The small, creaking footsteps faded away, taking with them the last trace of fresh air from the dungeon.
Furenna remained seated against the wall, her eyes closed, withdrawing the last bit of her awareness from the direction Xiao Ling had departed.
She sank back into that inner world only she could “see,” sealed away by layer upon layer of restraints.
Xiao Ling’s visits, the mild yet effective potions, the shared half-meal, and the girl’s increasingly familiar yet still cautious concern
had been like a few drops of warm water, briefly soothing her frozen and torn body and mind.
But Furenna never forgotten that all of this occurred under Demon King Iris’s tacit approval, even her arrangement.
This “care” was, in essence, still part of the cage, another form of control and observation.
She accepted it to preserve her strength and observe variables, not to indulge in this false comfort.
Now, the dungeon returned to its dead silence, lit only by the eerie green moss and cold stone.
Under the medicine’s lingering effect, the whip wounds across her body had shifted from a constant, dull throb to a deep-seated, bone-aching pain,
becoming part of the background noise, tolerable as long as she didn’t move too much.
This gave Furenna a precious window to concentrate her mental energy.
Her consciousness, like the most dexterous and cautious probe, once again “touched” the violet-black contract sigil engraved upon the very source of her soul.
This was not the first time, nor would it be the last.
During the past, timeless period of “recuperation,” this had become almost the only active, quasi-“training” activity she could perform,
apart from passively sensing the shackle’s interference and the environmental noise.
The contract’s terms, Furenna had turned over and over in her mind countless times.
Exchanging her own freedom and capacity to resist for a “peace” where high-level demonic combat power would not be used against humanity.
The core of its restraint lay in “intent” and “action.”
When she formed an “intent to resist” or “attack” demons,
or attempted to put that intent into action by channeling power, the contract would activate and inflict backlash.
It was a restraint based on “subjective initiative.”
Could there exist a state, an action, that in itself carried no “intent to resist” or “attack,”
not even directly targeting any demonic individual, yet whose result might indirectly weaken the contract’s foundation or create a “condition” for her to break its bonds?
Her consciousness no longer attempted to assault the sigil’s solid structure head-on—that was suicide.
Instead, it began, with immense patience, to “patrol” inch by inch along the sigil’s intricate pathways,
observing its energy flow, searching for possible “logical gaps” inherent in the contract’s own terms.
Day after day of observation, combined with Furenna’s minute awareness of her own soul state and the contract’s reactions,
an extremely vague, yet persistent, thought began to take shape within her.
The contract’s triggering depended on her “intent.”
But who executed the judgment of that “intent”?
Clearly, the contract itself was not an omniscient deity; it was a pre-set, precise magical logic program.
Its criteria for judging “intent” were likely tied to the Heroine Furenna’s soul fluctuations, energy channeling trends, and the ultimate “nature of the target.”
So, if she performed a certain “action,” whose “intent” was not directly “to resist” or “attack” any demon…
How would the contract judge it?
It was a dangerous hypothesis, yet it held a sliver of desperately faint hope.
The contract restricted her from attacking demons, from resisting.
But the contract’s terms did not explicitly forbid all use of magic. This might be Demon King Iris’s pride and oversight—
she believed Furenna utterly incapable of such fine manipulation under the contract’s bonds, let alone of somehow using “magic for the purpose of maintaining the contract” to gradually alter its effects.
But the key was “degree.”
How fine an operation could be judged as “maintenance,” not “deliberate assault on the contract’s structure”?
How weak a force could be channeled without setting off the contract’s alarm?
This required Furenna to achieve a level of perception regarding her own soul state and the contract’s energy fluctuations that seemed unattainable in her current, heavily-restricted condition.
This required her to first obtain even the tiniest sliver of magic that she could fully control, magic that was “gentle” in nature, absolutely incapable of being misjudged as “offensive energy” by the contract.
This also required a perfect, utterly inconspicuous “experimental” environment.
Each condition was like an insurmountably high peak.
But, at least, there was a “direction.”
Furenna repeated this to herself silently, and the faint amber ember deep within her seemed to glow a fraction brighter, stimulated by the mere idea of hope.
The path ahead was no longer total darkness. It was now a narrow, thorn-covered cliff path that would require years, perhaps longer, of immense patience and risk to climb.
She began to focus her mental energy on simulating and deducing the possibilities.
This required honing her mental energy to a near-physical sharpness and performing operations at a microscopic level of precision—
a task that seemed as difficult as scaling the heavens in her current, severely disrupted mental state.
But in theory, the possibility existed.
Just as her mind became fully immersed in this tedious, difficult, yet strangely stimulating exercise—
Click.
A very soft sound, different from Xiao Ling’s usual door-opening rhythm—a more solid, mechanical sliding sound—came from the direction of the cell door.
Furenna was instantly jolted from her internal focus. All her dispersed awareness snapped back. Wariness rose like a conditioned reflex.
Instinctively, she thought it was Xiao Ling returning, perhaps having forgotten something—
Furenna pushed against the wall, enduring the dull pain of moving her wounds, and slowly stood up.
It was a posture she had deliberately maintained over the past days in front of Xiao Ling, one that didn’t seem too hostile.
Had Xiao Ling done something wrong?
But the footsteps were wrong.
When the heavy metal door swung open without a sound and a tall figure, outlined by the brighter torchlight from the hallway outside, stepped into the range of the greenish glow,
Furenna’s recently straightened body stiffened almost imperceptibly.
It wasn’t Xiao Ling.
It was Demon King Iris.
She wore her signature form-fitting attire of dark colors trimmed with dark gold, her crimson cloak draped behind her, her steps unhurried.
Unlike the oppressive presence in the pink room, Iris now seemed to be on a casual inspection.
Her crimson eyes swept indifferently over the cell’s interior before finally settling on Furenna, who was now standing rigidly at attention.
The Demon King’s gaze lingered on her face for a moment, then slowly traveled down, brushing over the now-faded but still visible whip marks on her neck,
passing over her body, still pale but no longer trembling visibly from acute pain, and finally pausing briefly, it seemed, on the metal restraint at her waist, not fully concealed by the prisoner’s garb.
“It seems,”
Demon King Iris broke the silence, her voice clear and even in the silent dungeon, betraying little emotion,
“the recovery is proceeding adequately. That child, Xiao Ling, is tending to you with some diligence.”
Her tone was like an owner appraising the restoration of a prized possession.
Furenna’s fingers, hanging at her sides and bound by shackles and short chains, curled slightly unconsciously.
The faint ripple in her heart, stirred moments ago by the discovery of a sliver of hope, was instantly crushed by cold vigilance and a wave of fresh humiliation.
She raised her eyes, her amber gaze meeting the Demon King’s crimson one.
“Thanks to Your Majesty’s grace,”
Heroine Furenna’s voice was low and hoarse from disuse, but she deliberately slowed her speech, making each word distinct, laced with cold sarcasm.
“First the lash, then the fine medicine, now the attentive maid…
Your Majesty’s ‘care’ is truly meticulous. Unforgettable.”