Chapter 107 “I Never Liked Her!”

"Then you'll just stand here alone and wait until we've finished eating? You're not eating?" Gu Shiyan's voice rang out.

Luo Xing looked at him. He was looking at her as well.

For some reason, Luo Xing felt that something was off. Did she do something last night? Otherwise, why would seeing Gu Shiyan now make her feel as though some private trace had betrayed her body?

Besides, Gu Shiyan had a point. She could skip the ritual, but she could not skip a meal. They still had to go back down the mountain in the afternoon.

She looked at the ladder, her legs trembling.

No, it was just a temple. Did it really have to be this hard?

"I think my calf is cramping," Luo Xing said, staring at the sea of cloud below, not even able to tell how high up they were.

If she fell, wouldn't even her bones be shattered beyond repair?

"How about I carry you across? Just close your eyes." The words had barely left Shen Que's mouth when

Gu Shiyan gave a faint, mocking laugh. "This is disrespectful to the gods. Who asks for blessings while being carried around?"

Of course Luo Xing would not let anyone carry her across. She was grown, after all.

"It's fine. You go ahead; I'll follow behind. I'll just walk a bit slower," Luo Xing said sheepishly.

Xu Yan said, "Then you should go in front even more. Don't wait until we've all crossed and you're still standing there cramping in the same spot."

Luo Xing: ...

Pushed along by them, Luo Xing ended up walking at the front.

"Go slower. Don't crowd me," Luo Xing muttered, staring only at the path beneath her feet and not daring to look outside. But the planks linked by iron chains were not very steady to begin with, swaying under her weight.

It felt like stepping on cotton. Luo Xing was scared stiff.

Behind her, the other four said silently, "No one is crowding you. At this pace, even a turtle could catch up."

Luo Xing: ...

What should have been a five-minute stretch took Luo Xing twenty minutes to cross.

And she was teased for twenty minutes as well.

At long last, they reached the temple.

Luo Xing even stumbled and nearly fell.

She kept muttering, "This place is bad for me."

With that thought in mind, even after entering the temple, she did not take a blessing strip like the other students.

Everyone else was bent over the wooden tables, writing on them with brush pens.

Luo Xing stood off to the side.

She rubbed her ankle and felt that it really was starting to cramp.

"Why aren't you going?"

Luo Xing's shoulders jumped; she was startled by the voice that suddenly sounded behind her.

She turned and saw Gu Shiyan. "Aren't you going either?"

"I don't believe in this kind of thing," Gu Shiyan said, glancing at her before turning his head away again.

Luo Xing nodded. "True enough. You have everything you could want already, so naturally there's no need to pray to heaven."

After saying this, she watched Gu Shiyan raise his wrist and rub the back of his neck.

She felt that the person in front of her was acting strangely today. "Why did I sleep in your tent last night?"

"You took it. I let you have it."

"You don't seem like the sort who would let anyone have anything."

"To you, I never come out ahead, do I?"

"Why do you keep staring at my clothes?"

At last Luo Xing figured out what was odd about Gu Shiyan today.

He kept looking at her clothes. "This jacket is yours anyway. What, do you want it back?"

As she spoke, she was already about to take off the jacket she was wearing.

"Keep it on. I can't be bothered to carry it if you take it off."

Gu Shiyan's tone was light, as though he truly simply could not be bothered.

"Hey, hey, hey. Shen Que, why are you over there?"

Luo Xing heard Qi Changbai's voice and instinctively looked over.

Shen Que was standing in the area for praying for marriage, holding a red blessing strip in his hand. It was impossible to tell what he had written on it.

Luo Xing's eyes flickered.

Did Shen Que have someone he liked?

Shen Que quickly tucked the blessing strip into his pocket.

Then he looked at Luo Xing. "Aren't you going to ask for one too?"

Luo Xing shifted her gaze, then looked back at him. "There's nothing I need to ask for."

After thinking it over, Luo Xing still wrote one out, asking only for her family to be safe and her studies to go well.

At lunch, the five of them sat at a small table, which held only plain vegetarian dishes and thin rice porridge.

Someone nearby sighed, "When we get back, it'll be finals week again. What kind of education is this? It feels like I haven't done anything all semester."

"Ugh, finals again," Luo Xing said, swallowing a mouthful of rice and shaking her head repeatedly. "Time is impossible to catch."

Xu Yan had already put down his chopsticks. "What I don't understand is, the final exam questions aren't even hard. They're way easier than what I usually do. But every time finals come around, my roommates still howl like ghosts."

Qi Changbai rolled his eyes. "There's a huge difference between studying all semester and going to an exam, and studying for just one week and then going."

"Why is there no signal at all here?" Luo Xing said, holding up her phone.

It was only after Luo Xing went back down the mountain that the phone finally got a signal.

A flood of messages immediately popped up.

Luo Xing ignored the useless ones.

Then she saw the list her brother had sent, naming the people detained for spreading the rumors.

Luo Xing fixed her eyes on the two characters for Su Mo.

For all this time, she had actually been keeping a little distance from Su Mo.

Not to mention interacting with her. That was why she could not understand why Su Mo would go to such lengths to spread online abuse against her.

"Your father works in the capital?" Gu Shiyan asked casually.

Luo Xing nodded. "He was transferred there only a few months ago. Why are you asking?"

"Oh, nothing. The lawyer your dad hired is quite famous, and I happen to know him. I was just asking."

"Do you know why Su Mo exposed you and Ke Yu?"

Luo Xing had thought Gu Shiyan was still in some ambiguous entanglement with Su Mo.

She therefore could not understand why Su Mo would bear hostility toward her as well as toward Gu Shiyan.

"How would I know?" Gu Shiyan said.

"How could you not know? The two of you aren't..." Luo Xing stopped. She did not even know how far the two of them had gotten.

Gu Shiyan looked baffled. "We have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Why are you putting me and her together?"

"You don't like her?" Luo Xing asked in surprise.

"Who likes whom?" Qi Changbai, who had been replying to messages, caught the scent of gossip and came over at once.

Xu Yan and Shen Que also gathered around.

"Su... Su Mo," Luo Xing said quietly.

"Whoa, Su Mo?" Qi Changbai choked a little. "Brother, I chased after her too."

Luo Xing was even more shocked. "Huh?"

"She was the last rich young lady I went after."

Luo Xing had not even recovered from Qi Changbai's remark when Gu Shiyan stepped closer, nearly pressing right up against her.

In front of everyone, he said word by word, earnestly, "I never liked her!"

"When we were in the capital, you went to her grandmother's hospital every day. If you didn't like her, what were you doing there?"

"That was because I was trading favors with Gu Liang then. I was helping him handle something. It wasn't something I went there for on my own."

Gu Shiyan seemed suddenly enlightened, as though a blocked meridian had been opened. He stared at Luo Xing. "You always thought I liked her?"

Xu Yan spread his arms and pulled Shen Que and Qi Changbai back a step. "Let's step farther away to watch the drama."

"You should have liked her in the first place, and besides..." Luo Xing lowered her head. The words that followed never came out. She took a step back.

"And besides what?" Gu Shiyan moved one step closer. "I have never had anything to do with her. She's Su Wan's daughter. How could I possibly like her?"