Chapter 198 - Predecessor
Chapter 198 - Predecessor
The door of the teleportation chamber opened smoothly and Ning Fei walked out.
"Welcome back, Ning Fei."
The system announcement that only he could hear rang in his ears: "You have successfully completed the 'Admiral's Adjutant Collection Mission', and the mission took 502 time coordinate points. Now we will start to settle with you..."
Ning Fei was busy with his own thoughts and listened carelessly, but he still heard his own performance clearly. Judging from the subscription ratio alone, Ning Fei can only say that it is just barely passing in his opinion. If there wasn't other things to do in that world, Ning Fei would definitely give a bad review to this mission.
——As for this other matter...
"Ning Fei?"
The sudden greeting interrupted Ning Fei's thoughts. He turned his head and uttered a name expressionlessly: "...Leonce."
"Ha, it's really you." A tall man approached. He had brown skin and a strong body. His slightly open collar revealed clear muscle lines. He smiled and said in a familiar tone, "What a rare coincidence! I almost thought I had made a mistake... Long time no see."
Ning Fei blurted out two more words calmly: "Indeed."
Lyons turned his head and glanced in the direction of the teleportation warehouse door: "Just returned from a mission?"
Ning Fei: “Yeah.”
Lyons: "Based on your level, you must have high scores and high income, right?"
Ning Fei: “General.”
"...I say, is it that serious?" Lyons raised his eyebrows and said in a teasing tone, "There is no hatred between us, you don't need to treat me with such an impatient attitude, right?"
"There is no hatred between us, but we don't have any relationship either. We are not so familiar that we can just chat when we meet on the street." Ning Fei put one hand in his pocket and said coldly, "If there is nothing important to talk about, then that's it. See you later."
After saying that, Ning Fei was about to turn on his toes and walk away, only to hear Leons jokingly say: "It seems that even if there is 'no grudge', you are still angry with me. It's been so long, and you still haven't calmed down?"
Ning Fei paused and glanced at him: "Why should I be angry with you?"
"Just follow your teacher's footsteps. We all share the same hatred for me." Lyons said, "Ha!" in a leisurely tone.
"After all, I am Yu Zhou's predecessor - although that was eight hundred years ago."
Ning Fei also sneered.
Yes, Lyons is Yu Zhou’s “old man who is better off dead”.
Yu Zhou is now determined not to fall in love with anyone who can jump out of his little world, and the culprit is Leons. To put it bluntly, the direct trigger for the breakup was that Lyons cheated in the mission world.
It's not just "playing around", it's outright cheating. In other words, he fell in love with someone in the mission world. And it’s not that he started a new relationship, but rather inserted one. The two relationships were not even parallel. When Yu Zhou was around, Lyons would love him wholeheartedly; when Lyons entered the mission world and separated from Yu Zhou, he might fall in love with someone in the mission world; and when he left the mission world and came back, he would continue to love Yu Zhou.
Lyons believes that this will help "keep things fresh," and he doesn't care about the moral issues involved. In his view, people with long life spans who have already jumped out of these worlds don't need so many boring constraints in terms of emotions. He thinks that if he is serious in every relationship, he is already a perfect lover. As for what happened in the mission world, since Yu Zhou was not in the same mission world with him, everything in the mission world had nothing to do with Yu Zhou.
Yu Zhou, a man with a strong desire for control, certainly could not accept Lyons' ideas.
It is true that the two were happy when they were together, and Lyons accepted Yu Zhou's "control" - whether it was voluntary or forced for fun - but Yu Zhou could not accept that when Lyons came back from a mission, he suddenly had an "ex-boyfriend". Yu Zhou would rather love thoroughly and passionately and then break up simply than become a "fixed refresh NPC" in the other person's relationship again and again.
And what Lyons said, "You can regard it as a reconciliation," made Yu Zhou feel even more disgusted. In this case, he was "broken up" inexplicably without knowing it, and then inexplicably turned around to "eat shit". Yu Zhou was never willing to go back to his ex, and Lyons went back without permission, making Yu Zhou a clown in fact. With multiple factors at stake, the breakup scene between Yu Zhou and Leons became extremely ugly.
Many people in the Space-Time Administration knew about the bloody story between the two, and as Yu Zhou's student, Ning Fei naturally knew more inside information. In fact, he never gave any advice to Yu Zhou when they were in love, nor did he give any suggestions or reasons when they broke up. He thought Yu Zhou didn't need these, and Yu Zhou really didn't need them. But it is undeniable that Yu Zhou's love affair also had a significant impact on Ning Fei's emotional concepts.
Although it is not as extreme as "even if I fall in love, I will only fall in love with someone whose lifespan is definite", Ning Fei does realize that the future of falling in love with someone who also has an infinite lifespan is extremely unpredictable.
Just like Yu Zhou before, each of them has their own work and enters different worlds, so they cannot know each other's emotional changes.
