Pretext (Bonus Update)

Top floor of Fan Tower, Luo Capital.

Gu Chengyin held onto the railing, casting his eyes downward.

The hour of Xu was precisely the most enchanting time in Luo Capital.

Along both sides of the main street, three thousand six hundred silk lanterns lit up one after another, simmering the entire long street into flowing amber.

Beneath the lights were endless carriages and horses. Those with fragrant nanmu wood cabins, silver-chased wheel hubs, and hanging spotted bamboo curtains belonged to the tea merchants of Jiangnan.

Those inlaid with mother-of-pearl, painted with gold lacquer, and hanging gilded bells from the carriage eaves were the shipping gangs of the Eastern Sea.

The horses were Hequ horses. When their horseshoes struck the bluestone slabs, what splashed up was not dust, but the crisp sound of gold.

The shops on both sides of the street had not yet put up their shutter boards.

At the silk shop to the east, the clerks were draping newly arrived cloud brocade onto the racks. Shaken out bolt by bolt, they looked like waterfalls cut from the evening glow.

At the cosmetics shop to the west, the female proprietor stood personally at the door, holding an enamel box to let noblewomen sample the fragrance, worth thirty strings of cash per tael.

Further away, the storyteller in the teahouse was striking his gavel, while the pipa strings of the singing girls in the taverns were moistened by the smell of alcohol, their tones as soft and sweet as candied lotus root.

Beneath Fan Tower, it was even harder to take a single step.

Young ladies wearing veiled hats stopped before the jewelry stalls, unable to tear themselves away from silver filigree hairpins inlaid with lapis lazuli.

Foreign merchants in short-sleeved jackets were haggling. A bolt of tribute Samarkand brocade was bargained down from eighty strings of cash to sixty-two, with a string of glazed beads thrown in for free.

The old man selling sugar paintings scooped up melted malt sugar. With a flick of his wrist, a spreading phoenix appeared. Children watched on tiptoe, their drool about to drip onto their bibs.

Then there was the flower market. In the twelfth lunar month, Luo Capital insisted on cultivating spring peonies. Forced to bloom in greenhouses, each stem was wrapped in rice paper. Ten strings of cash could buy the arrogance of half a spring.

Everything from the two capitals and thirteen commanderies of Great Luo could be found here.

Even the unimaginable could be found in Luo Capital.

Now, Gu Chengyin stood on the very top floor.

Fan Tower beneath his feet should have been the most dazzling pearl in this prosperous age.

But tonight, this pearl had its luster artificially erased.

The reason was simply that Lin Qingyan had moved in.

Yet Gu Chengyin had no interest in the bustling prosperity before his eyes.

He was still pondering the absurdity of the day.

Logically speaking, being treated specially by a fairy like Lin Qingyan should be an honor great enough to make one's ancestral tombs smoke.

She was aloof and self-possessed, untainted by the mortal world. If she spared anyone an extra half-glance, it would be enough for that person to remember for a lifetime.

And what Lin Qingyan gave him was far more than an extra half-glance.

However, using a method like rendering him unconscious... wasn't that a bit too special?

Even now, Gu Chengyin still could not remember what had happened.

He only remembered his vision going black, and when he woke up, he was resting on Lin Qingyan's lap.

She looked down at him, her usually cold eyes resembling the first pool of spring water melting after an early snow.

Lin Qingyan said she had accidentally shocked him unconscious.

But for a Foundation Establishment cultivator to be accidentally knocked out by a Golden Core cultivator, yet wake up with undamaged true qi and uninjured meridians...

There wasn't even a red mark on the back of his neck. With such precise control, it didn't look like an accident at all.

It seemed more like a deliberate accident.

Moreover, Lin Qingyan's expression afterward was too strange.

Satiated.

Gu Chengyin thought for a long time and could only use this word.

When Lin Qingyan looked at him, there was a strange light in her eyes, like a cat that had stolen fish from the counter, satiated and carrying an unconcealable smugness.

When they were alone, she took the initiative to approach him for no reason, just pressing close, their clothes rubbing, breathing the same air.

