Ira forgot his Host again, he realized some four days after his picnic date with Xiao Wei. It was like a bolt of lightning, this realization. He sat up abruptly on the bed and swore quietly, “Shit,” into the night.
Pushing his braided hair over his shoulder, he sighed deeply and rolled his eyes. He flopped back down on the bed and scooted closer to his fiancé, throwing his limbs over Xiao Wei and hugging tight. Closing his eyes, he hummed and drew himself as close to the other man as possible. He loved the warmth this man exuded, loved the feeling of being surrounded by him.
He woke up again when morning arrived. Xiao Wei was already awake then, sitting up on the bed and leaning against the headboard. He was reading a book, slowly leafing through it page by page. Ira stayed sleeping, listening to that sound and memorizing it.
He heard Xiao Wei mutter something below his breath (something about tax evasions, but Ira could not care less about that), heard him rustle with the blankets to get more comfortable, felt him pulling up a blanket over Ira’s chest that had slid down. Ira turned into it, continued pretending to be asleep while he laid his head on Xiao Wei’s legs and snored excessively loudly. Did he usually snore? He had no idea. That wasn’t important.
Xiao Wei placed a hand on Ira’s head and patted it softly, his fingers sweeping through the hair strands. He massaged the scalp and Ira sighed into the thigh he was lying on, his arms drawing tighter around it.
“Are you awake?” whispered Xiao Wei, turning the page in his book.
Ira groaned, “Possibly,” into Xiao Wei’s leg and snuggled even closer, resolutely ignoring his need to breathe. It was fine. He could hold his breath until his body realized that it was a cultivator and worked like it was supposed to. It was really getting annoying, this being-bad-at-cultivating-in-a-cultivation-world thing.
Flying with Xiao Wei was fun and all, but he wanted to fly on a sword of his own, too!
“You can go back to sleep if you want to,” Xiao Wei said and smoothed his hand over Ira’s hair. Ira shivered, opening his eyes and squinting against the skin on display in front of him.
He said, “It’s fine,” and yawned, pushing up his head a little so that he could see Xiao Wei’s face. Xiao Wei was smiling at him, his eyes soft and gooey, his cheeks plump with fat. Ira rubbed his eye and pushed himself up further, scooting up the bed until he, too, could sit against the headboard’s wall.
He stretched out his hand and was delighted when Xiao Wei grabbed it without him needing to say anything. Grinning, he leaned his head on Xiao Wei’s shoulder and rested his eyes on the book. It really was a ledger of some kind, lists of numbers going on and on.
“Having fun?” he asked, voice teasing.
Xiao Wei pressed a kiss to his head and leaned against him, too. He drawled, “It’s always fun to hunt down idiots who think they’re invincible.”
Snorting, Ira said, “Nice.”
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.
They fell into silence again. Ira dozed off against Xiao Wei’s shoulder, his sleepiness getting the better of him. This body really was the ultimate mob body, utterly failing at giving him awesome abilities. Like that thing where cultivators didn’t need to eat and survived off the ambient spiritual energy or something.
…To clarify, that wasn’t an ability that he wanted. Ira loved eating things that tasted good; both baked goods and cooked food. Going without eating for months just seemed like an especially cruel torture to him.
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Ira clicked his tongue. He put down the chopsticks (that’s what they’re called!) and leveled a glare on Xiao Wei. “Is staring at that book going to make a difference? Will you find out anything you haven’t already?”
“No, but—”
“Then you’ll join me for a walk in the garden, they’re quite lovely. It’s where I got that plant I almost drowned,” Ira said. He stood up from his seat and walked around the table, grabbing Xiao Wei’s arm. Xiao Wei frowned at him, but allowed himself to be pulled up.
Xiao Wei muttered, “The plant that almost killed me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it was merely an eye,” Ira said, puffing out his cheeks. Xiao Wei gave him a look and Ira sighed. “I promise to protect you from the plants this time, okay. But I managed to save your eye, didn’t I? And I punished the plant—it knows it can’t do that again.”
Xiao Wei smiled at him and said, “Then I’ll trust you to keep me safe.”
Ira smiled back, happy.
They entered the garden (with the help of the same nameless male disciple as before) to find that Zhou Li was already there. She was overseeing the planting of some new, exotic (poisonous) plants while her wife (or was it fiancé?) directed the thing from a safe distance. Ira instantly began to drag Xiao Wei over to them.
“What you doing?” he asked, standing on his toes to see better. It was a gigantic plant, the one they were currently trying to bury in the dirt. It wasn’t going that smoothly as the plant kept pulling up its roots and walking away.
Zhou Li’s wife answered, “We just got a new demonic plant from the north. I want to see if I can create hybrids with another plant of ours that isn’t doing so well in this climate.”
“To compensate for the weakness,” Ira pretended like he knew what she was talking about. She smiled at him, her eyes kind.
“Are you here for another tour?” she asked, expertly throwing out a talisman to keep the plant contained when it managed to get loose from the shackles. She didn’t even look at it, easily stopping it anyway. Ira was dutifully impressed.
