The students nearby heard those words too, and they all froze in unison.
Then the atmosphere around the edge of the athletic field suddenly turned rather strange.
Someone's mouth fell open in an O.
Someone's eyes nearly popped out of their head.
Someone instinctively nudged the classmate beside them with an elbow.
They exchanged meaningful glances.
The new student had been taken by Gu Yue?
And they'd kept at it until morning?
Xie Xie was completely stunned, his head buzzing.
He looked at Gu Yue, then at Lin An.
An indescribable wave of grief and indignation welled up inside him.
I thought we were good friends.
And you two have already gone this far behind my back?
"Questions! We were doing questions!"
Lin An's face flushed bright red. He shook Gu Yue in his arms as hard as he could.
"Wake up! Don't say it in a way that makes people get the wrong idea! We were doing questions! Questions!"
But Gu Yue didn't budge.
She even took the opportunity to bury her face deeper in the crook of his neck, tightening her arms around him.
She clung to him like a piece of stubborn chewing gum that wouldn't come off.
She was doing it on purpose.
Lin An was absolutely sure.
The curious, excited looks around him shone on him like spotlights.
He wanted nothing more than to find a crack in the ground and crawl into it.
Even Wu Zhangkong, the Cold-Faced Yama, glanced over at them a couple more times without saying a word.
He seemed not to have expected his student's private life to be so... chaotic.
Tang Wulin's gaze dimmed, and his lips pressed into a thin line.
But he still managed to force a smile, his voice tinged with a dejection he hadn't even noticed himself.
"Then... that's good."
Lin An took a deep breath and decided to stop bothering with the silly dragon pretending to be dead in his arms.
He raised a hand, palm up, toward Tang Wulin.
"Want to try a little hand-holding?"
Tang Wulin paused, then quickly understood.
His eyes lit up for a moment, and he reached out to take Lin An's hand.
The instant their palms met, their Soul Power began to collide, merge, and refine.
Lin An's high-quality Seven-Colored Soul Power surged into Tang Wulin like a gentle torrent.
The Soul Power washed through his meridians, tempering his foundations.
Meanwhile, the power returned by the Golden Dragon King Bloodline within Tang Wulin flowed back along with his Soul Power.
It seeped, thread by thread, into Lin An's limbs and bones.
This time, since they already had some experience, Tang Wulin lasted only twenty minutes before he was completely drained.
He was drenched in sweat, his face flushed red.
He looked as if he'd been hauled out of the water, his chest heaving violently.
Lin An's Soul Power had also been depleted to the very bottom.
But his first Soul Skill, "Seven-Colored Favor," had a continuous recovery effect.
The Soul Skill automatically absorbed the energy of heaven and earth to replenish what he'd spent, so he didn't collapse.
What truly surprised him was—
His Soul Power Level had risen from twenty-two to twenty-three.
Lin An's eyes brightened slightly, and he looked at Tang Wulin with a little more heat.
This guy really was a treasure.
The benefits of the Golden Dragon King Bloodline's power in return were better than any rare heavenly treasure.
"Remember to come by tonight."
Lin An reminded him, setting a time with Tang Wulin for their next cultivation session.
Tang Wulin nodded repeatedly, the weariness on his face swept away.
In its place was an excitement he could barely contain.
The process had been painful, but the results were undeniable.
He felt he wasn't far from level thirteen.
Lin An withdrew his hand and looked down at the silly dragon still pretending to be asleep in his arms.
Expressionless, he peeled her off himself.
Gu Yue opened her eyes at just the right moment, yawned, and rubbed the corners of her eyes as if she'd just woken up.
She muttered softly.
"My wife is such a flirt. She already has me, but she's still tangled up with Tang Wulin..."
She paused, then lowered her voice until only Lin An could hear.
"If you dare betray me, I'll cut it off, pin you beneath me, and make you give me little dragons until you can't take any more."
Lin An's face instantly turned black as the bottom of a pot.
He raised a hand, curled a finger, aimed at Gu Yue's forehead, and flicked it hard.
"Bing!"
A soft little sound rang out.
Gu Yue clutched her forehead and looked at him with tears in her eyes.
Then Lin An ground out through clenched teeth,
"I remember your original character was supposed to be cold and aloof, wasn't it? Hey! You're breaking character!"
Gu Yue clutched her forehead and froze for a moment.
So his wife liked the cold-and-distant type?
She should've said so sooner.
She immediately wiped every trace of softness from her expression.
She straightened her back and raised her chin slightly.
All warmth vanished from her eyes.
She stood up from Lin An, brushing nonexistent creases from her clothes.
A chill that warned people to stay away spread around her.
Her aura was exactly the same as when Lin An had first met her at the station.
Lin An watched her transformation, the corner of his mouth twitching.
Gu Yue was the sort of person who, as long as she wasn't smiling, made everyone think she was sulking.
Even the most ordinary remark, coming from that cold face, sounded like a gracious favor.
Looking at her now, Lin An couldn't help grumbling to himself.
She looks aloof, but she's actually a goofball.
Sure enough, when you were out in the world, you made your own character.
Gu Yue maintained her icy expression and swept her gaze over the students who were craning their necks to peek.
When her eyes passed over them, they all pulled their heads back in unison, not daring to look again.
She was satisfied.
Then she turned to Lin An, still wearing her cold expression, and asked in a tone as casual as if she were commenting on the weather,
"Should we go to the little woods?"
As far as she was concerned, Tang Wulin was barely worth noticing, and Xie Xie was trash.
The others were nameless human pests, so of course she wouldn't bother showing them any expression.
But Lin An was different.
The Dragon Queen had been her wife in her previous life. How could he possibly be the same?
"Go to the little woods? My ass."
Lin An rolled his eyes at her, stood up from the bench, and brushed off his clothes.
"We're going to eat. In a few days, when Xie Xie reaches level twenty, we'll go to the Spirit Pagoda."
He glanced down at his class schedule.
He had math in the afternoon.
Lin An thought it over and promptly decided to skip it.
Classes like that weren't much use to Soul Masters. Most people would take the time to go out and work part-time.
Tang Wulin, for instance, was hardly ever seen in culture classes.
"Why do we have to bring him along?"
Gu Yue's voice suddenly rose.
She glared at Lin An, the frost on her face shattering completely.
"We finally get to meet the parents, and you still want to bring another third wheel?"
The more she thought about it, the angrier she became.
The Dragon Queen had flirted with three dragons all by herself.
That was too much!
Lin An didn't reply.
He simply placed his communicator in Gu Yue's hand.
The screen displayed Chapter Three's after-class exercises for Forging Materials Science.
"Do the exercises."
Two short words, firm and forceful.
Gu Yue's anger caught in her throat.
She lowered her head and looked at the screen, crammed with technical terms and formulas. The corner of her eye twitched.
In the end, she obediently sat down and began swiping across the screen with her fingertip.
There was no denying that, silly as this dragon was, her memory was astonishing.
She practically had a photographic memory.
Some of the difficult problems that Lin An thought required careful working through—
All it took was one hint, and she could immediately apply the idea to other problems.
Lin An watched her bowed profile as she worked through the exercises and sighed silently to himself.
If only she used that cleverness for something decent instead of spending all day thinking up ways to drill into me.
Before you continue