Xu Chuyao took several minutes to confirm that her girlfriend was serious and not joking at all.
Even Guan Miaofei’s reasoning made perfect sense.
“You said you wanted to set the date, and this really is a good way to do it.”
From the engagement onward, you have to buy things, plan the banquet, take wedding photos, exchange Wedding Tokens, decorate the Wedding Room, inform friends for the Bridal Attire… By the time you’ve gone through all these steps, you haven’t even had the banquet yet, but ten days or half a month will have already passed.
After the banquet, there’s still the Honeymoon, which takes another month or so. You can’t not go, after all.
And so, this is a good reason. The best part is that no one is forcing anything; after all, this is a big event in life.
After Xu Chuyao analyzed it for a while, she realized there was a lot of truth to it. The only question was—
“Why did you suddenly think of this?”
“You asked me yourself,” Shen Ning looked away calmly, “You asked if I had any way to set the date.”
So it was just a spur-of-the-moment idea? And yet she came up with such a great solution. Xu Chuyao looked at her girlfriend with newfound respect and couldn’t help but say:
“Shen Ning, you really are a genius!”
“I thought you’d just play around, take it as something fun.” A low voice whispered in the young girl’s ear, “Didn’t expect you’d be about to be locked into the jar of marriage.”
Well, it’s not quite like that, Shen Ning thought. Something so worth celebrating—how could it be a coffin?
But they were indeed preparing to invite the Nine Hundred Guests from the big hall for the banquet.
The weather was good the next day, and the girls each went back to their dorms to catch up on sleep. Because a big boss had come to the school, even Hu Hu was behaving herself, lying on her bed for a long time.
Mi Xiaolu had only slept half the night, and woke up a little past one to find her roommate still lying in bed, quietly staring at the ceiling, which made her feel a little out of sorts.
“Xu Chuyao, what’s up with you today?”
“Nothing much, just thinking about something that might be important, or maybe not that important—maybe somewhere between important and not important.”
This succeeded in confusing Mi Xiaolu, who just rolled over and decided to keep her company.
“Young people are the best—just go with the flow.”
Xu Chuyao continued to stare at her own ceiling, sighing silently.
Matters of the heart aren’t complicated; it’s just about how much of the original feelings remain. After almost two hours of thinking, she sadly discovered things weren’t looking great.
“Back in the first year of the story, Professor Swina died, Wang Li died, even Wen Shengqing was left with a T-peptide.”
Little Jiaming mumbled that in this world no one was eternal, and Yaoyao’s mood was very low.
Still, not everything was so gloomy. After all, the heroine reached the fourth stage, but the main reason she couldn’t figure things out was—
“The Prophet’s title is sealed, that’s it.”
Might as well sleep and forget about it.
2zzz
There was no need to go to Sea Port, but Lilis and the others had to stay a little longer in Dangcheng. For now, they stayed at a small inn in the borderlands.
Their new task was to investigate the cause of Wang Li’s death.
“Physically speaking, Mrs. Wang Li was burned to death,” Lilis raised her glass to everyone. “As for the real reason behind it, no one knows.”
It certainly wasn’t anything heartwarming.
No one in the room responded to his nonsense, except for Molly, who clinked her little cup of juice against his plate, as if there were something worth celebrating.
“Thank you, Tea Yin, you really are my good partner.”
After Lilis finished, he looked to the others, “Alright, alright, I know I’m talking nonsense. But, back to the point, Wang Li died in the Siren Expulsion Battle. Surely there’s some internal document or record of how exactly she died. Don’t any of you have a way to get intelligence?”
Of these people, the only one he’d known before was the disillusioned apostate Benjet. The rest were all unfamiliar, and he didn’t know if any of them held important positions.
The bald Eastern European man spoke up indifferently: “Wang Li was killed by Xu Chuyao’s team. The case file says: Four-star Director Xu and the Leader led the Sea Depth Team as reinforcements, but then encountered the traitor Wang Li, so they killed her on the spot.”
“Xu Chuyao?” Lilis paused, “How did she get involved?”
“They once fought at the Brussels airport, it caused quite a stir, and that’s why things turned out the way they did. They became sworn enemies there, so when they ran into each other again during the Siren Expulsion Battle, they fought, and Wang Li was killed.”
