Chai Xiaomi furrowed her brows as she finished listening to White Cat explain the whole story.
She tapped her toes on the ground, bringing the swaying swing to a halt.
She remained silent, her eyes filled with mixed emotions. After a long while, she hesitantly spoke up:
"Old Ji, is it possible that you misunderstood him?"
"Xiaomi girl, I know you are protective of him and won't allow others to say a single bad word about him." White Cat sighed, his tone earnest and heavy. "But you can't just blindly and unconditionally trust him, can you? Look at that dark aura around him. For it to be that heavy, how much blood and how many vengeful souls must he have been tainted with to cultivate it? I don't believe you are completely unaware."
Chai Xiaomi lowered her eyes and did not reply.
White Cat continued, "I gave him a chance, but he threw it away."
"I will lay it out right here today. If he remains stubborn and refuses to repent, one day, I will do everything in my power to eliminate him."
"If left unchecked, sooner or later, that Gu poison and dark aura will swallow him whole."
"When that time comes—" White Cat looked up, his voice dropping low as he stared fixedly at Xiaomi, "He will only become a world-destroying monster."
"He won't!"
"I will ask him clearly about this matter. If it is his fault, I will definitely make him come and apologize to you."
Her usually soft and sweet voice was now stiff and forceful, like a taut string.
The swing was still swaying emptily, the wooden frame creaking, leaving only lingering echoes.
White Cat watched her retreating figure walking briskly away, looking frail yet stubborn, and sighed helplessly.
Even he was this furious; right now, in Xiaomi's heart, she was probably feeling even more terrible and angry.
The door was kicked open.
The two carved wooden panels slammed heavily against the wall, bounced back, and were pushed open again by a pair of hands.
It was clear how much anger the person arriving carried.
Wu Li had never seen Xiaomi look like this.
That smiling face, which was always gentle and lovely, was now uncharacteristically expressionless, even exuding a trace of coldness.
A flash of panic swept through his eyes, but he still went up to her holding the sobering soup he had just blown cool, his voice bordering on pleading, "Mimi, drink this bowl of sobering soup."
Chai Xiaomi glanced at the bowl but didn't take it.
"Explain."
She walked to the table and sat down, her hand gently pressing on her upper stomach. She decided she still needed to hear him explain the whole thing himself.
"You're clearly having stomach discomfort, why are you forcing yourself?" Wu Li acted as if he hadn't heard her. Catching her small movement, he stubbornly offered the bowl to her lips, gently stirring it with a spoon. "It's not hot anymore. Come, let me feed you."
Chai Xiaomi raised her hand to block his wrist. Her crystal-clear eyes burned with anger, and she couldn't help but raise her voice, "Lili, give me an explanation. Did you intentionally try to harm Old Ji, or was there a reason?"
The young man's grip on the spoon tightened. "Drink it first, be good."
"There are priorities. I am asking you a question right now, please answer me first."
Wu Li knew that she was never overly formal with people close to her. Whenever she used words like please, carrying a hint of alienation, it proved she was truly furious.
He pursed his lips. "Finish this bowl of soup, and then I will answer you."
"Is Old Ji's life not as important as this bowl of sobering soup?"
Wu Li suddenly looked up.
In those eyes, there was grievance, paranoia, and an almost naive sense of entitlement.
"Yes. Anyone's life is not worth mentioning. In front of you, they are all trivial matters."
He stared at her hand pressing on her upper stomach, his gaze darkening.
"I only know that your stomach hurts. It's all because of that damn cat, calling you away to talk for so long, delaying you from drinking my soup. It's always like this, mysteriously calling you away to talk about irrelevant nonsense."
"Once, twice, if there is a third time, I will absolutely, instantly make sure it dies without a burial place!"
He gritted his back teeth, carrying a dark and sinister ruthlessness.
This time, he didn't even need to listen to guess what they had talked about.
That hypocritical old thing must have patiently tried to persuade her again, putting on that bullshit logic of rotten wood cannot be carved and inferior soil cannot cultivate a foundation! And then there was his gloomy dark aura, carrying his mother's curse, which he could never wash clean or break free from in this lifetime!
Using these shackles welded shut onto his body...
To persuade her,
To abandon him.
"Wu Li!"
Chai Xiaomi stood up abruptly, her cheeks flushed with anger.
The bowl of sobering soup was knocked over by her sudden movement.
With a crash.
The light brown soup splashed all over Wu Li, and the porcelain bowl fell to the ground, shattering into pieces.
