ETR | Chapter 37

So now, no matter how Xiao Xueman treated him, or what he said, Qin Lou could endure it. As long as he could see this person standing alive right in front of him, he felt satisfied—that alone was already a gift from the heavens.

“If… if we’re just friends, that’s not okay either?” he pleaded. “Xueman, you don’t have to live at Wangtian Immortal Sect. I’ll manage the sect properly, I won’t let them stir up trouble anymore. You can go wherever you want. I… I just want to see you. I won’t force you to do anything again.

If… if not even being friends is allowed, then I just want to take a look at you. If you don’t want to see me, then I’ll do it secretly, I won’t disturb you at all. Just like that, still not okay?”

Xiao Xueman sighed and didn’t answer immediately.

Unlike Qin Lou, whose eyes were red from emotional torment, he himself was calm inside the whole time.

He said these things only to make the person in front of him give up and stop clinging. But at the same time, he knew Qin Lou’s obsession ran deep—if he really gave up just because of a few words, then he wouldn’t be Qin Lou.

So he stayed silent, not directly answering the question. In the end, he only said, “Right now, I just want to live a quiet life with Xiao Wan. That’s all. Qin Lou, there’s no place for you in the life I want now.”

Outside, Su Mingming and Lin Yuan huddled together, trying to talk to Xiao Wan, but he wasn’t very willing to engage. After Xiao Xueman went inside, he just sat quietly on the stone bench outside. Shen Guan handed him a piece of pastry, and he sat there eating obediently. Sometimes, he’d glance up, his eyes rolling around to size them up, then he’d look down again and wouldn’t say another word.

But he was still so little, and when he chewed, his chubby cheeks puffed up like little dumplings. Su Mingming looked at this mini version of Xiao Xueman, and no matter how cold he acted, she was totally looking at him through a lens of love—completely smitten by the cuteness.

“Don’t bother him,” Shen Guan saw them circling the child again and again. Judging from Xiao Wan’s expression, he clearly didn’t like it, so Shen Guan spoke up to gently stop them. “Xiao Wan’s a little shy with strangers. If you keep doing this, he’ll just avoid people even more.”

Su Mingming was a bit helpless, and after hearing that, she sulkily sat down on the opposite side. But she couldn’t hold back and asked Shen Guan, “By the way, Shen Guan, when did you first meet Xueman?”

Shen Guan thought for a moment and said, “Seven years ago. Ran into him by chance.”

He didn’t say much else. Not even Qin Lou or the others knew yet about Xiao Wan’s dual-type spiritual power, so naturally they didn’t know why Xiao Xueman went to the Seventeenth Heaven back then.

Seven years ago…

Su Mingming was feeling a bit jealous.

“I really thought Xueman was dead,” Shen Guan sighed. “Because of that, I didn’t want to step into the First Heaven for a long time. When I saw him back then, I was so shocked.”

Su Mingming didn’t say anything at first. She exchanged a glance with Jiang Yan, who was sitting behind him. Both of them let out a long sigh.

Yin Ying had entered the courtyard but didn’t come closer. He stood alone beneath a big tree at the gate, head slightly bowed, occasionally stealing glances over. When he saw Xiao Wan, his expression carried a hint of satisfaction.

Shen Guan saw this too. He’d been wondering all along why Xiao Xueman and Yin Ying had such a falling out. Su Mingming and the others weren’t saying anything either, and the doubt in his heart hadn’t faded.

“He’s not unwilling to come over, he just doesn’t dare,” Lin Yuan’s voice drifted into his ears at that moment. “Regret is useless once the mistake’s already made.”

Shen Guan was stunned—he heard Lin Yuan’s voice, but she hadn’t moved her lips. She was using sound transmission into secrecy.

This was a special communication trick only those at the Spirit God level could awaken. You could transmit your voice to a specific range. Among everyone present, only he, Lin Yuan, and Yin Ying had reached that level. But Yin Ying was far away and his expression didn’t change, so he probably didn’t hear it.

What Shen Guan didn’t notice, though, was that Xiao Wan, who was chewing on a pastry, suddenly stiffened. He glanced quickly at Lin Yuan, eyes filled with suspicion, but then lowered his head again and didn’t show anything further.

No one noticed this slightly odd little movement of his.

Shen Guan also used sound transmission into secrecy and asked, “So, what really happened?”

It was only when Yu Zhengrong left and after piecing together what she’d seen that Lin Yuan figured out what had happened back then.

Even though Qin Lou knew that Tian Shu Institute was behind it all, manipulating things from the shadows, he still couldn’t stop himself from falling apart. He ended up using black iron chains to bind Xiao Xueman. Lin Yuan briefly explained this part, then added, “Those chains—they were from Yin Ying. Or more accurately, they were passed on through him.”

“Yin Ying? I don’t get it. Why would he do that?”

“Yin Ying’s true form is a white-feathered snow eagle. He got separated from his tribe as a child, and because he mutated into a rare white-feathered silver eagle, people couldn’t recognize him. They just thought he was from the ordinary white eagle race, so he wandered until he was picked up by Xiao Xueman in the Middle Realm,” Lin Yuan said. “After arriving in the First Heaven, he finally met his clansmen and learned about his origins.”

She snorted coldly. “That tribe saw how talented he was and naturally didn’t want him wasting away at Wangtian Immortal Sect. They wanted to bring him back. Yin Ying doesn’t respond well to force—if they tried to take him by force, he’d never go. He still cared about Xiao Xueman. Unless they erased Xueman from his heart, he’d never leave.”

