severe.
No one had explicitly told her this.
But based on the descriptions of divine followers in the book, along with the instincts awakening inside her now, it had to be true.
“…Forget it,” Su Cheng said irritably. “I was only stating what I assumed were basic conversational manners.”
As she rejected the proposal, the heat in her palm vanished instantly.
That strange, oppressive sensation disappeared with it.
Sasha smiled at her brightly, the amusement in his eyes only deepening.
“Then I’ll remember it. I’ll be more careful next time. My sincerest apologies.”
Yeah, right, Su Cheng thought.
She plastered on a fake smile anyway and turned toward the silent blond mage beside her.
Camus had been staring at her for several seconds earlier. Now his gaze lowered once more to her back, as though contemplating something.
“You said you don’t know the identity of the caster,” Camus said in a low voice. “How much do you mean by ‘don’t know’?”
“No clue whatsoever.” Su Cheng spread her hands helplessly. “I can’t think of a single suspect. And I feel like this happened before I even had memories.”
Camus nodded faintly.
“If the curse was placed during infancy, it wouldn’t be strange for it to erupt around adulthood.”
His gaze swept briefly across the exposed nape of her neck.
“This is a compound blood curse.”
A blood curse, by definition, required the target’s blood to cast. Such curses often flowed through the victim’s bloodline and could sometimes even pass down to descendants.
Which meant they were notoriously difficult to remove.
“…But it shouldn’t be hereditary. Compound curses are overlays of multiple curses. Sometimes the caster even creates them personally. This one has an existing prototype, though the caster likely modified it somewhat.”
Camus paused thoughtfully.
“You still haven’t answered me. How were you suppressing it before?”
Su Cheng originally intended to brush him off with some nonsense about sleeping around.
But when she met those cold, sharp blue eyes, she suddenly felt like maybe honesty was the better option here.
“Succubus blood.”
“Mhm.” Camus didn’t seem surprised. “An effective solution. Do you still have some stored?”
Su Cheng hesitated.
“I do. But I’m running through it pretty fast, and I’d like to stock up more. I heard there’s an underground black market in Amber City that sells prohibited materials and magical items. I was thinking of trying my luck there?”
Camus neither agreed nor objected.
“Hard to say. The Church has been cracking down pretty aggressively lately.”
At the mention of the Church, Sasha let out a quiet scoff nearby.
The smile remained on his beautiful face, though several traces of disdain slipped into his expression.
“Why not just go take a look? Worst case, you catch one yourself.”
Su Cheng: “…”
He said it like he was talking about grabbing rats off the street.
That was a high-ranking demon.
A normal adult succubus could probably wipe out a hundred-man paladin squad by itself.
Back during the old wars, creatures like that supposedly required lower gods from the Light faction to deal with them.
Even the one whose blood she’d drunk before had worn restraining seals around its neck, yet still moved like a ghost.
“Leaving that aside…” Su Cheng’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You know where to catch succubi?”
“Perhaps.” Sasha looked at her with obvious interest. “If I tell you, what will you give me in return?”
Su Cheng narrowed her eyes.
“You really want to make deals with me that badly?”
He blinked at her meaningfully.
“Isn’t that exactly why you came to us, darling? I adore dealing with people like you.”
“People like me?” Su Cheng repeated. “What kind of people?”
“Have you ever heard a certain song?”
Instead of answering directly, Sasha suddenly began humming in a bright, lilting tone.
“It was a promise forged from gold,
An oath carved deep into stone,
Yet within the words of contracts they buried hidden snares,
Letting flowers of honesty and trust bear the poisoned fruit of betrayal.
Ah, look at your faithful believers.
You call them keepers of their vows,
But all I see—”
His beautiful voice suddenly rose sharply, the pitch climbing without warning.
“—are sophists and swindlers offering tribute at your altar.”
The final note lowered slowly into darkness, and the cheerful rhythm twisted eerie and heavy before cutting off abruptly.
Su Cheng stared at him wide-eyed.
“Huh?”
What kind of chaotic nonsense was that?
What was this, some cursed opera world? Why did he suddenly start singing?!
“Not surprising. You’re still a human hatchling, after all.” The vampire hummed the melody lazily beneath his breath. “But speaking of blood, I should probably go eat something too.”
Then he simply turned and left.
Su Cheng almost tried to stop him, but feared he might stick himself against her again, so she froze instead.
The meeting room door shut completely.
As she replayed the lyrics in her mind, an indescribably strange feeling rose inside her.
The other two men remained perfectly calm, apparently long accustomed to their teammate randomly breaking into song and leaving whenever he pleased.
Camus was still staring at her back.
Kai continued reviewing the scrolls on the table, occasionally jotting down a few words with his pen.
“Gentlemen, quick question.” Su Cheng raised her hand. “What exactly was that song?”
