The ice spread rapidly over his entire body. This man’s strength was truly terrifying. Mo Ran released some spiritual energy to fend off the freeze and was met with a burst of immense and oppressive force bearing down on him. The enemy before him might rival even Chu Wanning.
Water element. Who?!
For a fleeting instant, a blurry face seemed to flash through Mo Ran’s mind, but before he could focus on it, his foe’s hand clamped down on his neck.
Fingertips wrapped in black silk caressed his throat. There was no reflection in those dark eyes. “Your Imperial Majesty needn’t concern himself with the length of my life,” he said slowly. “More importantly, let me help you retrieve some basic human emotions so that you don’t screw up my plans by doing everything but what you’re supposed to.”
“Nngh!”
There was the wet sound of something being cut into. Bugui cried out in sorrow as it pierced its former master’s flesh.
“It’s not deep. Just getting some of your blood to bind the seal.”
True to his word, the man took only a bit of blood from Mo Ran’s wound to mark him between his brows. Then he began to chant some manner of incantation.
A searing pain exploded in Mo Ran’s head. “Fuck. Your. Mother!” he cursed. “The fuck did I do to you in my last life? Did I chop you into minced meat or kill all eighteen generations of your ancestors or some shit? Fucking hell! The fuck are you doing?!”
“Shh, hold still. It’s just a virtue spell.”
“I don’t fucking care if it’s a virtue spell or a vice spell—keep touching me and it’s gonna be a vomit spell! Fuck off!”
“Ah, Mo Ran.” The man sighed softly while drawing a seal on his brow. “How could you bear to tell me to fuck off?” He paused, then resumed chanting. “Heart lesser than water, fervor unstoppable. Heart gate…open.”
Agony tore through Mo Ran’s chest. “You…”
Suddenly, the ice was dispelled. Mo Ran stumbled, legs giving out as he sank slowly to his knees, face pale and colorless.
“You should thank me.” For a while, the black-robed person looked down at him through lowered lashes, expression apathetic. Then he said evenly, “I’ve heightened the emotions in your heart, made love and hate clearer still. Surely you should be able to figure out your own feelings now. If, even after all this, you still don’t understand that you must do all in your power to protect Shi Mei, up to and including giving your life, then you…are truly useless. Nothing more than an unwanted child to be tossed aside!”
So this virtue spell made love and hate more intense and clear-cut? Why would this person go to such lengths to preserve Shi Mei’s life? Water element…
These were the last scattered thoughts in Mo Ran’s head before his consciousness faded. He crumpled to the floor with a thud, thick curtains of lashes closing over his eyes.
The black-robed person stared dispassionately at him for a while, then slowly crouched to take his pulse. He thought for a short moment before lifting a hand to gather a brilliant blue light in his palm.
“Forget,” the black-robed person intoned in a low voice. The blue light glowed brighter still, and Mo Ran’s tightly locked brows slowly relaxed.
When Mo Ran woke, he would only remember going out to try to summon the holy weapon, to no avail. He would remember nothing else, nor would he know that in this world, another person had been reborn.
Meanwhile, the virtue spell, though its effects lasted for only a few days, was an excellent tool for showing the lost where their desire truly lay.
“With your emotions heightened, you might wake up to find yourself even more in love with Shi Mingjing,” the black-robed man said in a cold voice. “So in love that you want nothing more than to wrench out your own heart and give it to him… See you later, Emperor Taxian-jun.”
The storm blew over and the waves settled back down.
Mo Ran opened his eyes the next morning to find himself lying on the floor next to Chu Wanning’s bed. He turned his head to the side. The window seemed to have been blown open by the wind sometime during the night; it was half-closed, swinging gently in the morning breeze, creaking every time it made contact with the wooden beam.
It was quiet inside the room. Mo Ran didn’t have to check the bed to know that Chu Wanning was still asleep.
The sky outside the patterned window was a dull teal. The morning sky was often pale before the rising sun broke through the clouds to dust a blush on her cheeks and bathe her in warmth. Few people rose this early, so she didn’t bother painting her wan, tired countenance.
The breeze from outside carried the faint scent of fresh grass and morning dew. Mo Ran lay there for a while, waiting for consciousness to come to him before sitting up—only to feel a stab of pain in his shoulder.
Weird. Why was there a rip in his clothes, and dried blood under it? He stared at it blankly for a while.
Hadn’t he gone out in the night to test Bugui? He seemed to remember that it hadn’t responded, so it was probably a fake after all. And then… Tsk, can’t remember.
Mo Ran looked around and found a thick nail sticking out of the dark brown floor. That must’ve scratched him, then. Had he been so deeply asleep that he hadn’t felt it? He draped an outer robe over his shoulders and looked toward the bed.
Chu Wanning lay there in peaceful repose. Mo Ran had long since grown used to him being all aloof and high-up, enjoying the best while Mo Ran had to settle for the leftovers, like making do with the floor at the foot of the bed. But for some reason, he felt extra irritable today, and he glared at his shizun’s figure with an itch in his teeth.
“How come you always get the bed while I have to sleep on the floor? Sure, the saying is, ‘Respect your teacher,’ but doesn’t it also say to, ‘Love your young’?”
Mo Ran was irked. He only got more disgruntled when he remembered the nail sticking out of the floor that had cut him for no damn reason. It was still early, and he didn’t want to pitifully curl up on the floor anymore, so he climbed on the bed and closed his eyes to go back to sleep.
The bed was spacious enough that he and Chu Wanning, one facing left and the other facing right, didn’t have to touch. They had once slept in each other’s arms; now they slept with an invisible barrier between them.
In their last lifetime, they had been skin to skin, limbs entangled, and on particularly frenzied days, Mo Ran hadn’t even pulled out after making love to him.
These two, who had once been so intimate, now lay on opposite ends of the bed to sleep.