Chapter 218: Why isn’t it working?
Damon made his choice.
He stepped forward and dropped to his knees beside her.
The heat radiating from her body was intense, like standing too close to a forge, but he didn’t pull back.
"Flare."
She didn’t respond. Her breathing was shallow, rapid, each exhale carrying a wisp of steam that curled into the air and vanished.
Her skin was hot to the touch now, hot enough that his fingertips tingled with the warning of a burn.
He cupped her face in his hands.
The moment his palms touched her cheeks, she gasped, her eyes snapping open for a brief second before rolling back again.
"Sorry about this."
He pressed his lips to hers, sealing the connection before she could slip any further.
They connected; a deep, resonant pull reached out, closing like a hand around unseen energy.
It was nothing like the cultivated, deliberate draw of a standard qi extraction.
This was instinctive, almost involuntary, as though his Incubus physique recognized the overflow in her and responded on its own terms.
Like a thread drawing taut inside his chest, anchoring itself to something buried deep within her core, something bright and furious and desperately close to breaking.
Then the fire qi began to move.
It flowed out of her mouth and into his, a stream of burning energy that should have scorched his insides to ash.
Fire surged from Flare into him—a pressurized, relentless tide choosing his body as its only path of escape.
It burned.
Hot and thick and almost viscous, it scraped down the back of his throat like molten glass, scorching a path all the way to his core.
Any ordinary cultivator would have had their meridians blown apart from the inside out.
Even a strong one would have collapsed under the sheer, unrelenting temperature of it.
They produced the kind of fire that reduced things to nothing.
But Damon held.
His Incubus physique instinctively reclaimed the fire qi, absorbing it into his own channels and folding it seamlessly into his core like simple, ambient spiritual energy.
The heat that would have incinerated someone else simply became his.
For a few seconds, it worked.
The fierce, angry glow that had been building beneath Flare’s skin began to dim.
The violent trembling that had racked her body eased to something smaller, something closer to a shiver. The temperature radiating off her cheeks dropped just slightly against his palms.
Just slightly.
Damon felt the overload in her meridians decreasing, the pressure dropping to something manageable.
Then the wall of fire pulsed again.
A fresh wave of fire qi crashed into Flare from every direction, pouring into her body with renewed force.
It hit her like a tidal wave, and through the kiss, Damon felt it all.
The overload spiked.
He sucked harder, pulled deeper, but the external fire qi rushed in faster than he could drain it.
It was like trying to empty a flooding river with nothing but cupped hands..
For every mouthful drained, ten more rushed in, feeding her meridians with relentless, indifferent, burning force.
Flare’s body seized again, a violent, full-body convulsion that snapped her spine rigid and wrenched a broken sound from somewhere deep in her chest.
Damon broke the kiss.
He pulled back sharply, one hand braced against the stone beside her head, his breathing harder than he would have liked. Heat clung to the inside of his throat.
His chest felt like he’d swallowed embers.
A reminder of exactly how much fire qi was still inside her, still building, still looking for somewhere to go.
"System."
His voice came out flat.
Clipped down to its essentials the way it always did when he was working through something that couldn’t afford panic.
His jaw was tight, though, and his golden eyes had gone sharp and still as hammered metal.
"Why isn’t it working?"
[The drain kiss is absorbing the excess fire qi, but the external fire qi is rushing into her body faster than you can drain it. The rate of absorption is insufficient to prevent overload.]
"Then what do I need to do?"
[You need to raise her yin qi. The fire qi is pure yang energy. If you balance it with yin qi inside her body, the overload will stabilize and she will be able to absorb the remaining fire qi naturally.]
"And how do I raise her yin qi?"
[By making her climax.]
Damon went still.
He looked down at Flare.
She was gasping on the stone platform, her robes half-burned away, her skin still glowing with veins of orange and red.
Her eyes were unfocused, her breath ragged, her body trembling with the strain of containing more fire qi than any cultivator her level should survive.
She was dying.
And the only way to save her was to fuck her.
Damon exhaled slowly.
He didn’t have time to think about it.
He didn’t have time to ask for permission.
She was unconscious, barely clinging to awareness, and every second he wasted was another wave of fire qi slamming into her core.
He made his choice.
Without hesitation, without ceremony, he reached for the scorched edges of her ruined robes — fabric already reduced to little more than blackened shreds clinging uselessly to her skin — and tore them open in one sharp, decisive motion.
The remnants fell away like ash.
His breath caught for just a moment.
She was beautiful.
Undeniably, almost distractingly so.
Her body was lean and athletic in the way of someone who had spent years pushing themselves past human limits — not through vanity, but through pure, relentless cultivation.
There was a strength to her curves, a discipline written into every line of her, from the defined lines of her abdomen to the elegant arch of her collarbone.
Even lying here on the edge of death, half-consumed by her own fire, she looked powerful.
Like something forged rather than born.
Her skin radiated heat the moment his hands made contact.
Not the comfortable warmth of a living body, but something far more intense — the kind of heat that pressed against his palms like an open flame held too close.
Any other man would have pulled back instinctively.
Damon didn’t flinch.
Eyes tracing the fire still pulsing beneath her skin, he mapped the damage.
"I’m sorry," he said again, his voice low.
"But this is the only way."