Chapter 407: Tale of Meeting the Immortal

The music faded, the traces of incense vanished without a trace, the room with the rolled-up blinds disappeared, and the old woman had also departed.

"Have you ever thought about the magical intent behind the spectacle you just encountered?" Du Zhengyi asked, seeing Luo Qi looking thoughtful.

Luo Qi didn't understand and looked at Du Zhengyi with a blank, questioning gaze.

"When you see a phenomenon, you must ponder the magical essence behind it. Existence has its rationality. A Great Mage of her level wouldn't construct an environment for you and me for just a single purpose," Du Zhengyi said. "Isn't that what you were thinking about?"

"Oh, I was thinking that we could give our experience today a name, like 'Tale of Meeting the Immortal'!" Luo Qi said.

Du Zhengyi looked at him with sympathy. "The fact that you've managed to live this long is entirely due to your high Luck."

Luo Qi was taken aback upon hearing this. Du Zhengyi frowned as he watched him, pondering what he was pondering, and suddenly seemed to realize something, murmuring to himself, "Your Luck really is quite high."

"My high Luck relies on my father hiding my abilities after I was born, meeting a noble person like you after growing up, and even gaining the favor of my enemy after being soul-extracted by someone, with the noble person and the enemy joining forces to solve my problem," Luo Qi muttered. "I'm just too damn lucky; my Luck is a completely selfish kind of Luck."

His mood was a bit complicated, but when he looked up and saw Du Zhengyi smiling, he could only offer a bitter smile in return. Du Zhengyi hauled him up from his seat. "Time to go back. On the way, I'll tell you about what Sound Pattern Magic is, as well as the effects of small-scale System Magic—including light, sound, and scent—on the human body."

"Wow," Luo Qi said. "Can I not listen? I'm a bit stuffed right now; my blood is busy digesting in my stomach, and my brain is currently oxygen-deprived and not working very well."

"When has your brain ever worked well? It's hard enough for me to be patient enough to teach others," Du Zhengyi said impatiently. "Let's be clear beforehand: I haven't read any parenting tutorials and don't understand any educational methods, especially for you—I feel that brutal teaching is the only way to make progress."

Luo Qi shivered dramatically, not at all afraid of Du Zhengyi's empty threats, and tentatively took a step, experiencing the feeling of being able to control his legs again.

"Boss, you already know these things, so that's fine. We were complementary to begin with by forming a team. If you really must teach me, you can just synchronize the knowledge directly to me."

"No, haste makes waste. Absorbing knowledge that way is too heavy a burden on your brain," Du Zhengyi refused.

"Then you can Entangle with me and help me bear part of the weight of my brain," Luo Qi said, looking up with a grin.

"Are you saying your own brain is too small and you intend to borrow a head?" Du Zhengyi said.

"Nonsense, I'm only in this mess because my brain is too big, okay?" Luo Qi said, walking unsteadily out of the barbecue restaurant.

Du Zhengyi impatiently grabbed his arm and dragged him along. "Right, you're just a big-head!"

"You think I'm small-minded yet you still call me a big-head?" Luo Qi said in surprise, suddenly reaching out to grab Du Zhengyi's hand, which was currently gripping his arm.

"What is it?" Du Zhengyi asked in a low voice, his spirit subconsciously tightening as he cautiously observed his surroundings.

"I almost forgot," Luo Qi said nervously. "I need to buy more snacks to take back. Once I'm back, I'll only be able to eat beans again. I only know how to make Oreo cookies right now, and I'll get sick of them very soon."

"Fuck," Du Zhengyi whispered.

Luo Qi looked at him in surprise. "Why are you cursing at me?"

"You just died, Luo Qi," Du Zhengyi said calmly. "When you go back, you'll probably have to work like a horse every day making Oreos just to have a chance at getting forgiveness from Mahjong and Guan Xinyue."

This future was shocking, but Luo Qi was Luo Qi after all. After a few seconds of melancholy, he still found a way to achieve phased victory step by step. No one could interrupt the will that the Great Raccoon King had already begun to execute! In any case, forty minutes later, he appeared in the newly restored hall of the Highland Mages, eating dried figs.

