Severing Ties — You Don't Respect Me, You Mock Me, I Won't Talk to You Anymore...

He Zhuoming replied, "Of course it's true, I—"

Halfway through her answer, she suddenly realized something was wrong. She stared blankly down into the pit: the corpse that had been mostly buried under wildflowers and weeds abruptly lifted its own arm and removed the green-leafed purple blossom covering its face.

He Zhuoming froze, then a second later let out a delayed shriek: "A ghoooost—!"

She screamed and jumped up at the same time.

The loose soil at the edge of the pit gave way beneath her feet. She stumbled and fell, landing right on Lin Qingyun's corpse. The impact left her seeing stars, and it took her a moment to recover before she slowly pushed herself up using Lin Qingyun's chest as support.

Once she sat up, she looked down and saw Lin Qingyun's beaming face.

Dim golden sunlight, filtered through the branches, fell across his clean, fair features. His face still bore smeared bloodstains and bits of mud from the flower roots, but his complexion was excellent—flushed with color, and when he smiled, he revealed a pair of symmetrical dimples. He looked perfectly healthy, perfectly full of life.

He Zhuoming was dazed, speaking in disbelief: "You... you... you're not dead?"

She was so startled she couldn't even form words properly, stammering while staring at Lin Qingyun without blinking, her swollen red eyes still streaked with messy tear tracks.

Lin Qingyun grabbed her hand and pressed it to his own face, just like the first time they'd met, blowing a warm breath into her palm as he grinned. "Then feel for yourself—do I feel like a living person or a dead one?"

His hand was a little cool, but not in that deathly way. When he spoke, his warm breath curled around He Zhuoming's fingers.

Clearly, this was the breath of someone alive.

He Zhuoming still wore a dazed expression. "But... but just now—that person just now—"

Lin Qingyun: "My cultivation is pretty high. Even if he chopped my head off, I probably wouldn't die, let alone from a stab to the neck and chest."

He Zhuoming: "Then why... why didn't you fight back?"

Lin Qingyun blinked, saying in the gentlest, kindest tone imaginable: "He's no match for me. The moment I fought back, wouldn't I kill him? Since he can't kill me anyway, I might as well pretend to die and let him think he's gotten his revenge. Saves a lot of trouble."

He Zhuoming froze, because Lin Qingyun's words sounded quite reasonable at first glance—even kind.

But she was still confused, struggling to make sense of the situation. She instinctively followed his thread and asked, "Do you have a grudge with that person?"

Lin Qingyun thought for a moment. He had no real impression of the man. "Should be a grudge, I guess—otherwise why would he keep trying to kill me? Before I met you, he'd already ambushed me five times..."

He Zhuoming was stunned. "He tried to assassinate you five times and never succeeded? What kind of grudge does he have to hate you that much?"

Lin Qingyun looked troubled too. "Every time I faked my death, but I never figured out how he saw through it. As for the grudge... haha, I don't know either! I forgot to ask him. If we happen to meet again, I'll ask him then."

He Zhuoming recalled the cold eyes of the black-clad youth, and felt her heart give a sudden lurch. She muttered to herself, "Meet again? Someone that terrifying... better to never cross paths again..."

In truth, as brutal as the black-clad youth's actions and demeanor were, regardless of how you looked at it, Lin Qingyun—who'd been killed five times and still came out bouncing—was far more frightening. But He Zhuoming didn't realize that.

Lin Qingyun's appearance was too deceptive, and he was her good friend. Besides, she really wasn't the type to be perceptive about the atmosphere.

Lin Qingyun reached over and patted her side. "Forget about that person. Let's talk about something more important first. Xiao He, how much longer are you going to sit on me?"

He Zhuoming: "Ah... I'll get up right now."

She scrambled off him in a fluster—the pit was simply too narrow. In the process of climbing out, she pressed on his liver once and stepped on his hand another time.

Amid He Zhuoming's string of apologies, she finally managed to crawl out of the pit. On her final kick as she climbed over the edge, she sent a big clump of dirt tumbling down, landing square on Lin Qingyun.

Lin Qingyun looked at his clothes, now covered in blood, mud, and wildflower juice, and his emotions gradually shifted from a subtle disgust to full-on resignation.

Whatever. What was there to hold against Xiao He?

He easily hopped out of the shallow pit and pulled out a shovel to fill it back in, while He Zhuoming stood off to the side, picking fragments of wildflowers off her own clothes.

As she picked, she remembered something, and said to Lin Qingyun, "Your horse ran off."

Lin Qingyun showed no reaction, still focused on filling the pit. Without looking up, he answered, "No matter. If it ran, it ran."

He Zhuoming asked, "Will it come back?"

Lin Qingyun shrugged, saying airily, "No idea. It's a beast at heart, after all—beasts never went to school, so they do whatever they please. And a person with brains and reason like me—well, it's hard to understand what a horse is thinking."

Even as dull as He Zhuoming was, she could sense that Lin Qingyun was praising himself with that remark. Besides picking up on that hidden meaning, she also noticed—several steps late—that her palms were stinging.

She stopped tidying her clothes and held out both hands to look at her palms. She saw redness and raw skin, with strands of blood seeping into her skin's lines.

That was only natural. Before transmigrating, the heaviest work He Zhuoming's hands had ever done was holding a mechanical pencil for homework and exams. Now she'd spent an afternoon digging earth with a wooden sword—it would've been strange if she hadn't gotten hurt.

Lin Qingyun, still filling the pit, kept talking to himself: "Xiao He, the pit you dug is way too shallow. Good thing I wasn't really dead—if you'd buried me in this pit, wild animals would've dug me up and eaten me before long."

