Embrace of Trust, The Calm Before the Storm

Inside the Library Pavilion, the night wind slipped through the broken windows, carrying a hint of autumn chill.

On the bamboo chair, Su Chen didn't even lift his eyelids, his peripheral vision sweeping across the light screen within his mind.

The warnings representing Qian Renxue and Liu Erlong were flashing silently and frantically.

With a flick of his thought, the screen vanished, his face remaining as calm as a still pond.

The night had grown deep.

The silence in the attic exuded a strange, eerie peace.

In the shadows, Bibi Dong lowered her eyes and closed the copy of Chronicles of the Continent.

"Clack."

A soft sound echoed.

She stood up, smoothed her moon-white skirt, and without a word or a glance at Su Chen, turned toward the dilapidated door reinforced with wooden planks.

Her boot heels struck the wooden floor, one step, then another, dull and rhythmic.

That rare tranquility had yet to dissipate.

Just as Bibi Dong's fingers touched the rough door frame, a cold, mechanical system voice exploded in her mind without warning!

[Ding! Releasing stage-based major mission—"Embrace of Trust"!]

[Mission Requirement: Have the Lord of Creation, Su Chen, take the initiative to embrace the host for thirty seconds.]

[Strict Warning: It must be Su Chen's absolute initiative! The host is forbidden from any form of physical coercion, verbal guidance, or suggestive expressions! Violators will be judged as failed immediately!]

[Failure Penalty: Target's favorability will be forcibly reset to zero, and four hundred hours of Soul-Devouring Pain will be executed immediately!]

Bibi Dong's movements froze instantly.

Her face turned deathly pale in a flash.

An embrace for thirty seconds!

No coercion allowed!

The man must take the initiative!

Three conditions, three death warrants, pinning all her composure firmly against the door frame!

"Crackle~"

Her fingernails dug deep into the wood grain, pulling out a few bloody splinters.

She couldn't force him, couldn't even give him a hint with her eyes.

To make a lowly servant, who was so afraid of making a mistake that he barely dared to breathe in her presence, take the initiative to embrace the Pope?

This broken system was trying to kill her!

Bibi Dong stiffly pushed open the door and rushed into the night with chaotic footsteps.

The cold wind hit her face, but it couldn't blow away the blinding crimson of the mission text in her mind.

The wooden door closed behind her with a dull thud.

Inside the room, Su Chen slowly opened his eyes.

On the Eye of Omniscience screen, the mission panel Bibi Dong had just received was displayed, word for word.

He leaned back against the bamboo chair, leisurely reading through those rigid restrictions.

Heh, high-level hunters often enter the fray in the guise of the prey.

The rules had bound her hands and feet, pulling the fangs from this venomous spider.

Next, he only needed to feed her just the right amount of "bait."

Su Chen closed his eyes again, a perfect fishing plan already taking shape.

The following noon.

The blinding sunlight was blocked out by the stone walls; on the path to the Library Pavilion, Bibi Dong walked with agonizing slowness.

The countdown hung over her head like a blade.

She carried a food box and stepped over the threshold.

Because of the system's prohibition, her entire body was taut as ice, her lines cold and rigid.

She set down the food box and served the meal without a word.

Su Chen, as usual, hunched his shoulders and kept his head buried, reaching forward respectfully to take the bowl.

The two drew close.

At the moment of the hand-off.

But Su Chen's hand didn't reach for the bowl; his fingertips slipped, trembling as they reached directly toward the gauze-wrapped index finger of Bibi Dong's left hand.

One inch.

Half an inch.

Just as his fingertips were about to brush against that blood-stained gauze.

In the next second, Su Chen felt as if he had been scorched by a red-hot branding iron!

His finger jerked violently, his arm retracted like lightning, and he pressed it tightly against his side!

He bit his lower lip, his teeth sinking into the flesh, while a landslide of terror erupted in his eyes. He retreated two steps, his back slamming heavily against the bamboo chair.

"This subordinate... this subordinate was rude, I deserve to die." His voice was shattered beyond repair.

Bibi Dong's hand, holding the bowl, froze in mid-air.

She had clearly captured it: that half-inch reach and retraction, the suppressed longing, and the fear that went deep into his marrow.

The life-threatening countdown in her mind seemed to have been pressed to a pause by this scene.

A surge of intense confusion and shock rushed straight to her crown.

He wants to touch me?

Yet he dares not!

He aches for that wound, yet he is held back, hands and feet bound by the chasm of their status!

Bibi Dong looked at his thin shoulders cowering in the shadows; her original irritability and anxiety were completely disrupted by this half-inch distance.

In the lake of her heart, it was as if a giant boulder had been thrown in, stirring up ripples she could not understand.

She said nothing, set the bowl down heavily on the table, and turned to leave.

Her footsteps were twice as fast as when she had arrived.

The next evening.

The setting sun was like blood.

In the Library Pavilion, there was only the "rustle" of turning pages. Bibi Dong sat in her usual spot, the system countdown now only at half.

Su Chen leaned against the bamboo chair, a book in his hand. But in the dim light, his gaze was not on the book at all.

