Darcy did let him sit on it. The throne was wide; there was plenty of space for him to splay out his legs. He leaned against the backrest and exhaled softly, his eyes shifting over the people gathered below the stairs in the middle of the hall. They weren’t doing anything, simply standing there and trying not to look straight at Ira. This was hard to accomplish, as Li Dawei was sitting right next to him with Ira’s feet in his lap.
There was some kind of meeting going on, Ira hadn’t paid any attention to it. All he knew was that Li Dawei would occasionally frown at them and the men down there would flinch back as if struck by the pointy end of a sword. And Ira knew what that looked like, he’d struck plenty of people with swords. Both the pointy ends and the less pointy bits; all sides hurt equally but the flinching was different.
Leaning his head back, Ira looked down at them all with his most condescending expression. One of them accidentally made eye contact with him and immediately winced, trying to go unnoticed. Unfortunately, Darcy was far too observant.
“Yes, I should introduce him,” Darcy said, his voice echoing throughout the chamber.
The disciples of the sect bowed down and waited without saying anything. Apparently satisfied by this, Darcy said, “This is Bai Ping, my fiancé. Any slight to him is a slight to me.”
At once, everybody’s head turned to look at him. Ira sat up straighter and said… well, he didn’t say anything at all, because he didn’t know what to say. Were they engaged? He hadn’t heard anything about this. But then, he thought they might have been engaged in other worlds (he couldn’t remember, so he was just guessing) so the question was if those engagements carried over to new worlds. They would have to talk about this at some point, he assumed. Not now, though, he was more than fine with the direction this was going.
Nobody said anything, so Li Dawei went back to the meeting. His hand fell on Ira’s leg and stayed there for the entire following hour of work, and Ira only leaned into it. It was a nice hand, warm and soft; the calluouses from sword work would just have to be forgiven.
When the meeting was over, Ira led the way to the kitchen while Darcy stayed behind to finish up some business with his head disciple. Ira wasn’t interested in that, so he gave no thought to it. Instead, he was already starting to salivate at the thought of what he could find in the kitchen. Oh, it was going to be glorious. He licked his lips and sped up his pace through the long hallways.
He was shooed away from the kitchen when he arrived, the servants blocking his path in. This was fine; not even an hour later, a whole pile of pastries was delivered to the table he’d been deposited at. He waited politely until the servants had all left (except for the one who seemed to be assigned to him) before he started to eat.
This time, he didn’t scarf it all down as quickly as possible. That was nice and all, but it didn’t leave a lot of time to enjoy the taste of things. Instead, he savored the flavors and let the pastries rest on his tongue, feeling some of them melting in his mouth. It was heaven. It was yet another proof of why baked goods were the best and anyone who disagreed was a heathen.
Ira still finished the meal too quickly, though. It always felt like time got away from him when he was eating things he enjoyed; before he knew it, the thing was gone and he was left staring at an empty plate, wondering if there was something left over in the kitchen he could steal while the chef wasn’t looking.
This time there was not.
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.
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For a minute, he didn’t know what to do. This world didn’t have TVs or computers or video games. His entertainment was severely limited. Yes, there was theaters troupes, operas and books; but it wasn’t like those were widely available. More importantly, he didn’t have any money or a job in this world.
Well, if he was marrying Darcy, surely it would be possible to borrow some money from him?
But that would have to wait, because Ira had a more important thing to do. Finding Amanda. Or whatever her name was in this world.
He’d known her as Amanda, Nylo, and Fumiko but she hadn’t been in the last world he visited. Here, though, he was sure she was. And now that he had secured Darcy’s loyalty, he would finally be able to track her down and play games with her. Surely, she’d know of some good theater productions, too. It would be like hitting all the flies with one stone, the ultimate solution to all his troubles.
In the interest of not wasting any more time, he rose from his pillow and stood up straight. “I need to see Li Dawei,” he told the servant. The servant bowed and started walking without saying anything — Ira took this to mean that they would show him the way and so he followed silently behind them.
They reached Darcy’s office quickly enough and the servant opened the door for him, closing it behind him without entering. So Ira was alone with Li Dawei. He took a step further in and stared at the wide man sitting behind the desk, busy writing something with a brush. Ira had forgotten about that — he really wanted to try writing with brushes as well, he couldn’t imagine how hard it would be. Although, maybe that depended on how hard the brush’s bristles were? He didn’t know, and that was fun.
It had been so long since he’d been in a cultivation world. And every once in a while, he’d delete his experiences in certain worlds so that when he went to similar ones, he would be pleasantly surprised.
“I need your help,” Ira said. He stepped forward again and stopped right in front of the desk.
