Heaven, Earth, Me

Ayanduin looked at Kali with a squint. He stated. "Kali Dravory, while I understand you are angry that your lover has been suffering, you are venting on the wrong person. I just sold the poison. I didn't do anything else. Would you go and destroy an alchemy shop because one of the pills they sold damaged Yasenia?"

Kali crossed her arms and snorted. "Wrong. You were not at fault for selling the poison. You are at fault for knowing that we are here to find you but still waiting and not coming out to sell us an antidote. At first, we wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. However, your greedy reaction is all I need to see to know your true intentions. You did NOT wait to come out because you were cautious about our true intentions. You just didn't come out because you wanted us to be more desperate and make a profit out of us!"

Kali waved her hand, sending a wave of thorns toward Ayanduin out of anger. Of course, Ayanduin easily countered the attack with a light palm strike. Kali stood up and said. "You now have two choices, Ayanduin. First option: you resist, and while we won't come out unscathed, you will eventually fall to us and perish. Then, we just take what we want from your corpse, and you are done with it."

Ayanduin asked, his face not reacting. "Quite an interesting option. What if I don't like that one?"

Kali snorted. "You are still a sixth realm cultivator. I will sell to you an antidote to your parasite. However, that antidote will only last for a week. This means that until I feel like forgiving you, you will live with that parasite inside you, but dormant. Of course, try to do something funny in the future, that antidote and its prescription disappears, and you will eventually die being eaten inside out."

Ayanduin sighed. "I admit it. You managed to trap me in quite an impressive manner. However, what makes you so sure that I won't find an alchemist that has a remedy for this? You are not the only alchemist under the heavens."

Kali smiled coldly. "But I am the only Parasite Alchemist under this heavens. Do you want to risk going to unknown star systems and find a cure? Be my guest. However, I am telling you that Body Cultivators are basically extinct outside this Solar System. Not to mention, Parasites are taboo basically everywhere because, unlike Body Cultivators, the rest have difficulty resisting them."

The merchant crossed his arms and looked at Kali for a few seconds. "You really thought this out."

Kali repeated. "Regardless of how much I hate you, you are a sixth realm cultivator. If you are given a single chance, just one, to retaliate, I am dead." Her tone did not become warmer in the slightest, continuing in the same chilling way. 

Ayanduin sighed and got thoughtful. No one in the room interrupted, and they just looked at him. Eventually, he asked. "What is your purpose? After you get control over me, what do you want to do? Destroy your enemies? Force me to fight somewhere? Or use me to create connections?"

Kali shook her head. "Ayanduin, you are worthless other than providing an antidote for Yasenia. Everything you can do, we can do. We could trap you, and we can trap others. You are just the holder of something we want." The fox stood up and commented. "Later, you can come with us or something and become our merchant. That will be up to Yasenia because if it were up to me, you would be suffering and rotting in a cell for the rest of your pitiful existence. Now, hand us your spatial ring."

Ayanduin smiled. "Well, everything did indeed go according to your plans except one thing. I currently don't have the algae."

Kali sneered. "As if that wasn't obvious. Hand me your spatial ring; the parasites will start taking effect in three minutes, and believe me, you want the concoction to make them dormant before that."

Her actions were confusing. "Huh? What do you mean? I told you that I don't have the algae, right? Why do you want my ring?"

Yasenia spoke at this time. "Well, compensation. We are going to take a few of your treasures for ourselves."

"Ha?" Ayanduin snorted. "As if that's something that I will do! I agree to give you that thing for free if you want. However, don't think about stealing my treasures for a single second! Do you know how many important things I have in this spatial ring? If I lose this, I also become vulnerable against the other Undying Monarch Body Realm cultivators."

Kali looked at him and spoke. "Two minutes and ten seconds."

The Undying Monarch Realm was baffled. "You really want to plunder my treasures?" 

Kali answered faintly. "Sadly for you, my lover, who you wronged, is a Dragon. And even more sadly for you, my lover is especially greedy among Dragons. So, yeah, we want your treasures. If not, what was the meaning of our long stay in this World? Our children have probably grown so much, and we have even missed several important events in their early lives!"

Kali sighed. "Everything because instead of appearing in front of us since the beginning, the ultra-powerful cultivator decided to hide and be greedy~. Now, you'll pay. Fifty seconds, Ayanduin."

Ayanduin gritted his teeth and looked at his ring. Then, he took a deep breath and said. "Okay. You can take everything, but you need to leave me a bit of room as well. I need, and now I am speaking sincerely, my Body Cultivation Manual and the large red box in the ring. Everything else, you can have it."

Kali looked at Yasenia, and the dragoness pondered. As time approached closer to the limit Kali said, Ayanduin became more restless. "Hey, junior, you should've heard the saying, 'even rabbits bite when cornered,' right? I am a bit more powerful than a rabbit, so you might not want to corner me so much!"

