Chapter 220: I’m not letting you die
Damon let out a long breath and sat back on his heels.
Flare’s breathing had evened out. The glow beneath her skin had faded to a soft warmth. She looked peaceful, almost normal.
’At the very least, she is stable for now,’ Damon murmured, his voice a low, melodic hum in the stillness of the room.
He leaned back, allowing his posture to relax, though his keen, golden eyes remained fixed on her form with an analytical intensity.
He felt a fleeting sense of professional satisfaction, seeing the chaotic energy that had once threatened to consume her finally silenced.
He extended his hand, his fingers moving with a delicate, almost reverent grace as he brushed a stray strand of hair away from her damp forehead.
Beneath his touch, her skin felt like cooling embers, radiating a lingering, residual heat.
Just as he prepared to withdraw, a sharp, cold chime echoed directly within his mind, shattering the brief moment of respite.
His expression shifted instantly, the gentle composure hardening as a translucent, crimson-tinted System notification flickered into existence before his gaze.
[Warning Host, Host’s intervention has temporarily stabilized the target’s qi overload. However, the target’s meridians and dantian have sustained critical structural damage due to the forced expansion.]
Damon’s hand froze mid-air.
[Without immediate repair, the target will experience complete meridian collapse within seventy-two hours. The target will be crippled. Death will follow within one week.]
His stomach dropped.
’What?’
[The climax induced by the host only prevented immediate qi detonation. The damage was already done. The target’s meridians were forced beyond their natural capacity. They are now fractured at the foundational level.]
Damon stared at Flare’s sleeping face.
’How do I fix it?’
[The host can repair the target’s meridians and dantian using the Yin-Yang Harem Scripture combined with the host’s yang qi. The process requires full dual cultivation. The target’s body will absorb the host’s yang qi and use it to rebuild the damaged pathways. The result will strengthen the target’s foundation beyond its original state.]
Damon’s jaw tightened, a muscle feathering along his cheek as the weight of the System’s words settled over him like cold iron.
’But she’s unconscious.’
He looked at Flare again. Really looked at her. Her chest rose and fell in slow, measured breaths, the rhythm almost deceptively peaceful.
The fierce, sharp-tongued woman who had glared at him with open contempt not so long ago now lay completely still, her red hair fanned across the ground beneath her, her features slack and unguarded in a way they never were when she was awake.
She looked, in every visible sense, like she was simply sleeping off exhaustion.
But she wasn’t.
Beneath that still surface, her meridians were fractured at their roots, her dantian quietly tearing itself apart with every passing second.
The fire that burned so fiercely in her — the Divine Flame Roots, the blazing spiritual pressure he had felt scorching the air around her — was now the very thing destroying her from the inside out.
In three days, those pathways would give out entirely, collapsing in on themselves like a structure whose foundations had been quietly eaten through.
In a week, she would be dead.
’There has to be another way,’ he thought, his golden eyes narrowing as he searched inward, pressing against the System’s logic, refusing to simply accept the first and only answer it had given him.
[There is not. The damage is too severe for pills or external treatment. Only direct yang qi infusion through the Yin-Yang Harem Scripture can repair the target’s foundation. The host has seventy-two hours.]
Damon closed his eyes.
He thought about every woman he had been with.
Ariel had wanted him from the start.
She had begged for him, pulled him into her bed, confessed her feelings before he ever touched her.
Mio and Mia had been curious, eager, willing participants who chased him as much as he chased them.
Selene had watched him for weeks before she finally gave in, and even then, she had been awake, aware, present.
Seraphina had been under the influence of the mist, but she had still made the choice to accept him.
Every single time, they had consented.
Even if they were driven by lust or desperation or the mist’s influence, they had still been awake.
Still aware. Still present enough to have said no if they had wanted to.
Flare had none of that.
She lay completely unconscious before him, her chest rising and falling in shallow, laboured increments, utterly defenceless and entirely unaware of what was happening to her.
She could not give permission.
Could not agree, could not refuse, could not make any choice at all.
There was no awareness behind those closed eyes, no moment of desperation-driven resolve, no whispered consent pressed against the weight of circumstances.
Nothing.
Just silence, and the slow deterioration of a foundation that would claim her life before the week was out.
And if he did this — if he crossed that line without her knowledge, without her voice, without even the thinnest veil of willing participation — she might wake up and look at him the way no one ever had.
Not with desire, not with gratitude, not with the dawning, helpless affection he had seen settle into the eyes of every woman who had truly come to know him.
She might wake up and simply hate him for it. Completely. Irreversibly.
He had to sit with that possibility, and not flinch away from it.
’But if I don’t do this, she dies.’
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
She was young. Twenty-one. A lifetime ahead of her. A future she hadn’t even begun to live.
And she would lose all of it because her cultivation had gone wrong.
’Because I couldn’t fix it in time.’
He reached out and touched her cheek.
Her skin was warm.
’I’ll take the blame.’
He made the decision.
’If she wakes up and hates me, fine. If she never forgives me, fine. But she’ll be alive to hate me.’
He leaned down and kissed her forehead.
"I’m sorry," he whispered. "But I’m not letting you die."