Darcy looked up at him and asked as he laid the brush gently on the table, “With what?”
“I need to find an old friend,” Ira said. “I miss them.”
It felt weird saying so. But… not wrong, exactly. Just an emotion he was unused to expressing.
“Do you know their names and description? You haven’t met them in this world, yet, right?” Darcy asked, picking up a smaller brush and another piece of paper like he was going to start writing down what Ira said.
“Right,” said Ira. “I know where they are, I just need to get there and I’ll be able to recognize them.”
In fact, Ira could use his map and zooming ability to just straight up find out all that stuff. But humans liked their privacy, right? They were peculiar about stuff like that; about not being monitored without their permission or something. Was it called stalking when you used your camera to find out what a person looked like and their name? He didn’t know, but he didn’t want to make Amanda’s current incarnation upset, so it would just have to be done the old-fashioned way.
“Okay,” said Darcy, writing something on the paper that Ira didn’t bother to read. He was sure it nothing important anyway. “I’ll go with you,” said Li Dawei abruptly.
Ira blinked. Furrowing his eyebrows, his expression soon smoothed out and he agreed, “Sure.”
It would be kind of fun going on an adventure with Silas. He didn’t think he’d done that before, and Silas was nice to have around. He made Ira feel soft inside, made the world seem smaller. When Ira was around Darcy, it was like all the world narrowed down to just him and it was certainly a different experience. He wouldn’t mind going on an epic adventure to track down a lost friend with him.
“I’ll prepare everything,” said Li Dawei.
Ira nodded, stopped nodding because he did a lot of that and it didn’t really feel like it meant anything anymore. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders, rocked back slightly on his heels, and said, “Sure, I trust you.”
Then he stopped and thought seriously; what do you do to express gratitude when somebody does a favor for you?
No, really, he didn’t know.
Walking up to Silas, he placed his hands on the man’s shoulder, looked him in the eyes (humans were irrationally insisted on “everybody has to look everybody in the eyes all the time or you might as well be an antisocial murderer” point) and said, “Thank you for your help.” After a beat — during which Darcy stared at him with wide eyes — Ira also leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Darcy’s cheek.
Darcy smiled brightly. He didn’t miss the opportunity Ira had presented him with and quickly leaned up, embracing him in warm arms and squeezed him tightly, pulling him closer. Ira rolled his eyes but let the man do what he wanted.
He sagged against the man, resting his entire weight on him. Darcy didn’t even twitch, easily carrying all of him. Because the man was a good cultivator and the weight of a single human was basically nothing to him.
Ira shoved his head into the space between Darcy’s shoulder and neck and breathed in the unique scent of this man. He thought he could nearly smell his soul; that bright thing that continued to dog his steps and transcend his every expectation. This man had followed him, continued to declare his love for him, spoiled him without asking anything in return…. that was probably a really unbalanced relationship, now that he thought about it.
It didn’t seem fair.
But first, they would find Amanda. He could deal with all the rest of this stuff after. Like figuring out if they were actuallygoing to get married.
Eventually, Ira managed to tear himself away from Darcy. He straightened out his clothes as he left the room, the fabric having been messed up slightly. While he waited for Darcy to finish the preparations, he found his way to a library and settled down on a divan with a book. He was halfway through it when Darcy pushed his way into the room and grinned at him.
“Everything is ready,” he said. “Do you want to take that book with you?”
“Can I?” Ira asked, looking over the edge of the book at Li Dawei.
“Of course,” answered Silas’ current incarnation. His smile softened and he held out a hand. Ira took it without a word and pulled himself up. Hugging the book to his chest, he walked side by side with Darcy. They walked leisurely through the long hallways, their pace sedated and unhurried. Ira opened the book at one point and was reading as he walked, expertly managing to avoid bumping into anything.
Li Dawei held out his arm and Ira gripped it, managing to both hold on and read at the same time. Like any reader, he would not be stopped from reading due to something as banal as walking.
Outside of the buildings, there was a carriage waiting for them. Li Dawei walked to the door of one and helped Ira get up without ceasing his reading. Inside, Ira sat down on, made himself comfortable on the pile of pillows, and said, “Thanks, Xiao Wei.”
He was pretty sure that that was right. It was a term of endearment, right?
my harteu
Baking is Life! also reading when doing other things does take some practice.
thanks for the chapter~
I read this chapter walking back to home ! There is 10 mn walk between my workplace and my home, sometime I think, i’m a crazy reader…
!!!!!
Amazing chapter!This is really such a unique story, there aren’t many novels centered around the system rather than the host, you must be a really talented person to be able to create something like this! ❤❤
Three names in one go Darcy, Silas, li dawei