Chapter 66: Chapter 66 - The Intangible Asset and the Premium Payment

The woman scrambled backward on the furs.

"Who do you think you are?!" she roared. Her raspy voice cracked. "I only wish you’d die sooner!"

Su Bai sat on the floorboards, completely speechless.

For the first time in two lifetimes, his proposal had been violently rejected.

Internally, Su Bai was running a rapid self-audit. He was fully aware of his good looks. In his past life, he had properly categorized his appearance as a highly valuable intangible asset.

He knew "pretty privilege" existed. It yielded high initial approval ratings from everyone he met.

Back on Earth, every time he had asked a woman out, they had always agreed. Of course, they also all broke up with him for the exact same reason a few months later.

As a hollowed-out corporate slave working ninety-hour weeks, he hadn’t wanted a life partner. He had just wanted a live-in cook. He had been a terrible boyfriend.

But looking at the fiercely blushing, furiously glaring girl in front of him, Su Bai realized she was completely different.

She had a poisonous mouth, but a kind heart.

For the very first time, he didn’t care if a woman knew how to cook or not.

’Wait,’ Su Bai’s internal monologue paused. ’A venomous tongue but a gentle soul... Could it be that I have the exact same terrible taste in women as my Master?’

He suddenly remembered Lu Canghai’s tragic, unrequited pining for a harsh lady from the Tang Clan. The parallel was striking.

Su Bai coughed awkwardly into his fist, then snapped himself out of his thoughts. He realized he had been incredibly rash.

He was treating this traumatized, suffering girl like a fast-tracked corporate acquisition. He wasn’t that hollow drone anymore. Relationships required proper onboarding and mutual trust, not sudden demands.

Seeing Su Bai coughing, shaking his head, and staring blankly into space, The woman’s fierce glare faltered. Absolute panic flooded her eyes.

’He’s hallucinating,’ she thought. Her heart dropped into her stomach. ’The venom is finally rotting his brain. I killed someone again.’

She wanted to reach out to check his pulse, but she violently pulled her hands back.

"Are you...?" she stammered.

Su Bai looked at her. The corporate calculations faded from his eyes, replaced by a gaze of deep, profound sincerity. He offered her a warm, incredibly reassuring smile.

For some inexplicable reason, seeing that gentle smile, Ziyan’s violently pounding heart suddenly skipped a beat. The overwhelming panic in her chest inexplicably eased.

"I’m perfectly fine," Su Bai said softly. "And I can help ease your pain. As you have seen, I am completely immune to your poison."

Ziyan opened her mouth to argue, but no words came out. She stared at his healthy, unblemished skin. It was impossible. No one survived direct contact with her bodily fluids. Yet, this strange, handsome man was sitting perfectly upright, looking healthier than when he walked in.

But she clearly didn’t believe him just yet.

Deciding that a practical demonstration was far better than a verbal pitch, Su Bai shifted closer.

"Please, sit up straight," Su Bai requested gently. "I will help you relieve the accumulated poison in your body."

He reached out to help her sit up. Ziyan violently flinched. She shrank back against the wall.

Su Bai didn’t rush her. He didn’t force the issue. He simply kept his hands extended, then offered silent and patient reassurance.

Slowly, hesitantly, Ziyan moved. She sat upright. Her shoulders were tense and trembling.

Su Bai shifted and sat cross-legged directly behind her. He pressed his palms gently against her back.

He didn’t use the Starving Wraith’s Devouring Maw like a hostile weapon. She was a mortal with incredibly fragile infrastructure. If he used full suction, he would rip her meridians to shreds. Instead, he throttled the technique down to a microscopic fraction of its power. He turned the violent vacuum into a delicate, surgical siphon.

Slowly, carefully, he began to draw the excess poison out of her system and into his own body.

Ziyan gasped. Her entire body went rigid.

To distract her from the strange, pulling sensation inside her chest, Su Bai began to speak.

"May I know what your name is?" he asked softly as he maintained his careful concentration.

"Zi...yan," she answered. Her voice was barely a whisper this time. "My father called me Ziyan."

Su Bai nodded, even though she couldn’t see it. "Ziyan. Purple Mist. A fitting name."

Ziyan’s brows furrowed deeply. She bit her lip. She actually hated her name.

To the villagers, ’Purple Mist’ was a curse. It’s a terrifying warning of the toxic fog that killed anything it touched. The only reason she hadn’t abandoned the name was because her father had spoken it with so much love before the exposure finally took his life.

Seeing that she had fallen silent, Su Bai continued to ask small, harmless questions to keep her grounded while he steadily vacuumed the lethal pressure from her organs.

At first, Ziyan answered defensively. She was aggressive, snappy, and easily irritated. She was so used to being treated like a monster that she didn’t know how to speak like a normal person.

But as the hour ticked by, something miraculous happened.

The agonizing, ever-present burning sensation in her veins... a pain she had lived with every single second of her life... began to fade. The suffocating heaviness in her chest vanished.

She looked down at her hands. The terrifying, sickly sheen of corrosive sweat was gone. Her skin, while still an ethereal violet, looked healthy, smooth, and vibrant.

She couldn’t believe it.

The man sitting behind her... he wasn’t lying. He had been in direct contact with her for over an hour. He had literally consumed her toxic blood. And he wasn’t dying. He wasn’t suffering.

The realization hit her like a tidal wave.

For the first time in twenty years, someone could talk to her without standing fifty feet away. Someone could touch her without wearing thick, protective leather. Someone was actually easing the horrifying burden of her existence.

She took a deep breath. Her lungs expanded freely, without the agonizing friction of acid. While her breath was still highly toxic to a normal mortal, it was no longer choking her from the inside out.

She felt... alive.

Unconsciously, tears began to well up in Ziyan’s eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t stop them. The emotional dam she had built to survive twenty years of absolute isolation completely shattered.

Silent, heavy tears fell down her cheeks.

Su Bai gently pulled his hands away. "The initial extraction is complete. Your meridians need to rest before I can take more."

He stood up and walked around to face her, only to freeze.

Ziyan was sitting on the furs. Her head was bowed and her shoulders were shaking violently as she wept in total silence.

Su Bai gulped. His corporate manual had absolutely no protocols for this level of raw, unfiltered human vulnerability.

He knelt in front of her. Slowly, he reached out and gently lifted her chin with his index finger.

Ziyan looked at him. Her eyes were a swirling, indescribable mix of profound sorrow, overwhelming relief, and disbelief.

Su Bai smiled at her. It wasn’t the calculated smile of a negotiator. It was the genuine, incredibly soft smile of a man who truly understood the pain of being entirely alone.

Then, he did the unexpected.

He gently brushed his thumb across her cheek, then wiped away a streak of her highly toxic tears.

Ziyan gasped.

Just then, Su Bai calmly brought his thumb to his own lips.

He gently sucked the tears from his skin.

To Su Bai’s Reversal Body, the highly condensed sorrow and poison tasted like an absolute delicacy. A burst of premium, high-grade spiritual energy that sent a warm rush straight to his Dantian.

But to Ziyan?

The act was so profoundly intimate, so wildly accepting of the very thing that made her a monster, that her mind completely blanked.

Her face flushed a brilliant, explosive shade of red. She sat utterly paralyzed, staring at the man who had just willingly consumed her tears.

Su Bai lowered his hand. His dark eyes locked onto hers, and his gentle smile never wavered.

"This," Su Bai whispered softly, "is the payment for the remedy."

For Ziyan, the world completely stopped spinning.