Chapter 33

Nian Qi was the kind of thoughtful person who naturally ended up taking care of cleaning after the quiet, atmospheric summer night. Ruan Qing, feeling a bit guilty for not helping much, at least tried to kick the trash can over with her foot to assist. After thinking for a moment, she decided to help reduce his workload in a different way.

She dashed into the study room and returned about fifteen minutes later, looking pleased with herself. “I just ordered a dishwasher and a robot vacuum.”

“A machine that washes dishes?” Nian Qi looked a little surprised. “Won’t it just grind everything to bits?”

The word “washer” made him think of a washing machine, and in his mind, he pictured porcelain plates tumbling and shattering to pieces.

Ruan Qing stifled a laugh and pulled up a video of the dishwasher. “Here, see for yourself.”

Nian Qi set a fruit platter on the coffee table, wiped his hands, and sat down on the sofa to watch the video. To his relief, the dishwasher didn’t tumble the dishes around. Instead, it used rotating water jets for targeted sprays. As for the robot vacuum, it was supposedly so efficient it only needed to be emptied once a month and could even wash and dry its mop automatically.

Sitting beside him, Ruan Qing snacked on some fruit and said smugly, “With these two, your life’s going to get a lot easier.”

Nian Qi wasn’t yet familiar enough with modern life to grasp the grand idea that “machines will eventually replace human labor.” But just from looking at these seemingly “convenient” gadgets, a sense of unease crept in. He cautiously asked, “If they’re so convenient, why didn’t you use them before?”

Given her personality, if she wanted something, she bought it. It was never a matter of money.

“I used to have them back when I lived in a first-tier city,” Ruan Qing explained. “But they weren’t as convenient as they sound. Someone still has to load and unload the dishwasher, and the robot vacuum needs water refills, dirty water disposal, and dustbin cleaning. It was easier to just hire a housekeeper.”

She went on to reminisce about the ideal housekeeper she once had in the city. In the two years she had been living in Jiangcheng, she had never found anyone as good. Some part-time cleaners were so careless that unless you told them repeatedly, they’d use the same rag to wipe both the toilet and the kitchen.

“That’s just how it is. When you rely on people you’re not familiar with, things are bound to go wrong,” Nian Qi said calmly. “And with me here, there’s no need to hire anyone else.”

“As for these machines, even you think they’re not that convenient. It’s a small apartment—just the two of us—there’s not that much to do. You know what I used to do before, right? With my skills, washing dishes is just a flick of the wrist.”

To emphasize his point, he picked up the fruit knife from the platter and deftly spun it between his fingers, the blade glinting in the dim light.

“If you can cancel the order, just go ahead and return them. By the time I finish loading the dishwasher, I could’ve already washed all the dishes by hand.”

When he looked up, he noticed that Ruan Qing’s expression had subtly shifted. She was watching his hands and the spinning knife with an unusual look, her focus completely drawn in.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I can return them…” she murmured, momentarily lost in thought. “But I bought them to lighten your load.”

“They look like more trouble than they’re worth. If I have to operate those machines, I might as well just do it myself,” Nian Qi replied, casually continuing his deft movements with the knife, making it twirl elegantly in his fingers.

Just as Ruan Qing started tapping on her phone to initiate the refund, her eyes remained glued to Nian Qi’s hands. Even though her fingers hovered over the screen, her attention was entirely captivated by his knife tricks. Unaware of how mesmerized she was, she kept aimlessly poking at her phone, lost in the smooth, hypnotic motion of the spinning blade.

Ruan Qing liked how he tied his hair half-up. She liked knives. And when she first discovered that he could scale walls and leap across rooftops, her instinctive reaction was one of delight. So that’s it—she liked those flashy, impractical tricks.

What she didn’t realize was that Nian Qi had already sensed her slightly juvenile, over-the-top tendencies. When he opposed her purchases, she didn’t argue and simply returned the dishwasher and robot vacuum: “Fine, I’ll return them. Guess you’ll have to handle the chores then.”

Nian Qi shrugged it off. “It’s just a bit of housework. Nothing difficult.”

Ruan Qing rested her elbow on the back of the sofa, looking up at him thoughtfully.

“What is it?” Nian Qi asked.

She hesitated for a moment, then asked tentatively, “Did you have a tough time before?”

“Before?” he echoed.

“I mean, before you officially ‘started out,’” she clarified.

Nian Qi rubbed his chin. “You mean before I was twelve?”

The pitch of her voice changed slightly. “How old?”

He was startled by her reaction. “Twelve. Why?”

Ruan Qing cautiously asked, “So… you mean you started doing that when you were twelve?” She made a chopping motion with her hands, mimicking the act of beheading.

Nian Qi found it amusing. “Yeah.”

But Ruan Qing didn’t find it funny at all. Just as Nian Qi had gradually come to terms with his new surroundings before feeling like he was living in a dream, Ruan Qing was also undergoing a delayed emotional realization. Initially, she had accepted his time travel with excitement and curiosity, gladly taking in this ancient assassin. But unlike Nian Qi, who adjusted faster, her understanding was slower to catch up. Only now was she starting to comprehend that all the killing and missions weren’t just stories—they were real experiences from Nian Qi’s life.

Without realizing it, her gaze softened, filled with compassion and sorrow.