The white-feathered snow eagle tribe really knew how to play subtle games. On one hand, they acted all family-like, talking about how hard it was to find him again. Uncles, aunts, cousins—they all came to see him, acting warm and kind. Who could stay unmoved? At first, Yin Ying still felt awkward with them, but after a while, he got used to it.

Even Lin Yuan had been fooled at the time. She thought a blood reunion wasn’t easy and had even advised him to be kinder to the clan, to stop being so cold.

That tribe never said anything bad about Xiao Xueman to his face. On the surface, they were all thankful and praised his care. But the emotional manipulation? That was slow and subtle.

After reuniting with his clan, Yin Ying started spending less and less time with Xiao Xueman. Distance and misunderstandings piled up. Plus, there were spies within the sect stirring up tension between the little group Yin Ying had built and the ordinary disciples. Everything was a mess. Not every misunderstanding could be cleared up in time. And with the white-feathered snow eagle tribe playing dirty behind the scenes, things never calmed down.

The closer you are, the more you can’t see the truth. One trap led to another. Not just Yin Ying—things between Qin Lou and Xiao Xueman were on the verge of collapsing too. Under those circumstances, no one could handle things perfectly.

But Yin Ying had followed Xiao Xueman for so many years. They had some foundational trust and unspoken understanding. A month before the final battle, Lin Yuan had to lead an attack from the left flank, so she left early.

Back then, Xiao Xueman, Yin Ying, and even Qin Lou were still okay. They’d had some small fights, but their feelings were deep. After a night passed, they’d sort things out.

Lin Yuan thought it was normal—no matter how close people were, they’d still argue. And during such critical times, a few bumps were inevitable. Once they won and exposed the clowns hiding in the shadows, everyone would have time to talk things out. Misunderstandings would be cleared with a smile.

But things didn’t go as she expected—they took a nosedive.

“I don’t know what happened that month to make Yin Ying and A’Xue fight like that. The white-feathered snow eagle tribe definitely said or did something. That chain was hard to find. Yin Ying was the one who found it. Later, we realized it was something the tribe had prepared long ago, just waiting for that moment to pass it to Qin Lou through him. They’d already partnered with Tian Shu Institute and had been putting on an act all this time just for this.”

Lin Yuan sighed. “After A’Xue left, Yin Ying cut ties with his tribe completely. He hated them so much, he forced them to move out of the First Heaven and relocate the whole tribe to the Third Heaven. Because of that, Yin Ying and Qin Lou hated each other for a long time. Even now, they’re only working together temporarily for Xueman’s sake. Deep down, they still despise each other.”

After saying all that, she paused for a long while, then added softly, “Yin Ying likes Xueman… you can tell, right?”

Back then, Yu Zhengrong passed on Xueman’s so-called “final words,” telling them all to live well, not to fight among themselves, not to make their loved ones grieve and their enemies laugh. He said they must all protect Wangtian Immortal Sect, and never follow the same path as Tian Shu Institute.

Because of those words, these two people—and everyone else, really—no matter how heartbroken they were, silently guarded the sect until today.

Qin Lou didn’t blame Yin Ying for giving him the chain, but because it was his own hands that did it, it wasn’t like he could just shove the blame elsewhere and feel better. The one he blamed the most… was always himself.

Yu Zhengrong had said that if it weren’t for the backlash from forcefully breaking the chain, Xiao Xueman would’ve been in much better shape during the final battle—he wouldn’t have been so gravely injured.

“Me, Su Mingming, and Jiang Yan—we only know this much. Yu Zhengrong knows more, but he’s not here,” Lin Yuan said. “He witnessed Xueman being chained, and he saw him leave. After the last battle, he told us all this, then left the sect. Now he’s the president at the arena’s general council. For over a hundred years, he’s never returned.

There are a lot of things about Xueman we still don’t know. His hatred toward Tian Shu Institute must have its reasons. And on the flip side, Tian Shu Institute also understood him very well. They picked exactly the right spots to sow discord between him, Qin Lou, and Yin Ying. But now that Tian Shu Institute has long been wiped out, all the clues have disappeared.”

Lin Yuan went quiet for a long time before she whispered one last sentence:

“Those two, especially Qin Lou… back then, I don’t know why, but they were terrified that after Tian Shu Institute was destroyed, Xueman would leave and never come back. So they tried everything they could to hold on to him.

But in the end, the very things they did… caused exactly what they feared most.”

Shen Guan listened in stunned silence.

He was no longer curious about Xiao Xueman’s grudge with Tian Shu Institute. He finally understood what happened in that last battle, and why Xueman never talked about it.

He had always been that way—keeping his pain to himself, never letting others notice, never speaking of it.

Tian Shu Institute was truly heartless, attacking the softest spots in people’s hearts. Psychological warfare like that was downright sinister.

But from Xiao Xueman’s perspective… how unjust, how heartbreaking.

Even Shen Guan could see that he was sincere to Qin Lou to a rare degree, and he never treated Yin Ying like a subordinate. He saw him as a partner, carefully looked after him, taught him with heart. It was precisely their selfishness and distrust that hurt him the most.

No wonder Xiao Xueman didn’t want to come back.

Even now that he had returned, it was because of unpleasant things like this. Shen Guan couldn’t help but feel a bit speechless.

“Xueman’s always been kind and tolerant toward his own people,” he said. “How did you guys manage to mess this up so badly?”