novelraw Chapter 1046 1046 Luo Xiangling Is Not Human
Chapter 1046 1046 Luo Xiangling Is Not Human
The scene froze for a moment.
A woman of unparalleled beauty.
A young man in flowing white robes.
One was a quasi-immortal from the foreign realm, the King of Luo.
The other was the divine son of the Jun family from the immortal realm, Jun Xiaoyao.
The atmosphere seemed to solidify at that very moment.
"You deceived everyone." Luo Xiangling parted her lips and spoke, her voice carrying a faint tremor.
It was not out of fear, for Jun Xiaoyao posed no threat to her whatsoever.
Her voice trembled because of disbelief, because of betrayal.
"That's right, I deceived everyone." Jun Xiaoyao was open and unapologetic.
"And you deceived me too!"
Luo Xiangling's tone sharpened, and the ice crystal sword in her hand advanced another half inch, pressing against Jun Xiaoyao's heart.
"I didn't deceive you." Jun Xiaoyao said.
"You still claim you didn't? So all along, you were using me as a shield. And to think that when you were wounded in the borderlands, I even had someone deliver a dragon vein to help you heal."
Luo Xiangling was truly heartbroken.
Pure by nature, she had never developed feelings for anyone before.
And yet this first time, she had run straight into Jun Xiaoyao, a scoundrel who had shattered her heart completely.
What terrible luck.
"If you consider it a deception of identity, then yes, you're right."
"But... every moment I spent with you held not a shred of pretense."
"Painting for you, composing poetry."
"Enjoying games of chess with you, discussing philosophy and the Dao."
"In my eyes, you are not the lofty King of Luo, but someone I can treat with genuine sincerity."
"A wonderful woman."
Jun Xiaoyao's face showed no flush, his heart no flutter.
His performance was nothing short of masterful.
The words were a little over the top, but this concerned Jun Xiaoyao's plans going forward.
So there was no room for error.
"You, stop talking..." Hearing all this, Luo Xiangling's heart fell into turmoil.
She found herself thinking back on everything she and Jun Xiaoyao had shared.
"Do you have any idea that if your identity were exposed, death would be the easiest thing that could happen to you?"
"You could have gone right on hiding it." Luo Xiangling said, her teeth pressing lightly into her red lips.
"True, I could have kept it hidden forever, but I didn't want to do that."
"I can deceive everyone else, but you are the one person I don't want to keep deceiving." Jun Xiaoyao said.
"Then you'll die." The rims of Luo Xiangling's eyes flushed faintly red.
"Then so be it. Dying at the hands of the King of Luo, I'd have no regrets." Jun Xiaoyao said calmly.
He looked into Luo Xiangling's glistening eyes.
He was gambling.
This was a high-stakes gamble.
If he won, he could forge a truly solid bond with Luo Xiangling.
If he lost.
Well, Jun Xiaoyao was not about to walk into his own grave.
He had long since arranged his plans and backup measures.
The idea of actually dying at Luo Xiangling's hands was simply out of the question.
Jun Xiaoyao was no legendary romantic hero, nor some lovesick fool.
With his temperament, dying at a woman's hands was even less likely.
"You..."
Watching Jun Xiaoyao wear the look of someone utterly unafraid of consequences.
Luo Xiangling's slender hand tightened its grip, trembling faintly.
She asked herself.
Even knowing that Jun Xiaoyao was the divine son of the Jun family from the immortal realm.
Could she actually go through with it?
Jun Xiaoyao could have kept it from her forever.
Yet he had chosen to open his heart and tell her the truth.
The ice crystal sword rested against Jun Xiaoyao's chest, and yet it could not fall.
Jun Xiaoyao raised his hand and closed it around the blade.
"Xiangling, with your strength, killing me would take nothing more than a single thought."
No matter how extraordinary Jun Xiaoyao was.
The gap between a Supreme and a quasi-immortal was a chasm nearly impossible to cross.
Of course, that was assuming Jun Xiaoyao did not play any of his other cards.
"You're forcing my hand!" Luo Xiangling's chest rose and fell.
Jun Xiaoyao was forcing her to make a choice.
Either kill him and expose him.
Or...
Help him keep the secret and become his accomplice.
After all, the closest bond in this world is the one shared between accomplices.
"How could I ever force you, Xiangling, I'm simply trusting you." Jun Xiaoyao smiled, warm and bright.
