The illegitimate son of a secondary branch of the Tan family knelt on a cushion before a fox statue, his face smeared with mud and someone else's blood. He wore an air of devotion, but his brows were drawn low. If anyone had knelt before him, they would have seen the half-grown wolf cub lurking beneath, dreaming of chewing through everyone's bones.
Tan Que was reborn.
In his previous life, this very statue had brought good fortune to the Tan family's eldest son. Tan Que had schemed at every turn, only to die without a body intact. When he opened his eyes again, he never expected to get the chance to live a second life...
That year, Tan Que was seventeen.
The incense burned, its smoke rising straight into the air.
A hot fleck of ash drifted into his open palm.
It worked.
Over the next ten years, Master Tan suffered a stroke, the eldest young master went to prison, and the second young master died a tragic death.
Tan Que got what he wanted and rose with unstoppable force.
By the time he was twenty-nine, every power in Dongcheng had come under the name "Que."
He thought he had finally paved the way for himself in this life.
Then, one night, someone slipped a letter into his pocket without a sound.
A letter of divorce. - Hu Chan
He scoffed and paid it no mind, casually flicking his lighter to set it aflame.
Smoke curled into the air, leaving a patch of ash on the ground. He stepped through it and climbed into his car.
Then trouble broke out at the docks.
His business was intercepted.
Even the foreign merchants who had always been compliant started giving him the runaround.
He tried to figure out where he had gone wrong.
At last, the Tan family's old clan tutor, who kept watch over the ancestral hall, came trembling to see him.
"Third Master, could it be... you've forgotten something?"
Tan Que rubbed the incense-burn scar on his palm and remembered.
He turned and knelt before the fox statue again.
He stayed kneeling for three days.
Three days later, the smoke before the fox statue suddenly shifted, as if something had brushed it aside.
A foot stepped out, its bones slender, a red cord looped around its ankle.
"What is the master of the house doing?"
Master of the house...
The old tutor said that the year he offered incense, Tan Que had broken the rules.
He had been bound to the fox by a red thread and promised in marriage.
It was this marriage that had kept him rising higher and higher all these years.
Tan Que suppressed the fury that had nearly overwhelmed him after three days on his knees.
He looked up. The person before him wore a moon-white robe that had long since gone out of fashion, like a bodhisattva who had spent ages enshrined in a temple and finally stepped down from its altar. The bitter scent of incense still clung to him.
Tan Que fixed his gaze on the fluffy white trim at his collar and said, word by word,
"I've come to apologize to my wife."
He asked in return, "What could the master of the house have done wrong?"
Tan Que moved forward, shuffling half a step on his knees, his chin barely brushing the hand hanging at the other's side.
He lowered himself, obediently pressing close to the belly hidden beneath the robe.
"If I was wrong, then I was wrong. My wife may punish me as he sees fit."
"Heh..."
He laughed, and a fox tail slipped out from beneath his robe.
It brushed Tan Que's Adam's apple, neither lightly nor forcefully.
Then, without warning, it whipped down against the fine fabric of Tan Que's trousers.
A sharp crack, like a slap.
"Then, master of the house..."
"Could you kneel a little more properly?"
A Guide to Teasing Foxes (a pure indulgence in personal kinks):
1. The story has a dominant male lead. Que is the top! Que is the top!
2. Both leads are virgins. In the previous life, the fox and the Tan family's eldest son had no intimate relationship whatsoever.
3. Tan Que puts self-interest first. He knows when to bend and when to stand firm, and will use anything at hand to pave his way. The fox seems gentle, but is actually old-fashioned and conservative, and will sternly teach Third Master Tan to uphold his duties as a husband.
5. Later on, there will be pregnancy and childbirth. This is not a dual-pregnancy story.
Theme: A husband's duties
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