Thus, in the time they drifted across the sea, the days fell into a pattern like this:
The white cat sat upright on the deck, its expression solemn as it taught Wu Li and Jiang Zhiyu the art of spellcraft. Wu Li could master a set of talismans in no more than three attempts, while Jiang Zhiyu failed so many times that he was ordered to grit his teeth and hold a horse stance off to the side as punishment.
When night fell, the mood shifted abruptly.
Wu Li sat cross-legged on the bed, facing Chai Xiaomi, who was also sitting cross-legged.
“Focus your mind,” he said.
“I’m focused,” she replied.
“Gather your intention.”
“It’s gathered.”
“Where’s the bow?”
Chai Xiaomi spread her hands open. They were empty. She blinked innocently, blinked again, then looked up at him with a fawning, charming grin. “Sorry, hubby. I forgot to take it out. Hee hee.”
In her mind, the furious yell of her old homeroom teacher flashed out of nowhere: “You didn’t even bring your book, and you still show up for class?! Why didn’t you just forget yourself at home!?”
She shrank her neck guiltily and fumbled quickly into her spatial pouch.
Zheng—
A faint shadow of an icy string swept through the air, and she accidentally plucked out a musical note.
Chai Xiaomi’s eyes lit up. She lifted the bow and shoved it right in front of him. “Hey, Li Li, look!”
She brushed her fingers across it again, and another clear sound rang out.
“This divine weapon is sick—you can play it like a pipa!”
Wu Li: “……”
Time treats everyone fairly.
Every person has only twenty-four hours in a day.
But the difference is that brains and talent truly don’t fall into the same category.
The sun and moon chased each other across the horizon several cycles.
Wu Li’s magical cultivation advanced several levels, and his speed in drawing talismans even surpassed that of Jiang Zhiyu, who had practiced for years.
Chai Xiaomi saw nearly every day the silhouette of Jiang Zhiyu slumping dejectedly against the ship’s railing.
That silhouette radiated five big words: Life’s just not worth it.
Without comparison, there’s no hurt. In fact, many protagonists in novels rely not on overwhelming strength but on four bright words: Plot Armor.
Since Jiang Zhiyu didn’t yet know he was a protagonist, he could only feel the crushing gap.
A pang of shared misery rose in her heart. She wasn’t much better off than him.
After slaving away so many nights, she’d finally just given up and turned the Ice Bow and Mystic Arrows into a one-stringed pipa she could pluck. To be fair, the tone was rather crisp.
Now, the sun was setting. The sea was covered in scattered gold.
Chai Xiaomi turned to look at Song Yueyao beside her. Song Yueyao’s eyes had never left Jiang Zhiyu. However long he had slumped there in defeat, she had watched him.
“Yao Jie,” Chai Xiaomi asked quietly, “aren’t you going to comfort him?”
A blow like that—being eclipsed by someone who just started while he had trained for years—would be hard for anyone to take.
Song Yueyao withdrew her gaze, her expression indifferent. “People only grow after being struck down again and again. No need to comfort him. Let him get through it.”
“But you’re clearly worried about him.”
Song Yueyao was silent for a moment.
“I’m afraid he might get the wrong idea and jump into the sea to end it all.”
No sooner had she spoken than Jiang Zhiyu’s silhouette seemed to sink even lower.
Chai Xiaomi looked at him, then at Song Yueyao, then over at Wu Li, who was hunched over studying talismans. He seemed to sense her gaze and looked up, meeting her eyes.
The setting sun fell across his face, gilding his profile in warm gold.
He raised an eyebrow slightly at her, a small curve tugging at the corner of his mouth, as if asking: What are you looking at?
Chai Xiaomi bared her teeth at him in a grin and turned her head away.
What was she looking at? Naturally, the person she had her heart set on.
The sea breeze blew softly. The sail rustled now and then. The dusk sank lower and lower, dyeing the entire sea a warm, cozy hue.
Suddenly, Chai Xiaomi thought:
If only this moment could stop here.
Stop on this spacious ship. Stop in this evening when no one had to rush anywhere.
Stop at the moment he lifted his head to look at her.
“Ah~ the sea, you are so vast! Ah~ the waves, you are so wild!”
Chai Xiaomi was already woken up for the third time by that unknown poetry genius on the upper deck.
These literati types really had baffling enthusiasm. In the dead of night, they got up to pour their hearts out toward the pitch-dark ocean. Probably drunk, or maybe their brains had been scrambled by the sea breeze.
Ah~ ah, your granny’s leg! she silently cursed, keeping rhythm with him in her head.
She rolled over, trying to burrow back into a familiar warm embrace to keep sleeping, and reached out to the side.
It was empty.
The sheets were cool.
Meaning he had been gone for a while.
She stared at the empty spot and suddenly realized the poem upstairs wasn’t so annoying after all—at least that guy was howling at the sea with genuine feeling.
But her Li Li, lately, was getting more and more wrong.
Before, when they went to sleep, he was like a clingy big dog, holding her tight in his arms, sniffing at her hair, nuzzling into her neck, calling out “Jie Jie” in a husky voice, asking for kisses as routinely as flowing water. But every time, she was the one who lit the fire, only to end up like a pitiful flatbread on a hot pan, flipped back and forth by the master chef Wu Li, fried crispy on the outside, burnt on the inside.
Cooking generally started with his gentle, tender call of “Jie Jie.”
But in the end, she was always crying and begging, screaming “Gege,” just to get him to stop.
It was ridiculous.
But recently—the ridiculousness had gone in a different direction!
The frequency of cooking dropped sharply. He’d even stop without her begging or crying. Until one time, after he had bathed her and tucked her into bed, she didn’t fall asleep right away. She heard faint sounds of running water from the next room and figured he was just taking a bath in fresh water.
But when he came back and slid under the covers, holy—his whole body was freezing cold, like he had just crawled out of an ice cellar.
He had obviously taken a cold bath.
Of course, all that wasn’t the strangest part.
The strangest was right now, when he wasn’t even in the room. She listened carefully to the next room—no sound of water at all. He clearly wasn’t there cooling off. He wasn’t in the room at all.
Chai Xiaomi frowned and sat up. She grabbed a random coat, threw it on, didn’t bother putting on her shoes properly, and shuffled out.
She was going to see where the hell this guy had gone in the middle of the night.
The night wind rushed in from the sea, instantly covering her in goosebumps.
The farther she walked toward the bow, the colder it got. She had heard that Youquan Town was covered in snow half the year. The closer the ship got, the lower the temperature. Luckily, the sea didn’t freeze, or even anchoring would be impossible.
Chai Xiaomi yawned, and a puff of white air came out.
She shivered suddenly, hesitated for a second about going back for more clothes. Nah, too much trouble. She’d find him first.
But the voice in her head went ballistic:
「Host, right now, immediately, right away—go back and put on more clothes! If you catch a fever and fry my CPU again, I’m gonna fight you to the death!」
She walked as she answered back: 「Oi, Twiggy, with what are you gonna fight me?」
「I’m warning you, don’t push it—your system has real skills too.」
「Like?」
「Like, according to system navigation analysis, this ship is estimated to arrive at Youquan Town in one day.」
「That’s it?」
「This is called strategic intelligence delivery!」
"The current outdoor temperature is quite low," Youtiao suddenly changed his tone, enunciating clearly like a broadcaster. "Please add clothing when going out at night, watch your step for safety on the road. In one hundred meters, you will arrive at—uh, basically a colder place. This navigation is sponsored by ShortDe Maps. There are thousands of roads, but keeping warm comes first; if you don’t dress properly, your loved ones will shed tears."
Chai Xiaomi: "..."
