Scene change. Back in the City of Stars, Ye Tianxie brought his health back to full and set off in the direction of his own home. Not one of the three System Quests was simple. The Mercenary quest was pure kill-your-way-through; the guild quest and the pet quest both plainly demanded some capacity for exploration and some for working with others… After one trip into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, he knew perfectly well that completing that pet quest alone would be difficulty piled on difficulty. That terrible Ice-Bone Severed Road left him urgently in need of a Priest.
Mm. Come to think of it — if you were talking about the Priest with the strongest healing there was, wasn’t she right there beside him?
Today was Shattered Star-Heart’s first day formally “on the job” at Guoguo’s Cottage. The beauty and luxury of the place still gave her a sense of unreality, as though she were dreaming; set against where she used to live — and it was no exaggeration — this was heaven. If she could be somewhere like this regularly, she would have been unwilling to leave even without any income at all. Every girl instinctively longs for beautiful, warm things. And even the most frugal girl, in the depths of her heart, sincerely loves luxurious ones.
Although she was entirely alone here the whole day long, she did not dislike that solitude in the least. On the contrary, she quietly loved it.
From yesterday through to today, she had carried a hazy feeling that none of it was real… It turned out that happiness and hope could come this quickly, this suddenly.
For her sister, for her own and her sister’s future, for this opportunity, she had to be serious and to work hard.
In the morning she made herself familiar with everything here. In the afternoon she picked the various ripened fruits and set them out in the dining room, then meticulously tidied everything here that could be tidied. A home in the World of Fate was just like one in the real world: it needed careful looking after.
She very much wanted to bring her sister here. The environment ought to lift her spirits — and perhaps it might even work some miracle on her illness. Only, this was not her own place after all, and she did not dare to act on her own initiative and inadvertently cause the master of the house any displeasure… And at the same time, her sister’s condition meant she needed long stretches of rest every day… Even playing a virtual game was no small load for her to carry.
The door opened, and Shattered Star-Heart, hearing the prompt, came hurrying at a trot out of the back garden to meet Ye Tianxie. When the prompt announcing his return had reached her, under the urgency there had been an excitement and a pleasure she could not have put a name to… She passed over it without thinking. Nor would she have known what such a feeling meant.
Feifei was not at home, which gave Ye Tianxie a moment’s pause. He sat down in the main hall, and Shattered Star-Heart very soon brought him a cup of freshly brewed fragrant tea, then sat down across from him… with her head slightly lowered, not knowing what she ought to say.
“Chenxin, can you tell me about yourself?” Ye Tianxie took a light sip of the tea, set the cup down, and asked it suddenly.
At the thought of a past she never wanted to think of again, the color in Shattered Star-Heart’s face went from rosy to faintly pale. The shift in her expression moved something in Ye Tianxie… He was more certain than ever. That look in her eyes, and the feeling she gave him, were proof of a past that was thoroughly painful, even wretched — and going back through a past like that was no different from tearing the wound open again. He added hastily, “I only asked at random. You don’t have to tell me.” Then, half joking, “A man’s curiosity can be pretty strong sometimes.”
Shattered Star-Heart bit her lip lightly and said, her expression dim and anxious, “Big Brother Xietian, you’re my friend, and you’ve given me so much help… I really shouldn’t be hiding anything from you, it’s only… it’s only… those things, I really don’t want to…”
“If the past can’t bear looking back on, then don’t look back on it. Just like me — every memory I don’t want to recall, I never think about again.” Ye Tianxie looked at her panicked eyes and said it smiling. That smile, light as a clear breeze, calmed Shattered Star-Heart’s anxious heart at once. She nodded gratefully and said softly, “Mm.”
“Is there anyone with you now, to keep you company?” Ye Tianxie asked idly.
“Mm… there’s my sister. My own younger sister.” At the thought of that poor girl heaven had abandoned — her only sister, her only family — a faded, faint smile and a deeply buried pain flickered in her eyes at once.
She hid it deep, but Ye Tianxie still read something in those eyes of hers. Inside him, something shook again. Two questions asked in passing had deepened his understanding of this girl by several degrees without either of them meaning it to.
Ye Tianxie steered away from the subject while he had the chance, and said casually, “Whatever the case, you’re the housekeeper I went to a great deal of trouble to find, and you’re to keep all the odds and ends here in order every day… If you’re not diligent about it, I’ll be docking your wages.”
The half-joking tone lightened an atmosphere that had suddenly gone strange. Shattered Star-Heart bowed slightly. “I’ll work hard.”
Ye Tianxie knew that since coming here, what filled her heart most was nervousness and unease. Because however it was dressed up, the element of “help” in this was still too heavy. Only by letting her gradually settle into the role, letting her feel she was worth the “help” Ye Tianxie was giving, would her heart truly steady. People who are fragile and have been hurt too much have, in fact, the most sensitive hearts.
And this was all Ye Tianxie could do to help her. Everything after this depended on her. Because he had a wretched past of his own, he helped her — but that did not mean he would be willing to reach in and change her fate without reason. At the very least, he had no attention to spare for it at present.
