The Golden Steel Flower Blooming Alongside the White Lotus (1)
A low groan slipped from between my cracked lips.
It felt as if I had been dragged up from a pitch-black swamp. My consciousness returned with agonizing slowness.
Fragments of the desperate battle flashed through my mind—the memory of an axe blade slicing across my forehead, crimson blood flooding my vision. That brutal moment flickered past like shards of a dream, growing distant and unreal before scattering away.
I struggled to lift my heavy eyelids, which felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds. The blurry world gradually came into focus.
Where… am I?
What filled my sight was a ceiling both unfamiliar and strangely familiar.
The scent brushing my nose wasn’t the damp stench of a prison cell, but the smell of roughly hewn rafters and dry timber. This was the old room I had lived in after my father’s death, before I was thrown into that jail.
I’m alive.
A wave of relief washed through my heavy mind. But that fleeting comfort was quickly replaced by a strange sense of unease. I should have been wracked with pain from broken bones and torn flesh, yet the only sensation dominating my body was a languid, dreamlike floating feeling.
And above all else—
…It’s hot. And wet… What is this…?
A sticky heat I had never felt in my entire life coiled around my whole body like a snake. And on my left breast, there was a persistent, damp, squishy sensation slowly tracing across my skin…?
-Chup, chup.
The obscene wet sounds reaching my ears jolted my half-submerged mind awake.
“Ah…?!”
I swallowed a ragged breath and shifted my gaze. The sight that greeted me made my heart plummet. I nearly fainted again on the spot.
-Chuuut, chuuuup.
The first thing that caught my eye was my own naked body, completely bare without a single thread. On top of me, a woman of blinding beauty had her face buried in my chest as if devouring it.
Eyes as red as rubies.
Hair black as ebony and elegant, refined features.
It was Seol-hye, the woman who had held me in her arms until the very last moment before I lost consciousness.
“Mmm, chup, haum…!”
She was sucking on one side of my chest with an innocent expression like a child seeking milk, yet at the same time with the greed of a starving beast. A satisfied smile spread across her entire face.
“Wh-what the hell…?! What is this?!”
The sensation of her tongue pressing against my skin and sucking was so vivid that an involuntary cry of shock burst from my lips. I desperately tried to push her away, but my body was as stiff as stone and wouldn’t budge. This was the price I paid for burning every last drop of inner energy in my dantian to take down that bastard Seung-pyo.
-Churrut, chup.
“U-ugh…!”
My whole body trembled from the relentless flicking of her tongue against the peak of my breast. A suppressed moan escaped my lips, and only then did Seol-hye lift her mouth from my chest with a wet sound.
Absorbing yang essence through intimate contact to restore depleted dantian and mend damaged meridians.
-Tssruut.
She slowly raised her head. Her red lips glistened with her own saliva that had smeared across my body.
“Are you coming back to your senses a little?”
She curled the corners of her lips elegantly and flashed me a smile so seductive it could steal one’s soul.
“You—what the hell are you doing…!”
“Shh. Don’t speak.”
Her index finger gently pressed against my lips, silencing me.
“I treated your external wounds with golden wound medicine, but your dantian’s inner energy is completely drained. If you push yourself any further, even your innate primordial qi might scatter.”
-Sweek.
A cool hand gently stroked my sweat-drenched cheek.
“So relax and leave your body to me. This is treatment right now.”
“Tr-treatment…?”
Stripping someone completely naked and sucking on their chest—how on earth was that supposed to be treatment? It was absurd, but I didn’t even have the strength left to argue.
I forced myself to swallow a breath and asked the heaviest question that had been circling in my hazy mind.
“The others… what happened to them….”
“You’re already asking that when your own body is in such a state?”
Seol-hye let out a dry, almost metallic laugh at my hoarse voice, then looked down at me with eyes tinged with bitterness.
“Everyone except the few who actually followed you ran away. The Black Wind Fortress is completely empty now.”
“Ah…!”
The moment I heard her answer, something inside my chest crumbled to pieces.
In the Green Forest Bandits, numbers were power. After my father’s death, the forces loyal to me had already been purged under Seung-pyo’s blade, leaving only a handful. The fact that everyone else had scattered meant the Black Wind Fortress—as one of the Ten Great Green Forest Strongholds—had effectively been dismantled. It was a cruel verdict.
I couldn’t… protect it….
The only legacy my father had devoted his entire life to building. This place that had been my home, my entire world. I, his worthless daughter, had failed to protect it because of my own incompetence.
Anger and sorrow mixed together, blurring my vision with heat.
“Hic… ugh…!”
As I quietly shed tears, Seol-hye gazed down at me for a moment before murmuring in a clear voice.
“Its fate was already hanging by a thread.”
“...?”
“The Black Wind Fortress’s destiny was no different from a dying ember.”
Her voice was chillingly calm, filled with an unshakable certainty that brooked no argument.