His eyes were fixed, glued firmly to the side of Bibi Dong's face.

That look was no longer that of a servant looking at a Pope.

Within it lay a craving suppressed to the bone, a struggle of wanting to touch yet daring not to.

It was as if he were looking at a peerless treasure, or perhaps a dream that could shatter at any moment.

This gaze was too heavy, too scorching.

Even with the temperament of a Titled Douluo, Bibi Dong could not withstand it.

Her hands, resting on her knees, curled slightly. She endured and endured, until finally, she turned her head to look at him.

Their gazes met.

Su Chen's body jolted violently, like a deer startled by a hunter, and he instantly buried his head.

He held the book tightly against his chest, his eyes fixed on a crack in the floor tiles, his breathing so rapid that his chest heaved violently.

In the silence, his heavy gasps were clearly audible.

Bibi Dong's own breathing was in total disarray.

This back-and-forth tug-of-war and evasion was like an invisible thread, tightly binding her heart.

Her hands, clasped over her lower abdomen, tightened unconsciously until her knuckles turned white.

She realized with shock that she felt not a shred of anger toward such an offensive gaze.

Far from it.

Watching Su Chen's struggle—the way he wanted to draw near yet feared death—her heart hammered wildly against her ribs.

The system forbade her from hinting, and Su Chen dared not cross the line.

An absurd sense of anticipation crawled through her blood and limbs. She sat there, her spine taut, actually faintly hoping that this servant would throw his book aside, regardless of the consequences, and rush over to cross that damned half-inch distance and hold her tightly!

Bibi Dong was so chilled by this thought that she stood up abruptly and rushed out, almost as if fleeing.

The third day, daytime.

The countdown, the final twelve hours.

In the underground secret chamber of the Pope Palace.

The shadow of the Soul-Devouring Pain had almost solidified.

And the words "Favorability Reset to Zero" were like poisonous thorns, pricking her heart with panic.

Bound by rigid rules, Bibi Dong paced back and forth irritably, her military boots thudding against the stone floor.

The purple-black Rakshasa soul power spiraled out of control several times, corroding the steel torches on the walls until they hissed.

"Just a little more... why is he so afraid!"

Bibi Dong nearly shattered her teeth from clenching them so hard.

She could feel that Su Chen's emotions had already reached their breaking point, yet the ingrained humility in his bones acted like an iron gate, firmly blocking that final step.

Countdown: eleven hours.

She could not take it anymore!

This sense of powerlessness, having her fate gripped by another while being unable to even speak a word, was driving her to the brink of madness.

Bibi Dong kicked the secret chamber door open with a violent force and, almost as if fleeing, strode toward the Library Pavilion.

She moved like a gale.

Arriving outside the Library Pavilion, she waved everyone away.

"All of you, get back three hundred paces. Without my order, whoever dares to look back, dies."

Clearing the area, Bibi Dong stood alone in the shadows of the corridor, not pushing the door open immediately.

She slowed her breathing, restraining her aura to the absolute limit, and peered inside through a crack in the broken window.

Inside the room.

Su Chen did not cower in fear upon hearing footsteps as he usually did.

He sat quietly, looking at the empty wooden chair not far away. That was the spot where she had sat the previous two nights.

His eyes were hollow, devoid of any pretense.

The right hand that had reached out and retracted two days ago slowly lifted.

In mid-air, he made a phantom grasp toward the empty chair.

Clenched, then released.

Like a drowning man trying to seize a light that never belonged to him.

He grasped nothing but air.

The hand fell listlessly. Su Chen tugged at the corners of his mouth, as if mocking himself for his delusional fantasies.

He slowly closed his eyes, the desolation of being abandoned by the entire world thick and impossible to dissolve.

Outside the window.

Bibi Dong stared at that listlessly falling hand, her heart feeling as if it had been fiercely squeezed, a sour ache rushing straight to her nose.

She leaned against the cold wall and took a deep breath.

The night of the third day descended completely.

The entire Martial Soul City was deathly silent. The Library Pavilion was unlit.

The final countdown pulsed frantically in her mind like a death warrant.

[01:00:00]

She stood outside the door, took another breath, and suppressed all her boiling emotions, her impatience, and even that trace of heartache she dared not admit to herself.

She raised her hand and pushed the door open with force.

"Creak~"

The groan of the door hinges was exceptionally harsh in the deathly silence.

Under normal circumstances, Su Chen would have already rolled off the bed and knelt properly upon hearing this sound.

But this time, he did not.

Su Chen did not rise.

He sat alone by the window, a thin blanket having slipped to the floor. The early autumn moonlight poured down like quicksilver, casting a ghastly white glow over his thin shoulders.

He did not even turn his head.

His side profile was incredibly sharp in the moonlight; all humility, obsequiousness, and panic had faded from that face.

Only a profound stillness remained.

A sorrow so absolute it seemed as if he had been forsaken by the entire world.

The foot Bibi Dong had just placed over the threshold was nailed to the spot the moment she saw this scene.

Her breathing stopped as well.