Nian Qi noticed and quickly looked away to avoid her pity. Then, with a light smile, he tried to comfort her: “It’s not a big deal. The training was a bit tough before I became a full-fledged assassin, but at least I didn’t go hungry. After that, life got much better—plenty of food, nice clothes, everything.”

“Well, of course,” Ruan Qing said, frowning in frustration. “Once you started working for them, they had to treat you well. You were a child laborer! What, they weren’t even going to give you decent meals?”

Nian Qi chuckled. “I was twelve by then, already as tall as my master. That doesn’t really count as child labor.” He added, “Besides, back then, unless you were from a wealthy or scholarly family, kids around eleven or twelve had to start contributing to the household. Even kids as young as seven or eight were apprenticed to shops—that’s what real child labor was.”

“That’s just… the limits of the times!” Ruan Qing thought, suddenly realizing how difficult it was to bridge their perspectives. It’s easy to tell someone what they should or shouldn’t do. But to change how someone fundamentally sees the world? That’s nearly impossible.

How could someone who had taken so many lives see human life as sacred? It wasn’t just because of the number of people he had killed. It was also because he himself lived on a knife’s edge, never knowing if he’d survive to see another day. Live for the moment—drink while you can, because who knows if tomorrow will ever come?

This realization hit Ruan Qing hard. The naive excitement she once felt about “adopting” an ancient assassin now seemed foolish and childish. The scars on his body that she had found so alluring and intriguing now felt suffocating, weighing heavily on her chest.

She wanted to apologize to him. Her lips parted slightly, but no words came out. It felt impossible to say.

Yet, her emotions were written all over her face, clear as day.

Nian Qi could sense her emotions and couldn’t help but chuckle. “You don’t need to pity me. Life isn’t easy for anyone. I was an orphan—if the sect hadn’t bought me, who knows when I might’ve starved to death or died of illness on the streets. At least in our sect, we never had to worry about food and clothing, and when we got sick, there was always medicine. The doctor in our sect was a famous miracle healer in the martial world.”

Yeah, that’s just how ancient society was. Infant mortality was high, and many women didn’t survive childbirth. A woman could give birth to ten children and only four or five might survive. A man might marry five or six wives throughout his life because each one kept dying in childbirth. Life expectancy was around thirty or forty years.

When Nian Qi first introduced himself by saying, “I’m about to be a grandfather,” it hadn’t been an exaggeration at all.

Ruan Qing sighed. “Suddenly, I don’t want to time-travel anymore.”

She really meant it—her long-time fantasy of traveling back in time had lost all its appeal in an instant.

Nian Qi found her change of heart even more amusing. “The longer I stay here, the harder it is for me to understand why you’d want to go to my era. The thousand-year gap is massive. How could someone as educated as you not realize that?”

“Well… honestly,” Ruan Qing admitted, biting her lip, “a lot of modern people think that with our centuries of accumulated knowledge, we’d easily thrive in ancient times. Like, even if someone’s just an average office worker now, they assume that with modern knowledge, they could make a fortune by introducing things like glassmaking or steel production.

“And if they were more ambitious, they might think about creating explosives or modern weapons, impressing the emperor, and becoming a high-ranking official. Some might even dream of building their own army, overthrowing the existing regime, and becoming king or emperor themselves.”

“It’s all about that fantasy of feeling powerful.”

Nian Qi stroked his chin and hit her with a soul-searching question: “Have you ever thought about what would happen if you weren’t as lucky as I was—if you didn’t meet kind people when you crossed over?”

“What if you ended up in the wilderness surrounded by wolves and became their dinner?”

“Or what if you ran into bandits? You’d probably wish for death, but they wouldn’t let you off that easily.”

“Or maybe you’d catch a plague in some remote village, with no medicine or doctors, and die of illness.”

“Even if you made it to a city, you’d be a lone woman walking around with bare arms and legs. Best case, you’d get harassed by hooligans. Worst case, the authorities would arrest you for indecency and beat you half to death with canes—and that’s if you’re lucky enough to survive the beating.”

“And even if by some miracle you escaped all that, let me ask you: How would you achieve anything in ancient times?”

“You’d have no money, just a phone, two packs of tissues, and a tube of lipstick. How would you rent a storefront, hire workers, or buy raw materials?”

“No, wait—that’s too far ahead. Let’s get real—how would you even feed yourself? Before your grand plans could take off, you’d starve to death.”

Ruan Qing’s face turned pale as his words sank in. Desperately, she tried to argue. “I can’t possibly be that unlucky, right? Don’t people say that ancient folks were kind and simple? Surely I’d at least meet someone willing to give me a bowl of food. Even monks lived off alms!”

Nian Qi smirked. “Alright, let’s say you’re lucky. You meet a kind-looking old woman who pities you, a helpless young lady, and offers to take you in and feed you.”

“You happily go with her, thinking your new life is about to take off.”

“Only for her to lead you to a brothel and sell you off. Whether you’re willing or not doesn’t matter. They force a bowl of drugged wine down your throat, and when you wake up—well, let’s just say your grand ambitions are over before they even begin.”

Nian Qi shook his head in mock pity. “Alas, your great dream is snuffed out before it could even start.”

Ruan Qing was speechless.

“…Damn it!”