The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 57
by Little PandaSpeaking of the Mating Heat That Consumed Two Demons Beneath the Mountain
In that fleeting instant, the shock and doubt in Longming’s heart settled into certainty.
She had never mistaken Zhuoxue for Jueguang, because that star fallen to the mortal dust—Hanxing—had only ever seen half of Jueguang’s face, and Jueguang had treated her not without some difference from the mortals passing through her world.
Yet it was precisely that fleeting, breathtaking glance1 and that gentle courtesy that had kept her holding on for so long.
Every line of the fox’s features resembled Jueguang’s, yet she was more vivid and cunning, more brimming with life.
As though she had broken free of some prescribed framework, becoming a fish walking on land, a bird swimming in water—living wildly, existing freely.
The figure from a century ago and the one before her now interlocked seamlessly, echoing that earlier cry of “Hanxing.”
Longming stared blankly, her mind seeming to leap beyond the three realms. Even having anticipated this, she still found herself adrift in bewilderment.
Was she joyous? As though greeting spring’s return—naturally, she was joyous.
Yet she couldn’t help but fear that this spring’s return was but a fleeting bloom, and she needed to know what the fox was trying to discern, and why those eyes held such haze.
It couldn’t be… that she had lost her memories, her soul returned to former times.
If these brief days were merely Zhuoxue’s Golden Millet Dream2, then what did that mean for her? Was it her own waking fantasy, her own daydream?
Longming suddenly felt as though a gaping hole had been pried open in her body, her chest flooding with sour bile, the dark surge rushing straight to her throat, her nose, her eyes.
She wanted to unravel the answer, yet she couldn’t afford to be careless.
The fox had just broken through her realm. As a Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox rarely seen in this world, she must have already reached the edge of the Primordial Boundary.
At this level, there should be a lightning tribulation.
Yet strangely, the horizon was silent—only the fox’s dazed, tear-drenched gaze cried out without sound.
In the mountain fissure, the fox’s eyes brimmed with a pool of water—so aggrieved, so at a loss. She stared for a long time before parting her lips: “Longming, it hurt so much just now.”
That single sentence was enough to cleave through all the fog in Longming’s heart.
The boulder suspended above Longming’s heart crashed to the ground, plugging the spring from which the sour bile had surged.
She lunged forward as if to hack through brambles and thorns3, but before she could even extend her arms, Zhuoxue threw herself into her embrace.
Skin pressed to skin, arms locked tight, holding solid.
This was no phantom, no Golden Millet Dream.
Zhuoxue’s skin burned astonishingly hot. The moment she embraced Longming, she went limp, releasing all her strength, as secure as a creature returning to its nest.
She nestled in Longming’s arms and wept softly—all the fear and anguish she had bottled up for so long pouring out at once.
But the more she relaxed, the dizzier she grew. Her heart frantically yearned to seek something, yet even she couldn’t understand what she was craving.
Longming held Zhuoxue tight, tilted her head to gaze directly at the Auspicious Radiance, and said with concern, “The restriction is broken, but I don’t know why the Heavenly Dao remains unmoved.”
A deep, desperate yearning made Zhuoxue impatient. She couldn’t help but let out a soft, breathy whimper, the way she did in her beast form.
Longming froze.
At that very moment, a howl tore through the horizon, and lightning crashed down upon the world.
So there was a heavenly tribulation after all. Longming abruptly braced her arms to shield against it—but the heavenly lightning did not strike Buzhou Mountain. Instead…
It slammed into Kunlun Jade Capital!
In an instant, the winds and clouds shifted. Even Buzhou Mountain was swallowed by dense clouds, plunging into pitch darkness so complete that one couldn’t see one’s own hand before one’s face. The cold wind grew ever more desolate.
Violet lightning flickered in and out of the black clouds, slicing across the sky, cleaving straight to the highest heavens with overwhelming force.
Buzhou Mountain lay very close to Kunlun Jade Capital, so the thunder was deafening. That single bolt of heavenly lightning carried the force of a hundred, as though it had come to annihilate heaven and earth.
Zhuoxue’s ears rang. She had burned into an inextinguishable blaze of fire, her reason already fraying at the edges. She could only cry out in a sobbing voice, “Longming, I’m miserable.”
It had hurt so much before; now, too, it was unbearable torment.
The instant the lightning struck, heaven and earth shook. Her thoughts snapped like a broken string, and the memories Longming had buried deep within her sprouted like buds from the tip of her heart.
The buds bloomed into flowers—peach blossoms beckoning rain, moistened and drenched in an instant.