And the nervous, deferential manner Shattered Star-Heart displayed in front of him just now… was rather like a little handmaid’s.
He took the two Snow Wolf Pelts he had gathered from the Snow Wolves out of his pack and put them into the hands of a thoroughly puzzled Shattered Star-Heart, saying, “Chenxin, go and make a trip to the tailor’s shop for me. Have the tailor there make them into two sets of cold-weather clothing. Whatever other materials are needed, just have the tailor quote you a price… Mm, and there’ll be plenty more legwork I’ll have to trouble you with in future.”
“It’s no trouble, no trouble at all. I’ll go right away.”
Shattered Star-Heart was currently in a very delicate state of mind. Her good heart meant that taking a thousand gold a day while idle much of the time would leave her deeply uneasy, and certain she was in Ye Tianxie’s debt; kept busy, she could be as tired as you please and still feel light in herself.
So at Guoguo’s Cottage she looked after every corner of the place meticulously, and whatever “quest” Ye Tianxie entrusted to her, she was glad to go and complete at the first possible moment.
Watching Shattered Star-Heart’s back as she hurried away, Ye Tianxie smiled a little and said under his breath, “A girl like that… the perfect candidate for a wife. I wonder who’ll have the good fortune to soothe that wounded heart of hers, and be let into it.”
Raising his wrist, Ye Tianxie called out, “Feifei, where are you?”
At the other end of the communicator…
“Huh? Tianxie, you’re finally out! When I called you earlier it kept telling me you were inside a special map… Big Brother Zuo and Qiushui and I are down south bullying little deer for levels… Pff! Those two really are hopeless. Little deer that weak, that adorable, and it takes the pair of them a goo~~d long while to beat one. They’re miles and miles worse than my Tianxie!”
Zuo Pojun’s aggrieved voice wobbled up out of the speaker. “Young Mistress Su, Fourth and I have told you a hundred times, our monster-killing speed is absolutely already at god-tier level. You’ve just gotten used to watching Second Brother’s freakish way of killing things, which is why you think—”
“Hey! Hmph, hmph — you’re all sworn brothers, you know. You’ve got some nerve saying that.” Su Feifei tipped her nose up and said it teasingly.
Murong Qiushui produced a single melancholy line. “Why else would your Tianxie be Second Brother, while the best we can manage is Third and Fourth?”
“All right, my Tianxie is back, so I’m not keeping you company anymore. Byeee.”
She cut the communicator and portaled out in such a hurry that she never got around to saying goodbye to Zuo Pojun and Murong Qiushui at all.
Zuo Pojun rubbed the end of his nose and said in a small voice, “Whew. That experience-devouring Young Mistress has finally retreated.”
“NONONO, my dear Third Brother. Do you not feel that with the beautiful, kind, benevolent Sister Feifei at our side, her loving healing arts freeing us of all worry from behind, our speed in passing sentence on these pitiable creatures is very nearly doubled…? Were the choice mine, how I would wish… that she might forget our radiant Second Brother, and linger, and remain at our side… Oh!! I would treat her better than Second Brother ever would. Certainly I would.”
Zuo Pojun shot him a glance and said scornfully, “Would you dare say the same thing in front of Second Brother?”
“Only if I had grown weary of this beautiful world!”
“……”
“Speaking of which, hearing Second Brother’s voice, why do I keep feeling there’s something important I’ve forgotten?”
“Something important… Oh!! Second Brother’s voice — it let me hear the call of the Heaven Soul mercenary corps!”
“Shit!! Get back to the city, fast! I want to join the Heaven Soul mercenary corps, aaaah!”
In the City of Stars: the tailor’s shop.
“Hello, Auntie Yu. Could I trouble you to use these as the base material and make me two pieces of cold-weather clothing?” Arriving at the tailor’s shop, Shattered Star-Heart produced the two Snow Wolf Pelts and handed them very politely to the shop’s proprietress, Auntie Yu.
Legend had it that Auntie Yu was not only an auntie but a Heaven-Severing-grade tailor.
As she took Shattered Star-Heart’s Snow Wolf Pelts, there was a needle in her hand — not the dreaded Ice-Soul Lewd Needle (a corruption of a famous poisoned needle from classic martial-arts fiction), but an… embroidery needle.
Shattered Star-Heart’s politeness and her frail little voice earned her a few extra looks from Auntie Yu. Then she turned the wolf pelts over in her hands, and in a moment said with feeling, “Snow Wolf pelt — off the Snow Wolves of the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, in the far north of the Lost Continent. Snow Wolves are few in number, but they’re a special sort of wolf that can live freely in extreme cold, and if you make a coat out of the pelt it’ll keep the cold out very well indeed… Little miss, have you brought any other materials, or any gemstones or the like that could be set into it?” She raised her head to ask.
“No… If there are any other necessary materials, could I buy them here from you?” Shattered Star-Heart had visibly begun to grow nervous. This was the first thing Ye Tianxie had entrusted to her personally, and she did not want to disappoint him in the slightest.
(End of Chapter 191)