He Zhuoming: "So you were faking death the whole time?"

Lin Qingyun rested his weight on the shovel, looked up, and flashed her a brilliant smile. "Yeah, how about it? Did I look convincing? I told you before, I know plenty of clever escape tricks—playing dead is one of them."

He Zhuoming: "So while I was digging you a grave, picking flowers, and reciting a eulogy, you were also faking death, right?"

Lin Qingyun finally sensed something off, because He Zhuoming's tone right now was far from friendly. Aside from crying, He Zhuoming's other emotional expressions were all a bit sluggish—anger included.

First, her face went blank. A second or two passed before her brows slowly furrowed. By the time she finished speaking, her eyes had gradually widened and the corners of her mouth had turned down as she stared at Lin Qingyun.

Lin Qingyun faltered, his smile receding slightly as he met her gaze. He Zhuoming said, "Why aren't you saying anything?"

Lin Qingyun: "You're mad? I was just joking around with you."

He tossed down the shovel and stepped up close to He Zhuoming, bending slightly to accommodate her height. "Whoa~ why are you making such a scary face? Staring at me like that, you're scaring me!"

He Zhuoming immediately backed up two or three steps, creating distance from him.

Lin Qingyun didn't understand. He assumed her anger this time was the same as last time, so he took a few steps forward and pressed himself close to her again, his thick-lashed eyes curved in a smile.

He Zhuoming said stiffly, "I'm cutting ties with you."

Lin Qingyun's smile froze, almost doubting his ears. "Cutting ties? What does that mean?"

He Zhuoming: "It means I don't want to be friends with you anymore—you don't respect me, you mock me, and I won't talk to you anymore!"

She finished in one breath and shoved him hard. Lin Qingyun was still mulling over her earlier words, so the push caught him off guard and made him straighten up, but his feet didn't move.

Seeing she couldn't push him, He Zhuoming backed away herself, reestablishing the distance between them. She no longer looked at Lin Qingyun with those bright, sparkling eyes, nor did she face him with that soft expression of trust and expectation, waiting to be helped.

Instead, she kept an angry look aimed at his face, along with a deliberate coldness and distance.

It was only then that Lin Qingyun finally worked it out: cutting ties meant she wanted nothing more to do with him—all because he'd played dead for a while while she dug that useless pit, picked those messy wildflowers, and delivered that eulogy that was never going to come true?

He could've just left long ago, yet he'd chosen to come back. And instead of being grateful to tears at his resurrection, Xiao He wanted to cut ties with him?

Lin Qingyun laughed in anger.

Lin Qingyun: "Over something this trivial and boring, you want to cut ties with me?"

He Zhuoming scrunched up her face, arguing with conviction: "This isn't trivial or boring at all. You never treated me like a real friend! You faked your death to trick me, made me dig a grave all afternoon, and I was even going to make avenging you a priority over going home—but you weren't even dead, you liar!"

Lin Qingyun pointed at the wooden sword in her hand, adopting a cold expression as well. "Fine then, we're done. That sword I carved—give it back."

He Zhuoming: "Fine, here!"

She tossed the wooden sword back at him.

Lin Qingyun pointed at her clothes next. "The clothes you're wearing are also mine. Give those back too."

He Zhuoming refused outright: "No way! If I give them back, I won't have anything to wear. I'll return them when I buy new clothes after we go down the mountain—and as for your life-saving kindness, I'll pay that back too once I've cultivated properly!"

Lin Qingyun spun the wooden sword in his hand, his head buzzing with irritation, and sneered, "Easy for you to say. Once we're down the mountain, the world is wide—you could disappear anywhere and pretend you don't know me. What can I do about it?"

That was a lie.

In truth, wherever Xiao He went, he could find her. But right now, Lin Qingyun was annoyed, so he had to say things to shut He Zhuoming up—to wipe that righteous look off her face, to stop that tone of hers.

He'd only told a few lies. Why did Xiao He have to yell at him like that!

He Zhuoming said coldly, "I'm not like you; I won't go back on my word. If you don't believe me, then until I've repaid your kindness, you can just keep following me."

Lin Qingyun: "Keep following you? I'm not that free. I wasn't born to revolve around you. I have plenty of my own things to do..."

Before he could finish, He Zhuoming had already turned and walked away.

Furious, Lin Qingyun caught up in a few steps and demanded, "How can you be like this? I didn't even finish what I was saying!"

He Zhuoming covered her ears and quickened her pace. Lin Qingyun reached out and grabbed the back of her collar. She stumbled backward and collided with his chest.

In the tug, the scraped skin on her palm rubbed against something, and He Zhuoming let out a pained hiss. Lin Qingyun glanced down and caught sight of her wounded hand.

His brow furrowed, and he grabbed her wrist. "What happened to your hand... did you hurt it digging the pit?"

He Zhuoming: "Let go. I don't want to talk to you!"

Lin Qingyun: "You—"

He Zhuoming turned her head away, glaring at him with dead seriousness. "If you don't let go, I'm going to bite you."

Lin Qingyun glanced at his own arm. The sleeve was covered in blood and mud, filthy beyond belief.

He hesitated for a moment. "You'd really bite it?"

He Zhuoming: "I don't discuss such personal topics with a life-saving benefactor of merely passing acquaintance."

In the end, Lin Qingyun released her wrist, though he also handed the wooden sword back to her. He Zhuoming didn't take it, just watching him with suspicion and wariness.

Lin Qingyun pursed his lips. "The sword was a gift. I don't take back things I've given—that would be tacky."

He Zhuoming reminded him, "You just told me to take off my clothes and give them back to you."

Lin Qingyun: "..."