Deep in the Sunset! An Unexpected Discovery!

The afternoon sun was just right as Lan Tian loosened the soil around the Nine Heart Begonia in the backyard.

After living alongside it day in and day out for six years, caring for this divine plant had become muscle memory. He knew exactly when it needed watering, when it needed fertilizer, when to stimulate its growth, and when to let it rest naturally.

Squatting beside the flower, he carefully used a small trowel to loosen the soil around its roots, humming an unknown tune under his breath, perfectly at ease.

Footsteps sounded at the courtyard gate.

Lan Tian looked up and saw Louise standing there. She wore a goose-yellow dress, her hair swept back into a simple, neat ponytail. There was a trace of hesitation in her brows, and her fingers twisted the edge of her skirt as though she wanted to speak but could not bring herself to.

She was thirty-three this year as well.

Time had left few marks on the face of this young lady from a prominent Nuoding City family. Instead, it had refined the delicacy of her features even further.

Her crescent eyes, elegant nose, naturally rosy lips, and fair, smooth skin made her seem as if she had stepped straight out of a painting as she stood bathed in the afternoon sunlight at the courtyard gate.

Six years ago, she had still possessed some of a young girl's softness. Now, she had fully blossomed—bright-eyed, white-toothed, graceful, and poised. Anyone who saw her would have to admit that she was a rare beauty.

Yet beneath that lovely face, she had hidden thoughts unknown to anyone for all these years.

"Doctor Lan." Louise called from the gate, her voice softer than usual.

"Come in and sit." Lan Tian set down the little trowel, brushed the dirt from his hands, and rose to his feet. Pulling over a stone stool, he gestured for her to sit. "What brings you here today? Nothing for you to help your father with?"

Louise sat across from him and remained silent for a long while, her fingers never stopping their twisting of her skirt.

She lowered her head to look at the patterns in the floor tiles, seemingly weighing how to begin.

Lan Tian simply waited without urging her, pouring her a cup of tea and pushing it over.

After quite some time, Louise finally spoke, her voice still somewhat strained. "Doctor Lan, I'm thirty-three this year."

"Mm, I know. We're the same age."

"...My family has been pressing me hard." Louise glanced up at him, then quickly lowered her eyes again. "My father says that if I don't marry soon, I'll become an old maid. He says he wants to hold a grandchild, and if I don't have one soon, he's afraid he won't live to see that day."

Lan Tian's hand paused slightly around his teacup.

Louise took a deep breath, as though pouring out all the words she had held back for so long in one go. "My father has been looking for a match for me lately. People from several nearby towns have come to propose—merchants' managers, landowners from smaller places, and even a minor noble from Heaven Dou City. They all had decent prospects, but I turned every one of them down."

"You turned them down? Why?"

Louise lifted her head and stared directly at him. Her eyes seemed to hold a faint sheen of light, her lips pressed together slightly as a blush gradually spread across her cheeks.

"Do you really have to make me spell it out?"

The wind in the courtyard seemed to fall still for several breaths.

Louise bit her lower lip and stared at him fixedly for several seconds. At last, as if she had thrown all caution aside, she closed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was not loud, but every word was clear, as though striking the stone slabs beneath them. "Why else would I reject so many people if my heart already held someone else? I've been coming here all these years—did you think I was really that free, coming just to watch you treat patients?"

Her voice unconsciously softened as she continued. "Whenever you start cultivating, you stop caring about anything else. If I didn't come looking for you myself, you probably wouldn't even remember I existed for ten days or half a month... You cultivated, and I waited for you. But my family is truly pressing me now. I had no choice but to come ask you..."

Her voice grew quieter and quieter until it was nearly inaudible. Only the broad flush spreading across her ears and neck betrayed how she felt at that moment.

Lan Tian sat on the stone stool and listened to her words. The tea in the cup beside him had already gone half cold.

He lowered his head and looked at his own reflection in the tea. At thirty-three, he looked much younger than others his age in the village, but the traces of years spent exposed to wind and sun, of arduous cultivation and tempering, still lingered at the corners of his eyes and brows.

He was stunned for a long time. The first thought that came to mind was that, counting both this life and his previous one, he had been alone for fifty-eight whole years—and this was the first time anyone had confessed to him so earnestly.

To be honest, he was not completely unmoved.