Yet he seemed completely oblivious.
He just lowered his eyes, quietly looking at the shattered fragments by his feet.
For a moment, it was unclear whether it was the bowl that had shattered, or something else.
After a long while, he tugged at the corners of his lips.
The smile was very light, very faint, but it didn't reach his eyes at all.
"If you completely believed in me," he raised his head and looked at her, his eyes so dim they seemed drained of light, "then why did you come to ask me?"
"How do I not believe in you?"
Chai Xiaomi's eyes suddenly turned red, her voice rising uncontrollably:
"If I didn't believe in you, I wouldn't have come specifically to ask you for an explanation! If I didn't believe in you, I would have just ignored everything and dragged you by force to admit your mistake and apologize!"
She grew more agitated as she spoke. "Do you know that if you harmed Old Ji, you would be heading towards your doom!"
"What?" he spoke slowly and methodically, his tone carrying a hint of mockery. "Is my fate tied to a mere cat?"
"If you really harmed Old Ji, then you are a certified vill—"
The word ain was stuck in her throat, left unspoken.
A piercing alarm sounded in her mind.
Youtiao appeared just in time, jumping up and down in anxiety: Host! Another reminder! You cannot reveal your identity or any content from the book to the characters, otherwise it is considered a violation. The mission will fail immediately, and you will disappear on the spot!
Chai Xiaomi was so anxious she wanted to swear.
But before she could recover her senses, her wrist was suddenly grabbed.
Wu Li stepped over the broken porcelain on the floor, forcefully lifting her wrist and locking it firmly in his palm.
Dark tides she couldn't understand surged in his eyes.
"What if I did touch it?" he suddenly became unreasonable. "No, not just it. Also Jiang Zhiyu, Song Yueyao, all these so-called righteous people standing on the moral high ground. They are open and aboveboard, they hate evil as much as their enemies."
"I ask you, do you choose them, or do you choose a... demon who crawled out from the depths of the gutter?"
His voice trembled violently, as if he had used up all his strength.
Those bewitching heterochromatic eyes were brimming with paranoia, as well as a trace of cautious, fragile hope that was about to shatter.
"Naturally, I choose you."
Chai Xiaomi reverse-grasped his fingers. Those hands were terrifyingly cold. She sniffled, her voice softening.
"But you have to listen to me, okay? If you did something wrong, we will openly admit it. To err is human, who is without fault? Old Ji said that an apology will make this matter pass, okay?"
She couldn't let him fall out with the protagonist group.
As long as he stood in opposition to the protagonists, as long as he became a threat to the protagonist group, the plot would nail him firmly in the position of the villain. Let me ask, what villain ever gets a good ending?
She couldn't just watch helplessly as Old Ji harbored thoughts of eradicating him.
The plot setting of this original story had to be rewritten.
Wu Li lowered his eyes, the curve of his lips bitter and strained: "In the end, you still believe it."
At his feet lay shattered porcelain and a complete mess—the soup he had just spent half an hour painstakingly brewing by the stove.
"I suppose so. Someone who could so lightly tell me to wait until you die and then go find another woman—how much could you possibly value our feelings?"
He lifted his gaze, looking at her once more, deliberately letting out the angry words he had been bottling up inside: "Mimi, in your heart, am I just a toy that can be casually replaced once you get bored?"
Chai Xiaomi looked straight into those eyes that seemed on the verge of shattering.
She was so angry she could practically die.
She wasn't angry that he asked this.
She was angry that he could think so little of himself.
His sense of self-worth was absurdly low.
He never believed he deserved to be loved. Even when her love was confirmed, he would start second-guessing how much of her heart was truly his and whether it could last.
He was like a puppy that had been abandoned too many times. Finally taken in and brought home, yet spending all day curled up in a corner, ears pricked up to listen to the footsteps outside the door.
Is the master coming back? Or have they finally decided they don't want him anymore?
He lived his days in constant, trembling anxiety.
"Fine." She took a deep breath. Since telling him she loved him ten thousand times didn't work, she might as well do the exact opposite. "If you never have it, you won't be afraid to lose it. If we never start, you won't have to worry about it ending. Since you are so consumed by this fear of gain and loss, let's just not get married at all."
Old Ji had given him a chance, and he refused it.
She was giving him a chance, and he didn't want it either?
Her temper flared up, completely impossible to suppress.
"I'm not marrying you!"
She raised her chin, biting her lip as hard as she could.
"Yes, you are exactly right. I am tired of playing with you. I was already sick of it last night!"
