"Ethan…" She said, her expression darkening into a frown as she turned away from the mirror and walked toward the window of her chamber, looking out over the palace grounds below. Ethan was someone she had been on guard against for a long time.
From the moment he had dared to speak to her the way he did over the phone, that casual, playful tone that treated her like she was just another woman and not the future ruler of an empire, she had wanted him to pay. Because in that moment, her composure had cracked, and she had felt her dao heart shake in a way that it hadn't in years.
He was too dangerous. Not because of his strength—he had none—but because of what he could do without it. He needed to be removed, and this had been her chance to finally kill the desire of lust that she had failed to stamp out thanks to him.
She still couldn't believe she had allowed him to talk her into sleeping with her. The memory of it made her jaw tighten every time it resurfaced. She was Ellen, the heir to the throne of the United Empire, and a mortal cripple had gotten into her bed through nothing but words and charm… well, he was her twin brother, and she did care for him.
But over time, she had come to understand something important: Ethan was a genius when it came to people. If Ethan wanted something from someone, he knew exactly how to get it. It didn't matter who they were or how powerful they stood—he would find the angle, find the crack in their armor, and slip through it before they even realized the wall had been breached.
She recalled, with a mixture of disgust and reluctant admiration, how Ethan had even managed to sleep with a Demi God. The Demi-God in question had been the ancestor of the United Empire herself—a being so far above mortals that most people couldn't even stand in her presence without their legs giving out. She had come to the palace to meet with the current king on a matter of national security, and Ethan had simply… bumped into her.
Flashback.
"Ethan, what are you doing here?" The king snapped, his voice sharp with irritation as Ethan strolled into the throne room uninvited, right in the middle of a meeting with the most important guest the palace had hosted in decades.
"Calm down, old man…" Ethan started, his tone lazy and unbothered, but his words trailed off mid-sentence when his eyes landed on the Demi God standing before the throne. His body went completely still. She was a beauty unlike anything he had ever laid eyes on—not in this life, and not in the last one either. The Demi God, noticing how Ethan had frozen in place the instant he saw her, assumed that her appearance was simply too overwhelming for his mortal mind to process. It wasn't an uncommon reaction. Most people below Martial Emperor couldn't even look at her directly without their thoughts scattering.
She was a beautiful, amber-haired woman with hair that looked like it had been woven from living fire—each strand catching the light and shimmering with a warmth that seemed to radiate outward.
By just existing in the room, reality around her was subtly unstable; the natural heat her body gave off was enough to burn a person out of existence if she let it slip even slightly. But she kept it all under tight control, sealing her power so deeply that the people in the throne room could stand near her without being reduced to ash.
"You're sad?" Ethan asked with a raised eyebrow, his voice cutting through the silence of the room. The Demi God's own eyebrow rose at that, caught off guard not by the question itself, but by the fact that a mortal had read her emotional state within seconds of seeing her face.
"That's disappointing. Sucks that I'm a mortal, and I can't help much. If I may ask, what's bothering you?" Ethan asked softly, his tone shifting from casual to something gentler without losing its directness.
"For a cripple, you have sharp eyes. But what can a cripple do to help me with my troubles?" She asked with a raised eyebrow, more curious than dismissive.
"Indeed, I can't do much but listen to your troubles. But from what I can guess, your troubles have to do with the demonic beasts? I believe they have gained a Demi-God, right?" Ethan asked with a smile, and the room went silent. The king stiffened on his throne. The Demi God's expression shifted from mild curiosity to genuine shock.
"How did you know?" She asked, stunned that a mortal cripple had access to information that had been kept quiet.
"A little birdy told me. It also told me that the demonic beast is gathering an army and would be attacking us soon, near the lawless region. It's truly scary," Ethan said with a sigh, as if he were discussing the weather rather than an impending war that could reshape the balance of the world.
She was stunned—this was intelligence she hadn't known about—but her thoughts were interrupted when she noticed the way Ethan was looking at her. He was smiling, but it wasn't the smile of someone trying to impress or flatter. It was gentle, almost warm, like a man standing before a painting he loved, quietly grateful that he had the chance to see it restored to its full beauty.
"What?" She asked, the word coming out sharper than she intended. She felt uncomfortable under that gaze in a way she hadn't felt in centuries. She was over a thousand years old, and this brat—this mortal child who hadn't even lived a quarter of a century—was looking at her like that.
