The Cold And Straight Alpha Is Always Being Flirted With By The Goddess Aunt - Chapter 13

“Qinghe, you’ve really been hiding your light under a bushel, haven’t you? To think you actually had Senior Xi drop you off?”

Back at her seat in class, Yan Qing saw the Beta, Zhang Siyu, turn around with a sly, gossiping look on her face.

“Um, she’s a close friend of my mother’s. She watched me grow up.” After setting down her backpack, Yan Qing carefully placed the thermos in her locker. “Did she go to this school before?”

“You actually didn’t know!” Zhang Siyu was flabbergasted. “She’s the Great Goddess Xi! All A+s on the entrance exams, a perfect total score, she held the number one spot on the H-City top student rankings for years.”

“Not to mention Senior Xi’s beauty. Back when she was at Hangyu, the people chasing her whether Alpha, Omega, or Beta could have filled a stadium. After graduation, among the elite families of H-City, who knows how many Alphas dreamed of marrying her.”

Zhang Siyu spoke incessantly, eventually furrowing her brows in confusion. “Everyone back then was curious about who would finally pluck this ‘Flower of H-City.'”

“Did she ever accept anyone’s pursuit?” Yan Qing asked with an air of casual curiosity she couldn’t quite hide. In her impression, Xi Zhaowan seemed to do nothing but soak in the company’s R&D lab or stay at home; she didn’t have many hobbies.

“Not a single person. Everyone who pursued her was rejected with the same reason.” At this point, Zhang Siyu’s expression became mysterious. “She said she already had a child and wasn’t considering marriage for the time being.”

“Ahem…” Yan Qing couldn’t help but cough a few times. That child couldn’t be me, could it? Realizing she might have been used as a shield, her feelings were complex, yet tinged with a faint, unconscious pleasure.

“Qinghe, what exactly is your relationship with Senior Xi?” Zhang Siyu rested her chin on her hand, her round eyes scanning Yan Qing up and down. If one looked at their ages, it wasn’t impossible for them to be mother and daughter, and both came from the Yan family.

The curve of Yan Qing’s lips cooled when she noticed the speculative look in Zhang Siyu’s eyes. “She is my Auntie.”

In reality, based on her past life, Xi Zhaowan, in her early thirties, would be categorized as her grand-disciple’s generation.

“But there’s no blood relation,” she added to Zhang Siyu.

Not only was there no blood relation, but it wasn’t even strictly a foster relationship.

Xi Zhaowan’s existence was likely just a beautiful scenery passing through her life during her long journey toward immortality.

Like mist, like a dream; the wild goose passes, leaving no trace.

So she told herself.

Moreover, Xi Zhaowan was busy now. Every day after Yan Qing returned from school, as long as Xi Zhaowan wasn’t home, she didn’t have to deal with going out to eat. She would simply shower and go upstairs to focus solely on her cultivation.

Under her tireless efforts, the pale complexion she had when she first arrived in this world had long since regained its healthy color. Her physical strength had also recovered significantly. If she were to participate in a school sports meet long distance race again, she might not guarantee first place, but second would be no problem.

“Let go of me!” While passing the restrooms after class, Yan Qing heard a familiar female voice coming from the adjacent Omega restroom.

“You’re just like that bitch Ji Qianqian, always wanting more than you have. Tell me, did you secretly seduce Chen Zhijian?”

A sharp female voice shrieked in rage, accompanied by screams of “Someone help… Zhang Jie has gone crazy!”

Chen Zhijian, Yan Qing had heard of him. He was a Beta top student in Class 3-5, handsome and popular with many girls. Among them was an Omega named Zhang Jie, who had once confessed to him on the rooftop. They were supposedly together for a short time before breaking up for unknown reasons.

“I didn’t!” the girl cried out.

“Sister Zhang, you hold her down. I’m going to pour this over her right now and let everyone see how filthy this bitch is.” A baby faced Omega named Cui Han, acting as Zhang Jie’s henchman, prepared to splash black ink onto the girl’s white dress and face.

Suddenly, both of their wrists were seized by a powerful force. They were clamped so tightly they couldn’t break free.

The two looked up in shock to see a young girl watching them with cold, beautiful eyes.

“Yan Qinghe, it’s you! I advise you to mind your own business!” Zhang Jie yelled, unable to break free. “Fine! I’m going to tell the teacher that you trespassed into the Omega restroom to spy on us!”

Yan Qing was speechless and waved her phone. “After you complain, I’ll let the teacher hear your conversation and show them the footage I just recorded.”

“Who do you think the teacher will believe?”

“Which is the greater sin: bullying a classmate, or my ‘mistake’ of coming into the Omega restroom?” Yan Qing gave their wrists a hard squeeze.

“I’ll only say this once: I don’t want to see you bullying her ever again.”