The bald man glanced at him, as if to say the matter was that simple, but the details weren’t clear.
“Come on, Kogor, that’s not what I meant. I just want to say, if it was that simple, why did they want us to investigate? Investigate what?” Lilis laughed dryly, “Did they just want us to look into whether she died from a single strike?”
It didn’t make sense.
The bald man said nothing, because he really didn’t know.
At this point, Molly spoke softly: “Maybe it’s just to mess with you, because you all completely failed the previous mission to kill Xu Chuyao.”
“Hey, partner, that was a mission for Professor Swina and Bildin. And then later Wang Li got involved too, but in the end—” Lilis clapped his hands, “—everyone failed, so how can you blame us?”
This time, his words finally got a response from the others at the table. Everyone joined in, expressing their agreement.
“Of course, this is a job for all us third-stringers, but things are different now compared to the beginning.”
“Xu Chuyao always has at least one fourth-stage expert at her side, so how can anyone make a move?”
“In the beginning, she didn’t even have protection and we couldn’t do it. Now… even Mrs. Wang Li died because of this.”
So now, not only did the new task have no leads, it actually stirred up issues with an old one.
Just then, the bald man suddenly received a call and immediately walked out. A few minutes later, he returned to the room, looking a bit strange, and said to the others,
“There are new orders. We need to go somewhere.”
Lilis instinctively asked: “Where?”
“Center City.”
Xu Chuyao never expected her girlfriend’s execution would be so efficient. Only a couple of days after discussing marriage, she had already gotten everything ready today.
Two white lilies as the background, with pink hearts dangling above, and a romantic poem written at the top.
[ For a moment, for a lifetime, two souls, one destiny. ]
Xu Chuyao resisted the urge to burst out laughing for a long time, then looked at the fair-haired girl beside her.
“I just want to ask, did someone suggest this line to you?”
“I came up with it myself,” Shen Ning’s eyes curved, “Why?”
She wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t telling the whole truth either, since it was the reflection who had suggested it, especially the lingering voice of sexual repression, who had taught her the first half. As for the second half, it should be logically related to the first, right?
Even the shadow of judgment thought it was deep and meaningful. Xiao Ran didn’t know the inside story but respected Shen Ning’s cultural roots.
“It’s nothing, just… doesn’t feel quite right.”
“Not right? The girl tilted her head, “Why not?”
She thought it fit perfectly—‘for a moment’ meant the moonlight at a certain time stayed in memory, and ‘for a lifetime’ meant it would influence a whole life.
“Emmmm, it’s like this, look, we’re giving this card to teachers and classmates, right? The Teacher is someone who teaches us knowledge, so putting a poem on it feels a bit pretentious,” Xu Chuyao said seriously, “And as for classmates, it’s even less appropriate, since their literature skills are already not great. Writing this would seem like showing off.”
Not great at socializing, Shen Ning thought her girlfriend made sense.
“Alright, we’ll skip the poetic line, just add more hearts.”
“Okay, okay, I agree.”
Xu Chuyao let out a tiny sigh.
Only a small one, because there was something even more alarming on the card—the date at the end.
“July Seventh… that’s just half a month away, so soon?” she asked.
It had only been a few days since they brought up the idea, and now they’d scheduled the banquet in less than a month. Wasn’t that a little too rushed?
Then again, ‘rushed’ suited this couple so well, you could practically write it as a banner for their wedding.
But Shen Ning explained reasonably, “I’ve calculated the time. Including booking the banquet and contacting everyone, the whole process can be done in half a month, just in time for the banquet. Besides, July Seventh is the Qixi Festival—a perfect day for weddings.”
Xu Chuyao’s mouth twitched, but she held back from explaining the difference between the lunar and solar calendars.
“I was just thinking…”
Even if Shen Ning’s reasoning sounded light, after thinking it over carefully, Xu Chuyao realized this was actually the perfect timing.
If they held it too early, it wouldn’t serve the purpose of buying time. If it were too late, the higher-ups might say, “Since you don’t seem to be in a hurry, why not do a mission in the meantime?” and then Wen Shengqing would quietly dump some work on them.
“Alright.”
Xu Chuyao agreed.
The two girls split up: Xu Chuyao went to deliver the invitation card to the Teacher and class monitor, while Shen Ning distributed them among classmates and friends, and invited their mothers over to help out.