Zhuge Wanqiu stared at Xu Yunsheng with a strange look in her eyes. She waited for him to finish before she said gently, “If I haven’t been waiting for you by myself over the years and I have someone else in my life – will you still have told all these things?”

Xu Yunsheng answered, “If your fate belongs to someone else, I will never want to interrupt or affect your life and neither will I want to impede your relationship with your partner. I won’t disrupt your mind.”

Zhuge Wanqiu asked, “Are you not disrupting my state of mind right now? You’re trying to do things your way again, senior brother Xu.”

Xu Yunsheng heaved a faint sigh and said, “Knowing everything now is only fair for you. I made you wait for so many years and I don’t wish for you to continue wasting time.”

Zhuge Wanqiu walked forward, step by step, and came before Xu Yunsheng. They were only inches apart as Zhuge Wanqiu stared deep into his eyes. “How can you be sure that the days and months that I have spent waiting have been wasted? How can you be sure that I am wasting time if I continue to wait?”

She was placing him in a spot, and that was rare for her. Xu Yunsheng grew quiet, and he said softly after a long pause, “If I told you everything all those years ago, today would have been very different. I have already made this mistake.”

Zhuge Wanqiu’s eyes gradually became tender and gentle. “Your heart was with me even before you entered the Celestial Wonders World, am I right? Your heart has always been with me over the years, am I right?”

Xu Yunsheng answered without hesitation and didn’t deny anything. “Yes.”

“You, Miaoying, and my master are the three most important people in my life.”

“My sister and I have been relying on each other for survival since were kinds, and she is the only real family that I have left. I will defy my own conscience for her, so I was willing to spy for the Great Zhou Empire.”

“Master changed my life and he helped me shake off the shackles. In order to repay him and the sect, I was willing to accept any form of punishment.”

“And you – I once had the fantasy of holding hands with you and striding into the sunset, of sharing a future with you. However, everything remained a fantasy because of my past and my background. I don’t know how to pay you back for what I owe you, and I will not audaciously say that I can take of you in the days to come, and that being nice to you is a form of repayment. That simply means I am still taking advantage of you and not repaying you.”

Zhuge Wanqiu continued staring at him. “You still have that mental barrier in your heart. Have you ever thought about asking me whether I need you to repay me, or how I want you to compensate me?”

Xu Yunsheng lowered his head and revealed a rare visage of weakness and timidity. His lips trembled as he laughed bitterly and said, “Yes, I am trying to do things my way again.”

He heaved another light sigh and looked up at Zhuge Wanqiu as he said softly, “I’m very sorry, Wanqiu.”

Even though their thoughts were sensitive and delicate, both Xu Yunsheng and Zhuge Wanqiu were still inexperienced with relationships and the notion of love. Xu Yunsheng appeared restrained and reserved because of his personality, and he could only make blunt guesses about what the girl was thinking, while he never really engaged in proper communication and expression.

Xu Yunsheng never had any romantic relationships in his hundred years inside the Celestial Wonders World. Even though he was more mature and his mentality was much more stable than before, he didn’t have any experience at all in something like this.

Zhuge Wanqiu tilted her head as she looked into his eyes. She suddenly whispered, “Please give me a moment – I will be right back.”

“Even though I have made my thoughts clear to Ying Luozha multiple times before, he insisted that he wanted to hear my decision one more time after your return. I owe him an explanation as well.”

Xu Yunsheng’s eyebrows shuddered and his eyes widened a little. There were so many things he wanted to say that were bursting out of his chest, but he forced everything down and finally uttered a single word. “Okay.”

Zhuge Wanqiu brushed against his shoulders and departed the bamboo room and strode towards the Heavenly Temple.

There was a faint blush of bashfulness in her rosy cheeks as she kept her head down, as if she was still the same young girl that wasn’t very good at expressing herself all those years ago.

She took a few steps out and the blush on her face gradually disappeared. Her eyes were as gentle as they had always been, but there was a dash of determination as she said, “Let me decide and be willful about this, father.”

A shadow drifted into vision from the void space beside her. It was a well-built middle-aged man clad in a white robe, and his facial features were sharp while his eyebrows were a pale golden color – he was Zhuge Wanqiu’s father, a powerful third-level immortal soul stage cultivator, the Scorching Sun Holy Man, Zhuge Zhan.

Zhuge Zhan sauntered beside Zhuge Wanqiu and gazed into her eyes with an expression that flowed with doting love. “Silly girl. I can arrange everything else for you as your father, but this – you are the only one who can decide for yourself.”

“The truth is that I think both Xu Yunsheng and Ying Luozha are not worthy of my baby girl. However, if you truly like one of them, all I can do is clear the path and make sure there are no obstacles before you.”

“You have been waiting for so many years, and your heart remains the same even up till today, and even when you now know the truth. I know what you are thinking – go ahead and do what you have to do.”

Zhuge Zhan’s lifted his golden eyebrows faintly. “However, if he lets you down in the future, I will put him in the ground even if that will offend Zhu Yi and the Leader of the Celestial Sect of Wonders. No consequence will stop me!”

Zhuge Wanqiu shook her head and said, “That’s not what I hope to happen, father. If such a day does come, I will accept all the consequences and responsibilities myself. I will have no regrets and no complaints.”

The smile on her face became brighter. “But I’m confident that I didn’t make the wrong choice.”

“I will not have another dramatic and epic love at my age and no matter who I choose. Our love will be like the clear springs trickling through the mountains – meaningful and drawn-out.”

Zhuge Zhan said slowly, “If you really have to choose between the two of them, I would rather you pick Ying Luozha. At the very least, he’s decisive and is straightforward about everyone. It’s not easy for someone like this to have waited for you for such a long time.”

