Chapter Ninety-Nine: Call Me Sister

Only then did he finally find a chance to leave the sect.

Xu Nuo took up the thread. “So you disguised yourself as a woman from a pleasure house to get close to me?”

Lu Ciyuan faltered. “There just happened to be one of my puppets there.”

Xu Nuo: “And you were the one who massacred Heartfelt Pavilion?”

“Mm.” Lu Ciyuan nodded silently in admission.

“I thought so.” Xu Nuo pinched Lu Ciyuan’s chin. “Why do you like pretending to be a woman so much?”

Without the scars, Lu Ciyuan’s face was delicate and pretty. If his features were a little softer, there really would be nothing odd about him passing as a girl.

“Because...” With Xu Nuo pinching his face, his words came out a little muffled, and he used that excuse to swallow the rest back down.

“Because why?” Xu Nuo clearly had no intention of letting him off that easily.

With a helpless sigh, Lu Ciyuan decided to come clean. “Because I don’t want any other man at your side.”

Xu Nuo laughed. “Oh? Jealous, are you?”

“Yes.” Now that he had said it aloud, Lu Ciyuan no longer seemed awkward about it. In that still-youthful voice, he said domineeringly, “Yes, I’m jealous. There can only be me beside you.”

“Don’t worry.” Xu Nuo patted the boy on the head. “I already said I came for you.”

Lu Ciyuan asked, “Then one day, will you leave for some reason?”

That question made Xu Nuo freeze.

A wave of unease surged through Lu Ciyuan at once. “Are you going to leave?”

Looking into those eyes of his, so clear and unclouded, Xu Nuo found she could not bring herself to say the comforting lie on the tip of her tongue.

Her silence all but confirmed Lu Ciyuan’s worst suspicion.

“Miss Xu, can you tell me?”

Xu Nuo said nothing.

“Xu-jiejie.” Lu Ciyuan called her with a teenager’s youthful, uncertain voice.

“I came for you. I can give you everything.” Xu Nuo spoke slowly. “You only need to understand that the meaning of my existence is you. It is enough that I can give you everything for your sake.”

Xu Nuo smiled at him. “No matter how you see me.”

Her gaze seemed almost able to see straight through him. Thinking of his own state of mind before, Lu Ciyuan was overwhelmed by a tremendous sense of shame. His voice turned low and husky as he carefully wrapped his arms around the person beside him.

“To me, you are like a perfect dream.”

“A perfect dream?” Xu Nuo asked, thinking of how the affection meter had not changed at all until now. In the system’s eyes, she might well be a textbook example of what not to be.

“For me, your existence is perfection.” Lu Ciyuan hurriedly made his position clear. “I was the one who failed to appreciate you.”

Xu Nuo was curious where that guilt of his came from. “Why would you say that?”

Lu Ciyuan said somewhat awkwardly, “Before, I... I actually didn’t really trust you.”

Xu Nuo was utterly unconcerned. “I know. Isn’t that completely normal?” If someone happened to be kind to him, would he just hand over his complete trust? Could he still count as the hero of a wish-fulfillment power fantasy?

Lu Ciyuan hurriedly added, “And I hid a lot of things from you before.”

Xu Nuo answered smoothly, “If you mean the fact that you often stole your classmates’ spirit stones, and that you hid your true strength—how you looked as though people were always bullying you, when in fact you secretly beat them back every time—and also...”

Hearing that whole string of words, Lu Ciyuan’s face flushed crimson. Xu Nuo, meanwhile, went on, “...and also the fact that you’d already long been able to return to your original body, yet still approached me under the identity of Luo Guo to test me. I know all of it.”

“What else do you want to say?”

Lu Ciyuan: “...”

“You approached me as Luo Guo because you wanted to test whether I was sincere with you?” Xu Nuo smiled a little.

Lu Ciyuan instinctively wanted to deny it. But Xu Nuo was right: he had indeed been testing her, and because she had grown close to Fang Yu, he had even lost control of his temper and acted petulantly.

He had thought that as long as he never said anything, Xu Nuo would never know he had done something so childish. But in truth, Xu Nuo had long since seen through his disguise and his motives. Even though he had taken the initiative to admit that Luo Guo had been a disguise, it had not eased the awkwardness one bit.

If anything, it had only left him in a more passive position.

“I was wrong.” Lu Ciyuan lowered his head obediently to admit fault.

Xu Nuo said with a smile, “It’s nothing serious. I’m not angry.”

Lu Ciyuan cautiously looked up. “Has Miss Xu forgiven me?”

Xu Nuo lifted a brow. “Still calling me Miss Xu?”

Lu Ciyuan: “Xu... Xu-shifu?”

Xu Nuo could almost see a pair of dog ears on Lu Ciyuan, drooping timidly and making him look rather endearing.

“Call me sister.”

Lu Ciyuan stared. “Huh?”

Xu Nuo: “Didn’t you call me sister before?”

“Xu-jiejie.” Lu Ciyuan tried it tentatively, then found himself growing more and more fluent. “Xu-jiejie!”

“Good boy.” Xu Nuo rubbed the top of Lu Ciyuan’s head. “Sister is going to give you a grand present.”

“What present?” Lu Ciyuan was, of course, looking forward to the gift Xu Nuo mentioned, but thinking of her current condition, he still said, “Xu-jiejie, your injuries haven’t healed yet.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Xu Nuo said, “Aren’t you curious what I prepared for you?”

Lu Ciyuan asked, “What is it?”

“Do you remember when I fought in the arena before?” Xu Nuo asked.

“Yes.” Lu Ciyuan nodded.

Xu Nuo said half jokingly, “I rarely made it to the finals, and I even secured a place for you.”

“But haven’t you already been exposed?” Lu Ciyuan looked from himself to Xu Nuo. The difference between a woman and a man was still quite obvious.

“What does that matter?” Xu Nuo said. “Aren’t you good at cross-dressing as a man? Put on a mask too, and who would recognize you?”

“But...” Lu Ciyuan hesitated. He did not understand what Xu Nuo intended.

Xu Nuo said, “You can use this to seize the city lord’s position quickly and trample the current city lord, who happens to be your biological father, underfoot.”

“Have you always wanted to deal with him? Now you have your chance.”

In the original storyline, one of Lu Ciyuan’s great spotlight moments was the father-and-son drama with the lord of the main city. The lord of the main city was a stumbling block that had to be removed on Lu Ciyuan’s path to power, and killing his own father was also one of Lu Ciyuan’s early ambitions.

So she really did know a great deal about him. Lu Ciyuan had once been wary of Xu Nuo because of how she seemed to see through everything, and he had kept his guard up at every turn. But now his state of mind was entirely different.

Xu Nuo knew so much about him, and instead of finding it unpleasant, he felt delighted. The feeling was brand-new to him, carrying with it an almost addictive urge: he was willing to obey Xu Nuo completely.

007 suddenly said, [Host, the affection meter is full.]

“Mm.” Looking at Lu Ciyuan’s youthful face, Xu Nuo could not help feeling a little regretful. “I wonder whether I’ll get to see the day he takes the city lord’s throne.”

At this stage, the most important thing for Lu Ciyuan was still to seize the city lord’s position from his biological father.

She had gone back through the story bible, and there were still many plotlines ahead that had not yet been explored. She had not expected the affection meter to max out so quickly.