Half an hour later, Nora hurried over.
"Yaoyao!"
The moment Nora saw Zhang Buyao, she rushed forward happily and hugged her.
The two chatted merrily for quite a while before getting down to business. Nora produced a sword and a shield, handing them to Yu Xian as she said, "Since you're the tank, use a sword and shield."
"Don't you have any other weapons?" Yu Xian held the sword in one hand and the shield in the other, his expression tinged with distaste.
He really didn't like having both hands occupied with weapons.
Especially his right hand—that was what he used to throw punches. How was he supposed to throw punches while holding a sword?
Left with no choice, Nora pulled out an umbrella and said, "Then this is the only thing left: the Wolf-Tooth Umbrella. It's on the heavy side. When folded up, it can be used as a spiked club, and when opened, it can serve as a shield."
The umbrella she produced was black, studded with numerous sharp iron spikes across its canopy, with an exceptionally thick and long shaft. The entire umbrella measured roughly 1.6 meters.
Yu Xian took the Wolf-Tooth Umbrella and immediately felt its heft. He grinned. "This is nice. I'll take it."
With that, he returned the sword and shield to Nora and happily set about getting used to the umbrella.
He had to admit, the weapon truly was handy.
Yu Xian gave it a few practice swings in an open area, feeling as though a single strike could bash a bull to death.
Zhang Buyao's weapon, meanwhile, was a thirty-centimeter dagger. This was mainly because her Spiritual Endowment Art wasn't powerful enough yet; she couldn't endow targets that were too large and was limited to smaller objects.
After she endowed the dagger with spirituality, it became her pet, gaining the ability to levitate and attack enemies according to her will—making her, in a loose sense, a pseudo-Sword Immortal.
"You redesigned this game yourself, so I'm sure you know where to go grinding. I'm heading off to level up," Nora said to Yu Xian after handing over the gear.
Yu Xian immediately caught up to Nora with a smile. "I'll see you out."
The two walked side by side toward the city exit.
"What level are you?" Yu Xian asked curiously.
"Level seven. Leveling up is much harder than before, but the upside is that there isn't all that messy nonsense anymore. Players aren't allowed to slaughter one another now, so it's a lot more harmonious," Nora answered.
Yu Xian nodded and smiled. "That's good."
"Were you worried I'd be jealous?" Nora brought up the subject directly, looking at him.
Yu Xian met Nora's eyes, silence speaking louder than words.
"I've actually thought about this before. An ordinary person's lifetime, even for the longer-lived ones, is really only thirty-thousand-odd days. Even three lifetimes would merely be ninety thousand days.
"Our lifetime is far too long, so I don't mind sparing ninety thousand days for Yaoyao.
"Or even nine hundred million days, or ninety trillion days...
"You are already a Mighty One, and I know we still have countless sets of nine hundred million days ahead of us. That's enough." Nora looked into Yu Xian's eyes, speaking with utter sincerity.
She didn't demand that she and Yu Xian spend every waking moment of their lifetime together, because their lifetime was simply too, too long.
Besides, romance wasn't the only thing in her life; there was family, friendship, and cultivation. In fact, much of the time, she was in secluded cultivation and didn't have the time to look after Yu Xian at all.
"Go on and keep Yaoyao company. I'm going to level up. Too bad your level is too low." Nora offered a faint smile. A pair of wings unfolded from her back, and as soon as she cleared Novice City, she shot up into the sky, quickly vanishing from sight.
Yu Xian stood at the city gates, finally smiling in relief.
Clearly, his mindset regarding love was still stuck in the mortal stage, whereas Nora, being a natural Transcendent, inherently thought like one.
It was true.
Their lives were far too long.
A hundred years was merely the snap of a finger.
Mortals had the seven-year itch—did Transcendents not?
Perhaps it just took longer—a seventy-thousand-year itch?
A seventy-trillion-year itch?
In short, there was no need to fight over mere moments.
Whoever could accompany the other to the very end would be the true victor.
...
...
Administrator Space.
Chi Feihong looked at the screen displaying Yu Xian and marveled, "Mistress is truly so sensible and understanding."
"Isn't that completely normal?" Feng Mingge looked at Chi Feihong in puzzlement. The vast majority of men in his clan had multiple wives, and even some of the women had multiple husbands. Some of those spouses weren't even human, but from other races like the Elf race.
In general, the strong determined the fate of the weak. Once someone was sufficiently powerful, they could naturally do whatever they pleased.
"By the way, are we still holding the fishing tournament?" Chi Feihong didn't pursue that topic and changed the subject.
Feng Mingge replied helplessly, "If you think it works, give it a shot. But are you sure your master won't scold you afterward?"
"Heheh, Master is actually very easygoing. I don't think it'll be a problem," Chi Feihong replied with a smug grin.
Over his hundred-plus years in the Zhen Realm, he had already figured out Yu Xian's temperament. Most of the time, Yu Xian was quite mild-tempered. As long as you didn't touch a sore spot, even if you did something that displeased him, at worst he'd just roast you a bit—he wouldn't even scold you.
Throughout that century and more, he had never once been yelled at, though he had been roasted by Yu Xian countless times.
...
...
Yu Xian returned to the city.
Then he saw several players surrounding Zhang Buyao, inviting her to party up.
"A beauty is always trouble," Yu Xian muttered in quiet amusement before pushing his way through the crowd.
He took Zhang Buyao's hand, turned around, and smiled. "Sorry, folks, she's already got me as a teammate. Disperse, disperse."
"Brother, you're crossing a line here. Watch out or you'll be flagged for molestation," a middle-aged man cautioned, looking at Yu Xian.
Because PvP combat wasn't allowed between players, other rules had naturally been put in place, such as protections for women. Touching a woman without her consent would incur system penalties if judged as molestation.
Of course, men enjoyed equal protection; if a woman put her hands on a man, it would trigger similar rules.
After all, the Myriad Realms didn't consist solely of male-dominated worlds; there were also worlds dominated by women—matriarchal worlds.
Women selected from those worlds would genuinely grope men, sometimes acting even more lustful than men.
"Let's go!"
Yu Xian didn't pay the middle-aged man any mind at all, pulling Zhang Buyao along as they walked away.
The players who had wanted to invite Zhang Buyao to their party realized the truth now: Yu Xian and Zhang Buyao really were together. Their eyes instantly turned red with envy. A classic case of a delicate flower stuck in a pile of cow dung!
"That guy just now looked kind of familiar."
"True. For some reason, the more I looked at him, the more punchable his face seemed."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah! The moment I saw his face, I had an inexplicable urge to stab him."
The crowd broke into a clamor of discussion, but in the end, they looked at one another and voiced their mutual disdain, each assuming the others were simply eaten up with jealousy.
Deep down, however, they all knew they were telling the truth.
Chapter 581