Picking up where we left off: Princess Sia had snapped cuffs onto Lingcai’s wrists, the girl caught like a sparrow tangled in silk.

Her fake identity wasn’t exposed yet, but her resolve burned low, like a candle guttering in wind.

With Xia’s runway height towering over Lingcai, the contrast was brutal, like a pine over a sapling. No wonder Xia kept mocking Princess Korol as a little pipsqueak.

That natural advantage made it one-sided. A soft-bodied girl against a tall, domineering elder-sister type—chick versus hawk, laid out for the taking.

Panic fluttered in Lingcai’s chest like moth wings, yet she forced herself to look proper. “Your Highness… please stop joking. We still have work to hand over, don’t we?”

Xia froze, a cat halted mid-pounce.

She couldn’t fathom why, pressed this far, Korol stayed cool as ice under a torch instead of dropping the mask and throwing a fit.

Xia grit her teeth, pushing all her chips in. If she backed off, it would feel like losing.

She yanked the cuffed Lingcai close, acid lacing her voice. “Well then. Small chest, big attitude.”

Tears shimmered in Lingcai’s eyes like dew on a lotus, her plaintive beauty deepening Xia’s guilt like a tide rising.

“I—I’m sorry… does it hurt?”

Lingcai didn’t speak; she just nodded, quick as drumbeats.

Sympathy stirred in Xia like a warm breeze, then a prickle of warning cut through. She stopped, stepped back two paces, and watched Lingcai, wary as a fox. “…Close one. I almost fell for it again! Don’t play cute with me; I don’t buy it!”

“I didn’t…” Lingcai answered, timid as a leaf in wind.

Seeing the shy, cowed look of the little princess, Xia finally let go of the itch to keep tormenting her, like a blade sheathed.

Helpless, she lifted both hands over her head in surrender. “Enough. I give up, you win. Korol, I’m begging you—curse me like before, or I can’t sit right in my own skin.”

“Huh?” Lingcai hadn’t seen this coming; her eyes went blank, twin moons staring.

Her stillness made Xia anxious, a kettle boiling over. Xia gripped Lingcai’s shoulders and shook her hard, back and forth, like a storm-churned tree. “So! Hurry up and curse me! Like before! Otherwise I’ll drown in guilt!”

Shaken until her brains felt sloshed smooth, Lingcai mumbled, fogged as a misted window. “Th-then… how do you want me to curse you…?”

Xia’s hands kept rocking on her shoulders, relentless as oars. “Anything goes! Use all your favorites from before! Say whatever you want! I won’t talk back, I swear!”

Lingcai knew that if she didn’t spit out a few curses today, she wouldn’t be let go, like a fish refusing the hook.

After holding it in for ages, she finally found one line. “Th-then I’ll say it… Y-you’re all chest and no brain!”

“Keep going! Louder! Didn’t you eat?” Xia kept shaking her, rocking her like a bell.

Lingcai squeezed out another like toothpaste. “Y-you’ve got height and no brains!”

Xia still wasn’t satisfied, a conductor demanding more. “Keep going! Meaner! Louder!”

Under Xia’s coaxing, Lingcai finally let her real voice spill, a flood breaking its dam. “You’re a sadist! A psycho! A sex freak! A lesbian! A total degenerate! You’re worse than a beast! Sharing air with you makes me sick! Your life is a waste of oxygen! Animal! Go to hell!”

After the flood of curses, Lingcai realized things had gotten worse, clouds thickening over sun.

Xia didn’t deflate. Her cheeks flushed, embers fanned to flame, satisfaction blooming as her breath quickened. “Haah… perfect… that’s the feeling… you can curse me more if you want…”

Carried away, she hugged herself and trembled, her panting sharpening like wind before rain.

Freak—help—

Lingcai didn’t want to stay a heartbeat longer. While Xia was distracted, she reached for the cuffs’ key on the table, quiet as a shadow.

No time to lose—grab the key, pop the lock, and run. Of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, fleeing is best.

One step. Two.

The instant her fingers brushed the key, a crisp click sounded at her neck.

Her heart jolted like a caught bird. Something locked tight around her throat. She tugged; the more she pulled, the tighter it bit, a snare sealing shut.

She looked up and found Xia eyeing her body with a dangerous gleam, a hunter over prey.

Lingcai’s face drained. “You… you didn’t just… put that on me, did you…?”

She clung to a faint hope of a joke, like frost refusing sun. But when her fingers found the tiny bell hanging at the front, she saw it plain and let the hope die.

Th-this was a collar. She really put it on her.

Jingle—

Xia tugged the thin chain on the collar, her cheeks flushed, color spilling like wine. “In just two years you’ve grown so sweetly mature… I can’t hold back anymore… I want to lock you away and grind you down, piece by piece… I want to watch you cry while you fight me… a withering, fallen flower of youth… heh heh heh…”

Her smile twisted, demon claws reaching for Lingcai.

As if Lingcai would sit still to be toyed with—she slapped the chain from Xia’s hand. “Didn’t you promise you wouldn’t talk back if I cursed you?!”

Xia calmly picked up another set of shackles and chuckled, smooth as silk. “Right. I didn’t talk back. I never said I wouldn’t use my hands.”

“You—”

Click, click, click.

Before Lingcai found words to fight back, shackles cinched tight on her wrists and thighs, cold iron blooming like night.

Things seemed to have taken a turn for the worse…