Shi Yue had felt shocked when Xie Yi had run and even more so when he noticed that Xie Yi was running seriously; there was no chance of catching up. His disciple was intent on not being caught.
Then he thought that Xie Yi might need a while to cool off his head, which was fine, but he was neither back the next day, nor the day after that.
He felt unwell and irritated, next to being worried.
Xie Yi… would come back, right?
Deep in thoughts, he didn’t hear the loud footsteps before his office.
“What in the world is the matter?! I’ve lied to people that there was a demonic cultivator that Xie Yi is currently pursuing, but even I don’t believe that! What happened?!” Master Chen closed the door behind her with a slam. “How long are you going to lock yourself up here and letting me handle the mess outside?!”
Her expression twisted a bit when she found Shi Yue sitting slumped in a chair, gaze distracted. He twitched to attention at the sound of her voice.
“Thank you. Please use that explanation, there is no danger.” He rubbed his forehead. This was bad. He had no time to get distracted, even if he wanted to. She was right – right now he was the proxy of the unconscious sect leader, so he couldn’t let the sect fall into panic.
“What happened?”, Master Chen repeated grimly.
“Xie Yi ran away. The energy was from an item.” Shi Yue avoided her eyes.
“Ran away? That child? The little puppy who loves you so much that he wishes he could tie himself to you?” Master Chen took on a sarcastic tone, but when Shi Yue did not respond, her voice dropped down to a freezing point. “What did you do.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
The disbelief on her face was evident. “Well, maybe that’s the problem then, because something must have happened for him to run! What happened in that room? Did you try to rape him?”
“No!” Shi Yue glared at her. How could he do such a thing?! “We… only talked.”
“About what? Don’t make me ask for every little thing. Either say you won’t tell me, or tell me everything at once.”
Shi Yue looked down for a while. Master Chen waited patiently, her arms crossed and eyes fixed on him. Finally, Shi Yue spoke.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Ktfgf lr… rbwfatlcu tf lr xffqlcu rfmgfa. P’nf yfmbwf jkjgf bo la jcv atf meggfca rlaejalbc vfwjcvr atja P mjc ajix ab tlw jybea la, rb P’nf mbcogbcafv tlw.” Lf rmgecmtfv tlr fsfygbkr. “Lf vlvc’a fnfc ifa wf olclrt! P kjr jybea ab rjs atja fnfgsatlcu lr olcf. P kjr rlaalcu klat tlw jcv ajixlcu jr ufcais jr P mbeiv. Rbatlcu ab wjxf tlw atlcx P kjr yfgjalcu tlw!”
“You mean to tell me”, Master Chen said slowly, “that you suddenly informed him of being aware of something he was desperately trying to keep a secret?”
“It was necessary. And he did not have anything to worry about. I was trying to make it clear that it was fine, if he had waited another two seconds.”
“He ran away before you could finish.”
If Shi Yue had any head to watch out for Master Chen’s mood, he would have noticed her dark face.
“Why doesn’t he trust me?”, Shi Yue’s fingers clenched around the cup in his hand.
He felt disappointed. He didn’t think that Xie Yi would still not trust him enough to even wait for him to finish his words. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand that Xie Yi got frightened by the situation, but… Running away? Did he think that Shi Yue was going to hurt him? After these years, did he really judge Shi Yue as a person to use such underhanded tricks as lulling him into security with a peaceful talk only to then betray him?
“Wrong!” Master Chen needed all her energy to keep herself under control. Right then, she truly wanted to hit this stupid Grandmaster with something. “You are seeing this the completely wrong way! Don’t be so self-centered!”
“Self-centered?!” With a bad mood, Shi Yue looked up, only to find himself staring right into the unblinking, moist eyes of Master Chen.
The woman breathed in shakily. “You know him, don’t you? You know what he is like. So rather than wondering why he doesn’t trust you…”
She sat down, her expression hurt. Even she felt heartache for the youth.
“Shouldn’t you think about just how much that secret of his must scare him, that the fear even overwhelms his trust for you?”
Shi Yue froze, surprised.
He hadn’t thought of the situation from his angle. His first reaction was that Xie Yi must not trust him enough, but Master Chen thought differently; as she saw it, it was simply that the fear was stronger than the trust he had. That did not mean that his level of trust was low at all, only that his fear was overwhelming.
“Look, I don’t know what you confronted him with, and I don’t want to know. But don’t you think that this fearless child must truly be traumatized to be scared into running away? Has he ever showed such a reaction before?”
Shi Yue tried to go over everything again. Hadn’t he only made it clear that he remembered things? If he wanted to kill Xie Yi, then he would have done it by now, so there was no reason for Xie Yi to think he might be planning to do such a thing.
However…
With the memories in his head… The memories of their meetings in their previous life, the signs of the elders’ treatment left behind on Xie Yi’s body…
No, she was completely right.
Xie Yi had lost way too much for anyone to expect him to act calmly in such a situation. That was a terrible oversight on Shi Yue’s part, and one he was going to have to apologize for.
“Stop hurting yourself over this. I fear he must be suffering worse than you right now.” She sighed. “Under normal circumstances, I’d tell you to run after him, but… Well. He must know that it’s impossible for now.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Shi Yue leaned into his hands. He couldn’t leave the sect right now. He couldn’t! No matter how painful it was, he couldn’t leave everyone here.
The mood was tense. Everyone was trying hard to stay calm, but the youngest could be heard crying every once in a while. It was only getting better now that Shi Yue took a walk around the sect each day, to give them a peace of mind.
If he left, he’d be leaving everyone here alone.
