Love Travels through Time (My father who traveled through time and space to cultivate immortality came back to pick me up) - Chapter 40
Chapter 40: The Boss’s Instructions
He truly was rendered speechless, as if bound by a silence curse.
Yin Changli guessed that something must have gone wrong with his original body—and something major at that.
A thread of consciousness detached from its original body was like a flower fallen from a branch, doomed to wither rapidly.
At the same time, it remained affected by the condition of the original body.
Right now, even the simple act of thinking was excruciatingly arduous for him, like a sleep-deprived person suspended between dreaming and waking.
Earlier, when Xiang Haikui thought he was making dead-fish eyes at her, he hadn’t done it on purpose.
He was genuinely a bit slow, so when he saw her testing him, he simply went along with it to tease her.
A quick laugh and a bit of fun helped his stiffened mind slowly come alive again so he could properly instruct her on business.
Just what kind of suffering had his original body endured during this period? He wanted to ask, yet he couldn’t—asking would lead to him giving unwanted guidance.
Sigh, he really felt a bit of pity for himself.
“Senior?”
Xiang Haikui felt an uneasy chill in her heart as she watched him put away his smile, the naturally upturned corners of his mouth slumping down.
She had no idea what he was up to now.
Tugging her arm to break free from his grip, she tiptoed backward, “Let’s hurry up and get down to business. You know my comprehension skills are pretty poor, so we need to leave some time for me to process things.”
Yin Changli offered no verbal response.
Pressing his fingertips against his lips, he shook his head at her.
What was this, playing charades?
Normally she might go along with it, but Xiang Haikui was currently in an exceptionally terrible mood.
“Fine, then speak when you feel like it.”
She squatted down, propping her cheek with one hand while drawing circles on the ocean surface with the other.
The seawater was sticky like modeling clay, which felt quite amusing.
Just as she finished drawing a set of five interlocking rings, a silver-white boot stepped down, trampling her masterpiece into nothingness.
Yin Changli lifted a corner of his long robe, slightly bending his left knee to half-squat in front of her.
His thick, long hair spread across the ground, with a few strands brushing against Xiang Haikui’s fingers.
Just as she tried to pull her hand back, her wrist was caught once more without warning.
Yin Changli turned her somewhat thin, small hand over, palm facing upward.
She instinctively curled her fingers, but he smoothed her hand flat.
Most sword cultivators had calluses on their hands.
Even if they could erase them with medicinal potions, they chose to keep them as a badge of honor belonging to a sword cultivator.
Xiang Haikui had them too, even before she began cultivating the sword.
Beside the calluses were numerous scars, both deep and shallow.
Xiang Haikui knitted her brows without bothering to struggle.
The last time someone grabbed her palm to read her fortune was a year ago under the footbridge, when she paid ten bucks to a fortune teller.
Using his fingertip to write on her palm, Yin Changli seemed to use magma as ink, leaving behind crystal-clear marks: “What’s wrong?”
Her palm felt tickled as though brushed by a feather.
Xiang Haikui thought to herself that she should be the one asking this question—why on earth did he switch to writing mid-conversation?
“It’s nothing, I just suddenly feel exhausted and a bit irritable.”
Having held her breath in tight tension all this time, she finally let that breath out today.
Yin Changli wrote slowly: “I know you are tired, but you do not have the right to cry exhaustion. Do you know why?”
Xiang Haikui pressed her lips tightly together, answering after a brief pause: “Because I haven’t outrun my destiny yet.”
Yin Changli shook his head.
Xiang Haikui was dazed: “Then why?”
Yin Changli wrote: “Look at the sea surface.”
Xiang Haikui lowered her head to look beneath her feet, where the ocean’s reflection displayed her hair bun and her face, which had thinned down into the shape of a melon seed.
Yin Changli: “Do you understand now?”
Xiang Haikui stared for a long time, completely bewildered.
Yin Changli wrote: “You see, your looks are mediocre to begin with; when you sulk and cry exhaustion, you become downright hideous.”
Xiang Haikui: …
Fuck!
She knew no ivory could ever come out of a dog’s mouth!
