Harem Master: Seduction System

Chapter 484: The Cruel Encounter in Cloud-Mist City

Two months passed swiftly as the late-summer heat gave way to the crisp, golden winds of mid-autumn across the central basin of Cloud-Mist Province.

During those two months, while Corbin and Feng Xiao rode hard southward from the northern volcanic wastes—concealing their identities beneath heavy mercenary cloaks and avoiding allJade Serpent checkpoints—life inside Alaric’s hidden sanctuary in Cloud-Mist City and his northern fortress in Azure Fall City had never been richer.

Having consolidated the grain, spirit-stone, and tax arteries of the four provinces, Alaric spent half of each week in Azure Fall City indulging the five Imperial Consorts (Cui Yulan, Yan Ruyu, Zhao Mengxue, Su Xinyue, and Ning Wan’er) and the other half of the week inside the wisteria-draped sanctuary of Cloud-Mist City—where Matriarch Lyra Steele, Aunt Cassandra Galanis, Princess Gu Ling, Ling Ying, Princesses Huang Mei and Huang Hua, Queen Cai Wei, Grand Elder Yun Lan, Princess Hai Lan, Mu Qing, Saintess Ceanna Paxton, Archmage Lilliana Valtor, Lin Ruoli, Ya Su, the Yue mother-and-daughter pair, the Su twins, and his maids Kara and Ulriya resided in decadent harmony.

Meanwhile, twenty miles west of Cloud-Mist City, in a rugged, red-rock ravine overlooking the Imperial Military Highway, two separate encampments of fierce, battle-hardened warriors had halted for the evening resupply.

On the eastern side of the ravine fluttered the black-and-blue Leviathan banners of the “Sea Devil” Long Chen—a tall, muscular man with wild blue-black hair, shark-like eyes, and heavy coral-scale battle armor pulsing with Peak Martial King Water-Dragon Qi.

On the western side of the ravine stood the jagged bone-totems of the “Soul Eater” Qin Wu—a gaunt, pale-faced man in dark gray robes whose eyes glowed with eerie green soul-fire and whose cultivation also sat at the Peak Martial King threshold, surrounded by his black-armored desert riders.

For the past ten months since General Bao had descended from the sky to halt their bloody war on Emperor Huang Long’s personal orders, Long Chen and Qin Wu had lived in simmering, bitter frustration.

Emperor Huang Long had summoned both men to the capital outskirts and offered them a simple choice: either die beneath his Dragon Palm for tearing up two imperial prefectures, or serve for two years as vanguard strike commanders against the Rimefrost Imperium and the Rising Sun remnants in exchange for imperial pardons, Eighth-Grade meridian-healing treasures, and the Imperial Court’s help in locating their missing women, Princess Hai Lan and the Fallen Fairy Mu Qing!

Because both Long Chen and Qin Wu still believed that Hai Lan and Mu Qing had simply gone into hiding inside the neutral sanctuary of the Pure Maiden Holy Temple to escape the chaos of their war, both warlords had grudgingly accepted the Emperor’s leash.

That twilight, however, as Long Chen and Qin Wu met in the center of the red-rock ravine to coordinate their march schedule toward Iron-Blood Pass, two cloaked figures descended silently from the high sandstone cliffs above them, radiating the unmistakable, suffocating pressure of two fellow Peak Martial Kings!

“Soul Eater Qin Wu! Sea Devil Long Chen!”

Feng Xiao pulled back his hood, his dark eyes burning with cold fire as Corbin stepped down beside him and tossed the glowing Void-Echo Recording Crystal into the air between the two startled warlords.

“Before you two fools march another mile north to bleed for Emperor Huang Long,” Feng Xiao’s voice cut through the twilight like a drawn sword, “look at where Princess Hai Lan and the Fairy Mu Qing have actually been for the past ten months!”

Ten minutes later, the red-rock ravine was shaking under the combined, apocalyptic fury of four Peak Martial Kings!

*BOOOOM—CRACK!*

Long Chen’s fist slammed straight into a twenty-foot granite boulder, pulverizing the stone into fine powder as blue sea-dragon scales erupted across his neck, while ten yards away, Qin Wu’s dark soul-lantern shrieked with thousands of wailing spirits as green soul-flames tore fissures across the canyon floor!

