Chapter 39: Tell Me About Your Story
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"Don't stop, keep running,"
Lyle's rather cold voice came from beside her.
Jiang Cheng's body wobbled, but was steadied by Lyle. At that moment, Lyle's presence unexpectedly gave her an endless sense of security.
Jiang Cheng secretly clicked her tongue and silently repeated to herself a few times not to fall into the trap of the suspension bridge effect, finally letting out a breath.
"Huff, huff, I can't go on, really can't..."
Jiang Cheng panted and flopped straight down onto the ground.
"Haaa,"
Lyle sighed and said, "Your body is still too weak. You really need to train more."
"I don't need to. I use my mind to kill without leaving a trace,"
Jiang Cheng muttered under her breath, curling her lips.
"Hmm?"
Lyle glanced over, having caught Jiang Cheng's words, frowning slightly.
"A girl shouldn't always talk about killing people, you know."
"Whatever,"
Jiang Cheng shrugged. She was so exhausted right now she was too lazy to argue. "Next time, for sure~"
"Let's go back to our rooms. That's enough for today,"
Lyle reached out a hand to Jiang Cheng, who was lying in the grass.
"Too lazy to move,"
Jiang Cheng rolled her eyes and replied feebly, "I'm dead tired. I'll just sleep here tonight."
"Anyway, I keep this courtyard pretty nice, and there are stars out tonight. It should be really comfortable to sleep here."
Maybe it was the atmosphere of the evening, or maybe she was just too tired to be sharp-tongued, but Jiang Cheng's words sounded much gentler now.
"Alright,"
Lyle fell silent for a moment, then nodded. He braced himself and lay down beside Jiang Cheng.
"My teacher used to love tending her garden too. That mage tower of hers was the most beautiful place I've ever seen,"
Lyle said softly.
"She gave me a bracelet once, said to contain memories of countless beautiful sights in the world," he continued.
"But I searched through it for a long time and never found the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen—the mage tower blooming with her carefully tended flowers, shining among the stars."
So that was the reason why you didn't seem so happy back then, just glanced a few times and went off to study magic... Jiang Cheng sighed inwardly, and whatever resentment she'd held about Lyle's lack of sensitivity quietly faded away.
Still, she clearly didn't want to linger on this topic with Lyle—after all, the more you say, the more you risk. So she changed the subject, "About physical training—my body is like this, there's no way I can handle high-intensity workouts, right?"
"I'll look for some of Teacher's belongings tomorrow and see if I can find the recipes she gave me for body training meals,"
Lyle thought for a moment before replying.
Why are we back on this topic again? Jiang Cheng cursed inwardly.
But she did wonder whether Lyle would be able to get the ingredients she'd once given him. She had gone to the Elf Forest and Dragon Isle to steal countless fruits of life and dragon sinews and bones, then combined them with many rare and precious ingredients and herbs. In the end, she had created that priceless, miraculous food for Lyle.
Jiang Cheng was confident that, under the regimen she crafted for him using several of her alternate identities, Lyle's physical abilities were even six or seven tenths stronger than those of previous heroes with the same heroic body.
If this time the Demon King was a girl, maybe he really could have defeated the Demon King in another way.
Unfortunately, the current Demon King was a man. Although the original story never stated it outright, Lyle had been ambushed by the demon army just after entering the demon realm.
Still, for some reason, Jiang Cheng was very sure—the Demon King this time was a man.
But even if Lyle couldn't collect the same ingredients as before, there was something Jiang Cheng still cared about.
"You said your teacher's belongings? You kept them safe?"
That's odd—she clearly remembered sending Lyle far away with a teleportation array back then.
"Yeah. Teacher used the teleportation array to send me to the other side of the continent,"
Lyle nodded, a trace of nostalgia in his eyes.
"Then, I made money along the way as I traveled back, following the road. It took me seven months to return to Teacher's mage tower."
"At that time..."
Lyle's eyes flickered with a hint of pain as he spoke.
"At that time, the most beautiful place I'd ever seen—the mage tower—was already a ruin."
"I dug there with my bare hands for five days before I managed to recover all of Teacher's belongings."
"I found almost everything. I took it all with me—everything except Teacher herself. She was gone."
Ah...
Jiang Cheng hadn't expected that what she did back then could move Lyle to such depth.
She sighed. For some reason, something deep in her heart was faintly touched. Clearly, she shouldn't have been moved by such "pointless" things, yet...
So she said, "Hero, tell me more about you and your teacher."
"I want to hear it."
What? She just said earlier she didn't want to talk about this. What a joke—if she really meant everything she said, her character wouldn't be so unpleasant after all.
Anyway, it was just chatting with Lyle. No big deal.
"You want to listen?"
Lyle turned his head to look at Jiang Cheng.
In the courtyard, a light summer night breeze stirred, lifting Jiang Cheng's gray-and-white long hair. Strands fluttered softly in the wind, occasionally brushing Lyle's cheek—ticklish, but comfortable.
The clear, crisp chirping of insects accompanied the tinkling of the fountain, rendering the night especially quiet.
Lyle was stunned for a moment. In the past, when his teacher took him out for training, they used to lie together in the tent and listen to the insects in just this way.
His teacher's charming face hardly ever showed much expression, yet Lyle could always feel how happy she was.
As an elf, she loved nature. Sometimes, she would seriously teach him which chirp came from which insect and what it did.
But... there was no going back.
Lyle wasn't a transmigrator; he didn't know what "you only realize how precious those days were after they're gone" meant.
But now, looking back, those seemingly ordinary days were what he truly yearned for most...
He sighed. At least Jiang Cheng was still by his side. At least, he was not alone.
"Alright," after a long silence, Lyle's voice finally broke the quiet of the night again.
"Jiang Cheng, since you want to listen, I'll tell you. So... where should I start?"
Jiang Cheng was surprised. She'd thought Lyle wouldn't speak so easily about such painful memories—just as she would never share her own past with him.
But if he was willing to say these things—maybe it proved that her current identity, and her relationship with Lyle, weren't so bad after all.
Jiang Cheng frowned. She still couldn't quite make sense of these emotions. It felt like she hadn't even really done anything this time.
Lyle's gentle, slightly concerned gaze was disgusting to her.
She frowned, and was about to say, in a bored voice, that she didn't want to hear after all—
But...
"Jiang Cheng, just keep me company a little longer tonight. I miss Teacher,"
Lyle said.
Haaa...
Jiang Cheng didn't know why, but she softened a little, and finally spoke up.
"Alright. I'll keep my hero company. So, I want to hear every story about you and your teacher."
"Tell me everything. Don't ask me where to start—I want to hear it all, from when you first met... all the way to her death."