The corners of Yin Changli’s lips curled upward as silent amusement seeped into his eyes.
He rumbled her hair bun.
For some unknown reason, he couldn’t quite control his eyes, constantly wanting to glance at her hair.
Get lost!
This gesture was like petting a domestic animal.
Xiang Haikui testily jerked her head to shake him off.
“Alright, down to business.”
Carrying a smile, Yin Changli continued writing on her palm: “Taking care of me is the first matter. The second matter: this jade slip is no ordinary messaging slip. It stores many recordings I captured out of sheer boredom while watching people duel. When you have free time, you can come in to observe and study them.”
As he flicked his sleeve, spray abruptly surged from the sea surface. The splashes condensed into scenes and figures—it was a group of magic cultivators engaged in a free-for-all brawl.
Whoosh!
On the other side, the seawater shot into the sky like a water dragon, condensing into a steep mountain peak.
Standing atop the peak were two sword cultivators competing with their sword intent.
Crash, splash!
Aside from the patch of ground beneath their feet, water waves were churning and exploding everywhere. The vast ocean inside the jade slip had turned into a massive combat training sandbox.
She was utterly thrilled; any decisive battle worth the Boss’s time to record was bound to be extraordinarily brilliant.
It was just that…
Among these images, there also seemed to be crabs fighting with shrimps, cats chasing mice, and drops of water wearing through stone.
It was clear he had truly been bored out of his mind when he recorded them.
“The third matter.”
Xiang Haikui was mesmerized by the surroundings, only snapping back to reality when Yin Changli shoved a night-luminescent pearl into her other hand.
Yin Changli wrote: “My original body can self-repair, but it takes too long. Absorbing the power of other demon beasts can accelerate my recovery.”
“However, I don’t just consume any random demon power. When there is a demon beast you wish to kill, test it with this spirit pearl. If the pearl glows, it can serve as my tonic.”
Xiang Haikui hurriedly accepted: “Understood.”
Speaking of which, what did she like most about the Boss?
He would force her to do things, yet he never forced her to act against her inner conscience.
For instance, if he were talking to Little Bai, the Boss’s instructions would undoubtedly be: “Take this pearl, and any demon that makes it light up—kill them all for me.”
Yin Changli: “Also, keep these three arrows safely.”
The three spirit arrows transformed into three jade hairpins, inserted diagonally into her hair bun.
Yin Changli wrote: “When you encounter an insurmountable problem, randomly draw one out, carve your question onto the arrowhead, and shoot it out.”
Xiang Haikui was puzzled: “Just shoot it randomly?”
Yin Changli gave a subtle nod: “Rest assured, when they fly out, no one will see them. The destinations of these three arrows belong to three titan figures of the Shanhai Tribe, who were imprisoned around the same time as your master.”
Xiang Haikui was shocked.
Her vocabulary was a bit poor, so she didn’t quite grasp the word ‘titan’ at first, but now it was clear—they were absolute powerhouses.
Yin Changli was amused to the point of exasperation: “Don’t rejoice just yet. If they were truly capable, they wouldn’t have been imprisoned either. They aren’t much better than your master, whose single shout could echo continuously for five thousand years—they are very likely to give you rotten advice…”
Xiang Haikui: … “Then why am I contacting them? To dig my own grave?”
Yin Changli: “Don’t be too disdainful. At least it gives you an extra path to take; just make do with it.”
Alright then, having something was better than nothing. Mentioning her master made Xiang Haikui miss him: “Senior, do you have an arrow to contact my master?”
Yin Changli shook his head, writing: “The restriction on the Thousand Bone Cave is the strongest among all sealed lands; my spirit arrows cannot penetrate it.”
Xiang Haikui’s head drooped, a bit disappointed.
Yin Changli wrote: “However, Little Bai knows the way there. Once my original body recovers to roughly thirty percent and can control the mobile palace, Little Bai can take you over.”
Xiang Haikui instantly came back to life!
“Next is the final matter I need to entrust to you, and it is also the most important one.”
Yin Changli’s expression gradually turned serious, and Xiang Haikui followed suit.
“Please speak.”
“During this period, you must drive away any woman who attempts to approach me.”
