Chapter 39
A stick of incense burns out.
Su Chengyue slowly opened her eyes, the hostility in her eyes still remained, only a cold and dead silence remained.
He let out a long breath, as if to expel all the filth that had invaded his sea of consciousness.
The once vibrant sea is now lifeless.
On the sea, densely packed dead fish with their bellies turned upside down floated with the waves, and the surrounding marine plants all withered and died, as if all the life had been drained away.
Su Chengyue stood up indifferently, his toes touching the sea sand, and ignored the ants that were stiffened to death by his pressure.
Like a ghost, it sank into the depths of the dense forest on the shore, and the last trace of it disappeared with the wind.
In the human world, in the red-light alleys of a prosperous city.
Su Chengyue landed quietly on the ground, all the immortal energy around him disappeared, the luxurious immortal robe turned into an ordinary green shirt, and the aura was also restrained, like a mortal without any spiritual roots.
He walked calmly, holding two baskets of candied fruits carefully wrapped in oil paper, with a faint sweet fragrance.
Su Chengyue stopped in front of the carved wooden building of a music hall with ease. As soon as she stepped over the threshold, a strong and pungent scent of cosmetics blew in her face.
"Oh my... What a rare guest! Master Su, you're finally willing to come and see us!"
A charming woman in gorgeous clothes came towards him, twisting her waist. She tried to brush Su Chengyue's chest with the handkerchief in her hand, but he dodged it calmly.
"Is A Tao here?" Su Chengyue's voice was flat, and no emotion could be heard.
Hongniang's eyes gleamed, and she pulled back her handkerchief to cover her lips with a sweet smile: "A Tao? He's been thinking about you for a while! Don't worry, as long as you, Master Su, come, A Tao will make time for you even if she has something important to do!"
As she spoke, she raised her handkerchief toward a carved wooden window in the middle of the second floor and called out in a high-pitched voice, "A Tao, look who's here! Your husband, whom you've been thinking about day and night, is here to see you—"
Before he could finish his words, the door was pushed open with a bang.
A young man with long hair like a waterfall staggered out, not even having time to tie up his loose robe. He ran down the stairs barefoot, like a young swallow returning to its nest, and threw himself into Su Chengyue's arms.
"Young Master—"
The boy's voice was soft and full of strong attachment as if he had just woken up, and he almost buried his entire body in Su Chengyue's chest.
A few strands of soft hair fell on Su Chengyue's arms, and a faint and cool fragrance of orchids quietly penetrated into Su Chengyue's nose.
"Ayue, I miss you so much." Atao raised her face, her eyes sparkling with undisguised joy. "You haven't come to see Atao for a long time. Tomorrow is Atao's fifteenth birthday. Can Ayue come and keep Atao company?"
He said it over and over again with cautious expectation.
A barely perceptible trace of impatience flashed across Su Chengyue's eyes, but she still maintained that gentle mask on her face.
He gently pushed Ah Tao away from his arms, raised the oil-paper bag in his hand, and softened his voice: "I bought your favorite candied fruit. Be good, let's go upstairs and talk, okay?"
The familiar sweet fragrance wafted through the oil-paper, and Ah Tao's eyes instantly brightened. She immediately and joyfully took Su Chengyue's arm and eagerly led her to her room on the second floor: "Is this from Li Ji in the east city? I can smell the plum fragrance even through the oil-paper..."
The boy's clear voice gradually disappeared at the end of the stairs.
Downstairs, Hongniang weighed the heavy silver ingot in her hand, squinted her eyes with satisfaction, and just as she turned to leave, several guests who had been left out for a long time surrounded her, speaking in sour and intimate tones.
"Hongniang, who was that pretty boy just now? Why was he allowed to touch Ah Tao?"
"That's right! Ah Tao will be sixteen tomorrow. According to the rules, she should be able to receive customers, right? We brothers have been waiting for a long time..."
"You've raised her from a thirteen-year-old chick until now, and she's grown up to be as beautiful as a green onion. Hongniang, you can't keep her hidden forever, right? It's time to let the brothers have a taste of her..."
Those obscene words entered Hongniang's ears, and she spat in her heart.
A bunch of toads want to eat swan meat. Mr. Su is a god-like figure, generous and generous. Who do you think you are? How dare you think about my Ah Tao? Ah Tao's face and figure are the cash cow that I have spent so much effort to cultivate!
But on the surface, she put on a professional fake smile, twisting her waist to soothe them: "Hey everyone, calm down, listen to me, that Mr. Su just now is not an ordinary person, he is a favorite among the nobles in the palace, and people say that he is an immortal who has descended from the Ninth Heaven. Our Ah Tao has found a destiny to become an immortal..."
Second floor, inside the room.
The room is filled with warm fragrance and curling tea smoke.
Ah Tao snuggled in Su Chengyue's arms, like a greedy kitten, picking up the candied fruit and eating it in small bites. Her cheeks puffed up slightly, and she squinted her eyes in satisfaction. "Mmm, it's really delicious. Li's is still the best."
As he spoke, he turned his head to look at Su Chengyue, his eyes pure and dependent.