The mage ignored her entirely.
Only the captain looked up seriously to answer.
“That was The Bells of Tethia.”
Su Cheng stared blankly with the expression of someone receiving forbidden cosmic knowledge.
“It’s an ancient folk ballad,” Kai explained thoughtfully. “Written by a wandering bard. It tells the story of an ancient city-state named Tethia, said to have once existed under the protection of the God of Contracts. The people there were all divine followers, mostly merchants known for honesty and integrity.”
“Until one day, an outsider arrived.”
“He taught them how to conceal contract clauses with illusion magic, how to trick others into signing agreements, how to manipulate wording in verbal promises so people misunderstood the terms of trade. The followers began earning greater profits this way… even harvesting the souls of others.”
Su Cheng froze halfway through listening.
“And then?”
“Then the city was destroyed.”
Kai’s voice remained calm.
“Two powerful divine followers deceived each other, each maneuvering the other into breaking their vows. Divine punishment descended. Amid thunder and catastrophe, all of Tethia became ruins.”
Su Cheng opened her mouth slightly.
“So that’s the story behind the song? Then when the lyrics say ‘your faithful believers,’ the ‘you’ refers to the God of Contracts?”
Kai nodded lightly.
Su Cheng fell silent for two seconds.
“That outsider… was it the God of Contracts personally?”
Camus glanced at her.
Kai nodded again.
“…According to the lyrics, yes.”
“So…” Su Cheng exhaled for some reason, oddly relieved. “It’s just a song then? Not real?”
Kai didn’t answer immediately.
After a moment, he said slowly:
“Perhaps. But for things no one alive witnessed personally, who can say for certain whether they truly happened or not?”
For a brief instant, Su Cheng suddenly felt her divine mark burn.
Not literally.
More like pressure pressing against her mind.
She already knew the gods of this world were hardly benevolent.
Or rather, judged by human morality and common standards, every deity possessed some aspect of cruelty. The forms merely differed.
Being chosen as a divine follower certainly made her happy. It meant protection, in a way.
But it also came with fear.
This power symbolized a connection to a god.
And such a connection could just as easily bring destruction.
Silence settled over the meeting room again.
Su Cheng sank into thought while the other two busied themselves separately.
Several minutes later, Camus slowly pulled off the glove on his right hand and fixed her with those dark blue eyes.
“I can’t guarantee I’ll remove the curse completely,” he said quietly. “But I’d like to try.”
Su Cheng nodded immediately.
“Okay.”
Honestly, she’d been worried the differences between her body and Lin Yun’s might cause unexpected complications anyway.
“I’ll need to conduct some experiments first to determine the proportions of certain materials,” the blond man said calmly. “If you don’t trust me, we can sign a formal contract.”
Su Cheng had already been considering that.
“Sure. I’ll draft a liability waiver. We’ll calculate this payment separately too. I can pay you directly, and it’ll stay unrelated to the mercenary contract between me and your group.”
Camus didn’t object.
“If it helps you cooperate fully, then write it.”
Su Cheng: “…”
She understood perfectly well that he wasn’t helping her out of kindness.
To him, she was also an experimental subject.
And honestly, they were strangers who had only just met. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t fully trust him either.
In fact, if she weren’t a follower of the God of Contracts, the agreement wouldn’t carry much real binding force anyway. At most, it would become evidence in court.
But if he truly killed her, what would any of that matter?
Su Cheng leaned over the table and began writing furiously.
Camus took the first draft, skimmed it casually, raised no objections whatsoever, and signed immediately.
Su Cheng distinctly felt the contract take effect.
The sensation was subtle, difficult to explain to anyone else, but perhaps that was simply a divine follower’s unique ability.
The last time she’d signed a contract with Murong Yue, she had only just become a divine follower before immediately getting distracted by the shocking appearance of an actual god.
This time, she could finally focus enough to notice the difference.
“Then…” Su Cheng said with mixed emotions, “it’s settled.”
Whatever special identities these people possessed, they probably still couldn’t contend directly against divine power. Otherwise they wouldn’t need to recruit collaborators through notices.
And she hadn’t hidden traps in the contract.
Everything she included centered around her own safety.
For example, during testing or treatment, if he harbored any malicious thoughts toward her, if he intended to harm her, control her, or deliberately use her as a dangerous test subject—
Even before acting on those intentions, the moment he formed the idea and planned it, he would already be doomed.
Camus handed the contract back to her.
“No problems?”
As he spoke, he tapped the table lightly with his knuckles and gave an unquestionable command.
“Turn around.”
Su Cheng obeyed.
“This won’t hurt too much, right?”
The mage behind her didn’t answer.
Instead, he hooked a finger beneath the thin strap clinging to her shoulder blade and gently pulled it aside, exposing her snow-white back completely.