Yasenia smiled and asked. "If I wait until the last second, will you give me that red box as well?"

Ayanduin instantly understood that what Yasenia was doing was the same as he was planning on doing, and he couldn't help but bite down. 'Karma is really fickle, heh.' 

The dragoness shrugged. "Okay, we'll take everything except those two things. The ring!"

"Promise me!" Ayanduin spoke. "This time, I need your promise."

Yasenia nodded. "As long as the contents of the box are the same now as they were before our conversation, I promise to take everything other than the red box."

Ayanduin rolled his eyes and spoke. "I have not been able to connect with the ring. How could I have changed it?" Then, he flicked his spatial ring, and Kali flicked a pill toward him. 

Ayanduin took the pill and gave it a sniff. Feeling that it was safe and left with no other choice, he swallowed it. 

Kali nodded. "We have a deal." Then, she sighed. "To be honest with you, Ayanduin…"

Looked at the fox's face, he asked, somber. "This is not the antidote, right?"

The foxkin blinked. "Huh? No, it is. As much as I hate you, not a single word that I've said is a lie. What I was going to say was that the parasite is a bit worse than you imagine it." 

Confused about this, Ayanduin asked. "What do you mean?"

Kali spoke. "If you had allowed it to trigger, which I was honestly hoping for, the parasite would take root in your soul. Unlike now, where it is nibbling at the corners of it and doing very little damage, once a certain time passes, the parasite goes through a metamorphosis and changes to match the soul energy that you have. Using it to trick your own body into not finding it harmful, the parasite enters your soul and goes to its center, eating and eating and growing until, well, you die."

The merchant couldn't help but shudder once. "That's quite malicious."

"Right? Imagine if I had thrown you the parasite booster pill instead of the antidote! Hahaha."

Kali's laugh, although gentle-sounding, felt like the evil laugh of a demonic woman for Ayanduin. 

"Really…" Ayanduin sighed. "I don't know if doing that deal in the Secret Realm was worth it. Sigh." 

Meanwhile, Yasenia was looking into Ayanduin's ring with a large smile and a wagging tail. "Ohhh! So many things! How much is this… One, two, three, four… Five billion Sunderials! That's worth fifty million purple crystals! Wow! Heaven Ranked items in the hundreds… Earth Ranked ones in the tens of thousands… Nice, nice. What is this? You even have a Transcendent Ranked Spear? That's great! Evelyn will love this spear."

The dragoness continued looking while Ayanduin looked on with a bleeding heart. "Can you not list everything you are stealing from me? You know, I usually carry around thirty percent of the treasures I own with me."

Yasenia blinked a few times. "Thirty? I want the other seventy."

Ayanduin looked at the ceiling. "Can you give me a bit of room to breathe?"

The dragoness hummed. "Okay. I don't want the other seventy percent…" 

Ayanduin squinted. "For real?"

"Yes…" Yasenia smiled widely. "I want twenty percent of that seventy percent! You know, half and half!"

The man sighed. "No. You really have stolen enough. The treasures that you have there, some of them at least, I have taken a few millennia to collect. Yasenia, please give this old man a bit of face." 

The dragoness clicked her tongue. "Sure. However, you'll work for me until I… No. Until my lovers forgive you." 

Ayanduin sighed. "Well, sure. I can work for another person for the first time in a few thousand years. It's not like you are a bad person to follow as long as I am honest with you, right?"

The dragoness chuckled happily. "Exactly. Getting rich is nice; getting rich together is nicer~. Treasures for all!"

The man crossed his arms and smiled faintly. "Honestly. I would find this quite endearing if I didn't know that you are a murderous dragon. Also, having a few bugs in my body makes me feel like puking all the time, but well. Tsk… My mood is ruined again."

Yasenia spoke, this time honestly. "Senior Ayanduin. I am honest in my intentions to form a close partnership with you. While we've had our differences, and honestly, you would've died if the situation was different, you are someone who knows how to go around and someone with enough strength to be substantial for my family."

"I won't fight for you, Yasenia." 

The dragoness saw Ayanduin's serious face and smiled, confident. "Perhaps not now, but I am sure that I can eventually convince you to become my ally. Eventually, senior Ayanduin, as long as you follow me, I will give you a chance to make amends with everyone around me." Yasenia blinked. "Well, good luck with my Mom."

Ayanduin hummed. "She is also a sixth realm cultivator, right?"

Yasenia stood up and turned around to leave, flicking Ayanduin his ring back together with a word. "Wrong~."

"Huh?" Ayanduin recalled their conversation, and a thought formed in his head that he almost immediately denied. 'No… It should be impossible, right?'