“Hm?”

A muffled sound slipped out from the room as Roland Ashby slowly opened his eyes.

“So soft?”

Still half-asleep, his hand moved on instinct and gave it two light squeezes. A warm, plush softness traveled straight to his brain.

“…Wait. That’s not right.”

Roland jolted awake in an instant. His heart dropped hard, and he looked down into his arms.

There, draped over him, was a woman with a stunning figure, sleeping against his chest like she had no clue the sky was about to fall. Her breathing was light, even, peaceful.

Her face was delicate beyond words, the kind of beauty that looked unreal, like she had stepped straight out of a painting.

And what hit even harder was that her body was fully within his line of sight. Skin smooth as polished jade, fair and velvety, curves rising and dipping in all the right places. No matter how you looked at it, she was absolutely top-tier.

“What the hell happened?”

Roland was completely dumbfounded.

How did he end up in a hotel?

And why did he wake up with an extra woman in bed?

A sharp, drilling pain stabbed through his head, making his temples throb. At the same time, scattered pieces of memory began forcing themselves back together.

This was Jiangzhou City.

He had come down from Guigu and arrived here.

Just yesterday, the backlash of Dragon Fortune had flared up again, and he had needed alcohol fast to numb it.

So he went to a bar and drank quite a bit of strong liquor.

Then, after he was already pretty gone, a drunk woman had staggered over and clinked glasses with him…

After that, both of them had gotten wasted.

And when he opened his eyes again, they were here.

Roland Ashby’s expression turned a little stiff.

“Yeah… this is bad.”

Before he came down the mountain, his master had handed him four marriage contracts. The old man had arranged those matches for him long ago.

Back then, the Four Great Families had begged the old man to alter their fates and shield them from heaven’s reckoning. The marriage contracts, along with the properties tied to them, were the payment they had offered. And now, that “payment” had become something Roland had to personally collect. More than that, it was tied to the life-or-death crisis of Ghost Valley itself.

Ghost Valley had borrowed the dragon fortune hidden inside the Dragon Tomb to help certain people hide from destiny, to change their lives against the natural order. Obviously, that kind of thing didn’t come free. The backlash had been building for years.

Then, only a few days ago, the Dragon Tomb changed.

Both his master and Roland were running out of time.

They had to find nine women born with the Heavenly Phoenix body and complete the Rite of Nine Phoenixes Paying Homage to the Dragon, only then could they mend what was broken between heaven and earth and drag everything back onto the right track. Otherwise, the backlash would keep coming, and sooner or later, Ghost Valley would be finished.

These marriage contracts were part of that plan.

That was why he had come to Jiangzhou City in the first place—to collect an old debt.

But who would’ve thought… the second he got here, before he could collect anything, he’d already landed himself in a romantic mess.

Roland let out a slow breath. He carefully moved his arm away and lifted the blanket bit by bit.

The moment he saw the white sheet stained with that striking red blossom, his body froze.

His heart dropped.

This woman… it had actually been her first time.

Now what?

If it had been anyone else, maybe he could still figure something out. But this—

This was different.

Roland lowered his eyes and looked at her face.

She was breathtakingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that could ruin cities and wreck lives without even trying. Delicate features, graceful and soft, but with a sharp pull that made people unable to look away.

Roland had seen plenty of women in his life, but even among all of them, very few could compare to her.

At that moment, Adriana Caldwell’s eyelashes trembled lightly.

Still half-asleep, she vaguely sensed that something was off. Her brows knitted faintly as she slowly opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw was a face right in front of her—a little roguish, annoyingly handsome, and way too close.

Then her gaze met Roland’s.

His eyes were deep, unreadable.

Her pupils tightened.

And in that instant, the air in the room seemed to lock solid.

Silence hung in the room for a few seconds.

Then—

“Ah...!”

A sharp scream ripped through the stillness.

Adriana Caldwell shot upright at once, clutching the bedsheet tight around herself as she shrank into the corner of the bed. Her face was pale, her eyes full of panic as she stared at Roland Ashby like he was some kind of monster.

“You... who are you? Why are you here?”

Roland frowned, then let out a dry breath. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking that? Why are you in my room?”

Adriana froze for a second.

Confusion flashed across her pretty face, but it didn’t last long. Almost immediately, she seemed to remember something, and her expression changed hard.

Oh no.

She had to have drunk too much last night and gone into the wrong room.

Almost instinctively, she looked down at the sheet wrapped around her.

The second she saw that plum-blossom-like stain on it, her whole body went rigid.

Her mind blanked on the spot.

A trace of fear surfaced on her face. Bit by bit, a thin mist gathered in her eyes. Her lashes trembled, and when she looked back at Roland, her eyes were already red.

Her voice shook badly.

“You... how could you do this to me...”

Roland gave a small laugh, casual to the point of being a little infuriating.

“It’s not like I wanted this either,” he said. “I was drunk last night too. Besides, a man and a woman alone in one room... if something happened, that’s hardly shocking, right?”