Seeing Lin Ge's expression at that moment, Xia Li could not help sighing. Thinking about it carefully, he seemed to have been sighing rather often lately. Though he had won a battle after forming his stellar golden core, it had not been a clean, exhilarating victory, nor truly his own victory.
"What's there to congratulate? They say marriage alliance and it's marriage alliance? What do they think I am, some helpless young woman they can just carry off by force?"
Xia Li found it funny even as he said it. Then again, that might truly be how they saw it.
"When a Holy Land takes the initiative to propose marriage, there has never been a precedent of failure. Unless the one to be married dies young by misfortune."
Lin Ge could not stop herself from imagining the worst. Holy Lands were simply too powerful. They were forces passed down from the Era of the Sages to the present day. Humanity currently had seven great Holy Lands, but the sages of the past had been far more than seven. In other words, only the inheritances left by the strongest sages had remained dominant after such endless ages.
"What if I simply refuse?"
"You should still agree. I don't know how many methods the Holy Lands possess, but I do know that in history there were prodigies even more dazzling than you, and all of them still ended up wearing the robes of the Holy Land through marriage alliances."
Lin Ge bit her lip and urged Xia Li to give way. She knew that if Xia Li refused, terrible things would happen. One should never judge the inheritance of a Sage by ordinary logic. Countless ages ago, it was the sages who brought an end to barbarism and ushered in the world as it now stood. They were civilization itself. They were the will of the human race. Seeing Lin Ge like this, Xia Li clenched his fists without meaning to. For the first time, he stepped forward boldly and reached out to pull Lin Ge into an embrace. Lin Ge did not resist. She lowered her head and let herself fold into his arms, listening to the heart in his chest, with its faint sound of mechanical transmission. It was larger than before, stronger than before. She could even hear the pumping of blood within it, like a great river surging or a blazing furnace roaring.
The enhancement prosthetic now installed around Xia Li's heart was called Chernobyl. It was a commemorative model, a special prosthetic capable of filtering intense nuclear radiation. One of the hazards of a stellar golden core was stellar radiation. The Dyson Sphere A2 Spirit Core alone could not block it completely. Even though Xia Li's body could repair itself fast enough, it would still cause unnecessary losses of blood and qi. That was why, when Liu Sheng Qianzao had selected embedded prosthetics for Xia Li, resistance to heat had been only the first criterion. The second had been radiation resistance.
"I still prefer the way you were when we first met. Bold, careful, and brave enough to pursue what you wanted."
Back then, on the strength of a moment of intuition alone, with no probing at all, she had directly confessed her interest to him. That had frightened the timid Xia Li badly.
"It's just a pity that now you've come to understand things, but there isn't any time left for us."
Lin Ge truly felt it was a pity. At first, her fondness for Xia Li had come from the memories of her mother. More than that, Xia Li gave her a strange familiarity, as if she had known him long ago. Perhaps her bloodline resembled demon bloodlines in this way too and carried something like inherited memory, passing down fragments of cognition and memory from her mother. She still remembered something Xia Li had once said. He had said with his own mouth that he had been friends with her mother. At the time she had not believed him, because his age did not line up. But when she thought about it more carefully, there were so many ways in this world to sleep through ages. If Xia Li had fallen into slumber for many years and only recently awakened, it was not impossible at all. So Lin Ge also understood what her feelings for Xia Li truly rested on.
It was a beautiful longing for the second homeland she had never seen.
"I will do everything in my power to refuse this marriage alliance."
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Xia Li hated this feeling of being arranged by others. He was no longer who he had once been. He felt that by now he ought to possess at least some power to resist. His telekinesis was on the verge of Soul Transformation. He had formed a stellar golden core. He was the first human in history to possess a golden core beyond ninth rank. He had made history on Earth and carved his own trajectory into this world.
He...
He should not still be as weak as before.
"What I hope even more is that you won't fight over this momentary anger, that you won't... won't end up like my mother!"
Lin Ge raised her head and took Xia Li's hand in both of hers, placing it gently against her cheek.
"I've remembered some things from when I was small recently. I would rather we become strangers again than see you in an inhuman body."
Lin Ge recalled the final time she had seen her mother. The sight of her mother in that Iron-Bone Corpse Fiend form remained a wound in her heart. She did not want to become like that, and still less did she want Xia Li to become the same. If resistance was doomed to end in ruin, then it was better to forget each other in the world.
"Come to think of it, am I really irreplaceable to you? Do you really value me that much?"
"To you, I'm more a substitute for your mother. And what I see in your eyes when you look at me is pity."
Lin Ge was a smart person. Within the limits of an acceptable price, she would do all she could to pursue what she wanted. But if the price became too great to bear, she also knew how to let go cleanly. That was why this relationship, which had begun with her, should also be the one she herself brought to an end.
"Is that so..."
Xia Li did not deny it. What he felt for Lin Ge truly was rooted more in pity than anything else. At the end of the day, she was only one of those unresolved knots in his heart. It was still far from being love.
"Which is exactly why you should handle this marriage alliance with the Holy Land calmly and rationally. You absolutely must not act rashly. Quite a few disciples in the sect already know we were close. Call me selfish if you want, but I don't want to become the price of your resistance."
"And don't underestimate the Holy Land either. In their eyes, is your resistance truly resistance, or just another development that happens to suit their plans?"
Lin Ge used words that were both reasonable and emotionally just to extinguish the fire in Xia Li's heart that wanted to resist to the end. Because even that very will to resist might well lie within the Holy Land's expectations. To Xia Li, those words struck like a blow of sudden awakening. He thought back again to that night when the Corporate Alliance had toyed with him. Whether he killed or did not kill, it had all been a joke. All of it had been the sort of spectacle the corporations wanted to see.
"I understand now."
Xia Li nodded and let her go. Lin Ge, though reluctant, stepped back a few paces. Lowering her head, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Then...
"Congratulations, Junior Brother Xia. I wish you and your unseen dao companion ten thousand years of harmony."
Lin Ge put on her bright and lively expression once more, congratulating Xia Li on being chosen by Taiyi Holy Land and on being able to take a Holy Maiden as his dao companion.
"Mm..."
Xia Li nodded lightly. He had kept rejecting Lin Ge before, but now that Lin Ge had rejected him in turn, his mood felt complicated. He understood that the situation had forced this outcome, yet his heart still ached. People needed a reason to come to know one another and grow close. What of remembering a lost loved one?
What of pity?
And yet, while fate had allowed them to walk together for a stretch, it had not allowed them to go farther.
No...
That was not quite right either. It was only that, for now, their fate did not extend any farther. He still had not yet reached the turning point where he could truly grasp his own destiny.