“That bastard… THAT BASTARD!” Long Chen roared, his shark-like eyes wide with disbelief and madness as he stared at the frozen frame of the crystal projection showing his beloved Sea Princess Hai Lan kneeling devotionally beside Alaric Steele in the snow while wearing a low-cut battle dress and smiling up as Alaric’s hand rested near her cheek! “Hai Lan would rather die than kneel to a human land-dweller! He must be holding the surviving elders of the Sea Dragon Tribe hostage or using a soul-enslavement artifact on her!”

“Mu Qing’s meridians were shattered when she disappeared from the desert!” Qin Wu hissed, his voice sounding like grinding tombstones as green soul-fire poured from his eyes while he stared at the image of the pure, gentle Mu Qing fighting at the Late-Stage Martial King realm beside Alaric and looking at the man with adoring eyes. “He healed her meridians—and used some vile mental curse during the treatment to turn her into his puppet!”

“He did the exact same thing to Elder Yun Lan, Queen Cai Wei, Ya Su—and I suspect he is right here in Cloud-Mist City doing the same to Princess Gu Ling of the Gu Clan!” Feng Xiao snarled, his eight Heavenly Flames flickering wildly under his skin.

“Wait,” Qin Wu’s sharp, suspicious eyes narrowed on Corbin and Feng Xiao. “If this Alaric Steele is hiding inside Cloud-Mist City or Azure Fall City behind the Imperial Consorts and the Gu Clan elders, why haven’t you gone to the Gu Clan’s Half-Step Martial Emperor elders in the city and shown them this crystal?”

“Use your brain, Qin Wu!” Corbin growled darkly. “Does Princess Gu Ling appear anywhere in this recording crystal from the Iron-Cloud Citadel? No! If we walk up to the Gu Clan’s eight Half-Step Martial Emperor elders in Cloud-Mist City without proof that he touched Gu Ling, and accuse the Imperial Consorts’ favored physician of enslaving women, Princess Gu Ling herself—if she is already under his mental hex like Yun Lan and Mu Qing—will deny every word and order her clan elders to execute us on the spot for slandering her honor!”

Feng Xiao gritted his teeth hard, knowing Corbin was completely right.

Eight months ago, when Feng Xiao had merely expressed mild jealousy about Alaric massaging her, Gu Ling had scolded him immediately, and Ling Ying had treated him like dirt! And inside Cloud-Mist City right now sat Princesses Huang Mei and Huang Hua alongside Elder Gu Shan’s eight Half-Step Martial Emperors!

“However,” Long Chen said, a savage, bloodthirsty grin splitting his face as he looked toward the glowing lanterns of Cloud-Mist City twenty miles to the east, “my scouts reported two hours ago that the grand central cathedral of the Pure Maiden Holy Temple sits in the Southern Canal District of Cloud-Mist City—and two days ago, Princess Hai Lan, Mu Qing, and Princess Gu Ling were seen entering that cathedral with Saintess Ceanna to pray without the Gu Clan’s Half-Step Martial Emperor elders following them inside the women-only inner sanctuary!”

“A women-only inner sanctuary?” Feng Xiao’s eyes blazed with sudden, fierce hope. “If the Gu Clan elders and the Royal Guards are stationed outside the cathedral walls while Gu Ling, Hai Lan, Mu Qing, Cai Wei, and Yun Lan are inside with that bastard Alaric—then if the four of us disguise our auras, slip into the temple sanctuary tonight to confront them face-to-face, and shatter whatever mental artifact or hostage token he is holding over them, our women will wake up and help us kill him!”

“Agreed!” Qin Wu, Long Chen, and Corbin nodded in unison.

Not one of the four men suspected for a single second that the rumor Long Chen’s scouts had heard two hours ago—about Hai Lan, Mu Qing, and Gu Ling visiting the Southern Canal Cathedral tonight—had been deliberately leaked by Guildmaster Lin Ruoli’s factors the very hour Alaric’s outer perimeter wards detected Corbin’s and Feng Xiao’s arrival outside the city!

—

That night, a soft autumn mist rolled off the Southern Canal of Cloud-Mist City, wrapping the towering white-marble spires and stained-glass domes of the Pure Maiden Holy Temple in a quiet, sacred glow.

