Chapter 3
Chapter 3
In the blink of an eye, ten years had passed.
So much time had gone by that even that person’s face had blurred in the river of years.
Seeing me stare at him without blinking, the cold, noble man seemed to find me distasteful. He reached out and turned my face to the other side.
Sometime in the night, the carriage had left the ground. Like a bright star, it cut through the steep curtain of moon and starlight and vanished deep into the dark mountain forest. Gradually, an exquisite, luminous treasure pavilion came into view.
Several long ranks of black-armored guards waited below the steps. Their voices were uniform, low, and solemn.
“We respectfully welcome Lord Lintian.”
Behind me, that noble master pinched the back of my neck. His dark lashes lowered, and the corners of his lips turned down.
“From now on, I am your master.”
He had me by the neck so tightly I couldn’t even lift my head.
“Okay, Aotian.”
“…”
As if suspecting he had misheard, he frowned, grabbed me by the collar with one hand, and carried me inside.
Unexpectedly, the interior of the pavilion was a world unto itself.
Behind a crystal curtain stood a thousand branch-shaped lamps. A beam of snow-bright moonlight poured down from the top of the pavilion, falling upon an incomparably beautiful woman.
She simply lay there in silence, yet she was like a jade statue carved from ice, a person formed from melted snow-so beautiful that one could fall for her at first sight.
Lord Lintian sat silently beside that beauty for a while.
After a long time, as if only then remembering my existence, he parted his lips and said flatly, “From today onward, you will be responsible for taking care of her.”
Leaving those words behind, he departed.
In that vast space, only I remained, along with the mistress of the house… a corpse that had long since gone stiff.
From the look of it, she had been dead for a very long time. It was just that her clothes were neat, her makeup complete, and her body preserved as though she were still alive. Clearly, someone had always cared for her with meticulous attention.
The cave estate was enormous. I wandered around it briefly and carelessly.
But when I stepped out of that icy, snowbound cavern, I saw that the grounds outside were filled with pure white crabapple blossoms.
They drifted into the night with the wind, grand yet sparse and elegant.
This scene… felt as though I had seen it somewhere before.
Back then, in my eyes, Long Chi fit the kind of character image an AI would create to pander to the market perfectly… lazy, shallow, and lecherous.
Naturally, I hated him.
If he hadn’t come running over to apologize to me so earnestly, that is.
That day, I was in a foul mood and went outside the courtyard to clear my head. There, I caught a faint fragrance in the air, rich and overflowing. At some point, someone had placed a huge bouquet of dewy, fragrant magnolia blossoms by the gate.
I picked up the flowers and looked around. “Who is it?”
From the shade of a tree not far away came a muffled voice.
“A handsome and strong man.”
“…”
Feeling that burning gaze on me, I casually tossed the flowers aside. “If you have something to say, say it. Why hide?”
The other party shyly tucked more of himself behind the tree, leaving only two eyes exposed.
“But I’m a little embarrassed.”
At that, I raised my middle finger to the sky.
He asked in confusion, “Master, what gesture is that?”
“…Paying my respects to heaven.”
“Oh, oh.”
He hid bashfully in the shade. “I just thought these flowers suited you very well.”
Hearing his glib nonsense, I turned and retreated back into the courtyard. “Hopeless. Utterly unteachable.”
“I can be taught! I can be taught!”
The young man hurriedly climbed down from the tree, uncharacteristically honest. “Long Chi knows he offended you and has specially come to apologize. I hope Master can let bygones be bygones!”
Thinking he was trying to trick me again, I was deeply repulsed. “If you can reach Foundation Establishment, I will naturally let bygones be bygones.”
“If you can’t, then stop appearing before me!”
With that, I flicked my sleeve and went straight back into the courtyard.
At the time, I wasn’t playing hard to get. I was trying to force him to retreat in the face of difficulty so I could switch to a more obedient, more compliant character to cultivate.
Who would have thought that, from that day on, Long Chi would wait outside my courtyard every day at cockcrow?
Even when I kept my doors shut and refused to come out, the young man, his hair covered in dew, had no complaints at all. He continued to cultivate beneath the tree with complete dedication. Apart from that, fragrant flowers would always appear beneath my window-if not magnolias, then azaleas.
According to the servants of the Long Family, their young master got up early every morning to pick those flowers himself.
Although I knew this was only a game…
Humans were not grass or trees. How could I feel nothing at all?
To prevent myself from investing too much emotion in an NPC, I coldly ordered a servant to pass along a message, declaring that I disliked the scent of flowers.
After the young man heard it, he left awkwardly with the flowers in his arms.
I thought he wouldn’t come again. Who knew that, by dusk, he would burst into the little courtyard once more, this time carrying a bouquet of crabapple blossoms.
I was just about to shout at him to get lost when I saw his black eyes shining, his whole body brimming with excitement, sweat dripping down along his glossy black hair. “Master! I succeeded in reaching Foundation Establishment! Look!”
With that, he gathered strength in both legs and let out a clear cry-
The next instant, he drew in qi and leapt into the air!
!
At that moment, my face betrayed nothing, but in truth, I was utterly shocked.
One had to know, I had searched through tens of millions of samples. Even the most top-tier characters took half a year to reach Foundation Establishment, and that was already an absolutely heaven-defying speed!
But Long Chi had only taken… ten days?
Before I could recover from my emotions, the young man was already standing lightly atop the tree. With great satisfaction, he waved the bouquet in his hand at me. “Now you can forgive me, right?”
For a moment, crabapple petals filled the sky, fluttering down like snow.