When he looked directly at her, her ears would turn red. The redness spread from her earlobes to the auricles, then seeped down the side of her neck, like rice paper meeting cinnabar.

Lin Qingyan also unconsciously licked her lips. It wasn't frequent, just three or five times, all when they were alone.

Gu Chengyin was not an ignorant youth.

He knew that while he was unconscious, Lin Qingyan must have done something.

And it was something enough to make an aloof and self-possessed Golden Core fairy reveal a satiated expression afterward.

Something that caused her tolerance of him to skyrocket, even faintly showing a state of dependence.

The absurdity of this problem lay in the fact that: if he thought in a certain direction, the answer was ready to be revealed.

But that was too absurd.

She was Lin Qingyan, after all.

She was Jingzhe of the Celestial Master's Mansion, Luo Zhao's aunt.

A person whose very inner demons were obsessed with replacing her empress sister.

A person whose emotional cognition was so chaotic that she needed to rely on transactions to define relationships.

How could she...

No.

What if?

What if Lin Qingyan really used some method he didn't know to confirm something, to obtain something?

And what if that something happened to be the desire she had always suppressed and avoided, something she was unwilling to admit even to herself?

What if she wasn't giving him special treatment, but rather...

Gu Chengyin snuffed out this thought.

Because a more terrifying deduction immediately followed: if that were true, what should he do?

Right now their relationship was good, so naturally there was no issue.

But what about the future?

Women could not be viewed through logic.

In his previous life, Gu Chengyin had seen too much.

Shrewd and capable female entrepreneurs could sign the most demanding clauses in gambling agreements for love.

Calm and rational female lawyers, upon discovering their husbands' infidelity, would not first think to divide assets, but instead ask, "How is she better than me?"

When a romantic obsession took over, IQ would drop accordingly; nothing in the world was more important than love.

And the relationship between him and Lin Qingyan had never been simply about whether they got along or not.

It was a transaction.

Although this transaction was mixed with too many things that shouldn't be there.

This was because Gu Chengyin believed that Lin Qingyan was not an ordinary woman; she was a Golden Core fairy.

She was rational, she was sober.

She was built on the logical foundation of inner demons.

She would not, and should not, be blinded by lust and emotion.

But if...

If Lin Qingyan really became completely obsessed with love?

If she was no longer satisfied with transactions, no longer satisfied with this current ambiguous closeness?

Instead, she wanted something more, something clearer, something more exclusive?

Could he afford to give it?

After all, Lin Qingyan was at the Golden Core stage, and an invincible Golden Core within her realm at that.

Anything she wanted, she would get.

Gu Chengyin lowered his eyes.

The twilight had deepened, and the lights of Luo Capital grew even brighter.

Looking down from the top floor of Fan Tower, the city's halos merged into one, like thoroughly fired Jun porcelain, with gold threads and iron lines seeping through the glaze.

The only thing Gu Chengyin could confirm right now was that he must reach the Golden Core stage.

As long as he reached the Golden Core stage, many of the current problems would no longer be problems.

At that time, if Lin Qingyan continued to approach, at least he wouldn't fall unconscious again.

If she tried to force herself on him, he would have the confidence to resist.

Everything would wait until he reached the Golden Core stage.

As for now...

It was time to keep some distance from Lin Qingyan.

At least to let her sober up a bit.

Just then, a pair of slender hands emerged around Gu Chengyin's waist.

Lin Qingyan paused, as if confirming the position, and then pressed her entire palms up against him, covering the sides of his waist through his official robes.

"What are you doing here?"

Gu Chengyin naturally wouldn't say he was agonizing over how to make Lin Qingyan sober up a bit.

And right now, there happened to be another equally important, even imminent matter:

"I'm wondering if anything will happen tonight."

Lin Qingyan looked up, their eyes meeting, her brows furrowing slightly.

"Didn't they say they would wait until the two major factions confirm your identity before making a move against you?"

Gu Chengyin shook his head and said:

"That's where the problem lies."

"When everyone thinks things should develop this way, they often become lax."

"The two major factions appearing as representatives at the Azure Sword Sect looks like a declaration."

"But what if this is just a smokescreen?"