In the outer courtyard of the cathedral, Elder Gu Shan and the Gu Clan elders stood guard alongside the Ling Clan protectors and the Royal Guards of Princesses Huang Mei and Huang Hua, drinking warm tea provided by the temple acolytes—convinced that the princesses and heiresses were attending an all-night autumn blessing ceremony led by the revered Saintess Ceanna Paxton.

Deep inside the innermost core of the cathedral, however, behind three layers of Alaric’s sixth-tier Sound-Severing and Spatial-Isolation Wards, lay the Sanctum of the Great Deity.

The sanctum was divided down the center by a magnificent, floor-to-ceiling partition crafted from Enchanted One-Way Starlight Crystal and carved white marble lattice.

From the outer prayer hall where visitors knelt, one could only see the upper half of the altar chamber through a waist-high window of shimmering crystal—and because of the one-way optical array woven into the crystal by Alaric and Archmage Lilliana Valtor, anyone standing in the outer prayer hall could see only from the chest up of the women seated behind the marble altar balustrade, while everything below their waists and anything standing two feet behind them was completely masked in golden sacred light!

Ten minutes before midnight, four shadowed figures wrapped in high-grade aura-concealing cloaks—Feng Xiao, Corbin, Long Chen, and Qin Wu—bypassed the outer rear garden wall of the cathedral through an intentionally unguarded drainage arch and slipped silently into the outer prayer hall of the inner sanctum!

As the four Peak Martial Kings crept up to the golden prayer rail ten feet in front of the waist-high crystal window, all four men froze, their hearts leaping into their throats.

Directly on the other side of the crystal window, seated side by side along the wide white-marble altar balustrade, were four breathtaking women dressed from the chest up in immaculate, high-collared white-and-gold silk vestments of the Pure Maiden Holy Temple:

On the far left sat Princess Gu Ling of the Gu Clan.

Next to her sat Queen Cai Wei of the Tagor Desert.

Beside Cai Wei sat Princess Hai Lan of the Eastern Sea.

And on the far right sat the Fallen Fairy Mu Qing!

Through the crystal screen, the four women looked ethereally beautiful—their fair cheeks flushed a deep, radiant rose, a light sheen of glistening sweat beading on their foreheads and swan-like necks, and their heavy, voluptuous chests rising and falling rapidly beneath their white silk altar tops as if they were in the middle of an intense spiritual meditation!

What Feng Xiao, Corbin, Long Chen, and Qin Wu could *not* see through the waist-high marble balustrade and the one-way golden light below the crystal window was the reality happening on the other side of the altar:

From the waist down, neither Princess Gu Ling, Queen Cai Wei, Princess Hai Lan, nor Mu Qing was wearing a single thread of clothing!

All four women had their white temple skirts hiked all the way up around their waists, sitting bare-bottomed along the cushioned marble bench with their long, pale, sweat-slicked thighs spread wide open—and standing directly behind them on the soft velvet carpet, flanked silently by a naked Matriarch Lyra Steele, Aunt Cassandra, Saintess Ceanna Paxton, Grand Elder Yun Lan, and the maids Kara and Ulriya, was Archmage Alaric Steele!

Completely naked and radiating his silent, overwhelming dominance, Alaric was currently standing directly behind Princess Gu Ling and Queen Cai Wei—with all nine scorching, thick inches of his rock-hard shaft buried to the absolute hilt inside Gu Ling’s soaking-wet, spasming core from behind, while his left hand slid two thick fingers deep into Queen Cai Wei’s dripping pussy and his right hand reached around to fondle Hai Lan’s and Mu Qing’s bare, trembling thighs!

“Ling’er! Cai Wei!” Feng Xiao whispered urgently from the outer prayer rail, infusing his voice into a compressed sound-transmission directed through the crystal lattice while Long Chen and Qin Wu called out just as desperately: “Hai Lan! Mu Qing!”

On the other side of the crystal screen, as Feng Xiao’s desperate voice echoed in her ears, Princess Gu Ling’s inner walls involuntarily clamped down around Alaric’s thick shaft in a violent, thrilling spasm of pure, corrupted arousal!

Just ten feet in front of her face stood her childhood sweetheart Feng Xiao—alongside the three other “heroes” who had crossed half the continent to “rescue” them—staring at her with eyes full of desperate love and righteous fury!