Su Chengyue's eyes were deep. She raised her hand and gently wiped the frosting off the corner of A Tao's mouth with her fingertips, then put the sweetness into her own mouth.
He has always hated sweetness and only preferred the blue lotus that grew in the dirty mire but was cold and lonely. Only when he broke it and crushed it with his own hands in the dead of night and watched the cold fragrance completely dissipate between his fingers, could he feel a twisted sense of pleasure.
“…Atao.”
Su Chengyue called out softly, and with a scrutinizing look in her eyes, she slowly stroked A Tao's face, which was about 70% similar to Gu An's. Finally, she stopped at the soft and tender lips, and gently stroked them with irresistible force.
Ah Tao's body stiffened slightly, then she obediently tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and endured this kiss without much tenderness.
The candied fruit in his hand slipped silently, fell on the carpet and rolled several times.
The white smoke escaping from the stove enveloped the entangled figures.
"A Tao."
Su Chengyue's voice suddenly turned cold, with a creepy calmness.
He suddenly pushed A Tao down on the soft quilt, and a cold hand suddenly grabbed the boy's slender and fragile neck like an iron clamp.
"Tell me," he looked down at the boy beneath him whose face instantly turned red from suffocation, with a cruel arc at the corner of his mouth, "What do I hate the most?"
The air was instantly deprived.
A Tao widened her eyes in pain and instinctively wanted to struggle, but her hands seemed to be bound by invisible shackles. In the end, she could only tremble and obediently wrap her arms around Su Chengyue's neck.
He struggled to squeeze out a broken voice from his throat: "Ayue... said... she... doesn't like... people who talk too much..."
"What else?" Su Chengyue tightened her fingers, admiring A Tao's expression twisted in pain.
“…I…don’t…like…the…love…of…laughing…” A Tao’s tears flowed uncontrollably, and her vision began to darken.
"Go on." Su Chengyue's voice was like a death spell.
"...I don't...like...people like...A Tao..."
The moment before his consciousness completely fell into darkness, the clamp around his neck suddenly disappeared.
Immediately afterwards, a stream of air with a refreshing scent was brought into the mouth.
A Tao was like a dying fish, greedily grabbing the life-saving oxygen, her chest heaving violently.
Su Chengyue gently embraced the exhausted A Tao in her arms again, as if he were a lost treasure, and kissed the tears on his eyelids again and again with pity.
"A Tao..." His voice was low and bewitching, with an almost morbid fascination. "You know, what I like most is when you look at me with those cold eyes, scold me, and then the next moment you stroke my face and say to me, 'You are my most proud disciple'..."
A Tao in my arms trembled slightly.
He closed his eyes, his fingers tightly gripping the quilt beneath him, his knuckles turning white.
"...I understand." The young man spoke in a hoarse voice, with a kind of resigned despair.
After a few breaths, he opened his eyes, pushed Su Chengyue away with all his strength, then staggered to his feet, trying to straighten his thin back.
Ah Tao took a deep breath, imitated the figure in the painting, and raised her hand tremblingly.
“Bang!”
A crisp slap landed hard on Su Chengyue's face.
"Who gave you the guts—"
Ah Tao's voice was trembling with fear and exertion, but she tried hard to maintain that forced coldness.
"How dare you touch me!!!"
This scolding was something he had barely learned after imitating it thousands of times in front of the mirror on countless silent nights.
Su Chengyue, who was slapped, was not angry at all. Instead, he seemed to have received a great blessing. He covered his face, his eyes instantly became fanatical and obsessed, and he knelt down at A Tao's feet with a plop, his forehead pressed tightly against the cold ground, his voice trembling with excitement.
"Master! I know I was wrong! I deserve death! I beg Master to punish me! I beg Master to forgive me..."
He raised his face, and in his bottomless black eyes there surged naked desire.
That was the dirty and humble possessiveness that Su Chengyue would never dare to show to the real Gu An.
So ugly.
So shameful.
Ah Tao looked at the humble and crazy man at her feet, and her heart was filled with cold sorrow.
He slowly leaned over, his cold fingers gently caressing Su Chengyue's red cheek, his voice so soft it sounded like a sigh: "Do you love me?"
Su Chengyue's lips trembled violently, her throat rolled, but she couldn't utter a word.
A Tao wanted to force a sarcastic laugh, but Su Chengyue hated his smile.
The sweet aroma of candied fruit still lingered in his mouth, but the hideous purple and black pinch marks on his neck constantly reminded him of the fear of suffocation.
In the end, A Tao could only lower her eyes, her thick eyelashes hiding all emotions, leaving only endless fatigue and sadness.
"Sir, Tao is tired."
He originally thought that the banished immortal he met in his youth was the light that saved him from the quagmire, but he didn't expect that the light itself was also trapped in an even dirtier quagmire and couldn't extricate itself.
They are all just poor creatures.
The sun is shining brightly in the fairy palace courtyard.
“Pah.”
A drop of warm tear fell on the yellowed page of the book, instantly blurring the ink-colored handwriting.
