Chapter 34

“I won’t fantasize about time travel anymore, alright?” Ruan Qing snapped, the veins on her forehead twitching. “Stop cursing me with bad luck.”

Nian Qi chuckled and made three quick spits, playfully breaking his supposed jinx. But he continued, “Listen, someone like you—a delicate woman, unaccustomed to hard labor—wouldn’t survive in my time.”

Thinking of Ruan Qing’s high standards for quality living, he added, “Even if you were lucky enough to make a living, even if you earned some silver, you’d still struggle to get by. For example, the cooking oil—we don’t have anything as pure and odorless as the ones you use here. Our oil smells strong.”

“And even if you had the skills to extract cleaner oil, where would you get the seasonings that don’t even exist yet? The spices you’re used to are from distant foreign lands, thousands of miles away. No matter how capable you are, you couldn’t just fly over there to get them, could you?”

“Got it, got it! I’m over it,” Ruan Qing groaned, crossing her arms into an X in front of her chest. “Enough already! I’m awake now—the dream is over.”

Facing danger? She could convince herself that luck would protect her. But when she imagined not being able to eat the food she loved, her enthusiasm for time travel died completely. No one fantasizes about time travel just to suffer—they want to become someone important, to live grandly, not worse than they do now.

Ruan Qing puffed out her cheeks and blew her bangs aside in frustration. As she glanced at Nian Qi, she noticed the sly smile at the corner of his mouth. She shifted, turning fully to face him.

“There’s something I need to say to you, and I need to make it clear.”

“Nian Qi, you’re from the past, and there are a lot of things you don’t understand about modern society.” She looked serious. “At some point, you might break our rules without even realizing it.”

“That’s okay—I can understand that. I’ll do my best to help you avoid those situations, or if something happens, I’ll find a way to fix things.”

“But there’s one thing I can’t accept. I absolutely cannot tolerate it.”

Her expression turned solemn. “Killing. I can’t accept it—ever.”

Nian Qi sighed, already feeling a headache coming on. They had discussed this before. “Didn’t I swear a deadly oath not to kill?”

“That’s not the point,” Ruan Qing said, her voice calm but firm. “I just realized something. You swore not to kill because I explained the legal consequences to you—that you’d face the death penalty, and with modern technology, there’s no way you could escape. You weighed the pros and cons and decided it wasn’t worth the risk.”

“But you didn’t truly understand. The reason you shouldn’t kill isn’t because of the punishment—it’s because life is precious.”

Her eyes were bright and clear, almost childlike in their sincerity. To Nian Qi, they looked so pure it was almost naïve.

He was silent for a moment, then smiled faintly. “You’re right. I’ve never thought of life as precious.”

He paused, then continued, his voice casual but cold. “I’ve killed people from all walks of life—high-ranking officials, wealthy merchants, and martial artists so skilled that ordinary people couldn’t touch them.”

“But none of them could escape my blade.”

“Whether rich or strong, in the end, death comes for them all.”

As he spoke, the gentle, harmless mask he usually wore slipped away. His gaze sharpened, becoming cold and indifferent, the look of someone accustomed to taking lives.

Even Nian Qi himself didn’t know why he was being so candid with Ruan Qing, or why he was speaking to her in this way.

He was still reminiscing about the moment on the balcony—the night breeze brushing against his feet, the quiet comfort of having someone beside him. He had already made up his mind to marry her, to spend the rest of his life with her. And yet, deep inside, there was this strange, unnameable sense of expectation. What exactly was he hoping for?

Ruan Qing studied him for a moment before speaking. “You’re wrong,” she said, turning her body fully toward him, sitting cross-legged with her hands resting on her ankles. Her tone was certain. “The reason you see things the way you do is because you’ve witnessed too much death.”

“When you’re constantly surrounded by abnormal deaths, it becomes natural to see them as ordinary. But the truth is, most people go through their lives seeing others who are working hard, just trying to live well.”

“There’s a term for your condition in modern times—it’s called an information cocoon. It means your life is trapped within a specific kind of information, like a cocoon that encloses you, making that small world feel like the entire universe.”

“You grew up an orphan, right? I’m guessing most people in your assassin organization were also orphans.”

“Have you ever wondered why these kinds of organizations prefer orphans?”

“It’s because it makes it easier to sever your ties with the normal world. It isolates you emotionally.”

“Being an orphan means that there’s no one in the world who’s so important to you that losing them would be unbearable. Sure, you value your own life, but only out of basic survival instinct. You don’t have parents, family, a wife, or children. You might not even have any real friends.”

