Liang Yuhan woke up with hardship, akin to rising from the depths of a deep slumber, judging by the groggy feeling, far later than she planned to wake up, or was it a surprise for her to find herself waking up at all?
Her mind was jumbled and confused.
As her eyes opened, his face was within the view, the look in his familiar, beloved eyes unreadable, which was extrely strange since she could usually read him like an open book, or was it normal because he was always unfathomable?
He was younger than she rembered, or she always knew his face to be this young. No, it was sohow... both.
The look in his eyes started changing as he intently read sothing within hers.
"What is it, Sweetie?", the words fell from her lips, involuntarily, almost on their own, and extrely naturally. But the next mont she gasped as her mind started to finally wind up, a jumbled mass of mories coming together in a tangled ss.
He very obviously reacted to the way she called him.
He knew.
Knew what?
Her head slightly hurt as his hands wrapped around her and slightly lifted her up from the bed into his embrace, as he soothingly and quietly spoke in a soft voice, "Shh~, don't rush, it's okay. I'm here"
She clung to him, hiding her face in his chest, trying to figure out what was happening. It was extrely disorienting and strange, and yet, it didn't feel ominous, on the contrary, she felt... liberated.
It took quite so ti, almost an hour, or maybe it felt long to her but it was a short ti, she couldn't tell. She couldn't really care about that at this mont.
Very slowly, all the puzzle pieces started to make sense to her. After all, she knew about Ye Ling and Wu ngqi. She understood what happened.
But there was a difference between them.
"Are you mad at ?", she finally asked after the long silence, still clinging to him as if afraid to see his expression.
"No, although I don't know why you hid your na and appearance, you must've had a reason", his voice reached her ears, tender and soothing.
She slowly, almost reluctantly drew back to look into his eyes, and then lted from the gentle, loving gaze she saw.
Tears soundlessly went down her cheeks, and then she felt a tender kiss on her lips. So sweet. Sweeter than she could've imagined.
"...", as their lips parted, she seemingly wanted to say sothing, but another kiss followed right after.
It was as if he was saying to her to take it slowly, to not rush. And with that, her body finally gradually started relaxing from being all tensed up.
They spent a long ti like that, not really talking, just hugging and occasionally exchanging a light kiss.
"I... was on the run... from a very powerful man... strangely enough, another alchemist, I guess my bloodline is sothing they can't really pass up on", she spoke in a low voice as they half-sat half-laid on the bed, his arms wrapped around her, and the back of her head resting on his chest, both facing the arch of the wide-open sliding doors to the balcony, from where moonlight was flowing into the room, and beautiful scenery stretched to the horizon, "So I mostly sealed the use of Illusory Arts, or rather, I used it all up. I concentrated all of it, every bit of it I could muster on changing my appearance, voice, impression I gave off and even aura as realistically and seamlessly as I possibly could. I spent years practicing new behavior, the new . The fear was so great, I couldn't speak my true na out loud even in private"
As she spoke, certain things started to make sense in his mind. There were signs of her hiding sothing, he just did not notice them back then. And he never thought to doubt it after.
"I think, by the ti I t you, I even managed to deceive myself into thinking I was who I pretended to be", she slightly bitterly chuckled.
He didn't ask why she did not tell him of this even to the end. He knew the reason.
At that ti, he was just a single rogue cultivator who had no power, had yet to develop strength, experience or garner any aningful connections. And at the sa ti, she knew that would not stop him. She was afraid he would be hard for her. For soone, who only was in his life for a little over a decade.
"But I don't want to be Lin Aihua... only now I realize, that I lied to myself. Lied it was okay, lied that I was fine being her", she shook her head, and then changing her pose to sit up on his lap and face him, added, as her hands went up to his face, "The only real thing in those millennia of lies, was you. No matter how I struggled to think my feelings for you were lies as well, a construct of my imagination, I couldn't deceive myself in that"
"Yuhan...", he spoke, and then his lips were sealed by hers.
She knew what he was going to say, and he knew that she understood. What was so difficult for her back then was surprisingly simple now.
Perhaps it was the fact she now lived longer as her true self if she combined her previous and current lives, or maybe it was because he was no longer soone she felt she needed to protect from her secrets.
The reasons were no longer relevant, as all secrets lted and all the complex emotions were easily untangled.
Even the conflict she felt with the fake identity she created beca trivial, dissipating as soon as it arose.
It all paled compared to being with him again, now liberated from the baggage of lies and secrets. She was free to love him as her true self, and be completely honest with him. At the sa ti she felt his support, and that he loved her without any shadow of bla, accepting all of her, whether it was her past or current self. All that mattered was their feelings. Everything else beca just noise.
---
The next morning, Wu Long and Liang Yuhan told the ladies of the Dao Family about her past, which certainly was a big surprise, but at the sa ti, did not fundantally change their relationships.
The only thing that noticeably changed was that from ti to ti, instead of calling Wu Long by na, the word "Sweetie" slipped out from her.
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