Xiang Haikui shuddered inwardly, thinking to herself: Right now you’re a holy monk—no woman wants to get close to you! It’s YOU who keeps brazenly trying to hit on ME!
She wanted so badly to tell him, but he wouldn’t let her speak.
Yin Changli: “Under normal circumstances, after losing my memory, my taste wouldn’t change. However…”
Han Qi had struck him through his clone, and the curse placed on him likely preserved his romantic acuity while sealing off his remaining spiritual senses.
Otherwise, even with memory loss, making his romantic star align wouldn’t be easy.
Xiang Haikui understood somewhat now—so it really was an intelligence-lowering strike.
Yin Changli corrected her: “What was lowered wasn’t intelligence, but rational thinking.”
Xiang Haikui processed this carefully.
The Boss meant that spiritual beings were an interwoven blend of emotion and rationality.
His enemy had sealed off his rational thinking, leaving behind his emotional thinking.
Furthermore, while a small trace of rationality remained at the beginning, as time went on, it would be increasingly suppressed by his emotional side.
The current submissive, puppy-like boss is already terrifying enough—could he really get even worse in the future?
Xiang Haikui felt as though she could already see the scene in the near future: the boss shedding tears as he went out to bury fallen flowers.
“This matter requires special attention,” he heavily emphasized.
“Leaving aside Xiang Tianqing, would other women affect you as well?”
Xiang Haikui really wanted to know this, as it pertained to how much effort she would need to put into the matter.
“Or is it simply that you dislike women… humiliating you?”
Yin Changli lowered his eyes in thought, his finger tapping rhythmically on her palm.
Xiang Haikui didn’t disturb him either.
With his brain’s processing speed, in the time it took her to say a single extra sentence, he might have already completed a lap around the earth.
“In truth, the former Lord of the Underworld created a weapon.”
Fiery red characters surfaced on her palm once more. Xiang Haikui watched intently without blinking, terrified of missing a single word.
“This weapon is like a firework. It only needs to be ignited, and with a single bang, it will surge into the sky and blow a hole right through the Upper Realm.”
Xiang Haikui’s eyes grew wider and wider.
For real?
It sounded fake as hell.
Yet perceptually, it felt as though the boss was merely using an analogy.
“However, that weapon was never completed; it was detected by the Emperor of the Upper Realm. Combined with the former Underworld Lord’s own lifespan reaching its end, he transferred the weapon to me for me to carry on and finish.”
“By now, the weapon has been fully forged, but the time is not yet ripe. We must wait until… Do you understand now? The Upper Realm is expending every effort to capture me precisely to extract the weapon’s whereabouts from my mouth and destroy it ahead of time.”
Since it was a monumental secret, Xiang Haikui didn’t believe he would just blurt it out like this.
However, in terms of significance, it was likely close to the truth, so she gave a cautious nod.
Yin Changli smiled faintly and continued writing: “All of my kinsmen died in war, and because I surrendered, I was branded with the mark of the Shanhai pariahs. The Shanhai Clan struck my name off long ago. After the only bosom friend of my life also passed away, I have been entirely alone, without a single weakness that could be targeted…”
That was why they tried every trick in the book, intending to manufacture a “hero falling for a beauty” weakness for him.
Xiang Tianqing was Han Qi’s first choice, but it wasn’t strictly limited to her.
From here on out, it would inevitably stir up other romantic stars.
“I understand. I won’t let any women near you in the future,” Xiang Haikui swallowed hard.
“But Senior, that…”
Yin Changli blinked, as if asking: “Hmm?”
Xiang Haikui spoke in an extra tiny voice: “Fending off your unwanted suitors isn’t a hard task for me, but I’m a woman too. Being together day and night, what if…”
Yin Changli was actually taken aback for a moment, as though he had never planned for this issue before: “Aren’t you overthinking things a bit too much?”
Xiang Haikui: WTF?
This was way too damaging to her self-esteem! Wicked thoughts surged wildly inside her heart. She desperately wanted to accept Tian kuang’s instigation—sleeping with the submissive puppy-boss while he was throwing himself at her, just to see how this CEO dog-guy would cry after he snapped back to his senses!
