Pretending To Be A Boss

He held onto Lingyi's hand and said:

"No matter what we face... I will protect you."

It was like a ray of sunset rain shining into a pitch-black chasm, Yuanwu's shy confession, lacking impact and not very romantic.

But after hearing it, Lingyi still nodded with tear-filled eyes.

In the hospital, Qiao Shanshan and Song Que didn't speak a word. Song Que was still unconscious, while Qiao Shanshan buried her head in Song Que's chest, listening to his heartbeat, calmly waiting for the dense fog to invade.

The dense fog encroached, and gradually, the sound of voices began to fade away.

The world became increasingly silent.

Li Xiaoyu looked at the sky and softly said:

"No matter where I go, I will, I will never forget you!"

...

...

Ruins.

Deep in the icebound.

Tang Xian had a dream.

In the dream, some harsh sounds could always be heard, they were rustling and indistinct in content.

But they kept buzzing in his ears endlessly.

He struggled to open his eyes, and saw a sparrow-like bird pecking continuously at the ice that imprisoned him.

Its beak was long and appeared quite sharp, leaving a shallow groove each time it struck the ice.

At that rate, it might never break through the glacier even until it dies.

Yet, it kept pecking relentlessly.

For a decade, Tang Xian watched this bird pecking the glacier bit by bit, barely scoring some fine cracks, only to be covered again by snow and wind falling from the upper world.

The snow never melted, the ice never thawed.

But it continued pecking with its beak.

Gradually, Tang Xian's eyeballs could move freely.

Yet he had no strength to break open the hard ice.

In the later years of this decade, he saw the bird's shadow.

Clearly it was a bird, but its shadow was in the shape of a human, not just a mere black silhouette; Tang Xian could even make out faint outlines and curves as if it was a truly living being.

In the beginning, there were six children.

Slowly, it turned into a couple.

When the shadow became a couple, Tang Xian felt as if his fingers had regained sensation.

Later on, the bird kept pecking tirelessly at the endless icy cold, and the shadow transformed into many familiar figures to him.

Until at some point, when it took the form of a little girl, the transformation halted again.

Being encased in ice, a person cannot shed tears. Tang Xian only felt something stuck in his chest.

That little girl turned into a fish, swimming through the snow of the mountain.

And then, the shadow of the ice-pecking bird changed once more.

It was many people, people who had appeared in Tang Xian's life.

Some shadows held batons, some wore masks, while others had forms of dragons and snakes.

Moonlight rested upon the pristine snow, and Tang Xian saw a fox howling in solitude.

But it was still but a shadow, while the bird kept pecking at the ice.

A hundred years passed by.

The glacier showed no signs of cracking and Tang Xian still had no strength to break free.

In the span of a hundred years, he did one thing each day: watching the bird, tirelessly, relentlessly, with dogged persistence, pecking at the thick and unbreakable ice.

Countless shadows changed over a century but eventually ceased appearing. In the end, the shadow of the ice-pecking bird finally held steady.

It was a young girl, her hands clasped in prayer.

At the end of a hundred years, at the terminus of Tang Xian's memory, it was this girl.

She was responsible for the final companionship, her stubbornness and patience far surpassed all who came before.

Even though the glacier never melted, even though the winds and snow filled the sky with no clear skies, she refused to leave.

A hundred years passed, and she remained by Tang Xian's side; three hundred years passed, and still she was there.

This world truly was home to a Jingwei who filled the sea.

The protracted time, with no end like the glacier, over these three hundred years, Tang Xian also continuously collided with the glacier.

His body finally could slowly move, and faintly feel his strength returning.

A thousand years passed, and the ice-pecking bird finally froze to death in the swirling snowstorm, yet that shadow was still maintained in a prayer posture.

The glacier had terrifying cracks, countless dark shadows merged from heaven and earth, like wandering souls finding their way home, akin to a Spiritual Purgatory, Tang Xian's body suddenly became a resting place.

He finally stood up, the din in his head and the noise by his ears vanished instantly.

Suddenly, Tang Xian opened his eyes.

The snowstorm disappeared, there was no ice-pecking bird that had died, no shadow of the girl in prayer, and the glaciers had not cracked.

He was still in a world sealed in ice, but he awakened from the dream of an ice-sealed world, his consciousness returned to the ground level of reality.

In Tang Xian's nostrils, there was even the scent of Eden's Lord.

The distant Eden's Lord suddenly halted.

Its heartbeat sped up abruptly, turning back, the sound of cracking ice pierced its ears, making it wear a fearful expression.

There had been no past of ten years, a hundred years, a thousand years.

Only in that fleeting moment did Tang Xian dream a dream that spanned a thousand years.

Over a millennium, a young girl always accompanied him.

The glacier finally began to crack, truly crack.

The figure deep in the ice, supposed to be immobile, began to attract countless consciousness to gather around Tang Xian.

As if Spiritual Purgatory was filling Eden's Lord's body, and these consciousness repaired Tang Xian's injuries.