Meng Lichun’s arrival was unexpected, and she even ordered a large table of delicious food through a food delivery app.
But with such a big table of dishes, only Xie Tao was earnestly eating, while Meng Lichun held her chopsticks but tasted nothing.
“Tao Tao, aren’t you curious about what they might be talking about?” Eventually, Meng Lichun put down her chopsticks, picked up the milk tea beside her, but then set it down again.
Hearing this, Xie Tao looked up at her, “Curious, yes,”
Holding a bowl, with a piece of meat in her mouth, her voice was muffled, “But Uncle Xi won’t let me go, so being curious is useless…”
For the first time, Meng Lichun felt even the milk tea in her hand wasn’t appealing.
Her gaze seemed to linger in a nebulous space, her beautiful eyes complex and entwined with a hardly noticeable desolation.
He was willing to see Wei Yun but never, her.
Sensing her mood shift, Xie Tao hesitated for a moment before cautiously speaking, “Sister Chun, you…”
“What did you call me?” Meng Lichun suddenly interrupted her.
Caught off guard by the interruption, Xie Tao, still holding her chopsticks, looked at Meng Lichun’s stunningly beautiful face, a bit bewildered, “Can’t I… call you that?”
Meng Lichun frowned, the face that had just shown a bit of sadness now seemed impassive, “Don’t make me sound younger!”
“Ah?” Xie Tao was momentarily unable to react.
Is calling someone younger… not good?
Moreover, Meng Lichun in front of her looked to be in her twenties, a young face.
“What do you call Xi?” Meng Lichun asked her.
“Uncle Xi…” Xie Tao honestly replied.
“Then you should call me ‘Auntie,’ got it?” Meng Lichun reached out and poked her cheek.
???
Xie Tao looked at Meng Lichun for a long time without saying a word.
She had never encountered such an odd request before.
Not satisfied with being called sister, she insisted on being called auntie…
“Tao Tao, hurry up, call me once.” Meng Lichun held her face, looking at her with hopeful eyes, always with a smile on her lips.
“…”
Xie Tao felt she couldn’t quite open her mouth.
Meng Lichun is getting a bit anxious waiting. “Hurry up and call me Tao Tao!” she urged.
Xie Tao felt like she was the Golden Horned King holding a gourd, with a Sun Wukong insisting in front of her to be called by a certain name.
“Auntie Chun…” Xie Tao called out weakly.
Upon hearing this ‘Auntie’, Meng Lichun immediately smiled brightly and cheerfully responded, “Eh!”
‘That’s right, Tao Tao, you should call me that…”
But as she smiled, tears inexplicably filled Meng Lichun’s eyes.
Then Xie Tao saw her stretch out her hand, and a small jar of wine appeared in it.
She poured herself a cup and asked Xie Tao if she wanted any.
Remembering Wei Yun’s words, Xie Tao shook her head, ‘I won’t drink.”
She saw Meng Lichun drink three cups in silence.
“Auntie Chun, what exactly is the relationship between you and Uncle Xi?” Xie Tao finally asked, a question she had hidden in her heart for a long time.
“You’ve guessed it, haven’t you?” Meng Lichun propped her chin with one hand and poured another cup of wine into her mouth.
Xie Tao noticed that her way of holding the wine cup and the slight movements when she drank, her eyebrows slightly drooping, were almost identical to Old Xi’s.
As if one person was accustomed to imitating another, attempting to retain the presence of someone from the past through such actions.
“Then, why did it become like this between you and Uncle Xi?”
Xie Tao found it hard to describe the feeling between them; it was as if they were the most familiar strangers.
“If I fucking knew why,” Meng Lichun suddenly slammed the wine cup on the table upon hearing Xie Tao’s words. But her agitated expression faded in a moment, her eyebrows relaxed and dimmed, as if the light in the depths of her pupils also extinguished in an instant, “I wouldn’t have been dwelling on it for so many years…”
Her voice suddenly became very soft, almost like a murmur to herself.
How exactly did she and Wen Xi fall to this state step by step?
For centuries, Meng Lichun never unraveled this mystery.
In her youth, as a time traveler who landed in one of the most chaotic eras, all the literature about that era in her future world consisted only of a few fragmented pages.
With her arrogant and unrestrained nature, she never backed down when she fell in love with that gentle boy.
Even the name ‘Lichun’ was given to her by him, a nickname bestowed in an apricot grove on a spring day hundreds of years ago.
Meng Lichun had almost forgotten her original name.
From the moment he died in front of her, she lived as the ‘Lichun’ he spoke of.
And at the moment of his death, she had already driven herself mad.
As someone who lived in a technological era, accustomed to a peaceful society where everyone is equal, that era of warring heroes vying for the Central Plains brought her countless bloody warnings, and the deep despair of being a person from the future unable to overcome the feudal society where hierarchy mattered above all.
Wen Xi died amidst the world’s scorn, but that infamy was unjustly imposed upon him by others.
Born into loneliness and suffering, his life was as fleeting as a duckweed.
Living in agony and pain, even in death, he was burdened with shackles that did not belong to him, amidst the insults and scorn of millions.