“Love and obligation don’t mix well. I know it will be hard for you to choose.” Master Chen hesitated again. “Wait for a couple of days to allow him to calm down. If he isn’t back by then, you can still decide if you want to rush out to find him.”
For once, Shi Yue didn’t correct her use of the word ‘love’. He desolately stared out of the window. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be forced to make the choice.
The message came timely, just when he was about to snap and run out after all.
The situation was gnawing at his nerves – every disciple in the sect was heavily relying on his presence, but he alone was going insane with the desire to leave.
Almost worse than the thought that Xie Yi wouldn’t return on his own was the worry that he might be misunderstanding something.
If Xie Yi simply didn’t dare return, Shi Yue could find him at any point in time and bring him back. But if he was misunderstanding that Shi Yue didn’t want to find him, allowing more time to pass would make it worse.
Just then, Master Chen placed a little origami crane into his hand without a word and closed the door to the office from the inside.
The crane was simple and cute, all green and made from a leaf.
It had been unfolded before – likely by Master Chen – and still carried a faint trace of a familiar spiritual energy.
Slowly, Shi Yue unfolded it again and read the single sentence that was written in blood. (If it was anyone else he would worry about a bloody message, but he was very willing to believe Xie Yi simply used blood because he didn’t have ink.)
“Will return soon”
That was all it said.
“Look at you. Your forehead has unwrinkled for the first time in days”, Master Chen teased him slightly. “We can be lucky it reached us. Cranes are hardly good messengers.”
Shi Yue carefully refolded the crane and placed it on the edge of his table.
“…”
“Are you going to work again now? Because honestly, the paperwork has been piling up with you being so fidgety.”
Shi Yue pulled over some scrolls.
“…”
“Alright, act like you’re not relieved enough to cry. I’ll be with the sect leader again, you stubborn guy”, she said while rolling her eyes and strutted out of the door.
Shi Yue waited until she was gone, then placed his forehead onto the table and simply breathed for a while. Once he had gathered his thoughts, he poked the little leaf crane and began to work on everything he had procrastinated these days.
Author’s Note
I’ve had someone complain before that characters appear just too coincidentally with the correct lesson for the main characters but… Please remember that I’m not anything grand like a professional author. I’m a rookie writer – I want to get my story done, so of course I’ll use some cheat to avoid having to draw out misunderstandings and situations endlessly. Could I have written this story without Juxian and without Master Chen/the sect leader talking to Shi Yue? Sure. Would it have taken like an additional 50 chapters? Yes.
I don’t like perfect male leads. I could have made Shi Yue a perfect male lead, but he’s human. He overthinks, he gets mad, he gets jealous, he makes mistakes. And he has the right to learn, just like Xie Yi has the right to learn.
It is so good to see everyone’s growth till now. Every move they made is so clear with logical reason. I love this novel so much.
Thankyou for the chapter! Please keep up the good work ☺️
Thanks for all the updates. I’m so glad Master Chen is here to gently push (sucker punch) Shi Yue into expanding his mind. Shi Yue really needs the books “How to Tame Your Traumatized Brainwashed Homicidal Naive Boyfriend for Dummies” and “Mysteries of Time: How to Tell When a Demonic Cult is Trying to Steal Your Boyfriend, How to Tell Your Boyfriend You Know He Time Traveled, and Other Time Related Tribulations”.
Dear writer, I love your work. It’s really interesting looking forward for the upcoming chapter’s…
Keep fighting we support you❤❤❤❤
in many novels people, places, and events do seem to appear too conveniently for the protagonist but strangely enough i don’t feel any of that from your novel.Xie Yi has his past life memories to give him omniscience. But the biggest reason that this makes sense (to me) is what the sword spirit mentioned last chapter or so. Since a timeline was forced off track it’s not odd that things can be coerced into helping as well. It’s a sort of balance.
That’s the way I saw it as well.
Thanks for the chapter!
I love the pair, and you’re doing a good job, Author daren. I hope you can freely write to your heart’s content and share it with us 😀
The only thing bothering me is Xu Yan being WAY too wise for his age and the goddamn patronizing sword
Oh, makes sense. Never thought it like that. Thank you 🙏
When MLs have it waaaaaaay too easy suddenly finding themselves being the wrong person; it’s where I want them to SUFFER.
Depending on how long it takes them to think about that they’ve done and what they’ll do afterwards🙂
He leído muchas historias, y para mí todo es conveniente (obviamente). Son protagonistas, le tienen que pasar cosas malas y buenas, si o si. No habría trama ni nada si ese no fuese el caso. Además de que si es realista que te den consejos cuando estás confundido, aún si no lo pides, tus amigos y las personas más cercanas te dirán sus opiniones, y eso es bueno porque ellos verán las cosas desde una perspectiva diferente ya que no están involucrados en el problema.
Está historia me ha gustado mucho, y ahora que estoy llegando al final no hay nada que me haya decepcionado. Puede tener sus errores, como la mayoría, y sigue siento tan entretenida.
Los gustos de todos son diferentes, algunos les gustará y a otros no. Así como pasa en novel updates que las opiniones varían mucho.
Tu historia es genial, así que gracias por compartirla.
I really like your non perfect characters who need help and arnt just 1000000% op and perfect at everything they do
I never once felt the character’s appearing was too coincidental. Isnt it expected for an elder to check up on shi yue in this situation given the state the sect is in? Not to mention, the sect leader is his master so of course that’s who should be advising shi yue in normal scenarios. And now that juxian is there shouldn’t he help xie yi? In life its convenient indeed to have friends and family there when you need them. The above is more normal unlike when an ml shows up to rescue mc when it makes 0 sense for him to be there and even then that’s cute at times.