Somehow, I find myself sitting in a comfortable chair, completely confused.

A beautiful red-haired woman is giving me shoulder rubs and asking when I started my body cultivation. Of course, I’m deflecting away from that information, as much as possible.

All when my original intention was to use this back-alley street as just a pathway to the main area.

Alright… I should probably get going. Though, she seems to be getting into a more comfortable mood.

And this massage is pretty amazing. Like, I have a healing constitution that keeps my body in top shape, but somehow, she’s finding knots I didn’t even know were there.

Could be the stress.

Might be a good idea to just work some of this out now.

Sigh.

No.

I need to check on the old man and the body of Old Rong.

…

I’m definitely coming back here, later.

…

“Hey Shi? Thank you for the amazing massage, though I will need to get moving.”

“Ah.”

She slowly removes her hands from my shoulders and moves to the front of me.

“My apologies, Young Master James, I hope it wasn’t too unsatisfactory.” Backing up slightly, she folds her arms, a slightly nervous look crossing her face.

“Nonononono, it was really amazing. Seriously. I may ask you to do that every time we meet, it was so good.” Her face instantly relaxes at my words, making me wonder if it was a trick.

Wait a second. Shouldn’t this cost something? Damn, I may have been tricked. Might as well ask straight out.

“Just to check, how much will you need me to pay for this? I’m still unfamiliar with how everything works.” I start looking for the money I brought with me.

I see her becoming a bit confused. Though, her face begins to turn into one I’ve seen on numerous women now, but certainly different from the previous ones I’ve seen from her.

She crosses one arm just below her chest and the other reaches to hold the side of her face.

Her chin slightly tilts up and a strange smirk grows upon her lips.

“Oh my, oh my. You are a cute one, indeed.”

Oh no.

My chastity is in danger.

I feel my eyes widen and heat come to my cheeks.

She continues with a full confident and flirty smile, now.

“There’s no need for someone of your status to have to worry about that for something like this, Master.”

Shiver.

She slowly leans down toward me, her dress drooping down perilously low, in all the right places. Revealing just how prominent certain aspects of her are.

Cooing in my ear, she says, “And even if it was… I’d give it to you any way, or anywhere.”

Gulp.

Because of how intently my eyes may or may not have been glued to her dress in that moment, I may have pulled a little intuitive information from it.

Yep, that dress was specifically engineered to drop in those areas and just barely hid the tips, based on her body type and size.

Alright. Time to break away from the obvious temptations and get to work. Seriously… or I will MOST DEFINITELY lose something tonight.

As I tune back in, my glazed eyes and scan just barely catches her leaning back with a self-congratulatory grin and a fist pump. My scan helps me to read her lips, saying, “I still got it.”

As she notices my gaze, I look toward her arm, which blurs absurdly quickly and returns to a normal position.

She now has a sweet smile on, as if she’s hiding the extreme abilities that I just saw.

It looks like my guard crush is a lot more than I thought she was. She definitely is a cultivator.

I’m tempted to use my intuitive scan on her, but a thought crosses my mind.

What if some cultivator abilities notify the user about when someone detects or has knowledge of them? I better be careful about who I use that on. Even as a lesser version. And if I start thinking of some of their secrets and they are reading my mind or actions, that could go badly.

Very badly.

Her voice interrupts my thoughts, “Young Master James. If you are okay with it, would I be able to switch out of these clothes, to my normal clothing?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course.” I say quickly, broken out of my thoughts.

She nods and heads into the next room.

It takes only a moment for her to come back in the room with her previous clothing. The only change I can see, is that she has a yellow stone ring on her left pinky finger, on now. Still looks amazing.

“Thank you for waiting, Young Master.”

“Of course, thanks for the help. Hopefully, you can guide me through this area, as I was hoping to use this back area as safe passage to get to city center.”

She seems to seriously think about it for a bit. “Huh, that’s a bit unorthodox, but I can see the value of doing that. Especially, if you have no guards with you.”

Oh, right. I should bring out the spider.

“Just so you know, I actually have a guard. It’s a tamed giant spider. Would that still be okay to bring through here?”

She blinks.

“Tamed giant spider?”

“Yeah. I work with Gong from the Maroon Spiders; we are the recent allies of your group.”

Silence.

Further silence.

She gulps and stutters out, “W-w-would you happen to be the alchemist that healed some of our ladies, the other day?”

“Yep, that’s me.”

She nods slowly, taking a deep breath through her nose. Breathing out of her mouth.

Pause.

She gives me a dazzling, but soft smile, “I greatly apologize Senior James, could you excuse me for a moment?”

Stiffly, she walks into the next room.

I see her go into the next room and via my scan (which I always keep on), she crouches and starts hyperventilating, wrapping her arms around her legs.

Ooookay. That’s definitely not worrying.

I’d rather if this didn’t escalate and we could get moving. I’ll just carefully walk in there and see why she’s acting like this.

Slowly and silently walking up to the entryway of the next room, I can see she still immediately tenses up and looks toward the door.

She sensed me? I know I was practically soundless while walking.

She definitely has to be a cultivator.

I didn’t imagine that I’d get to know one like this, though.

I knock on the side of the entrance, without peeking in. “Hey, are you alright in there? Can I come in?”

She instantaneously gets to her feet. Literally blurred and she looks like it had never happened.

“…Yes, please do.”

Rubbing the back of my neck, “Ahem. Sorry for the sudden news, I didn’t mean to get you caught up in anything.”

Dropping my hand to my side, I attempt to catch her eyes, which are pointed downward.

“Hey… I know this might be a bit of a tough question, but why did you react the way you did? You seemed a bit nervous as you left the room and suddenly left, after I told you about my group. Was there something wrong?”

When I mentioned her being nervous, her eyes shake. But, after I finished, her lips have tightened and she is now looking over to the right.

She opens her mouth and breathes in, as if she is going to say something… but then stops with a sigh. Putting a hand to her head, she starts massaging her temple.

“Ugh, I’m not even sure if I should be mentioning this, but I’ve never been good at politics, so I might as well say it… You are something of a high priority right now for the group. The higher ups seem to really value the help you’ve given and want to draw you into our group, because of the cure you gave us.

“Everyone has been notified to keep an eye out for you in the next few months. Most likely, they are looking out for you outside the main show street, since you were walking this way. They likely aren’t expecting you to actually be inside our alleys.”

She breathes out a sigh, as if being further exasperated.

“Also, it’s definitely a weird situation. They even told the girls that if you want higher level privileges, you could ask for it, no questions asked.

“In fact, one of my bosses said the order from Master Wu was, and I quote, ‘If you see him on the show street, I want you to grab him, jump his bone, and make him never want to leave this section again.’ End quote.”

…

Most excellent, scanning ability… is this really the safe route? Because, this seems far more dangerous for multiple reasons.

This may also have been the wrong time to make the commitment to have my first time with someone I care about.

…I could always go back on it?

No. I should stick to it.

Fuckin’ A.

Sigh.