His fingers paused briefly.
“…Your hair.”
Su Cheng tilted her head and swept the loose strands away from the back of her neck.
His fingertips quickly descended onto her skin.
It felt as though an ice spike and a branding iron pierced her flesh simultaneously.
The pain itself wasn’t overwhelming at first, but the clash between freezing cold and burning heat was startlingly vivid.
She shuddered uncontrollably again.
The alternating sensations wandered constantly across her back. In her mind, Su Cheng instinctively traced the path, gradually piecing together the shape of the curse sigil.
She focused on that partly to distract herself.
But the pain only intensified.
It felt as though the entire layer of skin on her back was being burned away or frozen rotten.
Grinding her teeth, she began breathing heavily. Instinctively she tried to dodge sideways, only for him to catch her waist firmly with his other hand.
“Stay still if you can,” Camus said in a low voice. “I need to feel how deeply it’s fused with your body. Endure it a little longer.”
At the same time, he began chanting unfamiliar incantations under his breath.
Su Cheng couldn’t understand them at all. They clearly exceeded the knowledge scope of ordinary elemental mages.
Tilting her head back, she gasped through clenched teeth.
“I’m really not trying to make things difficult for you, I just…”
“I know,” Camus murmured. “Don’t move.”
Sweat poured down her face as her fingers dug desperately into the edge of the table.
“Sorry, I’m really trying to endure it, damn it, I can’t hold on anymore. Maybe tomorrow instead—”
The blond man fell silent for two seconds.
Then suddenly he stepped forward, pressing himself directly against her slender body.
His solid chest pressed against the arch of her shoulder blades.
One knee slid between her trembling legs, preventing her from shifting away again.
As the chanting slowed, the broken whimpers escaping the girl became sharper and more strained.
Su Cheng’s mentality completely collapsed.
This hurt way too much.
Shockwaves of pain kept hammering through her spine, each pulse worse than the last. It felt as though her entire body were being split apart down the middle while a massive hammer pounded inside her skull.
Stars burst across her vision.
Her fingers clawed wildly at the scrolls scattered across the desk, knocking draft papers into the air.
Behind her, the blood mage gritted his teeth and grabbed her wrist hard.
“Will you stop—”
His gaze dropped.
The rest of his sentence abruptly died away.
The constantly trembling curve of her waist and back resembled pale waves surging during high tide.
As their magic intertwined, her body moved involuntarily beneath him. Every now and then, her tailbone knocked lightly against the ornate buckle at his belt.
The girl’s weakened arms barely supported her against the table. Sweat and tears dripped steadily onto the surface while the fingers pinned beneath his grip turned bloodless white from strain.
“…”
The two of them separated almost violently.
Su Cheng collapsed bonelessly across the table like all strength had been ripped from her body.
Her thoughts were still a chaotic storm of divine followers, curses, and fragmented plotlines, but somehow she’d managed not to pass out.
She’d been about to groan dramatically when she realized the pain was already fading quickly.
Pulling a small mirror from her pocket, she angled it toward her back and discovered the curse sigil looked slightly lighter than before.
Su Cheng blinked.
“…Wait. Miracle doctor?!”
Camus leaned against the table, breathing faintly harder than usual.
“No. I only delayed the next outbreak, assuming nothing unexpected happens.”
His originally pale skin now carried a trace of flushed color. A sheen of sweat dampened several strands of his curled blond hair.
“It really is complicated. We’ll start with potions first. I’ll write down the materials needed for the formula.”
He spoke almost absently while bending down to retrieve several blank scrolls and a stack of draft paper from the drawer.
After wiping the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, the blond mage lowered his head and began writing rapidly.
A while later, he slapped a sheet of paper onto the table.
“Go buy these first.”
Across from him, the black-haired captain rose to his full height.
He picked up the heavy sword resting against the wall and secured it onto the clasp at his back. Those sharp golden eyes settled on her.
“I’ll take you to the underground district to gather materials. We can also see whether any succubus blood is available as backup.”
Su Cheng agreed immediately.
She picked up her clothes from the table.
“…Thank you. And thank you too, Mr. Camus.”
Even though it had hurt horribly just now, the pain had vanished quickly afterward. Besides, the blood mage himself looked thoroughly drained too.
Camus still seemed immersed in thought. Several seconds passed before he finally looked back up.
“?”
Su Cheng walked over and deliberately leaned close to his ear before speaking loudly.
“I said thank you!”
Camus froze slightly.
His gaze swept across her face, then drifted lower to the sweat-soaked front of her tank top, where the thin fabric clung translucently against warm skin beneath.
He immediately looked away again and said coolly:
“No need.”
Then he adjusted his coat, crossed his legs against the chair back, and never looked at her again.