But if we always go in and out together, or even work in the same world together, and see each other every day, won’t we get bored quickly? How can we break up gracefully with people who have been entangled for too long and too deeply?
Ning Fei felt that his personality was very similar to Yu Zhou's in some aspects. If I were to meet someone like Leons, my reaction might be even more explosive than Yu Zhou's.
——Tsk, it's like a sudden wake-up call to me...
This thought flashed through Ning Fei's mind, and suddenly, he made a decision.
"Hey, are you free for a drink?"
***
Ning Fei and Leons sat in a bar.
"It's really strange." Lyons shook his wine glass, looking inquiring, "Even when Yu Zhou and I were in love, I never drank with you. Now that we've been separated for so long, I'm drinking with you one-on-one. Are you suddenly interested in me?"
Ning Fei's reaction to this was to sneer.
"Okay, it's just a little joke, don't be so serious." Lyons shrugged, "Tell me your real purpose."
Ning Fei also took a sip of his wine: "I just want to chat casually."
"I don't think it's casual, right? You and Yu Zhou are not the kind of people who do things without a purpose. You didn't poison my wine, you just have something to do with me." Lyons put his arm on the back of the chair, and pointed his index finger at him with the hand holding the wine glass, "Tell me, what do you want me to confess?"
"I want to ask about your love history."
"..." Lions raised his eyebrows. "Well, it's not surprising. You can only come to me for this kind of thing. But why are you suddenly discussing this now? Could it be that Yu Zhou suddenly remembered that I made a big mistake in the past and sent you to interrogate me?"
Ning Fei replied: "It has nothing to do with him. I just wanted to ask."
Lyons asked: "What do you want to ask specifically? Tell me first, and then I'll consider whether to answer you."
Ning Fei thought about it, and finally asked a question: "Have you...ever regretted it?"
"What do you regret?" Lyons asked back, "Regret breaking up?"
"No, do you regret dating Yu Zhou?" Ning Fei looked at his face, as if he wanted to rely on his own observation to get the real result, "Especially when you two were having an ugly quarrel, did you want to stop dating this crappy relationship if you knew it earlier?"
"What you said, who hasn't thought 'If I had known this, I wouldn't have done it in the first place' when they get angry?" Lyons didn't act pretentiously and replied directly, "But overall, I don't regret it much."
Ning Fei took another sip and said, "You are a smart person. I don't believe you didn't see Yu Zhou's temper before you started dating him. When you decided to date him, did you make up your mind not to date other people? Or were you confident that he wouldn't find out?"
"None of them. But I was so obsessed at the time that no one cared." There was some nostalgia in Lyons' words, "I liked him and loved him at the time, and being with him was the happiest thing at the time. I got what I asked for, and I got what I deserved. It felt so good, right? As for whether there would be any mess later, no one cared."
As he spoke, Leons suddenly took several more gulps of wine and added, "Well, actually, these thoughts flash through my mind occasionally. For example, if I make any mistakes and am caught by Yu Zhou in the future, my fate will be miserable. But in my opinion at the time - and I still think so now - it's miserable, and there's nothing to get over. If I give up being with Yu Zhou because of something that might happen in the future, I guess I will regret it. Well, I will regret it so much before I die."
Ning Fei raised an eyebrow: "So you think the same way when you fall in love in the mission world? Anyway, you are willing to bear the consequences, so just have fun first?"
"...You can say that, but I think I'm just someone who likes to enjoy life in the moment." Lyons replied, "We are all people with almost infinite lifespans. If we have to consider the long term, how far is it? When will it end? I vaguely heard that Yu Zhou now falls in love in the mission world, so the average mission duration has been extended a lot. Isn't this also an idea of enjoying life as long as you can? Instead, you are still struggling with this. Although I don't know the real reason why you suddenly came to talk to me, you shouldn't live too hard, brother."
Ning Fei ignored his teasing and just asked: "So, this is the reason why you cheated? The so-called - 'live in the present'?"
"Hey, it was you who said you wanted to come and talk to me, not me looking for trouble to mock you." Leons drank the rest of the wine in one gulp and slammed the glass on the table. "Yu Zhou and I have different ideas. We had an ugly quarrel in the end, and I admit all that. But if you want me to evaluate the time when we were in a good relationship, I am willing to give a high score. I am not going to be consumed by internal energy until now just because of a relationship that didn't end well."
As he said that, he stood up and said, "Alright, I feel like we're going to have a fight if we continue talking. Regardless of whether the answer I give is what you want to hear or not, I'll say this is all I have to say. When I was dating Yu Zhou, I didn't take care of you, so consider it my treat this time."
After saying this, Lyons really left.
Ning Fei didn't say goodbye, and was even too lazy to take a second look at the other person's departing back. He just looked at the remaining wine in the glass in silence for a long time, and finally raised his head and drank it all.
"Give me another drink, something stronger."
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