Chapter 470: Suffocating
As the original Ji’an grew older, the cracks in her soul began to manifest as a restlessness.
The estate felt suffocating.
She felt absolutely nothing for the political marriages her father proposed. She felt nothing for the silks or the jewelry.
She sought stimulation to pierce the numb void in her chest.
At eighteen, she left the Lin Estate.
She took a sword, a bag of spirit stones, and walked out into the world as a wandering cultivator, seeking the thrill of life-and-death combat just to feel her own pulse.
The vision shifted, tracking her journey into the treacherous, rain-slicked mountains of the Southern Basin.
The original Ji’an was walking along a narrow, muddy mountain pass during a torrential downpour. Her face was completely impassive, rain plastering her dark hair to her cheeks.
Suddenly, the mountain above her groaned.
A landslide was triggered.
Thousands of tons of mud, uprooted trees, and jagged boulders cascaded down the slope with the deafening roar of an earthquake.
Ji’an leaped backward, effortlessly dodging the primary flow of the mudslide.
But as the mud roared past her, she heard a sound.
"HELP! THE MUD IS RUINING MY SILK ROBES!"
Transmigrator Ji’an, watching the vision, groaned so loudly it vibrated her spatula.
"Oh, for the love of all that is holy," Ji’an muttered, closing her eyes. "I know that voice. I know that obnoxious, overly-enunciated tone of golden distress. Don’t tell me."
In the vision, the original Ji’an peered over the edge of the newly formed mud-cliff.
Dangling desperately from the roots of a protruding pine tree, suspended over a deadly drop, was a young man.
He was covered in mud, but beneath the grime, he was wearing the immaculately tailored, outrageously expensive white and gold robes of the Holy Sect.
His hair was a mess of golden-blonde, and his eyes were wide, bright, and filled with tears of pure panic.
Gu Zhiwei. The Golden Retriever. The Holy Son.
𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢
"Please, kind maiden!" Zhiwei wept, his golden aura sputtering pathetically as his grip on the root slipped. "I am on a diplomatic mission to purchase rare incense, and the mountain has betrayed me! If I fall, my perfect bone structure will be irreparably shattered!"
The original Ji’an stared down at him.
Her face was a mask of absolute, unfeeling apathy.
She calculated the energy required to pull him up versus the annoyance of hearing his voice.
"You are very loud," the original Ji’an stated flatly.
"I am a Holy Son! We project from the diaphragm!" Zhiwei cried, his fingers slipping further. "Please! I will grant you immense wealth! I will bless your ancestors!"
The original Ji’an sighed, a tiny release of air that signaled ultimate boredom. She reached down, grabbed Zhiwei by the collar of his ruined silk robes, and effortlessly, with one arm, yanked him up over the ledge and dumped him onto the solid path.
Zhiwei hit the ground, coughing up mud.
He looked up.
He saw the original Ji’an standing over him in the rain. She wasn’t smiling. She looked completely annoyed and emotionally dead.
But to Gu Zhiwei’s ridiculously dramatic, hopelessly romantic orthodox brain, he wasn’t looking at an apathetic wanderer.
He was looking at an angel of mercy who had descended from the heavens to pluck him from the jaws of death.
Click.
The golden retriever imprinted instantly.
"You... you saved my life," Zhiwei breathed, his golden eyes blowing wide, completely mesmerized. He scrambled to his knees, totally ignoring the mud ruining his pants. "I am Gu Zhiwei! Holy Son of the Azure Empire! I owe you a life debt, beautiful maiden! I shall follow you to the ends of the earth! I shall be your sword! I shall be your shield! I shall carry your luggage!"
Transmigrator Ji’an screamed at the vision.
"HE IS FLIRTING WITH YOU, YOU EMOTIONALLY STUNTED ROCK!" Ji’an yelled, swinging her spatula in frustration.
"TELL HIM TO GO HOME! DO NOT ADOPT THE DOG!"
But the original Ji’an did not possess the emotional intelligence to recognize a romantic advance.
She looked at the kneeling, muddy, eager boy with the bright golden hair.
For a fraction of a second, her blank eyes flickered.