Of those forty minutes, thirty were spent on him picking out snacks. He even rejected Du Zhengyi's proposal to compress his food; while compression made it easier to carry, he insisted on carrying the heavy backpack himself, as food would taste slightly off once decompressed. Du Zhengyi considered this view of his to be entirely in the realm of metaphysics, but when it came to food, no one could sway Luo Qi.

Long before they appeared, quite a few mages had gathered in the hall, all waiting for this "perfect couple" to show their faces. The technical mages working in the valley naturally brought the news back; although they didn't know the truth, Mahjong and Guan Xinyue knew it must mean Luo Qi had been resurrected. However, while their excitement was understandable, it didn't explain the interest of the others watching.

Luo Qi was thick-skinned and never annoyed by scenes of being surrounded by crowds; he calmly continued eating his figs, only scanning the onlookers with his gaze.

Guan Xinyue's reaction upon seeing him was particularly intense, and also the most normal. Guan Xinyue first looked at him, trembling all over—probably because she couldn't tell at a glance which monkey he was—and finally cast her gaze toward the Tathagata Buddha beside him. Du Zhengyi nodded subtly, and she began to scream, finally rushing up and slapping Luo Qi across the face.

Luo Qi, who was eating his figs with great relish, bit his tongue, his cheek burning with pain. He was at a loss as to why he had been hit. Why was the real-life expression of emotion by girls so intense? Couldn't they just rush up and kiss him passionately like in the movies?

He couldn't figure it out, and this slap was accompanied by the excited exclamations of the crowd, which sounded to Luo Qi's ears like the excitement of people watching a spectacle without fear of it getting too big. Guan Xinyue ran off after hitting him without saying why, and the others were still in the aftershocks, so he had just enough time to observe and listen to the crowd's clamor.

The crowd was burning with pure excitement, savage and powerful like a flood. Luo Qi had barely opened his Consciousness Barrier before he couldn't take it anymore and hurriedly closed his doors again. In a fleeting glance, he felt that everyone was very happy, as if they had gathered to eat a big piece of gossip.

Judging by the hot spot of that emotion, this big piece of gossip was mainly directed at their arch-enemy Du Zhengyi, not entirely at Luo Qi; Luo Qi could only be considered an additional target. This was too strange; Luo Qi couldn't figure out why Du Zhengyi was always such a traffic magnet.

It wasn't until about three days later that Luo Qi realized what had happened. It turned out that Du Zhengyi's genius junior sister, Liu Ziyi, had returned to the Highland Mages' base and described the sequence of events based on surface appearances. The sequence of events was that in the valley after the mountains crumbled and the earth split—in that poetic (apocalyptic) scene—Luo Qi had knelt before Du Zhengyi.

Furthermore, while everyone was eating Oreos and drinking herbal drinks (stolen plants from the garden), Liu Ziyi did not deny their speculation that Luo Qi was proposing to Du Zhengyi at the time. The theory that Luo Qi might actually be a boy was overturned once again. Liu Ziyi also said that Luo Qi had been carried all the way to the city by Du Zhengyi to eat and celebrate, possibly out of concern for a sprained ankle or getting his leather shoes dirty (completely ignoring the fact that Luo Qi was wearing a new pair of Nike retro sneakers that day).

In the Qionglin tabloids, the fact that Du Zhengyi finally (surprisingly) had someone who wanted him was worth writing about at length. Not only that, but on the day of the engagement, there was a human girl catfight, staging a melodramatic scene. The sanctimonious Qionglin War God actually had such an unknown side in private; was this the moral decay or the distortion of human nature?

On the public accounts of the Qionglin underground social circle, a series of public articles appeared—"Just by doing two things right, even he managed to get a wife," "Why more and more female mages are unwilling to get married; this reason is too heartbreaking," "He ascended to the highest divine throne of the Battle Mages, yet he couldn't be happy. Why? The truth behind it is sigh-inducing," "Good marriages all have some similarities"...

Above all, what Luo Qi found most unbelievable was that some of them would go so far as to make a trip to the city every day just to send and receive articles.

Of course, that is a story for another time. Du Zhengyi had always been too lazy to know what others were going crazy about, and he dragged Luo Qi all the way back to Luo Qi's room.