And right behind her, invisible to the four men, Alaric gripped Gu Ling’s wide, bare hips with both hands, pulled his glistening nine-inch cock almost all the way out of her dripping folds, and slammed it back in to the root with a slow, silent, grinding twist against her cervix while whispering into her ear through his mental link:

‘Look right into their eyes, my little sluts. Tell them why you are here—and if a single one of you lets your voice crack when I bottom out inside you, I’ll leave you aching until dawn.’

Gu Ling bit the inside of her lip for half a second to swallow a filthy moan, her starry eyes glazed with pleasure as she looked straight through the crystal window at Feng Xiao.

“Brother Xiao?” Gu Ling spoke aloud, her crystalline voice echoing clearly through the one-way sound array into the outer prayer hall—steady, cool, and carrying an unmistakable tone of distant irritation even as Alaric’s hips rolled slowly and deeply inside her wet passage behind the altar. “What are you doing sneaking into the inner sanctum of the Pure Maiden Holy Temple at midnight with three armed men? And why have you deserted your post on the northern border?”

Feng Xiao stared at her in stunned disbelief, pointing a trembling finger at Queen Cai Wei, Hai Lan, and Mu Qing sitting right beside her.

“Ling’er, don’t be afraid to speak the truth!” Feng Xiao pleaded earnestly, pressing his hands against the outer prayer rail ten feet away. “I found out everything! This man found a recording crystal from Azure Fall City! I know that the scholar Alaric who massaged you at the Yao Clan’s Secret Realm is actually a foreign Archmage who captured Elder Yun Lan, Queen Cai Wei, and Ya Su! Tell me, Ling’er—what hostage or mental curse is he using to force you and Cai Wei to obey him?! We four Peak Martial Kings are right here to break his spell and rescue all of you tonight!”

Right beside Gu Ling, Queen Cai Wei let out a low, mocking laugh as Alaric smoothly slid his thick, nectar-coated shaft out of Gu Ling’s fluttering core, stepped six inches to the right behind the altar balustrade, and rammed all nine inches straight to the hilt inside Cai Wei’s scorching-hot, soaking-wet desert queen pussy!

*SCHLUCK!*

Cai Wei’s golden eyes flashed with blinding, animalistic ecstasy as her inner walls stretched around Alaric’s massive girth, her bare toes curling against the marble floor behind the balustrade while Lyra and Yun Lan knelt behind her to kiss her bare lower back and fondle her heavy breasts beneath her loose white altar top!

Looking straight at Feng Xiao as Alaric began a slow, deep, heavy rhythm inside her womb, Queen Cai Wei spoke in a rich, scornful voice:

“Rescue me, Feng Xiao? From what—from finally having a real man who doesn’t leave me rotting in a desert for years while he chases flames like a headless fly?” Cai Wei sneered coldly, her chest heaving visibly as Alaric’s powerful thrusts rocked her curvy hips against the padded altar rail. “No one put a spell on me or Yun Lan! We serve our Lord here at the temple because a single night in his presence is worth more than ten lifetimes waiting for a naive boy like you! Take a look at yourself—hiding in the shadows like a rat while claiming you came to save us!”

“Hai Lan! Tell me this is a lie!” Long Chen roared in agony, slamming his fist against the prayer rail as he stared at the Sea Princess. “Tell me he is threatening the Sea Dragon Tribe!”

“Mu Qing, look at me!” Qin Wu begged hoarsely, his green soul-fire trembling violently. “I crossed the Eastern Sea and fought the entire empire to find a cure for your meridians!”

Just as Long Chen and Qin Wu spoke, Alaric pulled out of a shuddering, biting-her-lip Cai Wei, stepped down the line behind the marble balustrade, and lifted Princess Hai Lan’s right leg onto the cushioned rail while bending Mu Qing’s bare lower half right beside her—driving his thick, glistening cock straight into Hai Lan’s gushing, velvet-tight core while sliding three fingers deep into Mu Qing’s soaking passage at the exact same time!

“*Hmph—!*” Hai Lan’s fair cheeks turned bright scarlet as she braced her hands delicately on top of the marble balustrade in full view of Long Chen, hiding the fact that her bare hips were being impaled from behind by nine inches of scorching manhood!