Tang An closed the storybook titled "Prison of the Heart" and felt a tightness in his chest. He subconsciously pulled up Chi Ying's wide sleeves to wipe his slightly red eyes.
Chi Ying, who was concentrating on teasing two crickets in a pottery jar with a grass stem, caught a glimpse of Tang An's tearful face from the corner of his eye. His heart tightened, and he ignored the crickets and quickly turned around, holding Tang An's cheeks with both hands, and nervously looked around: "What's wrong? Are you missing your parents again? Or that stupid dog Tang Bohu? Or..."
"Stop, stop, stop!!!" Tang An was so dizzy from being shaken by him that he quickly slapped his hand away and held his head with both hands to calm himself down. "Don't guess blindly, I'm not that fragile. It's just that I haven't been home for 3 months, 3 days, 24 minutes and about 30 seconds. I was tortured by this crappy novel!"
His tone was a little angry.
Chi Ying: “…”
He looked at the fancy-covered book thrown aside, then looked at his wife's red eyes, and was speechless for a moment.
Tang An casually threw the copy of "Prisoner of the Heart 1" onto the low table next to him, where there was already a tall stack of similar notebooks.
He lay back on his desk in boredom, his fingertips occasionally poking at the ever-victorious general in the clay pot that Chi Ying had just treasured.
"...I don't know when the second part will be released." He muttered gloomily.
Chi Ying watched his beloved jump around in the jar after being prodded by Tang An. He then lay down too, resting his chin on his arm and looking sideways at Tang An: "I remember you used to despise these love stories. Back then, at home, the bookshelves were filled with books like 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and 'War and Peace'. You wouldn't even bother reading anything that wasn't a Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece."
Tang An rolled his eyes lazily at him and said unhappily, "Stop making fun of me. Even the popularity of movable type printing is questionable here. How are you going to find me a Nobel Prize in Literature? Forget Nobel. It's even questionable whether Nobel's ancestors were reincarnated here."
"Fuck." Chi Ying was amused and couldn't help laughing out loud.
Ever since Tang An traveled here and brought news from the real world, especially after confirming the huge difference in the speed of time between the two worlds, Chi Ying's mentality has indeed become much more relaxed. He almost regards this place as an extra-long standby honeymoon vacation world.
He spent the whole day leisurely, humming little tunes, and occasionally accompanied Tang An to study those seemingly hopeless plans to return home.
But Tang An is different.
What he was experiencing at this moment was exactly the same process that Chi Ying had experienced alone.
From the initial panic and confusion, to the doubt about the authenticity, to the intermittent bad performance today, what runs through it all is the irrepressible longing for family and the original world.
Chi Ying knew very well the feeling of this kind of torment, and understood even more clearly what kind of despair it would be if he really couldn't go back.
Therefore, he tried hard, almost deliberately, to make himself appear optimistic, reliable, and calm, and created an image of a strong man in front of Tang An who would support him even if the sky fell.
Then, as he worked harder, Chi Ying discovered that the growth he had accumulated in the past seven years of marriage was far less rapid and profound than the growth he had gained during the year he had struggled alone in this world, and the time he was currently working hard to support Tang An.
The afternoon sun gently shone through the carved wooden windows, casting a warm golden edge on the two of them.
Tang An suddenly turned his head to the side, resting his head on his arm, and said sullenly, "It seems like we haven't quarreled for a long time."
Chi Ying was slightly startled, then reached out and gently pinched Tang An's delicate cheek with her fingertips, smiling, "Isn't this good? It means we've become more mature, the adjustment period is over, and we've entered a stable and sweet period, right?"
Tang An just looked at him quietly, with a hint of inquiry in his black and white eyes, and said nothing.
The Chi Ying he was familiar with was a stubborn donkey that could never be tamed. Even if he had to go into a coffin when he was old, he would definitely stand with his neck stiffened.
How could that youthful pride that never bows its head, that self-esteem that is higher than the Himalayas, disappear without a trace just because of the appearance of Tang An?
Tang An knew clearly that Chi Ying must have experienced something extremely tragic in the year before he arrived, which caused him to change so much.
He reached out his hand and gently placed it on the back of Chi Ying's hand that was pinching his face. He patted it soothingly and said softly, "Don't be afraid. I'm here."
Chi Ying's heart warmed up, and a gentle arc appeared on the corner of his mouth. He was about to speak——
"Bah!"
The ever-victorious general in the pottery jar, who was annoyed by Tang An's poking, suddenly jumped high and landed on Chi Ying's high nose bridge with incredible precision, struggling with his six legs in panic.
"Hey, hey, hey—"
An anxious voice with a hint of electrical noise, as if it was separated by thousands of mountains and rivers, suddenly and clearly exploded in front of him without any warning.
"Is Tang An here? Is Chi Ying here?"
"Hello, hello? Can you hear me???"
Chi Ying, who was busy catching the cricket off his nose, and Tang An, who had just stood up, froze in an instant.
The two of them looked up suddenly, their eyes met, and their pupils trembled.
Hold!
Auditory hallucinations???
Or is it a call from home????????
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