“What did you say?”
Shao Feng sobered from the wine in a single instant and looked at his son Shao Jun with the eyes one used to look at an idiot.
“She’s too perfect. I want to marry her.”
The youth Shao Jun of about sixteen or seventeen repeated it.
The Spirit Immortal Sect master was dumbfounded.
He admitted the Phoenix Body was very perfect, yes.
That was standing from a gu master’s angle to speak.
As a normal man, he also admitted the Phoenix Body’s figure and appearance full of a sense of brokenness, able to fully stimulate a male’s desire to dominate and abuse, were one in ten thousand.
But the problem was—
She was not normal!
“Son, have you gone mad?! Have you not discovered she’s a lunatic?!”
“But she’s good-looking! Good-looking is enough!”
Shao Feng’s nose was about to twist from anger.
What kind of filial son was this?
As long as the girl grew well, the three views ran after the five features, was that it?
The gu insects on her body—was that something this son of his who spent all day learning nothing and accomplishing nothing could control?
“What use is good-looking! Put her there as a decoration? You marry her? Never mind that her identity sits there and whether other people will agree. Retreat ten thousand steps. Even if everyone else agreed, with that gu poison on her body, in the time it takes to kiss you’d already have died several hundred times!”
“Ah?”
Shao Jun stared blankly in a daze for a moment, then shouted again.
“Then… then that’s fine too! I’ll just marry her back and look at her. Can’t I enshrine her like a totem and a bodhisattva?”
“You’re truly stuffed from eating your fill. You might as well find a few more painters to paint a few pictures of her and go mad facing a few pieces of paper every day. She’s not normal, and you’re catching the illness along with her, is that it? Is taking a wife such a child’s-play matter?!”
Shao Feng suspected that in just this little while his son had been struck with some kind of hex by that Phoenix Body.
It was clearly yin-yang sarcasm, yet Shao Jun seemed as if waking from a dream and nodded like a chicken pecking rice.
“Right! Right! Father’s reminder is correct!”
He hastily responded.
“Right your head!”
Scolding aside, Shao Feng turned the thought and felt his son’s idea seemed to have something worth taking.
The Phoenix Body… people of the other immortal sects only feared they could not avoid her far enough, neither wanting to manage her nor willing to manage her.
This kind of thorny great trouble, even if she were healed, would at most have a few light, floating words of praise sent her way.
Not only would actual benefits not be obtained, it would instead even more draw other families’ attention, fearing you had scooped up some benefits that made people’s eyes red—
For example the chance at rebirth.
If she could not be healed and it led to the Phoenix Body’s death, that would be even more a losing business that expended effort without earning thanks.
Who knew how much bad talk those eyes secretly peeking would jump out to say.
Truly losing the lady and breaking the soldiers as well.
Their Spirit Immortal Sect had taken it all on in one mouthful because they could use the Phoenix Body’s insect gu for research.
But even so, even if they could obtain an empty name of “no merit yet there is bitter labor,” he did not have full grasp and confidence that he could conveniently and with proper name and words also pull down the Phoenix tail-feather’s number of rebirths.
If… if they could trick this Phoenix Body whose common-sense cognition was not quite normal into marrying through the door, then she would be one of their own family.
At that time, taking out this reason, facing the questioning of the people of the immortal sects they would also be able to speak with firm words—
“There is only one chance at rebirth. Is there any problem with the Phoenix Body giving it to her husband’s family.”
Reasonable.
Quite reasonable.
In this instant Shao Feng felt he was simply a genius—
Though it was only thought of under his son’s reminder, he still could not help admiring himself, able to walk the edge of the framework of order and rules and maximize the sect’s interests.
It just so happened the Phoenix Body was a born beauty embryo.
If by chance they regulated her and weakened the deadly poison toxicity on her body by a few parts, being able to personally enjoy the fragrance of such an iceberg beauty would also be a blessing that eight lifetimes of cultivation could not bring.
A business that steadily earned and never lost.
One had to know that Phoenix Bodies of successive generations had all appeared after the Dragon Sovereign, and from then on the two of them had been bound together as a pair of immortal companions going out and coming in as one.
If not for the Fang family of Penglai this time having who-knew-what accident and being late in awakening the contemporary Dragon Sovereign, would the current Phoenix Body even have fallen to their turn to lay a finger on?
Never mind.
Gamble it!
Strike first to gain the advantage!
If this big wave of a gamble was bet correctly, it could at least prosper the Spirit Immortal Sect’s destiny for several hundred years!
Thinking of this, Shao Feng looked toward his good big son with a face full of loving kindness and concern.
“Jun’er ah.”
“Father, you speak.”
Seeing Father’s expression change and finally freeze on his face as an excited, joyful smile, Shao Jun knew his proposal was stable and could not help giving rise to expectation.
“You lost your mother young. This father knows you have lacked love from a young age and indeed need a woman at your side to look after you. From your proposal, that Phoenix Body is quite good. Though she currently seems unable to do anything, she can be taught slowly.”
“Yes, Father!”
Shao Jun’s face blossomed with delighted smiles.
“This father plans to continue the string and marry again. Let that Phoenix Body you took a fancy to at a glance become your stepmother and give you a mother’s kind of care. How about it?”
“?”
The youth’s smile froze on his face.
The mouth corners that had just been raised now were like wrinkled wall plaster, twitching and fluttering downward.
“You… said what?”
Spirit Immortal Sect Master Shao Feng repeated it.
“I said, find you a little mother.”
“This is an old ox eating tender grass!”
Shao Jun would not have it, his eyes glaring.
“I don’t agree! Clearly I saw her first!”
“You child! This is for the sake of considering the sect! Do you know how great the benefits she can bring us if she marries in?!”
“Release your dog fart! Who was it just now who scolded me until dog blood poured over my head! This time when it comes to yourself the way of speaking is different? Besides, if she has to marry through the door, isn’t marrying me the same! Who still wouldn’t be surnamed Shao or what!”
“You unfilial son! Since when does a father taking someone through the door need your agreement?! No sense of seniority!”
“What! If you took a fancy to someone else I would be too lazy to care! But this was clearly me first!”
Facing a beauty who brought calamity, this father and son finally tore off the false appearance of a kind father and filial son, and beside the elders drunk beyond consciousness and the wine table they wrestled into a tangle, fighting from the edge of the wine table to outside the room.
Rather ironically, the object the father and son were contending over, at this very moment and this very place, several walls away, like the most primitive of wild beasts, was enduring the pain coming from her hand and carrying out a bloody feeding.
The refined meal of five meats and three vegetables on the room’s table had not been touched in the slightest.
Because no one had ever told her that those were things she could eat, or how she should eat them.
The world knew she was the Phoenix Body, was a human gu, was a peerless beauty of silver hair and green eyes who could topple kingdoms and cities.
They knew the honored status she originally should have possessed, knew she possessed a phoenix tail feather that could be met but not sought, that could give people a chance at revival, and some people even knew the potential enormous value of the gu poison on her body.
But no one cared about her herself.
What everyone wanted had always been that selflessly dedicated Phoenix Holy Maiden who universally saved living beings, and not her.
Not her, this dark, selfish, common-sense-disordered, extreme and cruel monster.
No one cared.
It was all right.
She had long since grown used to it.