Her mind was hazy and muddled, yet she remembered how that spiritual energy had coursed. Through the searing heat of flesh, she had almost been able to touch it.
She also vaguely remembered how she had lain atop Longming, clumsily and ignorantly trying to relieve her mating heat.
This time, her entire body was even more unbearably soft and weak. She didn’t push Longming away. Her devotion was an open page, her longing written plain as day.
She wanted it—and she would have to take it, she thought dizzily.
At the horizon, thunder rushed and clouds shifted4 as another bolt of heavenly lightning drove straight toward Kunlun Jade Capital, shaking heaven and earth with its fury.
In the flash of lightning, the fox bit down on Longming’s chin—her teeth so sharp they drew blood at once.
At the bottom of the ten-zhang mountain fissure, bestial desire bloomed like desert evening primrose after a long-awaited rain, suddenly, brilliantly in flower.
It tangled inseparably with the love of this moment. They climbed side by side—one flourishing and growing, the other relentless in its competition.
Zhuoxue was like an unreasoning beast, extending her tongue to lap the blood from Longming’s chin, then remembering her ten fingers that had ached to the bone.
Her body had fully repaired itself—there wasn’t so much as half a wound left—but the phantom pain lingered. She raised her hand and sucked on her fingertips, her misted eyes growing even more unfocused.
She licked each fingertip one by one. Her body was deeply uncomfortable. She cast a hazy glance toward Longming, wondering dazedly why she had helped her last time but now sat motionless.
Longming grasped Zhuoxue’s hand and gently rubbed her fingertip, frowning. “Does it still hurt?”
Zhuoxue laced her fingers through Longming’s. Her thoughts were chaos; she didn’t know what the gesture meant, only that with their palms pressed together, even their pulses seemed to connect. She liked this.
She ached to know what Longming was thinking. The sharp wit that normally never rested for a moment had become a dull, blunt instrument, barely able to move.
Why wasn’t she using her spiritual power?
Zhuoxue simply pulled Longming’s hand and forced it against her cheek, her neck and shoulders, her waist and belly.
She pressed it firmly, demanding Longming’s palm flush against her skin without a sliver of gap, but the yearning in her heart didn’t diminish.
Her breath was hot as boiling water. She leaned to Longming’s ear and exhaled, the sound sticky as paste, like a stirring rod meant to churn Longming’s consciousness into delirium.
Touch me.
Zhuoxue pressed her legs together, thinking she must have fallen into water again—otherwise why would she be so drenched?
Unfortunately, there was no boat. She could only soak in it, clutching the straw in her hand as though it were her lifeline.
“Do you know what this means?” Longming asked with difficulty.
Zhuoxue was pressed tight against her, then climbed atop her. Longming simply lay back against the mountain stone, her silver hair scattered everywhere.
The fox half-closed her eyes, tilting her head in dazed contemplation.
“Can’t figure it out, can you,” Longming said.
Zhuoxue’s body burned all over, save for the tip of her nose, which was still cold. She pressed her cold nose against Longming’s cheek, sniffing delicately, as though searching for the orchid’s roots like before.
As though taking this silver-haired great demon for a miraculous elixir.
When she opened her mouth, what she said was: “I know. It’s you and I, you and I, such fierce devotion; where devotion deepens, it burns like fire5.”
Wasn’t that the very poem the little hedgehog demon had recited at the Huangliang Dream Market?
Her mind was hazy and muddled, yet she hadn’t entirely lost consciousness.
After all, she had become a Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox. It was only because she had just broken through her realm, her body in the earliest stages of recovery, fragile and vulnerable, that the mating heat had found its opening.
Longming was silent for a long time—so long that the fox exhaled displeasedly against her ear once more—before asking again, “What do you want me to do?”
The fox paused briefly, her golden eyes stalling as well.
Perhaps she was thinking. But with her consciousness in turmoil, she would need a long time yet before she could think clearly.
Before long, she clamped Longming’s long, beautiful hand between her slick, drenched thighs.
She pursed her lips in silence, touching herself along with Longming’s hand, but nothing was right—nothing matched the hazy memory of that last time.
Longming’s breathing faltered. The pair of crimson eyes set above those black markings retained not a shred of their usual sharpness—they had become like the red lanterns that filled the sky in the Soft Red Dust.
The lantern glow was hazy and blurred, but the wick inside burned clear and plain, scorching as a furnace.
She used her fingers as a comb, carefully arranging Zhuoxue’s hair, which had turned entirely white, then lifted Zhuoxue’s hand to examine it closely.
Every inch of this skin seemed newly born—paler and more fragile than before, so delicate it looked as though a breath would break it.
With skin like this, the fox would likely tear up at the slightest touch.