“Before the sun set today, this place would have been reduced to ashes. By a punitive force formed from a coalition of large government armies and nearby orthodox sects.”
“What…?”
I stared up at her blankly. In her unwavering eyes and voice, a strange emotion flickered—as if she had witnessed that very scene with her own eyes.
“It could be retribution for raiding merchant caravans left and right, or perhaps because you happened to touch the bloodline of the Heavenly Fortune Trading Company. One thing is certain. The Black Wind Fortress was destined to be destroyed soon.”
“…Ugh!”
Before she even finished speaking, I bit down hard on my lip, letting out a small groan.
I had no idea what basis this woman had for speaking with such certainty. But I couldn’t deny it. Ever since my father’s absence and Seung-pyo’s rampage began, I had instinctively known that I couldn’t stop the falling boulders with my own power alone.
Still, hearing it stated so directly made the emptiness flooding my chest impossible to ignore.
“I… see….”
“Hehe. Don’t be too heartbroken.”
At that moment, Seol-hye smiled and suddenly leaned her beautiful face close to mine.
“I don’t want the Black Wind Fortress to end here either.”
“What do you….”
“I will help you rebuild the Black Wind Fortress.”
At the completely unexpected proposal, I looked into her eyes with confusion. Within them, a ruby-like glint flashed.
“I’ll explain the details later, but I need power as well. To prepare for the enormous tribulation that will soon arrive, I must gather every useful soldier I can.”
Her delicate fingers traced across my lips, which were hesitating over how to respond.
“So first, you need to regain your strength and become incomparably stronger than you are now. Only then will you be able to stand by my side.”
The moment she finished speaking, her head dropped down again.
-Chuuup, chuuuuup.
The moment her hot, slick tongue licked up the hollow of my collarbone, an unbearable stimulus made my entire body jerk upward.
“Aahng, w-wait! What the hell are you doing?!”
She said it was treatment, so why was she constantly licking my vital points!
“Mmm, I told you. It’s treatment.”
“Liar! There’s no way this could possibly be treatment!”
I twisted my body with a shout, only for a pain so intense it felt like my waist would snap to strike my entire body.
“Kugh!”
“See? I told you to stay still.”
She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and looked down at me reproachfully. Then she buried her face deep into my powerless, moaning neck.
-Tssrut, chuuup.
“Hah?!”
The strange sensation of soft lips sucking on my delicate skin while sharp teeth gently nibbled along my neckline. My waist arched involuntarily as a wet moan burst out.
-Sweek.
While teasing my neck with those soft lips, she simultaneously reached out and slowly caressed every part of my body. And those hands… were far too skilled.
“A-ah…?!”
Hands that moved with mastery, as if she knew exactly how to handle a woman’s body—hot and experienced. Every place her elegant fingers touched sent shivers of electric pleasure and burning heat blooming across my skin. As her hands slid down from my chest, stroking my waist and circling my navel, I clenched my teeth and gathered what little strength I had left.
“Relax. I won’t hurt you.”
“…Ah, ugh…?”
Her voice seeped into my ear like sweet poison. The low whisper cast a hypnotic spell, melting my reason into mush as a hazy intoxication enveloped my entire body.
“Hah, haah…. But… we’re both… women…!”
My mind flickered white. Whether woman or man, this was the first time anyone’s touch had made my body burn so fiercely. Shame and an unknown pleasure rose together until I thought my face would burst.
“Hehe.”
Seol-hye let out a low chuckle, as if my trembling reaction was utterly adorable.
“I know. That you have absolutely no experience with this.”
“…!”
“So just obediently surrender your body to me and fully accept the pleasure that’s rushing in. This is all for your sake.”
Having finished speaking, she rose with graceful movements and fixed a heated gaze between my legs. Her scorching stare sent a chill down my spine, and a trembling voice slipped from my lips.
“Wh-where are you looking? What are you trying to do…?!”
“…”
Sensing danger, I desperately tried to close my thighs, but she paid no attention and simply spread my knees wide apart with her arms.
“H-hey…! Stop it, I don’t know what you’re doing but stop—!”
My most secret place, completely exposed and defenseless before her. Into that helplessly opened space, Seol-hye dove without hesitation. The increasingly close hot breath, the presence of something, and then—
-Chuuut!
“H-haaaaaahng?!”
A moist, soft mass of flesh pressed against skin that had never once allowed another’s intrusion in my entire life. My mind burned white from the stimulation as I twisted my body, letting out a high-pitched cry.
What the hell is this…?!
It was an unbelievable sensation. A hot, flexible mass of muscle forced its way between the delicate petals of my tightly closed flower and wriggled inside.
-Churrup, chuuuup!
The wet, obscene sounds rang in my ears.
“Wh-what are you doing! Where are you—!”
I tried to lift my head to check, but my vision shook too much to focus. One thing was certain, however. Seol-hye was licking the most shameful place between my legs like a ravenous beast.