She didn’t see a handsome Holy Son.
She saw a boy roughly the same age as her little brother, Lin Xuan, back at the estate. He had the same naive, irritating, helpless energy.
The original Ji’an reached out. She didn’t offer a romantic embrace.
She patted Gu Zhiwei firmly, twice, directly on top of his muddy, golden head.
"You remind me of my little brother," the original Ji’an stated in her monotone voice. "He is also loud and bad at climbing. You may carry my luggage. The bags are heavy."
Gu Zhiwei’s face flushed a brilliant, violent crimson. The head-pat completely shattered his remaining sanity.
"SHE PATTED ME! SHE HAS CLAIMED ME AS HER VASSAL!" Zhiwei’s internal monologue practically broadcasted into the corridor. "I WILL CARRY HER BAGS TO THE END OF TIME! I WILL BE THE GREATEST BROTHER-FIGURE-TURNED-HUSBAND IN HISTORY!"
"He’s so stupid," Transmigrator Ji’an wept, rubbing her temples as she continued to march through the dark. "He’s so incredibly, fundamentally stupid. She literally sister-zoned him in the first three minutes, and he thinks it’s just a foreplay."
The Tenth Timeline shifted into a bizarre, tragicomedy road-trip.
The original Ji’an wandered the continent, hunting beasts and exploring ruins, searching for anything that would make her soul feel alive.
And trailing behind her, carrying an absurd amount of bags, holding a parasol over her head, and constantly projecting his blinding holy light to keep her warm, was Gu Zhiwei.
He was hopelessly, desperately in love with her.
He bought her flowers. He wrote her poems. He fought off bandits while screaming her name.
And the original Ji’an... did absolutely nothing.
She treated him exactly like a petulant younger brother.
When he brought her flowers, she fed them to her horse. When he wrote her poems, she used the parchment to start campfires.
When he was injured in battle, she coldly, pragmatically bandaged his wounds, telling him he needed to improve his footwork if he didn’t want to bleed out.
Transmigrator Ji’an watched the dynamic play out with a heavy heart.
It wasn’t funny anymore. It was tragic.
Zhiwei was pouring his entire golden heart into a void. He thought her coldness was a test of his devotion. He thought if he just loved her hard enough, the ice would melt.
He didn’t know the ice wasn’t a defense mechanism.
He didn’t know the ice was the symptom of a soul that had been ground into dust across nine previous lifetimes. There was nothing left inside her to give him.
The vision scrolled forward.
They were in the dense, toxic jungles of the Eastern Basin.
The original Ji’an was tracking a high-tier Demonic Miasma-Boar. She cornered the massive, rotting beast in a clearing.
But before she could draw her sword, a massive, scarred figure dropped from the canopy above.
Hu Yanlie. The Beast Lord.
He was younger, wilder, draped in the furs of apex predators.
He didn’t use a weapon as he landed directly on the back of the Miasma-Boar and snapped its neck with a single, brutal twist of his bare hands.
He stood up, covered in the beast’s toxic blood, and locked his feral, primal eyes onto the original Ji’an.
"My kill, little girl," Yanlie rumbled, pounding his chest. "Find your own meat."
Normally, a mortal cultivator would flee from the Beast Lord.
But the original Ji’an was hollow.
She felt no fear.
She walked directly up to the towering giant, unimpressed by his raw masculinity.
"I tracked it for three days," the original Ji’an stated flatly. "The core is mine. The meat is tainted anyway. Give it to me."
Yanlie sneered, stepping into her personal space, attempting to use his massive physical presence to intimidate her. "Or what? You will hit me with your delicate little sword?"
The original Ji’an didn’t draw her sword.
She simply stepped forward and forcefully, aggressively kicked Hu Yanlie directly in the shin with a Qi-infused boot.
CRACK.
It wasn’t enough to break the Beast Lord’s leg, but the kinetic force made Yanlie howl in pain, hopping backward on one foot.
"Hey!" Yanlie roared, clutching his shin, staring at the cold, unfeeling girl in absolute shock.
"The core," the original Ji’an demanded, holding out her hand, her expression completely blank.