In that world, no one cared about his life or death, no one cared about his innocence.
Perhaps even he himself did not care.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have stubbornly gone alone, on that snowy, grand night, back to the center of the power vortex, to become a pawn in his father and brothers’ hands.
But she cared.
She loved him, more deeply than she had imagined.
His father and brothers used him, harmed him, made him a target for all, leading to his death in front of the palace gates of Prince Liang.
He was executed in the most tragic and bloody manner.
“I went to great lengths to rescue him from Prince Liang’s palace, but he insisted on going back…”
Perhaps it was the alcohol, but Meng Lichun, who hadn’t shared her feelings with anyone for many years, began to ramble about her past to the girl sitting in front of her.
Her tears came suddenly, as if she hadn’t noticed them herself.
Seeing this, Xie Tao hurriedly took a tissue, walked over to the chair next to Meng Lichun, and handed it to her.
But Meng Lichun remained indifferently, without reaching out to take it.
She seemed to be engulfed in the many memories of the past, lost in where to begin.
That snowy, harsh night.
The young lord she had always held dear and secretly adored, when facing the blade she held against his neck, disregarded the sharpness of the sword, and kissed her while also cutting himself, marking the only time in her life she was kissed by him.
She threatened him not to return to Prince Liang’s palace, not to step out of that door, or she would kill him… She threatened him to flee from the state of Liang, to escape the strife.
But all those threats were sealed with a kiss in an instant.
Meng Lichun’s heart, it seemed, had never beaten as fast as it did at that moment in her half-lived life.
“Later, he died…”
Meng Lichun smiled through her tears, “right in front of me.”
She looked at Xie Tao, holding her hand, “His arm was chopped off, his head was decapitated without hesitation, blood spilled everywhere, everyone watched, everyone cursed him, so many people were applauding… I can’t forget, I will never forget in my life.”
As she spoke, her teeth chattered, and her eyes were tinged with red blood vessels.
His death was deeply engraved in her bones, painful to the core.
“Aunt Chun…” Hearing her ramble on about these things, Xie Tao felt saddened and could only tentatively reach out with a tissue to wipe her tears.
“Then,”
Meng Lichun suddenly laughed again.
Her demeanor turned somewhat manic, laughing uncontrollably.
“I endured for three years, it took me three years, I killed his brother, his father, everyone who harmed him… I didn’t spare a single one.”
Meng Lichun became a complete lunatic.
But what she didn’t expect was that the young lord she killed, would historically be the iron-blooded emperor who unified the six nations after the Yi Dynasty.
The young lord was the most crucial link in the historical chain following the Yi Dynasty.
She died by her hand.
Thus, history became chaotic and shifted, rushing towards an irreversible situation, even causing a once unified world to split into two distinctly different timelines.
Her hometown disappeared.
She could never return.
As a time traveler, having arrived thousands of years earlier, she had already merged with the magnetic field of that era, so the disappearance of the future world did not take her along with it.
She became the culprit who destroyed the world’s timeline, yet for some reason, the gods did not let her die. Instead, they gave her a half piece of an immortal bone, making her an immortal being who could not die, living between the cracks of two timelines as a person seeking redemption.
And now, she discovered that Wen Xi, who was supposed to be dead, was still alive.
She had clearly seen him die, beheaded, without a complete body.
But why did he become the thousand-year-old immortal in the mysterious tavern mentioned by Xie Tao?
“You say… was I the only one who took his life seriously from beginning to end?”
Eventually, Meng Lichun leaned on Xie Tao’s shoulder, murmuring.
The man she had loved so dearly, had he never taken any of it seriously from the start?
Only she, like a fool,
Fell in love with him,
Felt sorry for him,
Even avenged him, killing so many people.
Meng Lichun got drunk, crying and laughing while leaning on Xie Tao’s shoulder.
In the end, it was one of her subordinates who came to take her away.
But what Xie Tao had not expected was that after a drunk Meng Lichun left, when she finished tidying up the dishes and came out, she saw Wei Yun leaning on the sofa, his eyebrows tinged with a hazy drunkenness.
Xie Lan had just thought about kicking Wei Yun while his eyes were closed, as payback for the powerful punch Wei Yun had given him on the way back.
Although it was he who had suggested the fight, and indeed he had not won,
Xie Lan still felt somewhat aggrieved.
But seeing Xie Tao come out, he quickly withdrew his foot, rubbed the back of his head, and deliberately frowned, “This guy is too weak. How many drinks did he have to end up like this, Tao Tao, what kind of boyfriend did you choose?”
“He may look good, but that’s hardly useful for anything…”
Just as Xie Tao was about to argue back, she hadn’t had the chance to say anything when Wei Yun, who was leaning on the sofa, seemed to have clearly heard Xie Lan speaking ill of him to Xie Tao. His eyebrows twitched, he lifted his eyelids to glare at him, and though his eyes seemed to gather a bit of hazy drunkenness, they were still aloof and cold.
He impatiently undid the buttons of his collar, revealing half of his delicate collarbone. His thin lips twitched slightly as he spoke with a hint of hoarseness:
“Get lost.”
