CHAPTER 148: 148- MARRY ME [2]

Fang Yuan met Lin Zhaoyue’s predatory gaze, the pressure of the Saberfangs’ auras like a physical vise.

He forced his voice into a tone of icy disdain, pulling his captured hand back just enough to emphasize the point, though her grip remained iron.

"A marriage sealed in blood and ruin before our dying enemies?" he challenged, his words sharp as shards of ice.

"Is this how the future Matriarch Fang wishes her authority recognized? A hasty oath in a graveyard, witnessed by corpses and captives?" He paused, letting the image of the pulverized Lin Xukong and kneeling Gu father and son duo sink in.

"Your name deserves more than this. Let us return to the ancestral hall. Marry me there, before our living clan elders and the city’s nobility... or let them whisper forever that you forced me at saber-point." There, he thought, the cold calculation settling in like frost.

This should hold for now. After all, what woman doesn’t crave recognition? What woman wouldn’t be tempted by the allure of fame?

If she just gave in to vanity, to the grandeur of being seen as the one destined to marry me, then I could buy time.. days, maybe even weeks. That’s enough time for me to maneuver or find a way out of this mess.

Lin Zhaoyue stared at him.

For a heartbeat, her predatory gleam flickered.

Fang Yuan braced himself for her to bite the bait. Or for her to flip and instantly become hostile.

Instead, her eyes widened.

The intense, possessive fervor didn’t dim instead it shifted.

The cold pragmatism vanished, replaced by pure, unadulterated, terrifying delight.

"YES!" she exclaimed, the sound startlingly loud in the ruined courtyard.

It wasn’t a shout of anger, but a cry of pure, unhinged joy.

She bounced slightly on the balls of her feet, the motion grotesquely childlike amidst the carnage. "Husband! You’re absolutely right! Why wait?"

Fang Yuan’s carefully constructed composure cracked. His brows shot up, genuine shock freezing him for a critical second. What?

Lin Zhaoyue beamed at him, her blood-flecked face radiant. "Authority? Recognition? Gossip?"

She waved her free hand dismissively, scattering droplets of blood.

"What does any of that matter compared to you? If you want the ancestral hall, fine! We’ll rebuild it after! But the marriage? The oath? The binding of you to me?"

Her grip on his hand became almost painfully tight, pulsing with frantic energy. "That happens now. Right here. Who needs stuffy elders and simpering nobles as witnesses? We have better!"

She spun, dragging Fang Yuan slightly with her, her free arm sweeping out dramatically towards the hulking Saberfangs.

"Behold! The most magnificent wedding guests! They understand true power! True devotion! They will witness me claim you, and they’ll witness me bind to you!"

She pointed next at Du Juan, who flinched violently.

"Du Juan! She’s the guardian you are going to raise! She’s practically family already! She’ll stand here as my attendant and also be a witness!"

Her finger then jabbed towards the near dead Gu duo.

"And them! Our honored captives! Perfect witnesses to the dawn of our union! Let them see the futility of opposing us!"

She turned back to Fang Yuan, her eyes blazing with manic triumph, utterly devoid of any concern for legitimacy, appearances, or power plays beyond possessing him.

"You see, husband? You worry about whispers? Let them whisper! Let them scream! All that matters is that you are mine. Here. Now. Before the beasts, the blood, and the broken! It’s perfect! So much more... intimate... than some drafty old hall."

She leaned in, her voice dropping to a feverish whisper that sent chills down his spine, her breath warm against his ear.

"Say the words, Fang Yuan. Bind yourself to me. Right now. In this moment we made together. Or..."

Her gaze flickered meaningfully towards the largest Saberfang, whose lips peeled back in a silent snarl, revealing fangs longer than daggers.

The unspoken threat vibrated in the air, sharper than any blade. "...our witnesses might get impatient."

Fang Yuan stood frozen, his clever gambit lying in shattered ruins at his feet.

He hadn’t appealed to a power-hungry matriarch.

He had handed a justification to a person whose only hunger was for him.

Time hadn’t been bought instead it had just run out in the most horrifyingly literal way possible.

The ancestral hall was irrelevant.

The nobility meant nothing.

All that existed in Lin Zhaoyue’s world was this ruined courtyard, her monstrous beasts, and the absolute, immediate need to make Fang Yuan hers.

The gilded cage wasn’t just closing.... she was demanding he weld the lock shut himself, right this second, surrounded by the evidence of her madness.

The sulfurous breath of the peak-stage Saberfang washed over Fang Yuan, hot and reeking of carrion.

Lin Zhaoyue’s eyes burned into his, a vortex of manic joy and absolute, unwavering demand.

Her grip on his hand was a shackle forged in madness.

The weight of four Nascent Soul beasts pressed down on him.

His clever ploy lay in ruins, shattered by the sheer, terrifying singularity of her obsession.

Legitimacy? Authority? She doesn’t even crave a throne!

A glacial calm settled over Fang Yuan, colder than the obsidian ring on his finger.

The frantic calculations ceased.

The desperate search for an escape route vanished.

He looked past the blood-flecked radiance of her face, past the monstrous witnesses, to the ruins, to the unconscious form of Fang Lian cradled by a trembling Du Juan.

Survival. Ascendancy. These were the only currencies left.

He met her feverish gaze with the steady, assessing look of a general surveying a battlefield he’d unexpectedly won through catastrophic losses.

"Very well, Lin Zhaoyue." His voice cut through the tension, clear, cold, and utterly devoid of affection, yet resonant with finality.

"If a binding witnessed by ruin and beasts is your desire... then we shall pledged our wedding vows here."

Lin Zhaoyue’s breath hitched. Triumph, pure and feral, blazed in her eyes.

"Husband!" she breathed, the word a caress and a brand.