“Fine, fine. I promise. Just let go.” Zhang Jie chickened out quickly. Once Yan Qing released her, she rubbed her bruised wrists. Such strength. She hurriedly pulled the glaring baby faced girl away and fled in disgrace.

“Thank you, Qinghe.” The girl seemed surprised by her savior.

“You’re welcome, Su Fang.”

Yan Qing glanced at Ji Qianqian’s best friend. She was less arrogant and flamboyant than before; her clothes were disheveled, and the top of her dress had been torn, leaving her in a pitiful state.

Sighing inwardly, Yan Qing took off her school uniform jacket and handed it to Su Fang to cover herself.

“Is it because I’m Ji Qianqian’s best friend that you came to save me?” Su Fang looked somewhat moved, biting her lip and asking weakly.

“No. Today, if it were any other Omega…” Yan Qing thought of her “Great Dao” the Dao is heartless yet full of feeling, unwilling to abandon any living soul. “…I would have stepped in.”

Nothing to do with Qianqian?

“Do you not like Ji Qianqian anymore?” Su Fang’s train of thought jumped so suddenly that Yan Qing was briefly caught off guard.

“Why do you say that?”

“Qianqian hasn’t said anything, but as her best friend, I feel you’ve been a bit cold to her lately.” Su Fang wrapped the jacket around herself, hugging her arms. “So, I was curious.”

“I don’t think I ever said I liked her,” Yan Qing said, finding it slightly amusing.

If you didn’t like her, why would you do all those things for her? And you haven’t been pursuing her lately. Could she have fallen for someone else? Su Fang decided to press further. “Then… do you have someone else you’re interested in?”

Could Yan Qinghe have shifted her affections?

She asked delicately, though deep down, she wasn’t sure if she was asking for her friend or out of her own irrepressible curiosity. Perhaps it was because the jacket she was wearing smelled so good, a scent of pheromones she had never encountered before. Come to think of it, what did Yan Qinghe’s pheromones smell like? Qianqian had never mentioned it.

“No.” A vague, flickering silhouette crossed Yan Qing’s mind, but she quickly dismissed it. “What is ‘interest,’ and what is ‘liking’?” Undefined romance was nothing but a hollow illusion.

Su Fang momentarily wondered if Yan Qinghe had been so badly hurt by Ji Qianqian that her heart had become like still water. She searched her vocabulary and summarized: “In front of someone you like, you feel restless. They haunt your dreams and won’t let go. After liking someone, you feel anxious one moment and joyful the next.”

“Oh.”

Seeing Yan Qing look as if she had suddenly attained enlightenment, Su Fang blinked, wanted to say something, but remained silent. She lowered her arms and smiled. “Thanks for today. I’ll wash this and return it to you another day.”

Someone you like will haunt your dreams and won’t let go?

Su Fang’s words caused Yan Qing to sink into deep thought. After school, she fell into contemplation regarding the “Dao of Severing Emotions.”

Before the Great Dao, romance was insignificant. Yan Qing’s expression dimmed as she unknowingly drifted into a dream.

In the dream, she returned to her childhood, those years before she turned ten, living in a thatched hut. Back then, she was neither the Sect Leader of Qingyun nor a traveler on the immortal path. She had ordinary but warm parents.

But who knew that Heaven and Earth are heartless and treat all things as straw dogs?

Impermanence is like the wind, blowing away her already dilapidated home.

“Qing’er, the country is conscripting. Father has to go to the battlefield. At home… remember to take care of your mother.”

Not long after, Yan Qing and her mother received a letter saying her father had died in battle, his remains could not be found.

Successive years of war and famine followed. People in the village died one by one from starvation. Her mother ate tree bark and grass roots, giving whatever edible food she could beg for to Yan Qing. Long-term malnutrition… eventually, she contracted a malignant disease and died of hunger and illness combined.

Of the eight sufferings of life, she had cried all her tears the moment her mother died. In the piercing pain of life, she felt her mother’s suffering and the pain of “separation from loved ones.”

Fortunately, she had a sister. After her parents died, she went to seek refuge with this older sister who had married into a distant family. Her sister and brother-in-law were deeply in love, but famine and war swept there too. One day, she went out to beg, thinking that her sister and three-year-old niece hadn’t eaten in days and she had to find something for them.

When she returned, she found her sister gone, and her niece gone. There was only a strange little boy and her brother-in-law, who was boiling a pot. It turned out that her brother-in-law, who usually treated his wife with great respect, had sold her for a few meals while Yan Qing was away.

Yan Qing was so angry she wanted to kill the man. She searched frantically for her sister and niece. She didn’t find her sister, but in a nearby broken down house, she found her shivering niece. The man of that house was boiling soup, staring at the three-year-old girl with a ravenous hunger.