Almost no woman could resist Jun Xiaoyao's smile.
Xuanyue before her had been no exception.
The ice crystal sword dissolved without a sound into scattered motes of light.
Luo Xiangling turned away.
"Is this your greatest secret?"
"Of course." Jun Xiaoyao said.
Deep down, he quietly let out a breath of relief.
It seemed this hurdle had been cleared.
He had bet right.
"You know, I have secrets of my own as well." Luo Xiangling said, her tone quiet and distant.
"I've said before, I would never pressure you to speak of them. Unless you're willing, I'm happy to simply listen." Jun Xiaoyao said gently.
"Then what if I told you I'm not human?"
With that single sentence from Luo Xiangling, the atmosphere instantly went still.
Jun Xiaoyao's expression paused for just a moment.
Honestly, it was a little unexpected.
And yet, it also seemed somehow within reason.
Because Jun Xiaoyao had sensed it before.
Luo Xiangling possessed a heart that was pure and clear, and at times even a little naive.
Naive in a way that lacked the complex scheming and hidden depths typical of humans.
And it was precisely because of this that Jun Xiaoyao had dared to make this gamble.
Seeing Jun Xiaoyao fall silent, Luo Xiangling smiled, with a faint trace of bitterness.
But in the next moment, Jun Xiaoyao gave a slight smile and said, "What does it matter either way? All I know is that you are Xiangling, and that's enough."
Luo Xiangling's heart trembled once more.
Then she let out a rueful laugh and said, "Perhaps I never had the standing to expose you in the first place."
"Oh?" Jun Xiaoyao was surprised again.
"What if I told you I also come from the immortal realm?"
Luo Xiangling's words made Jun Xiaoyao's expression tighten.
"What's wrong, don't believe me? I can tell you my story." Luo Xiangling sighed softly.
She truly was not human.
Not even any other kind of living being.
She was a river.
A river called the Xiang River.
Like any river one might come across.
The Xiang River was nothing more than an ordinary river.
But one day.
A middle-aged man came to its banks, his entire body wreathed in primordial chaos energy.
He sat by the river, cultivating, contemplating.
Returning to simplicity, tracing the great Dao of heaven and earth.
An utterly ordinary Xiang River was no longer ordinary from the moment that man arrived.
Every day, the sounds of the great Dao rang out and filled the air.
Runes of heaven's supreme truths flickered and shimmered, drifting into the river from time to time.
Luo Xiangling did not know when she first began to have awareness.
She saw the figure by the river's edge.
Day after day, year after year.
The Xiang River was no longer just an ordinary river.
It had gained a spirit and transformed into a river spirit.
By the banks of the Luo River, the Xiang River had gained a soul.
And so she was called, Luo Xiangling.
She regarded that middle-aged man as family, for it was he who had given her life.
Yet when Luo Xiangling took on a physical form and stood before him.
The man's expression was utterly indifferent, like the Dao of heaven itself.
"All things under heaven follow their order. You were born an ordinary river, and an ordinary river you should remain."
"My arrival entangled your fate with mine, and so that entanglement must be erased."
"The rules of the heavenly Dao cannot be defied. Those who defy heaven shall be punished."
The man made his move. Primordial chaos energy surged and swept away Luo Xiangling's spirit.
But what he could not have anticipated.
The waters of the Xiang River evaporated and rose into the sky, becoming rain.
Within a single raindrop, a trace of Luo Xiangling's spiritual consciousness still remained.
That raindrop drifted and drifted, on and on.
No one knew how long it drifted, nor how many ages and eons passed.
It fell into a river.
That river was a tributary of the Underworld River of the foreign realm.
And the Underworld River stretched across all ten great provinces of the foreign realm, existing like a mother river to them all.
The Underworld River Province, where the War God Academy stood, was named after the Underworld River itself.
After an age of untold length, Luo Xiangling appeared once more.
And when she took on physical form again, her power was nothing like it had once been.
Perhaps owing to the power of the Underworld River, she had become a quasi-immortal revered in all directions.
With no kin and no ties, the most natural place for her to settle was the War God Academy, situated in the Underworld River Province.
From then on, deep within the War God Academy, inside a grove of purple bamboo, there appeared an ancient and supreme figure of unparalleled grace, the King of Luo.
This was Luo Xiangling's story.