“Is anyone there?”
Two knocks came from outside the door. Jiang Ci gave a weak response. Her voice drifted through the wooden door, sounding incredibly faint. She was completely listless, with not a shred of energy left in her.
“Come in.”
Lu Yan gently pushed the door open and stepped inside.
A single small candle was lit in the room, casting a dim, gloomy light across the floor. Jiang Ci sat alone on the edge of the bed, lost in thought. As she sat there so quietly, her thin silhouette looked indescribably lonely.
Upon seeing that the visitor was Lu Yan, Jiang Ci's mind instantly tangled into a chaotic mess. Two conflicting thoughts began to pull her back and forth.
On one hand, she was utterly mortified and didn't want to see him at all. Earlier, she had lost her mind, chugging down alcohol straight from the jar. Once drunk, she had completely let herself go, refusing to leave his bed and pressing close to him with all sorts of messy thoughts running through her head.
Thinking back on it now, she had behaved no differently from the seductive enchantresses of the Joyous Union Sect described in storybooks. Her face burned hot with shame.
She had heard people say that what one did while drunk revealed their truest, innermost desires. At the thought of this, Jiang Ci couldn't help but find herself pathetic, filled with an overwhelming sense of shame.
She didn't dare raise her eyes to meet Lu Yan's gaze. Even a single glance made her feel entirely uncomfortable. Even when she thought of him out of nowhere in private, her heart would swell with a messy, restless agitation.
But the strange thing was, if she didn't see him for a long time, her chest would feel empty, and she couldn't summon any energy at all. Yet, the moment he actually appeared before her, a subtle, inexplicable trace of joy would quietly bubble up from the depths of her heart.
She couldn't understand what this awkward emotion was all about, but she was truly being torn back and forth by these two conflicting feelings.
However, after realizing she didn't have many days left to live, Jiang Ci had come to terms with it. She might as well enjoy whatever comfort she could find, second by second. There was no need to dwell on her past embarrassment and torture herself over it.
So, the moment Lu Yan stepped through the door, the corners of her eyes curved slightly into a faint smile. In a soft, gentle voice, she asked, “You're here? Do you need something from me?”
Before coming over, Lu Yan had rehearsed his words countless times in his head. He had envisioned all kinds of reactions from Jiang Ci—coldness, giving up, or even throwing a tantrum. He didn't care about any of that.
He was fully prepared to handle whatever she threw at him. But the moment he looked up and caught sight of her slightly sickly, smiling face, his chest tightened, and his heart began to pound rapidly.
Quickly turning his head to steady his emotions and suppress his surging thoughts, he chose the most direct, straightforward, and efficient approach. He went straight to the point: “Regarding your heart, I've found a way to save your life.”
He knew very well that he couldn't just feed her empty promises. After all, that mechanical heart was forged from metal, relying on metal qi to suppress heart fire, and it carried quite a few side effects.
He had to tell Jiang Ci about these costs in full detail. Even if he was willing to risk his life to keep her in this world, he couldn't make decisions behind her back. If he hid the truth on purpose, he feared his conscience would never allow him to face her properly again.
He planned to first explain the path of forging the heart. Once she digested that, he would explain the hidden dangers of the metal heart in detail, handing the choice entirely over to her, asking if she could accept a cold, metallic heart.
If she couldn't accept it, then he would pour all his remaining energy into going to the Central Continent Alliance to retrieve her heart.
He wanted only one outcome: for her to live—to live happily, joyfully, and healthily.
Jiang Ci froze for a long time after hearing this before uttering a delayed, “Huh?”
It wasn't that she didn't trust Lu Yan, but no one knew the miserable state of her body better than she did.
Back then, she had endured a tribulation lightning strike whose power rivaled that of a celestial dragon. She had blacked out immediately after the strike. When she finally woke up, the Glass Sword Heart that had accompanied her for years in her chest was completely gone. Her cultivation was entirely dispersed, her meridians empty, unable to mobilize even a shred of spiritual energy.