She was nauseated by that look, realizing that due to the famine, neighbors were “exchanging children to eat.” The boy from this house had been traded to her brother-in-law’s house, and the niece had naturally been sent here.

In an era of famine, humanity had perished to such an extent.

Even deep love, like that of her sister and brother-in-law, was ultimately that shallow.

Even the bond between father and daughter became insignificant.

She secretly took her niece back and began to flee as if for her life. Caring for a child on the road while avoiding wild beasts and refugees, they eventually reached the foot of Qingyun Mountain and met Zhuchen. Her fate was fundamentally changed from then on.

She hated this world, hated the uncontrollable sufferings of life, and hated the destiny that could not be mastered.

She grieved for her kin and herself, who were like small boats drifting on the waves of fate, tossed and destroyed at will.

They say “my fate is determined by me, not by Heaven,” but how could the heartless Heaven and Earth care about the fate of mortals?

In her despair, Zhuchen, the Great Elder of the Qingyun Sect, appeared. He said only one sentence that completely ignited her fighting spirit.

“Child, Heaven and Earth are heartless yet full of feeling. You carry a mandate from Heaven; are you willing to fight against it?”

“I will not betray Heaven’s mandate, nor am I willing to,” Yan Qing said sternly, her posture as straight as a standing cedar. She gritted her teeth, uttering each word slowly: “Because I am Heaven’s mandate!”

They say Heaven and Earth are heartless, but what if one stands above them?

Mortals are small and human hearts are fickle. From the moment she stepped onto the path of cultivation, she had decided.

She would renounce this impermanent romance, comprehend the universe, and control her own destiny.

The physical body shall not perish; she would realize the Heavenly Dao.

Living as long as Heaven and Earth, roaming freely.

She had always fulfilled her vow. At eighteen, she reached the third stage of cultivation, the “Round Light Stage,” at an astonishing speed fifty years faster than the greatest genius on the cultivation continent.

Her appearance was frozen in her youthful eighteen-year-old state, beautiful and bright.

When she was eighty, she visited her niece at the foot of the mountain. Her niece had been sent by Zhuchen to a kind, childless family and had lived an ordinary life free of disaster.

She should have been happy, right?

But looking at her niece’s aged face, her limbs like withered bark, shrunk into a small form, it seemed she had returned to her three-year-old self. Life had completed a cycle.

But Yan Qing rejected this cycle.

If reincarnation is a mandate of Heaven, she would become the master of her own cycle.

For this, there was only the path of cultivation.

“Qing’er, even if Mother is gone, you must be strong.” Even with her extinguished personal feelings and increasingly firm Dao heart, her mother’s soft, warm last words would still move her.

She could not forget her mother’s weak yet warm face before she died.

This firm Dao heart… would still occasionally remember those ancient memories.

That dirty steamed bun and the small scrap of meat, at what price had her mother exchanged for them? She finally remembered… it was a man’s filthy, foolish laugh, and the “rip” of torn clothing.

“Qing’er, you’re hungry, aren’t you?” A staggering figure, a pale face.

“Qing’er, come here.” Upon seeing her daughter, a smile was forced.

She was too young then to know that every mouthful of food was secretly paid for by fate in a sickening way, making it impossible for her to forget for even a moment during her immortal journey.

She couldn’t forget the food held in her mother’s thin, dry palms.

She couldn’t forget her mother watching her eat with longing, her lips peeling, her eyes watching her with warmth.

She was her mother’s only treasure.

From then on, after reaching the Round Light Stage, she was unwilling to eat. She felt nauseous at the smell of meat. She only drank water and nectar.

But she seemed to have made an exception. Was it because she saw a pair of eyes that were so familiar, just like her mother’s?

Longing, soft as the morning sun, gentle like a mother, the table full of food prepared in the kitchen, the soup brought to her school or her room every few days.

“Qing’er, come here…”

Under the shade of the trees at the school gate, someone had called her like that, holding a thermos of soup, walking toward her.

Those eyes… she began to sob.

Enveloped by an overwhelming darkness, in her cold bed, Yan Qing hugged herself tightly. She couldn’t wake up, trapped in a nightmare.

“Mother… Mother… Sister…” She could hardly breathe, sobbing until she was out of breath, her heart racing with anxiety.

In that state of unrest, a warm body took her into its arms.

The tears at the corners of her eyes were brushed away by warm, slender fingers.

Her heartbeat gradually stabilized, patted gently by a hand on her back once, twice, steady and soft.

“Qing’er, don’t be afraid…” she heard a whisper in her ear, comforting her once, then twice, following the slow rhythm of the pats.

“Don’t be afraid… Auntie is here, I’m right here with you.”

Gradually, her heartbeat calmed down. Finding room to breathe, she let her back sink into that warmth.

the dream faded away. Surrounded by the familiar scent of white gardenias, she fell into a peaceful sleep.