“So there’s no one who makes you feel that another person’s life is as precious as your own. You’ve lost the ability to empathize with others’ survival instincts.”

“But if you can break out of that information cocoon, you’ll realize that abnormal deaths aren’t a normal part of life—they’re not supposed to be.”

“Life is precious because once it’s lost, it can never come back. There are no do-overs.”

“For example, my parents are the most precious people to me. If anyone tried to harm them, I would fight that person to the end.”

Ruan Qing briefly considered suggesting that Nian Qi try falling in love and getting married, so he could experience what it means to have someone important in his life. But then she thought of how men in ancient times often saw their wives as possessions rather than as independent people. She quickly changed her approach.

“I think you should have a child,” she suggested. “Blood ties are the easiest way to form deep bonds. Maybe if you had a child of your own, someone connected to you by blood, you’d understand what I’m trying to tell you.”

Nian Qi gazed at her for a moment, then smiled and agreed, “Alright. If I take a wife, I’ll definitely have a child.”

Of course, shifting someone’s worldview and reshaping their understanding isn’t something that can happen overnight. Ruan Qing knew that. She had said everything she could and let out a long breath. Lowering her gaze, she fidgeted with her ankle, rocking her body slightly back and forth. After a brief pause, she looked up again.

“There’s one more thing…”

“Well… fine. I admit I really like how, since you’ve come into my life, everything has become so neat and organized. It’s made things feel really comfortable,” she confessed.

“But my comfort shouldn’t come at the expense of someone else’s suffering.”

Nian Qi raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by that?”

Ruan Qing propped her ankle up and stared at the ceiling for a moment before finally looking Nian Qi in the eye. “Remember when we talked in the car last time about whether you were just pretending? You said that you weren’t exactly pretending, just trying to show the proper attitude since you’re living under someone else’s roof…”

Nian Qi asked, “What exactly are you trying to say?”

“Ah,” Ruan Qing sighed, “I mean, if you don’t enjoy doing these chores, then just don’t do them. It’s not like I absolutely need you to. I had a part-time cleaner before, but it was just bad timing—right before I met you, I’d just let them go and hadn’t hired a new one yet. Then you came along, and I never got around to it. That’s why these tasks fell on you. But it’s not like I insisted you had to do them.”

It was just that Nian Qi did the chores so diligently and exceptionally well, making everything so pleasant and comfortable, that Ruan Qing hadn’t said anything to stop him. In retrospect, having an assassin doing daily housework in a small apartment, washing dishes and scrubbing the stove, seemed like a bit of a waste.

“It’s my fault,” Ruan Qing admitted with some embarrassment, but she bravely owned up to her mistake. “Honestly, it’s like… to me, you’ve always seemed more like a character in a TV show or a novel. What I mean is, I’ve been projecting a kind of filter onto you, if that makes sense. I never really saw you as a real, flesh-and-blood person.”

As she stumbled over her words, repeating “what I mean is,” Nian Qi felt an unexpected sense of fulfillment deep inside. So, that’s what it was. In his past fantasies of a retired life, he had pictured himself with a secluded estate, a few servants, and a wife. In these plans for his later years, he never imagined revealing his true identity or his bloody past to that hypothetical “wife.” She would likely go her whole life without ever knowing about his violent history.

But with Ruan Qing, he found himself hoping she could come to know the real him, not just the facade he presented. Nian Qi took a deep breath to steady the unsettling feeling in his chest. He interrupted her rambling with a gentle smile, “I understand.”

“But I did mention that day, it’s not all an act. I actually enjoy doing these things,” he said.

Ruan Qing, who detested chores so much that even using the dishwasher or robot vacuum seemed like a hassle, looked skeptical. “Really?” Her almond-shaped eyes widened in suspicion, making Nian Qi chuckle.

“It’s true,” he assured her. “With my skills and stamina, these chores don’t even qualify as hard work. My daily training is far more exhausting. Besides, what may seem tedious or annoying to you is different for me.”

“I’m starting to believe that there really are tens of thousands of people who love watching videos of carpet cleaning or hoof trimming,” Ruan Qing remarked. The satisfaction from watching such tasks must be similar to how Nian Qi felt when he cooked, folded laundry, or mopped the floor. His mind was clear, his heart at peace. It was comforting, like soaking in warm water.

He didn’t want to leave that tranquility; he just wanted to keep floating there, with his limbs relaxed, his body naturally buoyant on the surface. It was truly soothing.