After leaving Fu Xuefeng and Kang Lan alone in the living room, Bai Zemin walked through the main hallway of the villa in the direction of the stairs.
On the way, he met a few maidens who looked at him and then at Shangguan Bing Xue before bowing slightly and continuing on with their work without asking questions. He even met Fu Shuren on the way.
Fu Xuefeng's big sister naturally noticed that the beautiful silver-haired woman who was about the same age as her was not feeling well. After all, it was easy to notice because of her flushed face and the sweat that covered practically her entire body. But although Fu Shuren was curious about it, she didn't ask any questions since she was sure that the young man who practically always wore a black armor wouldn't do anything bad to the unconscious woman anyway.
As for the reason... Considering that Bai Zemin could have had his way with her in the past but never even touched a single hair apart from a casual conversation, it was only natural to consider him a pretty honorable person.
Of course, our hero didn't mind anything of this.. Regardless of what others thought, Bai Zemin firmly believed that as long as his conscience was clear, then the rest was only secondary.
Bai Zemin walked up the stairs and when he reached the second-floor hallway didn't stop, he simply crossed the path and continued up the steps to the other side of the hallway, reaching the top floor of the luxurious villa seconds later.
The thud of his boots along with the obviously labored breathing of the woman in his arms was the only sound he could hear at this point.
Finally, after a few twists and turns, he stopped next to a mahogany wooden door and carefully opened it with one hand before pushing it open with his shoulder to open it all the way.
"Damn, if only I could get the Mana out of my body to use at will everything would be easier." He grumbled as walked into the room lamenting that he couldn't do as Lilith did, waving a hand and moving things around at will.
The room was considerably luxurious, just slightly below the room where Bai Zemin slept. In fact, in reality, all the rooms in this villa were very luxurious; the guest rooms were no exception to the rule.
"Well, another way to achieve what you want is to obtain the skill Telekinesis from a skill scroll." Lilith appeared in the room, right next to the large window whose panes were partially covered by a huge light gray curtain.
"Learning a skill to do something like open a door... So pitiful." Bai Zemin smiled bitterly and shook his head as he walked towards the bed that was located centered on the left side of the room.
"Hehe... Of course, you can also learn the skill by yourself. But for that, you need to control the mana almost perfectly, so it might be difficult for the current you." Lilith observed as he placed the body of the unconscious Shangguan Bing Xue gently on the bed and a smile showed on her face as she playfully said, "You're pretty good at taking care of women. Are you sure you haven't had a girlfriend before?"
Bai Zemin straightened his body again and walked towards the private bathroom of the suite as he jokingly replied, "Oh, I tried in the past but things didn't go well. I ended up with a broken heart and someone else ended up hospitalized with broken legs. Lord help us."
"Hehehe~" Lilith giggled softly at the joking tone he replied with and said solemnly, "Amen!"
The reason why she was joking with something like that was because even though at that time Bai Zemin had a hard moment, she was 100% sure that the current him really didn't care about what happened back then with that girl he met during his teenage years.
In fact, just by the tone of voice without fluctuations and by his steady gaze as well as the movements of every muscle on his face, Lilith knew that Bai Zemin didn't even hate that girl. To him, that woman was similar to a stone in the middle of the road; she only stopped him for a moment before being kicked away and forgotten the next instant before continuing on his way naturally as if nothing had happened.
Bai Zemin came out of the bathroom and finally answered honestly, "Well, although I might not have dated a girl, I don't think it takes such a thing to know how to treat a woman. After all, I'm not a kid who doesn't know anything about life."
"Maybe." Lilith shrugged before raising an eyebrow at the sight of what he held in his hands, "Just curious but... That wet towel, you're not thinking of using it on her, are you?"
"Uh?" Bai Zemin paused and looked at her before saying in confusion, "Yeah, well. It's for her face... Why do you say that?"
"Ugh..." Lilith approached him with a serious expression and stopped when she was at a close enough distance that her bust threatened to touch the chest plate of his armor.
Bai Zemin looked at her stunned, and she said in a serious voice, "I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to be honest. Is it okay?"
"Of course." He did not hesitate and nodded. There were very few times he lied... Though he had embezzled the words several times.
Lilith took a step back and pointed at Shangguan Bing Xue before asking her question, "She, what is she to you?"
"A reliable companion on the battlefield." Bai Zemin didn't even take a second to answer.
"That's all?" Lilith raised an eyebrow and pursued further.
"That's all. Nothing more and nothing less." He nodded and continued, "Shangguan Bing Xue is a person I can entrust my back to while we fight, an intelligent woman whose opinion is worth listening to. As for seeing her as a woman, naturally, I find her beautiful. But that's all. If you want to know if I have any special feelings, then the answer is a total and absolute no."