"Nothing, I'm just happy I have lessened your burden. The name is Ethan, by the way," Ethan said, holding out his hand for a handshake. The king, still seated on his throne, looked like he was about to have a heart attack at the sight. His son was offering a handshake to a Demi God—a being who could erase bloodlines with a thought.
She stood there, frozen for a moment, staring at the outstretched hand. It had been so long since anyone had offered her something as simple as a handshake that the gesture felt foreign to her, almost alien.
Beings on her level didn't shake hands. They bowed, they knelt, they kept their distance and spoke through intermediaries.
But looking at Ethan, who clearly had no idea she was a Demi God, she found her hand moving on its own. She reached out and took his hand, her slender fingers wrapping around his.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Iris." She said, shaking his hand while looking deeply into Ethan's eyes, searching for his true intentions. After all, the touch of a Demi God carried immense power—just skin-to-skin contact with someone at her level was a significant thing, and most cultivators would have been overwhelmed by the sensation alone. She expected awe, reverence, maybe even greed. Instead, she was left speechless when Ethan looked down at his own hand, his eyebrow rising in confusion.
"Did you put something on your hand? It feels… How do I say it, wonderful? I wonder if I can create something to mimic this…" Ethan said with a thoughtful expression, his mind already racing in a completely different direction than she had anticipated. He was thinking about soap. He was touching the hand of a being that could unmake stars, and his first thought was how to turn the sensation into a product.
"That's right, you created the thing known as the internet." She said softly, her eyebrow raising as she watched his brain work in real time. He had just made contact with her skin before he was already thinking of ways to replicate and commercialize the feeling. It was almost impressive how quickly his mind defaulted to invention.
"Yeah… if it wouldn't be too much, might I ask for your help? No, it would take a long time to create it… But I want to feel the skin as I try to see if what I create would match it." Ethan said softly, resting one elbow in his palm while placing his other hand against his chin, lost in thought.
"How about I pay you… No, that sounds like I'm buying you for sex." Ethan said softly. Her eye twitched.
If this had been anyone else—literally any other living being in existence—she was certain she would have slapped them out of existence for even letting that sentence form. But because it was Ethan, and because the sheer oblivious sincerity behind it was so absurd that it almost circled back around to being endearing, he got a pass. This once.
"Forget it, I will just use myself as the lab rat. Can you come and see if what I made would work?" Ethan asked with bright, eager eyes, his entire demeanor shifting to that of a child who had just had a breakthrough idea and couldn't wait to test it.
"Sure…" She said, unable to bring herself to reject this strange little mortal who was so genuinely passionate about something so trivial. A small smile crossed her face as she watched Ethan turn on his heel and run off to get to work, nearly tripping over his own feet in his excitement. She shook her head lightly before heading off to deal with the demonic beasts. Since it was a newly born Demi-God, she was confident she could handle it without much difficulty. And with Ethan's intel on its likely location, she was able to track it down quickly and kill it before it could rally its forces.
The main reason she was here was to get help searching for it, as it was hiding, a whole empire helping her, she would have been able to find it… But Ethan did it so easily.
Flashback End.
Ellen didn't know the full details of what happened after that. What she did know was that Iris had returned to the palace afterward, met with Ethan again… and ever since that meeting, the ancestor of the United Empire had been hunting Ethan down across the stars, enraged beyond reason that he had dared to not take responsibility after taking her virginity.
Over a thousand years of existence. Over a thousand years with the concept of sex never once crossing her mind, never once clouding her judgment or shaking her focus. And then Ethan popped up out of nowhere, slept with her, and ran.
She was beyond enraged. She wanted his skin peeled from his bones and hung on a wall, but Ethan knew how to run and how to hide better than anyone she had ever pursued. And now, thanks to Ellen's little arrangement, she would finally know exactly where Ethan was located.
Ethan was indeed a powerful weapon in his own right. Ellen was certain that she could throw Ethan into enemy territory with nothing but the clothes on his back, and he would come walking out the other side unscathed because he had charmed his way through every obstacle.
Ethan knew how to read women—that was why he kept himself surrounded by females more often than males, because that was where his talents were sharpest. But that didn't mean he was limited to women. He knew how to play men like puppets just as well when the situation called for it.
"Annoying," Ellen said with a sneer, the single word carrying the full weight of her frustration. She turned from the window and walked out of her chamber.
She descended through corridors that grew darker and colder with every step, until she arrived at a jail cell where the other half of Ethan—the clone Raven had captured—was currently lying on his back against the stone floor, staring up at the ceiling as if he didn't have a care in the world.