After another round of fussing,
Lin Qingyan lay contentedly in Gu Chengyin's arms.
She had calmed down and stopped saying much more,
after all, she had already said everything during their earlier tangle—more than once.
Saying it again now would only be repetition.
After snuggling for a while, Lin Qingyan couldn't help but think of something very important,
something that had been weighing on her heart ever since she left the warm chamber.
She had never been sure whether she should say it.
Originally, she didn't want to talk about it, because she feared the outcome.
But now, she wanted to know.
"Chengcheng..."
Lin Qingyan's gaze drifted past Gu Chengyin's shoulder,
landing on a ray of light slipping through the gap in the curtains.
"Hmm?"
Gu Chengyin's voice came from beside her ear, low and gentle.
His fingers were still on her waist, the tips against her skin, feeling the rhythm of her breath rising and falling in her chest.
It was slower than before, but also more unsettled.
Not the kind of flustered breathlessness from being overwhelmed,
but more like something pressing down on her chest, making every breath take a little more effort than usual.
Lin Qingyan was silent for a moment.
It was as if a piece of water-soaked cloth lay heavily between them,
absorbing all sound, turning the very air stagnant.
Gu Chengyin didn't rush her.
He just waited quietly, his fingers stroking her waist in a steady rhythm.
One stroke, another, and another.
As if to tell Lin Qingyan: Take your time. I'm here. Say it when you're ready.
Lin Qingyan's fingers tightened again on his collar.
Then she spoke, her voice even lower than before:
"That bastard also told me some other things."
That bastard.
When those three words came out of Lin Qingyan's mouth,
they carried a fierce determination born from having a soft spot poked with no place to vent her anger.
In front of Emperor Luo, she wouldn't call him that—not because she dared not, but because she couldn't bring herself to.
Emperor Luo was her brother-in-law, the man her elder sister deeply loved,
also the one who could put her in a foul mood for half a day with just a few words.
So Lin Qingyan only badmouthed him behind his back, cursing him like that.
But after doing so, she only felt angrier,
because of all the things Emperor Luo had said, she had thought long and hard and still found no argument to refute a single one.
Gu Chengyin could hear something off in Lin Qingyan's tone.
It wasn't anger, nor grievance, nor sadness.
It was more like being stabbed gently by the person closest to her in the most tender way.
The wound wasn't deep, and there wasn't much blood, but the pain was so sharp that words failed her.
His fingers stopped on her waist. His gaze fell on Lin Qingyan's face, on the mark where her teeth had bitten her lower lip,
on the film of moisture in her eyes that looked as if something had soaked into them.
Gu Chengyin didn't press her immediately.
Instead, he thought about it.
He knew Lin Qingyan. For something to make her this angry,
it wouldn't be about court politics, or the selection of the Minister of Rites,
or any matters of approval or denial.
Lin Qingyan didn't care about those things.
What she cared about was him—only him.
Countless threads of deduction ran through Gu Chengyin's mind simultaneously,
like a precision machine when its mechanism was triggered: gears meshing, levers turning, springs loading tension.
Every part turned precisely in its place.
What had Emperor Luo said to Lin Qingyan in the warm chamber?
What could have made her sulk for half a day, angry enough to sit alone in the Tower of Stillness,
angry enough to bite her lip and refuse to speak?
Emperor Luo wouldn't scold her, wouldn't reprimand her, wouldn't treat her with any kind of accusation.
Instead, he would speak to her as a brother-in-law, as family.
That was the most impossible way to argue against.
Because there was no argument, she got angry.
Because getting angry was useless, she felt wronged.
Because she couldn't voice her grievance, she sat alone in the Tower of Stillness,
crushing all her anger and resentment deep inside, grinding them up and swallowing them down.
Gu Chengyin's fingers moved from her waist, lifting to her cheek,
his palm against her cheekbone, his thumb brushing lightly at the corner of her eye.
A faint trace of dampness was there.
It wasn't tears—it was moisture that hadn't yet formed into droplets, pressed back before they could gather,
like dew on a lotus leaf that rolls off with a single wind.
"Little Aunt, let me guess."
Gu Chengyin didn't need to guess; he was confirming.
Because with his understanding of Emperor Luo, of Lin Qingyan,
and of the relationship between these two people,
there was only one answer.
His thumb stopped on her cheekbone.
"Did His Majesty say..."
He paused.
It was a short pause, no longer than the space of a single breath.
But in that pause, his gaze met hers in the air,
like two parallel rivers meeting at an unexpected bend—the sound of water was quiet,
but the undercurrents had already merged in that moment.
"He won't marry you."
Lin Qingyan froze. Her gaze stared blankly at Gu Chengyin, as if pinned in place.
Her pupils dilated slightly; her eyelashes didn't move; her lips still held the shape of biting her lower lip,
but the pressure from her teeth had loosened, so much that the faint white mark had disappeared.
Her whole body seemed to have been put on pause, her breath stopping for a beat.
No, not one beat—several beats.
Long enough for Gu Chengyin to count how many colors there were in her eyes.
Black was the base, gold was at the edge of her pupils,
and deep in the center, at the very core of her pupils, there was a thin, shining layer of moisture,
like a broken mirror with fragments scattered across her irises, each one refracting different light.
He was right.
Gu Chengyin was right.
That was exactly what Emperor Luo had said to Lin Qingyan.
In the warm chamber, after she had finished reasoning for Gu Chengyin,
just when she thought everything was settled and she was about to take her leave,
Emperor Luo had leaned back in his chair and, with a casual tone, asked a single question:
"Jingzhe, do you think Gu Chengyin will marry you?"
Lin Qingyan was stunned at that moment.
It wasn't that she had never thought about the question; it was that she had never imagined it would come from Emperor Luo's mouth,
in that tone, at that moment, right after she had done his bidding with the warmth in her heart still thinking about her beloved Chengcheng.
Lin Qingyan opened her mouth, wanting to say, "Of course he will."
But those four words got stuck at her lips, and she simply couldn't force them out.
Not because she didn't believe in Gu Chengyin,
but because of the way Emperor Luo was looking at her.
There was no mockery in that gaze, no doubt, no condescension.
Only the concern of a family member.
Because Lin Qingyan was Empress Lin's younger sister.
There was no hidden malice behind it—it was just pure concern.
But that kind of concern hurt Lin Qingyan more than any sarcasm ever could.
Because sarcasm could be refuted, doubts could be argued against, condescension could be talked back to.
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
world slacker. But a genius female disciple just had to get clingy, insisting that he take her as a disciple. Not only that, she was always making advances on him, thoroughly disrupting his peaceful slacker life...
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
