417 Ch 417 - Since We're Here, Shouldn't We Speedrun This?
After his brief victory over Yuyan, Yino shouldered his pack and traveled thousands of miles to Jiangnan.
Before departing, he'd sent Ruoning a letter well in advance, asking her to wait for him at the bridge in her hometown.
Yino knew Ruoning didn't really want to return home. Her issue was nothing more than those snobbish family members at the Liu mansion.
This was something Yino understood deeply.
In his previous life, when playing Fallen Immortal, choosing Xumo's Liuli Sect opening meant the main storyline would naturally reveal all the Liu mansion's internal conflicts during the mid to late game.
The Liu family were financial magnates. The game basically recycled the same tired tropes from any wealthy family drama: vicious mothers-in-law, snobbish brothers-in-law, spoiled siblings...
These cardboard characters existed mainly to torment players.
In his past life, Yino had already endured cheesy short drama ads hijacking his novels. Having to relive similar brain-dead plots in a game was just adding insult to injury.
You could imagine how much Ruoning, as a real person born into such circumstances, would hate going home to see relatives.
Fortunately, Ruoning was much luckier than players.
Players couldn't skip cutscenes, but Ruoning could find creative ways to skip her family drama.
In the Fallen Immortal, Ruoning had no beloved, but her destiny as the chosen daughter still made her proud and rebellious. She refused arranged blind dates and was too lazy to participate in family disputes. So she simply went all out, left home, and worked with her master at the Liuli Sect to get promoted to sword representative.
Once she had a title at the immortal sect, Ruoning could legitimately use righteousness as an excuse to skip going home for holidays.
Later, Ruoning's cultivation strength grew stronger at the Liuli Sect. Her impressive performance during an Immortal Alliance mission caught the National Advisor's eye. Afterward, National Advisor Changli poached Ruoning from the Liuli Sect to the Dragon Palace, granting her an official rank.
Since ancient times, merchants have loved currying favor with officials.
After getting on the imperial payroll, Ruoning's status and authority were immediately elevated when she returned to the Liu mansion for holidays. Even the previously sharp-tongued relatives all put on fawning, polite faces.
In return, Changli could use this opportunity to plant one of her own pieces within the Liu mansion, which was already at odds with national policy. Using Ruoning as a fulcrum, she could infiltrate and improve relations between the Dragon Palace and the Liu family...
But those were matters for later.
In any case, Yino wasn't worried about Ruoning's future. In the game, Ruoning was ultimately a blessed daughter of destiny with a perfect life, completely different from tragically-born, late-game-crazy heroines like Yuyan.
The only problem was that Ruoning should already be at early Nascent Soul stage by now in the original timeline. But after Yino's rebirth, despite Ruoning claiming to train hard every day, her cultivation had actually dropped a level compared to the same period.
This puzzled Yino.
Everyone else's cultivation had advanced ahead of schedule. Why were both Ruoning and Jinyue's cultivation stagnating instead of growing?
Yino suspected this girl was just talking about training hard at the Liuli Sect, when in reality she probably spent all her practice time daydreaming about him.
"Hmm?! What's with that look!"
"You think everyone's like you, risking their life recklessly! I really did train seriously every day when you weren't around, but fate wasn't kind. I'm just stuck at Core Formation and can't break through!"
The blue-haired girl in her snow robe walked along the winding path in the ancient Jiangnan town, crossing her arms over her chest. Though her puffed-up face complained aloud, thinking of her master's earlier warning about "emotional barriers being hard to break" made her feel inexplicably tongue-tied.
She looked at Yino and couldn't help regretting that she hadn't asked her master clearly how exactly to break these so-called emotional barriers...
Did she need to kiss her beloved once to break through?
Or did she need to do some kind of dual cultivation with her beloved to break through to Nascent Soul stage?
Every time she thought about such questions, Ruoning's mind went blank and her face turned red.
After all, Ruoning was really about to become Yino's junior sister now.
The last time they met, Ruoning's cultivation was still several levels higher than Yino's.
Ruoning had thought that even stuck at Core Formation stage, she should at least be able to match Yino based on her past foundation.
But who would have thought...
In just three short months, Yino had already reached Nascent Soul stage!
No wonder Ruoning had virtually no ability to resist when they met at the bridge earlier and was easily captured by Yino.
"Yino... you just love taking advantage of people..."
Thinking of this, Ruoning couldn't help pouting slightly again.
She noticed that Yino had been keeping his arm around her waist while they walked side by side ever since they met at the bridge. Combined with Ruoning's wealthy, pristine ermine robe, this naturally attracted quite a bit of attention from passersby.
Honestly, Ruoning somewhat regretted dressing so flashily today.
She'd worn beautiful clothes because they hadn't seen each other in so long, wanting to make a good impression on Yino.
But now...
Looking beautiful and wealthy, Ruoning had become the most eye-catching rich young lady on the entire street for people to gossip about while being taken advantage of by Yino.
It wasn't that Ruoning felt being with Yino would lower her status.
But the matter had exploded among relatives within the Liu mansion ever since that time when Ruoning returned from Azure Forest and boldly announced she wanted to marry Yino. This had put Ruoning under great pressure at home recently. She hadn't actively mentioned marriage with Yino to her family for nearly ten years, so her understanding of the family situation was still stuck at the time when she used to visit the He mansion ten years ago.
Naturally, Ruoning had assumed the Liu and He mansions were well-matched, so the marriage could definitely be arranged as long as she could bring Yino back to Jiangnan.
But experiencing it firsthand, Ruoning now realized how sensitive her clan relatives were about her marriage! As if Ruoning was betraying ancestors and violating heavenly law by not choosing some young master from the Lin mansion for blind dates!
In such an environment, Ruoning's initially optimistic attitude would naturally be gradually beaten down.