Yet this very fox who feared pain had leaped into the fissure without a word, clawing out the orchid’s roots bit by bit.
Longming couldn’t bear it. The moment this thought arose, she also wanted to crush the fox into her own flesh, bone, and blood.
The tiger’s nature was savage. Even in expressing love, it couldn’t help but carry a trace of the desire to destroy.
She would never have felt this way toward Zhuoxue’s former life. That dim, inarticulate passion had been given entirely to the fox.
Outside the fissure, the heavenly lightning had ceased, but the blizzard still howled.
Amidst this world of ice and snow6, only Longming knew how fiercely the fire in her heart burned.
Zhuoxue gazed at Longming, her breathy sobs catching and breaking. Her lips, born the color of blush-pink, looked as though they held a cherry petal.
The fox could no longer count on this silver-haired great demon. She was adrift in a vast ocean again, but this time was different—she was no longer crossing by boat. She would easily drown in the sea.
She fumbled blindly. Her robes shimmered with flowing light, white fox fur trimming the edges. When the fabric slipped to her elbows, it looked as though snow encircled her body, setting off her skin, luminous and pale.
Still not right.
The more she couldn’t find relief, the more agitated and aggrieved she grew. With nowhere to vent, she treated Longming as a chew stick, sinking her teeth in and gnawing.
The fox surged forward again, biting Longming’s neck until it was covered in marks. Had she not been forged of demon sinew and demon bone, her throat would surely have been torn open.
She straddled Longming, her bare feet rubbing lightly against Longming’s legs, the silver bell chiming a few times.
After all this, her robes had nearly come entirely undone. Nine fox tails curled in disarray at her sides, softer and longer than a bamboo brush’s bristles, yet they wrote nothing but enchantment.
“Why won’t you help me yet?” She bit Longming’s earlobe, pouring every murmured syllable into Longming’s ear without missing a word.
Longming wanted even more to devour her flesh and bones. Restraint and abandon tore at each other within her.
Zhuoxue sobbed. “Longming, you’re truly awful.”
Ever since the first day she climbed Lingkong Mountain, she had been thinking this line. Now, overwhelmed by emotion, it slipped out before she could stop it.
“Why am I awful?” Longming leaned close, inhaling the scent of her arousal.
Zhuoxue gave Longming’s waist a weak pinch, making Longming inhale softly.
The tiger demon had wanted to seize the fox’s neck in a fierce grip, but the moment she brushed aside the fox’s silver hair, she changed her mind.
Their lips met. Now it was Longming who held the cherry petal.
The water in the fox’s eyes was soft as spring silk gauze. She had barely parted her lips when something slipped inside, stirring ripples in all directions.
Was it a fish? The fish pecked at the tip of her tongue, and would swallow her whole.
She received that kiss—swift as wind and snow, yet searing and wet—and dimly understood what else Longming could give her.
She tasted Longming’s breath.
That cold, sharp, and steady essence drenched and soaked through her. She fell into the swamp Longming had tailor-made for her, unable to pull herself out.
It felt so good, but it still wasn’t enough.
Zhuoxue eagerly pressed close, copying a cat to draw a tiger7 as she licked and bit, but she knew no measure and wanted none. She bit until both their mouths were filled with the taste of blood.
This faint trace of blood made her even more delirious with desire. She was a beast at heart—even cultivated into a demon, her nature didn’t change.
Her voice was sticky with panting sobs. Behind her, fox tails silently twined around Longming’s waist, and one tail was pinched without warning.
Zhuoxue grew dizzy. In the brief parting of their lips, she hummed softly, murmuring vaguely by Longming’s ear, “I know… and it’s more than that…”
“More than what?” Longming scattered dense, fine kisses, like her deep gaze—devoted and reluctant to part, and never satisfied.
If she had taken her beast form, it would likely be the same.
“Last time… you weren’t like this.” Zhuoxue’s breath came in fragments. “I… I remembered everything. You can’t hide it from me.”
The fire in Longming’s heart blazed up through her skin. The composure in her eyes was in peril.
The fox licked the corner of her lips. Her skirt was bunched in disarray at her side; were it not for the fox tails draped like a cloak, not a trace of her would have been concealed.
She smiled through reddened eyes, her gaze as drenched as her sweat-slicked body, thoroughly ruined—yet even steeped in desire, that gaze remained clear and pure, as though washed clean.
The mating heat had burned away all her shame. She only wanted relief. One hand braced against Longming’s waist, lifting herself slightly, while the other gathered the edge of her skirt and slowly pressed into the depths.
