Feng Xiaoxiao panted for breath, her whole body feeling as though it had dropped into an ice cellar — yet she dared not turn on the hot water. Breathing was hard enough as it was; add steam to the mix and she would simply suffocate on the spot.

"Help... I feel wretched... I'm dying..." Feng Xiaoxiao cried out with all her might, but her body was so utterly weak that the sound came out pitifully small.

Even so small a sound was more than enough for Wei Zhao to hear; in fact, he had caught Feng Xiaoxiao's very first cry. A late-stage Yellow-tier expert was not to be trifled with, and Wei Zhao was stronger still than the usual practitioner of that rank.

Only Wei Zhao paid it no mind, assuming she was simply up to her tricks, trying to seduce him. He did not think Feng Xiaoxiao was the sort of girl who threw herself at men, though with a temperament like hers, once she ran wild there was no absurdity she would not commit. So he took no notice.

Wei Zhao heard her cries for help too, but he did not believe them. That girl was full of schemes — who could tell what was real and what was not? If he stepped into the bathroom and she shrieked that he had assaulted her, then had photographs taken, he would never be able to clear his name.

"Wei Zhao... I'm dying... help me..." When no Wei Zhao appeared, despair flooded over her. She was having an attack here in the bathroom and nobody even knew; she would die without anyone ever learning how. How miserable could a person be!

Though Feng Xiaoxiao knew her days were numbered, she did not want to die. Every extra day of life was a day won; who would choose to go so early? She struggled toward the bathroom door, trying to crawl her way out.

"Haa..." Feng Xiaoxiao pushed at the door with her hands, but though it was not locked, the handle still had to be pressed down — it was hardly the sort of thing one could open so easily.

Ah — this time Feng Xiaoxiao truly despaired. She did not want to die; she had not lived long enough! There were still so many things she had never done — how could she just die like this? She had even been planning to travel the world before her death, and she had never so much as had a boyfriend, still had no idea what love felt like... ahhh, she did not want to die...

That was Feng Xiaoxiao's last thought before she fainted there by the bathroom door.

At first Wei Zhao had not taken Feng Xiaoxiao's cries seriously; but after a while there was not a sound from the bathroom, and a note of doubt crept into his mind.

By rights, having failed to trick him, Feng Xiaoxiao should have come out by now. The water had stopped running, which proved she had finished her bath — so why had she still not emerged? Could it be...?

Wei Zhao frowned. Had something actually happened to her? He was not the sort to meddle in other people's business, but this time he could not simply walk away. For one thing, he and Feng Xiaoxiao were fairly well acquainted — at the very least they sat at the same desk; for another, she was Feng Tianlong's daughter, and if anything happened to her while she was with him, wouldn't Feng Tianlong curse him to death?

With a rueful smile Wei Zhao rose to his feet and tiptoed to the bathroom door, pressing his ear to listen for any sound within. He could have heard from where he sat, but he wanted to catch the faintest stir.

Feng Xiaoxiao was no expert and had received no special training; even were she feigning silence, she could never have kept as perfectly still as one of the trained.

And now Wei Zhao truly heard nothing at all, and the wrongness of it struck him at once. He hesitated, then reached out and took hold of the bathroom handle — only to find, to his surprise, that the door was not locked.

The door swung open with ease, and what met his eyes made Wei Zhao jump: Feng Xiaoxiao lay naked on the bathroom floor, face down, utterly motionless.

"Feng Xiaoxiao?" Wei Zhao called out tentatively.

There was no answer. By now Wei Zhao was wholly certain something was wrong with Feng Xiaoxiao — in her present state she could hardly have been photographing anything or blackmailing him.

Certain that Feng Xiaoxiao was truly in trouble, Wei Zhao hurriedly bent down, keeping his gaze from wandering, and closed his fingers around her wrist. He fell into a frown of thought.

Nothing whatsoever was wrong with Feng Xiaoxiao's body! Every bodily function appeared perfectly normal — yet a thread of vitality was missing from it. That startled Wei Zhao.

Vitality was a strange thing. By the standards of modern medicine there was no such thing as vitality at all — so long as the organs of the body showed nothing amiss, the person was deemed well.

But Wei Zhao could sense the vitality in every person. The vitality of one who had never cultivated was weaker than that of one who had: a Yellow-tier expert's ran stronger than an ordinary person's, and a Mysterious-tier expert's stronger still than a Yellow-tier's.

And this vitality, in Jiao Yazi's words, was a form of energy — and it was precisely by judging the abundance of that energy that Wei Zhao assessed a person's level of strength.

"Elder Jiao, what is going on?" Trained by Old Master Wei, Wei Zhao was by any reckoning a miraculous doctor — yet he had never in his life encountered anything so bizarre as this.

"I don't know." For the first time, Jiao Yazi could not answer Wei Zhao's question. "But in a weak body, the energy is correspondingly faint."

"..." Wei Zhao's heart quickened with anxiety, and leaving Feng Xiaoxiao lying there was no solution. He scooped her up in his arms — but his mind was elsewhere, and he was careless about where his hands landed; his right hand closed over something soft...

"Huh?" Wei Zhao froze, then realized at once where he had touched... it was a girl's breast.

Wei Zhao's heart gave a lurch, and he nearly flung Feng Xiaoxiao away. True, he had touched Shen Yushu's before — but only through her clothes, which hardly counted as direct contact.

All along Wei Zhao had assumed the first girl he ever touched would be Tang Yun. He had never imagined it would be Feng Xiaoxiao.

Normally so composed, Wei Zhao could not compose himself now; his heart was racing wildly. Feeling-wise, he did not care for Feng Xiaoxiao — but his reaction at this moment had nothing to do with feeling.

Wei Zhao wanted to let go, and yet he was reluctant... The arms that held Feng Xiaoxiao began to tremble. Spinning about in his agitation, his forearm grazed the latch of the bathroom door and opened a gash in the skin; blood began to flow...

The pain brought Wei Zhao sharply back to his senses! Feng Xiaoxiao's life hung in the balance — what was he thinking?

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