Chapter 403 - 205: Li Zhi, I...
Chapter 403: Chapter 205: Li Zhi, I...
She met Shen Yuan’s gaze, which held the tension of a man awaiting judgment. There was no anger, no reprimand—only a clear calm and openness. Within it, perhaps, lay a trace of warmth even she hadn’t noticed.
"Shen Yuan..."
"Hm?" Shen Yuan replied, his eyes fixed on Li Zhi.
"What’s between us doesn’t need any blessings from a Bodhisattva."
The sentence was like a silent clap of thunder, detonating in Shen Yuan’s mind with devastating precision.
It was as if his spine had been ripped out, or as if an invisible sledgehammer had slammed him into the ground.
The expression on Shen Yuan’s face, once a taut mask of apprehension as he awaited his sentence, instantly fractured into a look of pure, unfilterable shock.
His eyes, which had been filled with a mix of anxiety and hope, were now wide saucers, the depths of his pupils churning with a silent tsunami.
His mouth hung slightly open, his lips parting and closing unconsciously as if he was trying to draw a breath, or perhaps trying to confirm if what he had just heard was real.
All the carefully prepared words he had practiced were torn to shreds by her single sentence, dissolving into a meaningless void.
"..."
Shen Yuan felt like he’d been struck dumb.
He couldn’t even form the simplest syllable.
All of Shen Yuan’s senses, his entire consciousness, were pinned to the clear, open eyes of the young woman before him, pinned to the tremendous impact of her words.
He could clearly hear his own heart, after a brief, sudden stop, restarting with the frantic pounding of a war drum, the violent beats hammering against his eardrums.
He looked at her. Just looked at her.
Shen Yuan had no idea what he was supposed to do.
He had no idea how to react. Should he throw his arms around her? Burst out laughing? Grab her shoulders in excitement?
All these impulses swirled into a chaotic mess in his mind, but his body, like a rusted machine, remained frozen in place.
He just stood there, stock-still, in a state of near petrification, the reflection of the calm and resolute young woman filling his pupils.
After the shock came pure, unadulterated joy.
Li Zhi calmly waited for Shen Yuan to recover from the earth-shattering impact of her words, her gaze remaining as frank as ever.
This certainty and openness had been like a bedrock in her heart; once it had taken root, it was unshakeable.
By choosing to face it and confirm it, she was choosing to trust in the natural bond that had formed between them over the years, a bond more real than any ethereal prayer.
However, when her gaze met Shen Yuan’s wide, round eyes and saw the pure, unadulterated joy that was practically overflowing from them now that the shock had faded...
...a stone was finally tossed into the placid lake of Li Zhi’s rock-solid composure.
It wasn’t that she was wavering in her declaration.
It was just... the reaction of the moron in front of her was just too... blatant.
Seeing him standing there like a fool, his mouth slightly agape, as if he’d forgotten how to breathe.
His eyes were as bright as two lit lamps, and the undisguised, ecstatic light in them shot straight toward her.
’...You moron!’
Li Zhi cursed silently. It was as if she’d been scalded by his overly fervent gaze, and she subconsciously wanted to look away.
A thread of barely perceptible discomfort had finally woven itself into her frankness.
’What is there to be so shocked about?’
’I just... uh, stated a fact, didn’t I?’
’An... obvious truth?’
The tips of Li Zhi’s ears quietly began to burn.
The blush she had worked so hard to suppress threatened to make a comeback.
She pressed her lips together, forcing herself to maintain a placid expression, but her eyes remained locked on Shen Yuan’s joy-filled face.
A strange mix of emotions welled up inside her.
Li Zhi had wanted to glare at him, to tell him to stop looking so foolish, but by the time the words reached her lips, she felt anything she said would be superfluous.
In the end, Li Zhi merely moved her lips, but not a single word came out.
’Forget it. Let him be a fool.’
Just then, Li Zhi suddenly heard Shen Yuan’s voice by her ear.
"I..."
Shen Yuan’s voice was as hoarse as sandpaper, tinged with a slight tremor left over from the massive shock.
Looking into Li Zhi’s clear eyes that seemed to peer right into one’s soul, a frank sort of chagrin and a clumsy smile emerged on his face.
"...Actually, I rehearsed this in my head so many times..."
He subconsciously raised a hand to scratch the back of his head. "I was planning to pray really hard, to ask Buddha and the Bodhisattva for their blessing..."
Shen Yuan took a deep breath, met Li Zhi’s gaze, and clumsily confessed the childish yet earnest plan he had been holding in for so long.
"And then... after you were done praying, you’d definitely ask me what I prayed for. Then, I’d pretend to be super serious and say..."
He paused, as if trying to imitate the mock-serious tone he had imagined, but the corners of his mouth curled up uncontrollably.
Shen Yuan’s voice was tinged with a candid laugh and a hint of bashfulness. "...that I was praying for a romantic match."
Li Zhi watched him calmly as he haltingly confessed the plan he had rehearsed in his heart.
"Pray for what..."
Li Zhi’s voice wasn’t loud, and it even carried a hint of her usual disdain.
But her tone had strangely softened, as if she were both dismissing his little scheme and stating a self-evident fact.
"The Bodhisattva can’t understand the words of a moron."
"Right... right!"
Shen Yuan nodded, looking at Li Zhi with a newfound calm.
Her cheeks seemed to be tinted with a faint blush, courtesy of the morning mountain light and their recent conversation. Her eyes were bright as she continued to meet his gaze with that same frankness.
Shen Yuan licked his lips, the rapid, powerful drumming in his chest now filling his entire mind.