“Go back to the ocean, Long Chen,” Princess Hai Lan said coldly, her voice trembling slightly with the sheer, overwhelming pleasure of Alaric’s deep strokes scraping her cervix while she looked her former suitor dead in the eye. “You butchered tens of thousands of innocent people in your madness and brought ruin to our waters. The Great Deity and Saintess Ceanna took me in, purified my bloodline, and gave me peace. I never want to see your bloodstained face again!”

And right beside her, as Alaric switched seamlessly into Mu Qing’s tight, sopping-wet core—making the Fallen Fairy’s soft breasts bounce beneath her white collar with every deep, silent thrust while Saintess Ceanna stood behind her whispering dirty encouragement into her ear—Mu Qing looked at Qin Wu with cold, disgusted pity:

“You are a soul-eating monster who slaughters the weak, Qin Wu,” Mu Qing said, biting back a high-pitched whimper as Alaric hit her deepest spot and forced a hot gush of clear nectar down her hidden thighs onto the velvet carpet. “My meridians were healed months ago by our Lord’s divine grace… *haa*… If you or any of these men take a single step closer to this altar, I will personally activate the temple bell to summon Elder Gu Shan’s eight Half-Step Martial Emperors and the Imperial Princesses’ guards from the courtyard outside!”

In the outer prayer hall, Feng Xiao, Long Chen, and Qin Wu stood frozen as if struck by heavenly lightning, their faces pale as death as the four women they loved more than life itself looked at them with cold contempt—while secretly taking Alaric’s massive cock and fingers behind the altar rail less than ten feet away!

“Don’t listen to their words!” Corbin hissed urgently, grabbing Feng Xiao’s and Long Chen’s shoulders as his sharp eyes noticed the flushed skin, the rhythmic, synchronized rocking of the four women’s shoulders behind the waist-high marble screen, and the heavy, trembling breaths in their voices. “Something is wrong behind that altar screen! Look at their faces and their breathing—Alaric Steele is either hiding right behind that one-way crystal or controlling them with a close-range soul array right now! Break the crystal screen before they ring the bell!”

Snapping out of their heartbreak into desperate, explosive rage, Feng Xiao, Long Chen, Qin Wu, and Corbin lunged forward simultaneously toward the waist-high crystal screen—unleashing four concentrated, silent Peak Martial King strikes to shatter the partition and grab the women:

“Eight-Flames Condensed Finger!”

“Deep-Sea Dragon Claw!”

“Soul-Shackling Ghost Hand!”

“Tyrant-Cleaving Sword Qi!”

Yet the very instant their four attacks touched the outer surface of the Starlight Crystal partition, a blinding, eight-layered runic matrix of silver-violet spatial light and golden holy fire—pre-charged by Alaric, Archmage Lilliana Valtor, Saintess Ceanna, Kara, and Ulriya—detonated outward from the crystal wall while the great bronze alarm bells atop the cathedral spires suddenly began to toll across the entire Southern Canal District!

*BOOOOOM—CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!*

“An ambush! The entire cathedral is aSeventh-Tier Spatial-Reflection Trap!” Corbin shouted in horror as their four Peak Martial King strikes were reflected back at twice their speed by Alaric’s Spatial Mirror Matrix, blasting all four men backward through the marble pillars of the outer prayer hall with blood spraying from their mouths!

At the exact same second, outside in the courtyard, the terrifying, sky-crushing auras of Elder Gu Shan and the seven other Half-Step Martial Emperor elders of the Gu Clan—joined by the Royal Guard Half-Step Martial Emperors—erupted into the night sky as Elder Gu Shan’s thunderous voice roared across the temple grounds:

“Bold thieves dare to intrude upon the Pure Maiden Holy Temple while Princess Gu Ling and the Imperial Princesses are at prayer?! Seal the district and kill them without mercy!”

Behind the intact, one-way crystal screen of the inner sanctum—completely invisible to the outside world—Alaric didn’t even bother looking at the four bleeding protagonists scrambling through the shattered outer doors to flee the incoming Half-Step Martial Emperors.

Instead, pulling Princess Gu Ling back onto his throbbing shaft from behind while Cai Wei, Yun Lan, Hai Lan, and Mu Qing eagerly surrounded his hips to kiss and lick every inch of his skin, Alaric buried a massive, scalding load of his seed deep into Gu Ling’s trembling womb—letting Feng Xiao’s beloved White Moonlight climax silently in his arms as the sounds of her own clan elders chasing Feng Xiao through the streets echoed across Cloud-Mist City!