"Does Spiritual Soothing require a bath?" Shi Li was a little slow on the uptake. She hadn't taken a bath when she soothed Jensen before; in fact, both of them had been in a terrible state at the time.
He had been covered in blood, and she had been a mess from her journey.
"We can skip the bath." Bai Qingye raised an eyebrow and, with a single motion, swept Shi Li up with one arm.
He was about to head toward the bedroom but hesitated just before the door.
And in that moment of hesitation, Heige, who had just come out of the bathroom, blocked his way.
"Hey! You can't just trick an innocent girl like that." Heige stood in front of the bedroom door, refusing to let Bai Qingye take Shi Li inside.
"How am I tricking her? This is my reward for finishing dinner, and she agreed to it herself." Bai Qingye refused to back down. Originally, he hadn't even been that eager to go into Shi Li's bedroom.
But now that Heige was blocking him, he was determined to get inside tonight, no matter what!
"We're both men. You think I don't know what's on your mind?"
"Do you really think Shi Li knows what you're actually trying to do?" Shi Li, caught between the two men, was a bit bewildered. Heige's expression was unfriendly, and his stance was uncharacteristically aggressive as he reached out, trying to pull her from Bai Qingye's arms.
But the two of them were speaking in riddles, and Shi Li couldn't understand.
"What's it to you? What? You've only been married a few days and she's already won over your worthless heart?" Bai Qingye retorted, not forgetting to tighten his grip.
A fight was about to break out.
In the blink of an eye, Heige grabbed Bai Qingye's arm, attempting to rescue Shi Li by force.
Shi Li felt herself teetering precariously on Bai Qingye's arm.
"Hey, what's there to fight over? Can't we just do one person per day?" Shi Li could feel the scales that had emerged on Bai Qingye's arm digging into her thigh.
Heige, on the other hand, had remained in a completely human form during their time together.
If a chaotic spiritual sea caused a Beastman to enter a state of Beastification, then Bai Qingye and Jensen should have been the most urgent cases right now.
"One person per day? A fine thought, but I doubt a little thing like you could handle it." Jensen, who had been cleaning the kitchen just a moment ago, suddenly appeared.
'How could anyone wash dishes that fast?'
'I guess potential really does need the right motivation to be unlocked.'
"After I gave you Spiritual Soothing, didn't I just sleep until evening?"
"It didn't seem that hard. I could probably even do two in one day." Shi Li was a little smug. Judging by the Beastmen's tones, performing Spiritual Soothing was supposed to be an extremely difficult task.
And yet, not only could she soothe a Half-beastified Beastman, but she had also recovered after just one afternoon of rest.
'Looks like that system that bailed on me wasn't completely useless after all; it left me with a pretty handy skill.'
"You were the one who gave me Spiritual Soothing?" Hearing this, Jensen was utterly shocked and couldn't stop himself from grabbing Shi Li's wrist.
He had thought he'd just gotten lucky. He assumed that even in his Half-beastified state, he'd managed to stabilize his own emotions after the outburst and avoid doing something as stupid as actually killing his Female Master.
'So it was actually Shi Li who performed Spiritual Soothing on me during that critical moment?'
Jensen could hardly believe it. Would the ever-proud Shi Li really deign to soothe her Beast Husbands?
Because Spiritual Soothing was draining both physically and in terms of spiritual power. Even if some Female Masters took a shortcut and only performed physical soothing, it was still an exhausting physical task for a female's weaker constitution.
Not to mention, Shi Li's soothing had managed to pull him back from the brink of a full Beastification rampage to a Half-beastman state.
And he was now gradually reverting to his human form.
'An ability like this... on this planet—no! You might not find more than a handful of people like that in the entire Interstellar Federation.'
"What? You gave him Spiritual Soothing?" Now it was Heige's turn to be shocked, his ire shifting directly from Bai Qingye to Jensen.
"You gave him Spiritual Soothing first?" Bai Qingye's anger also turned on Jensen.
"I'm your first Beast Husband! Shouldn't your first time have been with me?"
"How could you give him Spiritual Soothing first!" At that moment, Bai Qingye, who had been maintaining a sophisticated facade, finally snapped.
'Childhood sweethearts? Innocent love? It was all a lie!!!'
'I was the only one who took this whole farce seriously from the very beginning.'
'But even though she didn't like me, she still married me and became my Female Master.'
'Back then, I just thought being married was enough. At least it made it official. We could work on everything else slowly. But looking at it now... "work on it slowly"? What a load of bullshit for fools!'
"Since when was there a rule like that?"
"Shouldn't it be about who's capable enough to earn it? You really think the Female Master will accept just any kind of man?" Heige was not happy. If that were the case, as Shi Li's most recent Beast Husband, would he have to wait until last for everything?
In this age where females are rare, how many of the Beast Husbands assigned to a female were just run-of-the-mill?
Why should he have to play second fiddle to these "seniors" in everything? It was clearly their own failure to capture the Female Master's heart, so were they really expecting him to wait?
CRACK!
A sharp, crisp sound, as if something had broken.
Shi Li looked toward the sound and covered her mouth.
She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Bai Qingye's hand, which had been about to open the bedroom door, had just crushed the doorknob, and cracks had even spiderwebbed across the adjacent wall.
Seeing Bai Qingye flex his strength, Heige, not to be outdone, also slammed his fist into the wall.
'So what? It's a contest of strength? I've got strength in spades!'
Seeing the two males inexplicably start showing off, Jensen, despite thinking it was a bit stupid, was driven by his competitive nature to join the contest.
BOOM!
The final result was predictable.
The house finally gave way under the strain, and the ceiling collapsed right where they were standing.
Luckily, Shi Li was carried out of the way by Bai Qingye. Left to her own devices, she most likely wouldn't have been able to dodge such an attack.
"Tsk, tsk, the neighbors are fighting again?" In the villa next door, He Bai Bai and her Beast Husband Feldman were in the middle of a tender moment when the huge commotion completely ruined the mood.
He Bai Bai couldn't help but feel annoyed.
'Why do the neighbors always have to cause a scene and disrupt my normal life?'
"Probably too many young hotheads. Full of vigor. It's normal for them to fight over their Female Master." Feldman, however, didn't seem to care much. He was all worked up, eagerly awaiting a rare soothing from He Bai Bai. Why would he let a little thing like this interrupt them?
"I really don't get that idiot Shi Li. Why have so many Beast Husbands? She doesn't even know how to manage them, just letting them squabble all the time!" But He Bai Bai had truly lost the mood. To be honest, seeing Shi Li's five distinctive Beast Husbands, sometimes He Bai Bai felt a little envious.
'Who wouldn't want to be surrounded by handsome men, each one unique?'
It was just that, in the beginning, when she saw how much Shi Li envied her for being able to marry Feldman and appear so in love, she had no choice but to put on an act of wanting only Feldman, of being deeply in love, just to make Shi Li feel bad.
But now, she was the one who was miserable.