Chapter 8: Master, This Time It’s Your Turn to Choose

After the battle at the Demon Abyss, Gu Chen’s name rang across the Nine Provinces.

A Nascent Soul cultivator with a Heavenly Demon Bone, who reversed a great formation with his own hands and destroyed the five-thousand-year-old remnant soul of the Demon Emperor.

Invitations from the great sects piled up on my table. One sect wanted to marry him to their holy maiden. One patriarch wanted to take him as a disciple, never mind that he already had a master.

I looked at the pile and got a headache.

“Disciple, why don’t you go down the mountain for a few years?”

Gu Chen was pouring tea. His hand paused.

“Is Master sending this disciple away?”

“Not sending you away. Young people should go out and see the world, not stay on this boring mountain all day.”

“This disciple already went.” He set the teapot down. “In the second year. A full half year.”

“Then go again for…”

“Master,” he looked at me, “are you tired of me?”

Me: “…”

Three years ago, he hadn’t dared eat a bowl of my noodles because he was afraid he couldn’t pay.

Now he knew how to shut his master up.

Raising a disciple really is like investing in a business. There are returns, sure, but once the capital grows, it starts talking back to the owner.

“Fine. If you don’t want to go, stay.”

He lowered his head, the corners of his mouth curling up.

【Told you. I’ve shipped it since chapter one.】

That evening, Gu Chen came to my cave.

No tea, no cakes. Just a small wooden box.

Inside was a pale green jade hairpin. Its head was carved into a small cloud, and the shaft was engraved with two characters: Yunci.

“You made this yourself?”

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful.” I turned the hairpin under the lamp, liking it more the longer I looked. “I didn’t know you had this talent.”

He didn’t say anything.

Then he knelt in front of me.

I was startled. “What are you doing? Get up.”

“Please, Master, let this disciple finish.”

So I sat still.

“Three years ago, nobody in that whole square wanted this disciple. You walked down the stone steps and held out your hand to me.”

“You gave me food and clothes. When I was afraid of myself, you never told me the thing in my bones was harmless, but you never abandoned me because of it either.”

“This disciple once thought that as long as I became strong enough, I could repay you.”

I sighed. “You already have. Without you, we never would have made it through the Demon Abyss.”

“That’s not it.”

He raised his head.

“This disciple doesn’t want to only repay you.”

I had a bad feeling about this.

“I want to be by your side. Not as someone who owes you. And not only as your disciple.”

The oil lamp crackled.

【AAAAAAAAA!!!】

【He confessed!!! He CONFESSED!!!】

【I called it at the bowl of noodles!!!】

I sat there, frozen.

It was a long time before I found my voice.

“Gu Chen, do you know what you’re saying?”

“I know.”

“I’m your master.”

“This disciple knows.”

“I’m two hundred years older than you.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“This disciple knows that too.”

I nearly choked.

I took a deep breath and said seriously:

“You grew up with no one to protect you. I was the first person who was good to you. You might be confusing gratitude with…”

“This disciple thought about that.” He wasn’t angry. He answered calmly. “That’s why, in the second year, I asked to go down the mountain.”

I was stunned.

“I wanted to know whether, after leaving Azure Cloud Peak and meeting more people, I would still feel this way.”

“Half a year. I went through twelve cities and met a great many people. Some were kinder to me than you. Some were more beautiful than you.”

Me: “…”

“But wherever I went, I always remembered the way home, and to buy osmanthus cake.”

He didn’t come a single step closer. He just knelt there, back straight, waiting.

“I’m not asking you to agree right away. If you don’t feel the same, I won’t force you.”

“I only wanted you to know.”

I looked at the person in front of me.

No longer the boy dragged out of the sect gate that year. A grown man, with strength, with his own thoughts, with a path of his own.

I had once taught him that everyone has the right to choose their path.

Now he was using that very right.

I couldn’t deny everything just because I was caught off guard.

Nor could I nod carelessly just because I was moved.

“Give me time.”

His eyes lit up.

“Until then, you still call me Master. You don’t use this to pressure me. If you truly respect me, let me think it through myself.”

“This disciple understands.”

He stood and stepped back. At the door, he turned around.

“Master.”

“What?”

“May this disciple still make osmanthus cake for you?”

I looked at him, was quiet for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“This disciple just wanted to be sure.”

“Get back to your cultivation!”

“Yes, Master.”

The door closed.

I sat alone for a long time, turning the hairpin in my hand.

Three years ago, all I’d wanted was to avoid an ending where the villain killed me.

Instead, the villain was no longer a villain. The male lead was no longer the male lead. The Demon Emperor had died once more. The Demon Abyss was sealed.

And the biggest problem in the end wasn’t a heavenly tribulation, or a demon lord.

It was that my disciple had grown up, and I had to learn to face that.

“I really did bring this trouble on myself.”

Outside the window, the night wind stirred the bamboo.

Before my eyes, one last line of text appeared.

No longer blood red. Only pale, like moonlight.

【The original story ended long ago. What comes next, nobody has written.】

【Master, this time it’s your turn to choose.】

【Wishing you a life of a hundred years. No, wait. A thousand.】

Then the lines faded and melted into the dark.

I never saw them again.

I slid the hairpin into my hair and looked at myself in the bronze mirror for a while.

Hm.

Really pretty.

As for how I’ll answer…

Azure Cloud Peak has many years ahead of it.

This time, I’ll write the ending myself.

— THE END —