Zhuge Wanqiu replied, “It’s possible for me to become partners in cultivation with senior brother Ying Luozha. However, partners in cultivation are all we will ever be, and we will never be husband and wife. I only have gratitude towards him – I don’t feel anything romantic towards him at all.”

“If I repay Ying Luozha’s commitment and determination with love, how can I live with myself when I meet another man that’s even more loving and even more committed than him?”

“Of course, that’s just hypothetical. However, if there is more than one person like Ying Luozha waiting for me today, how will I decide who to give myself to?”

Zhuge Zhan’s expression became more affectionate as he listened to her words, but his eyes flowed with dense despondence and disappointment.

His daughter had finally grown up.

This feeling threw him off a little and complicated thoughts and emotions rippled in his mind.

Zhuge Zhan’s shadow disappeared, and Zhuge Wanqiu entered the Heavenly Temple by herself. She came to one of the side halls, ad immediately saw a young girl with a cold look and resolute determination and stubbornness in her eyes standing sentry.

The girl greeted at once when she saw Zhuge Wanqiu. “Greetings, senior uncle Tian Hong.”

Zhuge Wanqiu naturally recognized this girl. She was Ying Luozha’s disciple, Meng Honglou, and she was one of the strongest students in the Celestial Sect of Wonders’ third generation of disciples in terms of pure fighting strength.

The only thing was that this girl had always been isolated and reserved, and she didn’t interact much with the others. She was headstrong but obstinate, cold and firm yet also sharp.

She was considered a rare prodigy in terms of her talent in cultivation when compared with the rest of the Divine Lands. However, her natural talent could only be considered slightly above average within the Celestial Sect of Wonders.

However, Meng Honglou took after her master, Ying Luozha. She possessed incredible fighting prowess, and her combat abilities were far superior than most. She could be ranked amongst the top five student in terms of fighting ability at the same level of mastery amongst the third generation of disciples, and she had a reputation of defeating opponents stronger than her when she roamed the world outside.

Meng Honglou always wore a cold look on her face and one hardly saw a smile on her face, while Zhuge Wanqiu was aware of the reason behind her disposition.

This girl was very competitive, and she had always hoped to be the strongest disciple in the third generation. She was the first to reach the aurous core stage back in the day.

However, just like Xu Yunsheng and Ying Luozha back in the day, prodigies and otherworldly talents began to spring up all over the Celestial Sect of Wonders, and powerful individuals began to appear amongst the third generation of disciples.

Meng Honglou could possibly match up to the various third-generation First Disciples such as the Qingu Pavilion’s Lian Huazhao, the Forest Abode’s Chen Fangge, the Wasteland Valley’s Shi Yang, the Inferno Precipice’s Duan Muhong, and even Jiao Qing from the Heavenly Temple, there was one person that still weighed down upon her like a mountain.

This person was publicly recognized as the number-one figure in the third generation of successive disciples. He was the touted by the Divine Lands as the individual that reigned supreme across his entire generation – the Blizzard Valley’s third-generation First Disciple, Guo Zonghuang.

Guo Zonghuang dominated everybody of the same mastery in terms of cultivation speed and fighting prowess. He was widely revered and well-liked by people both inside and outside the sect, while he had the aura of a leader and everybody regarded him well.

Meng Honglou wasn’t jealous or envious of Guo Zonghuang, and she would only continue giving everything she had, and squeeze every bit of potential that she had.

However, she would never be happy as long as Guo Zonghuang remained stronger than she was.

However, Zhuge Wanqiu, Ying Luozha, Zhao Huan and the others recognized that Guo Zonghuang’s existence helped Meng Honglou become stronger relative to her original expectations.

“At ease.” Zhuge Wanqiu nodded at Meng Honglou. Meng Honglou straightened herself and said, “Master is waiting for you, senior uncle Tian Hong.”

Xu Yunsheng had just returned to the Heavenly Temple before he left for the Wasteland Valley. However, Ying Luozha was clearly aware that he had returned.

Ying Luozha didn’t pursue him in to the Wasteland Valley, and chose to remain inside the Heavenly Temple instead.

Zhuge Wanqiu pushed the gates open. There was nothing inside the great hall – there were no tables, no chairs, and there wasn’t even a futon. A tanned and skinny youth sat on a slab of stone on the ground, and a streak of lightning seemed to flash across his eyes as he opened them and stared at Zhuge Wanqiu.

“He’s back,” Ying Luozha looked at Zhuge Wanqiu calmly. “You came to me at the first possible moment after meeting him – that means you still choose him.”

Zhuge Wanqiu sighed and replied, “I’m sorry, senior brother.”

This man was also in the nascent soul advanced stage. However, with this man’s initial trajectory, he was supposed to be in the immortal soul stage like Yang Tie and the others.

Ying Luozha closed his eyes gradually, and his lightning-like gaze vanished. “Xu Yunsheng should be the one apologizing to you. You didn’t have to come here to tell me – you have rejected me with unwavering determination every time I came forward to ask you, and you have never given me any hope ever since I brought it up to you. It was me who showered love on an uninterested party in the first place.”

“Since you have no feelings for me, I’m letting go. I’m not the clingy kind or the kind that will continue entangling myself in the fray, but I just don’t want to lose to a coward that left without saying goodbye and a coward who disappeared without a trace!”

Ying Luozha said plainly, “But he’s finally back now, yet your decision has never changed from the beginning to the end. There is nothing more to be said between us – you can go now.”

Zhuge Wanqiu stared at the tanned and skinny youth before her and descended into silent contemplation. She bowed after a long pause before the left the great hall without saying a single word in response.

It didn’t take long before the Heavenly Temple’s second-generation Elder, the Tian Bi Master, Ying Luozha, reached the immortal soul stage.