Over the years, Louise had constantly been by his side, bringing him food and drink, helping manage the clinic, running errands and delivering messages for him. Whenever he traveled far, she prepared dry provisions and water in advance. He had seen every bit of her care.

It was only that he had always believed cultivation was the foremost priority, and matters of love could wait until later. But now he was already thirty-three, still without his third soul ring. The road of cultivation ahead would only grow more difficult and longer, and he did not even know how far he could ultimately go.

Starting a family and building a career might not be such a bad thing.

He looked up at the flushed face across from him and suddenly felt a place inside him that had always been tightly drawn begin to loosen.

Perhaps, after fifty-eight years alone, it was indeed time to give this bond an answer.

"Louise." When he spoke her name, even he felt that his voice was much gentler than usual. "Give me some time to think. Not about anything else—about how to handle this properly."

Louise abruptly looked up, shock and joy filling her eyes. Her lips parted slightly, as though she could scarcely believe what she had heard.

Lan Tian could not help laughing at the sight. He stood and walked over to her, gently patting the top of her head as if soothing a startled cat. "It's not as if I don't know your family's circumstances. Your father has cherished you like a treasure for all these years. I can't just casually show up at your door and take you away as my wife. Once I obtain my third soul ring and break through to Soul Elder, I'll be able to apply for a baronial title. Then it'll be more respectable for me to come propose."

Louise stared at him blankly, overwhelmed with joy. "Y-you're agreeing? You've broken through level thirty, to Soul Elder!?"

"Mm. I broke through three days ago. I'm preparing to search for my third soul ring, and I'm agreeing to your matter as well."

Lan Tian looked down at her, his gaze unusually warm. "Go back and tell your parents first. Tell them that I have every intention, but I'll personally come to propose after I return from this trip. At the soonest, a month or so; at the latest, two or three months. I won't make them wait long. Have them turn away the matchmakers for now."

Louise's eyes immediately reddened, and the tip of her nose flushed as well. She looked as though she was about to cry but was desperately holding it back.

She stood up and suddenly threw herself into his arms, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face against his chest. In a muffled voice, she said, "If you go back on your word, I'll never speak to you again."

The impact made Lan Tian take half a step back. Laughing helplessly, he patted her back. "All right, all right. You're thirty-three and still crying like this—what would people think if they saw you? Go tell your family first. I'll make my preparations and set out."

Louise stepped out of his embrace and lowered her head to wipe at the corner of her eye. When she looked up again, her eyes were still red, but the corners of her lips had already lifted. Even her voice was far brighter than before. "Then I'm going back first. You have to come back quickly!"

With that, she turned and ran outside. Her skirt swirled in a circle at the courtyard gate before she quickly vanished around the street corner beyond it.

The courtyard fell quiet once more, leaving only the afternoon sunlight shining silently over the Blue Silver Grass filling the yard and the Nine Heart Begonia.

Lan Tian stood where he was, staring in the direction of the courtyard gate for a long while before slowly lowering his head to look at his palm.

Fifty-eight years.

He had been single until he transmigrated at twenty-five in his previous life, then remained single for another thirty-three years after transmigrating.

Adding both lives together, at the age of fifty-eight, he had actually agreed to the first marriage proposal of his life.

Although his current body was only thirty-three, his mental age was what it was. When it came to starting a family, he was far more calm and composed than he had been in his youth. It was no longer an impulse driven by hormones, but something that had naturally settled into place.

He knew Louise inside and out. Her character, family background, and temperament were all excellent, and over the years, her care for him had been beyond reproach.

Both of them came from well-off families and had no worries about food or clothing. He would soon obtain his third soul ring and advance to Soul Elder, after which he could apply for a noble title.

Their lives would only get better and better.

Even after starting a family, he could continue cultivating. Louise was not the sort of person who would cling to him endlessly; she could even help him manage the clinic properly.

He suddenly felt that marrying, having children, and living out this life steadily and earnestly might be far more real than striving to reach the summit and become a god.

As for how far he could go in the future?

All he had to do was give it his best. Not letting himself down, and not letting down the people around him, mattered more than anything else.

The night breeze carried the scents of grass and earth. He raised his head to look at the gradually darkening sky, an unconscious curve touching his lips. He had already made up his mind: once he obtained his third soul ring, the first thing he would do upon returning was bring betrothal gifts to Louise's home and ask for her hand.

He wanted both a family and a career firmly in his grasp.