Later, she restarted from scratch, step by step, and with great difficulty, she managed to recover slightly, seeing a glimmer of hope. Yet, the moment she tried drawing qi into the body, she discovered that her original heart had long been damaged.
To this day, Jiang Ci couldn't understand how she was still hanging onto life without her sword heart or even a complete physical heart.
Earlier, when Lu Yan had held her hand, kneeling by her bedside and promising to find a way to keep her alive, Jiang Ci had merely listened quietly and nodded along. In her heart, she hadn't taken it seriously at all.
Truth be told, she didn't mind whether she lived or died; her own life didn't matter much to her. But she feared that if she said it outright, Lu Yan would be sad and angry, and she couldn't bear to dampen his spirits.
Sitting on the bed, her mind wandered as she wondered why Lu Yan was so intent on keeping her alive.
Thinking it over, perhaps it was just like back at Black Mountain Fort. When he was on the verge of death from his severe injuries, she had dragged him along with all her might, refusing to let go, absolutely unwilling to watch him be buried in the desolate mountains.
Or maybe it was because she owed him a massive sum of spirit stones and a mountain of favors. If she died, those debts would go completely unpaid, and he would suffer a terrible loss.
At the thought of becoming a complete deadbeat, a wave of melancholy washed over Jiang Ci's heart. She sighed to herself, wondering if she would have to reincarnate in her next life just to pay off her debts. She had no idea what kind of creature she would have to be reborn as to clear what she owed.
Before her melancholy could fade, an boundless dread of death enveloped her once more.
Outside the window, the sky darkened bit by bit as the last rays of the setting sun vanished completely. The more she thought, the more terrified she became. She feared the unknown path after death, and she feared never seeing the people around her again.
She feared her soul would be trapped in this broken shell, unable to live yet unable to die, enduring the agony of a rotting body and burning fire day after day.
The terror gripped her so tightly she could barely breathe. Jiang Ci curled her legs, shrinking her entire body under the blanket, burying her head between her arms as she suffered through the time alone. It was only when the sky had turned pitch-black that she finally remembered to pull out a fire striker and light the candle on the table.
The warm yellow candlelight barely suppressed the unease in her heart. However, her previous thought of “at least paying off her debts” instantly turned into a blank void, leaving her unable to see any future.
This empty, lost feeling did not last long before two knocks sounded at the door, like a ray of light piercing through the gloom, instantly pulling her drifting thoughts back to reality.
“Is anyone there?”
And so, Jiang Ci slowly raised her head and softly replied:
“Come in.”
Lu Yan pushed the door open and walked in. His words about “finding a way to save her life” struck Jiang Ci's ears with absolute clarity. The dread of death that had been weighing heavily on her chest instantly vanished. She no longer had to spend her days overthinking and consuming herself with worry.
It was just that the news had come so suddenly that she couldn't feel even a shred of wild joy. Instead, she was overwhelmed by sheer disbelief.
She blinked, staring straight at the man before her, her gaze so unfamiliar it was as if she were seeing him for the very first time.
His silhouette grew clearer in her eyes, yet simultaneously turned more and more blurred.
He was steady and reliable, never failing when it mattered. He was gentle, and even when he teased her occasionally, he always knew his limits. Every time she was down, he would patiently coax her.
At times, she even felt dazed, thinking that someone so wonderful couldn't possibly be real. He seemed more like an illusion created out of thin air, born solely to save her.
Throughout the day, her tears had long been dried up by terror, and she didn't dare to cry. If this was just a beautiful dream, tears would only blur her vision and wake her up to a dark, lonely room. It was better to just keep dreaming.
While Lu Yan watched her in surprise, Jiang Ci leaned forward slightly, reaching out to grab his arm. She squeezed it with a bit of force, earnestly confirming that the person before her was real, and not a phantom born of her imagination.
“Why...”
Her originally clear voice was terribly cracked, carrying an unerasable hoarseness. She looked up at Lu Yan, a thin mist of tears welling in her eyes.
“Why are you so good to me?”
“Were you sent by someone... specifically to save me?”
Rate on N.U.
