"Of course I'm Zhang Lexuan." The woman's voice was low and hoarse, carrying a deep affection suppressed for far too long.
Then she lowered her head and looked at Liu Lin, pinned beneath her.
"It's just that I'm the Zhang Lexuan of the future."
Liu Lin sighed. He'd thought that whether it was Zhang Lexuan's Soul Ring Configuration, which differed from the original, or his conversation with her today, none of it had seemed normal.
At the time, he'd tried to deceive himself into thinking it was just a coincidence. Then Zhang Lexuan had come looking for him that night.
But because of what had happened with the Three-Eyed Golden Lion last time, Liu Lin's expression remained perfectly calm.
"Then how did you come back here?" Liu Lin asked in confusion, looking at Zhang Lexuan as she straddled him.
Zhang Lexuan raised an eyebrow slightly. She'd thought Liu Lin would be confused or assume she'd gone mad, but she hadn't expected him to look so calm.
"You seem to have accepted pretty quickly that I'm the Zhang Lexuan of the future."
Surprise and a barely perceptible disappointment colored Zhang Lexuan's tone. She'd thought their reunion would provoke a stronger reaction from Liu Lin.
Liu Lin couldn't help rolling his eyes inwardly. Could I accept it any faster?
I'm a transmigrator myself, and the Three-Eyed Golden Lion came before this. Even if Zhang Lexuan had been reborn as an immortal emperor, I wouldn't have reacted that strongly.
Liu Lin even felt that if another version of himself from a parallel world showed up one day, he probably wouldn't be all that surprised.
"You still haven't answered my question," Liu Lin said, looking at Zhang Lexuan.
Hearing Liu Lin's words, Zhang Lexuan didn't answer right away. Instead, she tightened her arms and drew him closer against her chest.
Her movements were gentle, as if she feared breaking something precious, but the strength of her hold betrayed what she truly felt.
It was an almost obsessive possessiveness, born of the fear that he might slip through her fingers again.
Liu Lin was being squeezed until he could hardly breathe. He was just about to ask her to loosen her grip when Zhang Lexuan took something from her Storage Soul Tool.
It was a chain, silver-white all over, its metallic sheen cold beneath the moonlight. The chain was fine, but densely engraved with Soul Tool patterns. It was clearly some kind of Soul Tool designed specifically to restrain Soul Masters.
Liu Lin's eyelid twitched. He was practically on the verge of tears.
Wait, she's got yandere tendencies too? What did my future self do to attract someone like this? At the sight of the chain, Liu Lin felt like he was about to fall apart.
But he quickly got his emotions under control, took a deep breath, and tried to keep his voice calm.
"Zhang Lexuan, what are you doing?"
"Of course I'm afraid you'll move around tonight, so I have to tie you up." Zhang Lexuan's tone was so calm it was almost matter-of-fact, as if Liu Lin were her possession.
As she spoke, she gently fastened one end of the chain around Liu Lin's wrist. Looking at the chain on his wrist, Liu Lin wore an expression of despair.
"Tonight, you're mine alone. Don't move around. I won't do anything. You know what will happen if you don't behave." Zhang Lexuan then leaned close to Liu Lin's ear and whispered.
Feeling the warm breath against his ear as Zhang Lexuan spoke, Liu Lin tried to rouse her reason with his knowledge of the law.
"D-don't, don't do this. This is pedophilia. You'll be punished."
Zhang Lexuan shook her head, not pausing for even a moment. She fastened the other end of the chain to the bedpost. It was just long enough for Liu Lin to lie down, but not long enough for him to get off the bed.
Once she'd finished, Zhang Lexuan lay back down beside Liu Lin and drew him into her arms. Resting her chin on his head, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, savoring his scent.
Then her body began to tremble faintly, like a traveler who'd journeyed a long way and had finally returned to the one place where she could feel safe.
"I don't care," she said, her voice as soft as a murmur in a dream. "Tonight, you're mine alone."
Then she began telling him how she'd come back. Her voice was soft and calm, as if she were recounting an old dream that had nothing to do with her.
Chained to the bedpost, Liu Lin couldn't run away. All he could do was lie in her arms and listen.
"I came back here because of a temporal storm in the future. You don't need to know the rest yet. You're still too weak."
"A temporal storm?" Liu Lin murmured.
According to Zhang Lexuan, he would become a god in the future. Given his personality, if he'd known about the temporal storm in advance, he should have made preparations.
The most reasonable explanation was that something in the future had exceeded his expectations.
Zhang Lexuan paused at Liu Lin's words, then nodded. "Yes. The temporal storm sent a wisp of my divine consciousness back here."
As she spoke, Zhang Lexuan's fingers gently brushed through Liu Lin's hair, her touch impossibly tender.
"The first thing I did after coming back was personally kill those enemies of mine. On the night my family was massacred, I used divine power to possess my past self and killed them all."
"That way, my past self wouldn't be bound by Mu En's betrothal arrangement. Without that betrothal, she wouldn't fall for Bei Bei, wouldn't take that wrong turn, and wouldn't end up like me, only realizing what she truly wanted after she'd lost it."
After saying this, she added, almost as if talking to herself, "Then we wouldn't have missed each other."
Hearing Zhang Lexuan's words, Liu Lin fell silent. He had more or less understood what was going on with Zhang Lexuan now.
"When my past self broke through to become a Soul Grandmaster, I woke up and used my divine power to nourish her meridians, bringing about a qualitative change in her physique."
Hearing Zhang Lexuan's next words, he finally understood why her Soul Ring Configuration differed from the original. It wasn't that he'd remembered wrong. Her body had been nourished with divine power by her future self from the very beginning.
She paused, and her voice suddenly softened.
"She was asleep tonight, and I missed you so much that I came out. We won't do anything tonight. Let's just sleep like this."
Liu Lin glanced at the silver-white chain still hanging from his wrist. Even the slightest movement made it clink softly.
"Could you take the chain off first?" Liu Lin asked tentatively.
"No." Zhang Lexuan didn't even open her eyes. A faint hint of amusement colored her voice.
"...All right." Liu Lin gave up. He resigned himself to closing his eyes and letting Zhang Lexuan treat him like a warm body pillow.
After an unknown length of time, Zhang Lexuan's voice sounded again, as light as a feather falling on a lake.
"Liu Lin."
"Hmm?"
"It's good that you're still alive."
Liu Lin didn't answer. He didn't know what to say. He wasn't the Liu Lin in Zhang Lexuan's memories—not yet, at least.
But he could feel what she meant when she said those words. It wasn't possessiveness, but a pure relief, all its edges worn away by the passing years.
Relief that this time she hadn't come too late. Relief that fate had given her a second chance.
Sleep finally swept Liu Lin under completely. Curled against Zhang Lexuan, he drifted into a deep slumber.
Before his consciousness blurred away, Liu Lin faintly felt someone press a gentle kiss to his forehead.