With one gentle rub of her fingertip, she exhaled in slow, trembling breaths, the hand supporting her shaking unsteadily.
After a few strokes, her breathing grew so ragged it threatened to stop. She bit her lip in silence, pressing every sound back into her mouth.
Longming caught Zhuoxue’s glistening wrist without warning, rubbed the inside of it—not too hard, not too gently—then clasped it firmly.
Zhuoxue had finally found a small boat, paddling toward shore under her own power, just about to land on the beach—only to be dragged back into the deep sea.
Her jade-white legs trembled violently twice with the sudden clench of her waist, and she wept in frustration, tears falling like rain.
Then rapid kisses traced down her neck. She became prey in the tiger’s jaws, every inch of her body steeped in the tiger’s breath.
She gripped Longming’s arm like an oar on a small boat, but the waves were beyond her control. She could only move with the current.
The waves surged up, washing over the cherry buds at her chest, then cresting past her navel, stealing her breath, wiping away her tears.
Not a stitch remained on her body. Only her fox tails still swayed with the tide of passion, drifting to loosely cover her sides.
Still not enough—until the pool in that secluded hollow was devoured completely.
If she were the ice and snow of this entire mountain, she had already melted into water.
Longming cradled her legs, so that all she could see was that crown of silver-white hair. She stepped onto Longming’s shoulders, her heels sliding down to Longming’s back, her sobbing breaths rising higher with each one.
She couldn’t bear it anymore, yet it still wasn’t enough.
The moment those lips and tongue withdrew, long slender fingers took their place—stroking and rubbing, occasionally plunging in, startling her breathless.
Night after night, their splendid robes spread across the ground. Outside the barrier, snow had covered everything tight. Inside the fissure, only fireflies kept the darkness from swallowing them whole.
After three days, the mating heat finally subsided. Zhuoxue curled up on Longming’s robes, fox tails draped over half her body. The crimson at the corners of her eyes had not yet faded, and even now held a faint sheen of moisture.
Longming wore only her outer robe, her figure glimpsed in fragments—truly as full and beautiful as her beast form.
She gazed at Zhuoxue for a long time, then simply picked up her sash, making do with the outer robe to cover herself.
The fox’s skin was white as satin. Having truly advanced her realm, the marks of intimacy had faded within a night. Were it not for the faint tears still pooling at the corners of her eyes, who would have known she had clung and demanded more than ten times?
Each time had been like beasts fighting. She could still exercise some restraint, but the fox wouldn’t stop without drawing blood, determined to bite her full of holes.
Longming touched the side of her own neck. The pain had faded, leaving only a faint itch like an insect bite.
She saw Zhuoxue still sleeping peacefully. She took her time tying up her hair, then quietly leaned forward, so that the ends of her hair wouldn’t tickle Zhuoxue’s face.
It was dark at the mountain’s base. They had entirely lost track of whether it was the hour of sunrise or the moment of moonrise.
Footnotes
- 惊鸿一眼 | jinghong yiyan | Literally 'a startled swan goose glimpsed once' — from Cao Zhi's 'Ode to the Goddess of the Luo River,' describing an unforgettable, magnificent first sight; here marks the single glance that etched Jueguang into Longming's memory.
- 黄粱一梦 | huangliang yimeng | Classical idiom from Tang dynasty writer Shen Jiji's tale, in which a scholar dreams an entire lifetime of glory while his millet porridge cooks, only to wake to uncooked grain; denotes a fleeting, illusory splendor.
- 披荆斩棘 | pijing zhanji | Literally 'hacking through thorns and brambles' — a classical idiom for overcoming formidable obstacles; here used metaphorically for Longming's desperate leap toward Zhuoxue.
- 雷奔云谲 | leiben yunjue | Literary four-character idiom describing thunder rushing and clouds shifting dramatically; evokes the violent, sudden transformation of sky and storm during the heavenly tribulation.
- 你侬我侬，忒煞情多，情多处，热似火 | ni nong wo nong, te sha qing duo, qing duo chu, re si huo | Lines from 'Song of You and Me' by Yuan dynasty poet-painter Guan Daosheng, addressed to her husband Zhao Mengfu; the poem declares an inseparable, passionate love that blazes like fire where devotion runs deepest.
- 雪窖冰天 | xuejiao bingtian | Literary four-character idiom meaning 'a world of ice and snow cellars'; describes an extreme, bitterly frozen environment, here evoking the merciless cold of Buzhou Mountain.
- 照猫画虎 | zhaomao huahu | Literally 'copying a cat to draw a tiger' — a common idiom for imitating something without truly mastering it; here describes Zhuoxue clumsily mimicking Longming's kisses.
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