Speaking up to here, Bai Zemin smiled slightly and said jokingly, "Could it be that you are feeling jealous?"
Lilith ignored his words and looked him straight in the eyes for a solid minute in total silence. Even though a single minute seemed short, it was different when two persons stared straight into each other's eyes without looking away for even a split second.
Finally, a complex light flashed in her eyes before she took a second step back and said in an exhausted voice, "Bai Zemin... I will give you a kind advice."
The smile on Bai Zemin's face slowly withdrew and his expression turned serious and indifferent. Since Lilith was calling him by his name and not 'little brother Zemin' as she liked, then it meant that she was being genuine.
Seeing that he was paying attention to her, Lilith sighed and said softly, like a good big sister teaching her little brother something: "If you don't have special feelings for a woman, or if you just don't want to have a special relationship with her, then be careful what you say and what you do... It's fine to be kind and all, but sometimes too much kindness can lead to misunderstandings."
Bai Zemin opened his mouth to say something, but in the end, hesitated and closed it again without saying anything.
Although he could be a bit dense sometimes as he simply didn't think about romantic matters because he didn't think too highly of himself in that regard and didn't have time for such things, Bai Zemin wasn't an idiot who didn't know anything. He naturally understood what Lilith meant by her words, and after silently analyzing them for a couple of seconds, he realized that maybe she was right.
"I see." He nodded and said only two words before turning around to go back to the bathroom.
When Bai Zemin returned to the room, Lilith realized that his hands were empty this time. As she kept looking at him walk to the window and sit in one of the couches near the terrace, she couldn't help but wonder if what she had just said had made things more complicated than they needed to be.
She thought that she had already intervened too much in certain things, and that if she didn't want certain matters to get too out of hand, it would be better to stop getting too involved when it wasn't necessary.
Lilith walked to the closed window and sat down on the couch facing Bai Zemin. She saw that he had his arms crossed and eyes closed with a meditative expression on his face. Just seeing him deep in thought made her regret what she had just said, but unfortunately for her, the words had already left her mouth long ago.
Despite being a Higher Existence that was unaffected by the passage of time regardless if it was hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of years; this did not mean that Lilith was above time. By no means. She could not control time and go back to the past.
* * *
The day passed very quickly, and Bai Zemin never left Shangguan Bing Xue's room.
Because she had entrusted her life to him, then he was going to fulfill her expectations. After all, as a man, the least he could do when another person entrusted him with her entire existence was to do his best to reciprocate.
Even when the sun descended and when the moon ascended into the sky that had now transformed into a massive black mantle with countless stars, Bai Zemin remained seated on the couch beside the window without moving.
Lilith naturally stayed by his side, and although the two did not talk much, the silence in itself was not uncomfortable in any way. On the contrary, it was extremely relaxing and allowed both of them to think and reason about things that, perhaps, they were doing wrong.
"Lilith."
She was looking up at the stars in the sky when Bai Zemin's voice caused her eyes to shift to him.
Like her, he was looking at the stars in the sky, apparently thinking about something or perhaps just appreciating their beauty.
"What's it?" She answered in a low voice that soon melted into the darkness of the room.
"May I know how old you are?" Bai Zemin asked calmly.
Lilith was a little surprised by the question before she smiled slightly and asked back, "How old do you think I am?"
He was silent for a few seconds before answering yet without looking at her, "I don't know, maybe about 5000 years?"
"Hehe..." Lilith chuckled sweetly before looking back up at the stars in the distant sky and replied quietly, "Well, I'm a lot younger than you think. So young that you'd probably be shocked to know it."
"Oh?" Bai Zemin's curiosity spiked sharply this time and he finally turned his face to look at her. Seeing that she didn't respond, he decided to wait and see.
After about a minute or two, she finally uttered, "This world called Earth makes a complete rotation in orbit around the star called Sun once every 365 days, am I correct?"
Although secretly surprised that she knew such information, Bai Zemin thought that as a Higher Existence it was something easy for Lilith to analyze. Even so, he nodded, "That's right."
Lilith smiled slightly, a smile that was intricate and emotionally charged to describe properly, and said something that left Bai Zemin without breath for a long time.
"So, one rotation around the Sun takes 365 days of time, which is abbreviated as 1 year of time in the calendar of this world's mankind... Taking that same time range into account, my age is young enough that the Earth didn't even manage to make 100 circles around its main star."
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Thanks a lot to all those who use their Golden Tickets to vote for BW <3