“Yep,” he popped. He swung his and Xiao Wei’s connected hands, beginning to pull the other man again.
“Well, have fun and scream if you need any help,” Zhou Li’s wife said and waved them off.
Ira smiled at her in gratitude, knowing that Xiao Wei could easily beat these paltry plants in the blink of an eye. His fiancé was not only strong and a good cultivator, he also had amazing spatial awareness. This was more important in a cultivation world than one might think.
The further they walked into the garden, the darker it became. The plants blotted out the sun piece by piece, cradling them in a blanket of darkness. Even though it was midday and the sun was right above them, soon enough, not a hint of it could be seen. The plants were not only tall and interwoven with each other, they also leaned closer to the humans passing by.
The world below them was silent. Almost like being under water, except there were carnivorous plants that wanted to eat you. Well, those plants could exist in water, too, he supposed.
“What do you think?” he asked Xiao Wei as they walked on a narrow path between two rows of plants. The plants waved to them, weaving their branches and leaves and watering mouths toward them.
Xiao Wei looked around with a critical gaze. “It seems like a recipe for disaster,” he said dryly.
Ira laughed. “That’s what makes it fun!”
Xiao Wei’s lips twitched until he was smiling properly. He hugged Ira to his side and said, “May you never change.”
Ira snorted. “Jokes on you, I’ve done plenty of changing recently. I’ve grown as a person. There’s been character development.”
Xiao Wei’s bark of laughter was sudden and loud. It made the plants sway toward them threateningly, made them open their mouths wide and swoop down on them. Xiao Wei simply let loose his sword and it dealt with the plants while he snorted amongst his laughter and asked, “Do you like this change?”
Ira tilted his head to the side, avoiding anything swooping plant in the process, and said, “I think I do. It’s nice, to not care about my Hosts one way or another.” He frowned, pulling on Xiao Wei to get the man moving again, and continued, “I’ve spent so much energy on them, on hating them and delighting in their misery and I guess it just… startled me, to realize exactly how much.”
Xiao Wei hummed. He grabbed his sword as it whooshed past them and held it in front of them. The plants trembled, some growling as they tried to reach them without getting bisected. It didn’t go that well; it was a very sharp sword.
“If you like it, then there’s no problem,” Xiao Wei said. His frown smoothed out and his grip on Ira’s hand eased until it was no longer painfully tight.
Ira grinned. He snagged a plant next to him about to eat his face off and squeezed it, loving the painful wheeze it let out in protest. But no matter how hard it pulled, it couldn’t get out of his grip. After all, though he wasn’t a very a good cultivator, he still was one. And every cultivator had enhanced bodies.
He pulled harder, feeling it straining in his grip. While Xiao Wei cut down the other plants coming for them, Ira gripped the plants’ body harder, gripping it with both hands. His eyes shone as he then began to pull it apart.
It died with a shriek.
The sound was painful—it made Ira wince.
When it died in his arms, the rest of the plant plopped down on the ground. Ira glanced around, made sure there was no-one who would punish him for this, and quickly stepped forward to poke at the plant with his toe. It didn’t react and so he kicked it. It flopped over. Still didn’t react. He tilted his head and was about to kick once more—with far greater force (he wanted to see if he could make it fly)—when Xiao Wei’s hand landed on his shoulder.
“I think I got most of them,” Xiao Wei said, voice thoughtful.
Ira looked up from his dead plant. Xiao Wei was correct; the vast majority of the plants in this row had been cut to about a thousand pieces. Leaves and plant-bodies littered the ground. The few remaining plants alive were all cowering away from them.
“I think so, too,” said Ira. He stepped back from the plant that he’d mercilessly killed (at least it wasn’t a human? Progress?) and threaded his arm around Xiao Wei’s. Together, they began to walk again.
The garden really was the perfect place for a romantic walk. The lack of sunlight meant that they were surrounded by a dark and menacing atmosphere—it made him feel like he was in a horror movie. A romantic one, of course. The deadly plant-life only made it seem more real.
“This way,” he told Xiao Wei, pointing vaguely to the right. “There’s a really big plant there I want to show you.”
“Did it try to kill you?” Xiao Wei asked, smiling when Ira looked over at him.
Shrugging, Ira said, “Only twice. It got distracted.” Ira frowned. He hadn’t asked Nameless Male Disciple to interfere yet the man had done so anyway. Ira had been fine. He’d only lost a little bit of blood.
Xiao Wei patted him on his arm. “I’m sure it’ll try again,” he reassured Ira. Ira smiled at him, then decided to just go for it. He pressed forward and pecked Xiao Wei on his cheek.
When you’re reminded your mc’s a psychopath.
Please don’t harass plants
Thank you for the chapter
did they ever go all the way
I have read totally 4 arcs and find no signs of it
I am feeling on literally going on massacre like Ira
so far they have not and i don’t know if they ever will. ira isn’t really into that
ಥ_ಥ (´。＿。｀)
“Jokes on you, I’ve done plenty of changing recently. I’ve grown as a person. There’s been character development .”
ah yes, the✨ character development✨