Are you going to give me a sachet?

Ning Ke rarely took the initiative to express his true feelings.

That had been true in the modern world, and it was true in this world too.

But faced with such a sincere Lou Yunxiao, he always found it a little hard to control himself.

"I know you didn't twist your ankle," Lou Yunxiao said with a soft sigh.

"But whether you twisted it or not, I would still carry you."

"Because you're my junior brother, and you matter to me."

Lou Yunxiao had already lost his entire family, so to him, his junior brother A Ke was like family, and the Sword Sect was like home.

Whatever his family wanted him to do, he would do his best to accomplish.

Ning Ke burst out laughing at those words.

The little bit of gloom in his heart vanished too.

"Junior brother, what are you laughing at?" Lou Yunxiao asked. "Wasn't that what you lied to me about?"

"Yes, yes, yes, that's exactly what I lied about! Boo-hoo, I've wronged you so terribly, senior brother! You're so good to me, yet I still lied to you. I deserve to die a thousand times over! I only hope you can forgive someone as despicable as me!"

"Enough of your nonsense." Whatever anger Lou Yunxiao had felt toward Ning Ke had long since worn away, and he smiled, a rare sight.

He said, "Junior brother, wherever your home is, as long as you want to go back, I'll do everything I can to help you."

"All right, all right. Then let me thank you in advance, senior brother."

As they spoke, Ning Xiaoxiao had already reached Ning Family Village. She waved at them from the village entrance. "Brother! Eldest senior brother! You two are taking forever! Hurry up! Hurry up!"

Ning Ke straightened up and waved back at Ning Xiaoxiao, the girl's radiant smile filling his view.

Many years later, Ning Ke would still think of that moment.

Because it had been part of the happiest time he had ever spent in this world.

Ning Family Village was tiny, and Ning Xiaoxiao's home stood at its westernmost edge. Along the way, the villagers greeted her warmly when they saw her.

Some were Xiaoxiao's childhood friends; others were the older men and women who had looked after her.

When the young women's gazes landed on Ning Ke and Lou Yunxiao, they blushed and turned away.

Clearly, they had never seen such celestial-looking young men before.

"Dad! Mom!" Ning Xiaoxiao's adoptive parents came out to greet them from afar. They kept wiping their rough hands on their aprons as they served Ning Ke and Lou Yunxiao hot tea.

"Immortal masters, please have some tea. This little place of ours is humble, and we don't have any fine tea worthy of serving you. Please forgive us."

"Please don't stand on ceremony. We're both Xiaoxiao's senior brothers, and we're imposing on you with this visit. We've prepared a few modest gifts. Please do accept them." Ning Ke waved a hand, and the "modest" gifts he had prepared instantly filled half the room.

The elderly couple tried to decline, but he deftly talked them out of it.

They could only thank him and accept.

Afterward, Ning Xiaoxiao gathered with her adoptive parents, chatting and laughing.

That evening, the couple prepared a large table of home-cooked dishes to entertain them, and Father Ning even coaxed Ning Ke and Lou Yunxiao into drinking a little wine.

He did his best to show off his modest learning as a schoolteacher before them, making Ning Ke struggle to hold back his laughter.

When bedtime came, there clearly weren't enough rooms.

In the end, Father and Mother Ning shared one room, Ning Xiaoxiao took another, and Ning Ke and Lou Yunxiao shared the last.

Ning Ke entered the room, swung his long legs onto the bed, and readily lay down on the far side. He pulled the quilt over himself, wrapped up snugly, then beckoned to Lou Yunxiao. "Senior brother, come to bed."

"All right."

Lou Yunxiao was completely straight. Back in the Demon Abyss, he had only agonized over sharing a bed with Ning Ke because he had mistaken him for a woman.

Now that he was sleeping beside Ning Ke, he thought nothing of it.

Until... Ning Ke suddenly wrapped an arm around his waist.

"...Junior brother, what are you doing?" Lou Yunxiao lay rigidly straight, not daring to move.

"Warming you up." Ning Ke shared his half of the quilt with Lou Yunxiao, bundling them both up like rice dumplings.

"You may have an ice spirit root, but you can't keep yourself freezing all the time. It's better to keep your body a little warmer."

Ning Ke certainly wasn't going to admit that lying on Lou Yunxiao in the snow had actually left him hooked on the feeling.

Being pressed against Lou Yunxiao like this made him feel incredibly safe.

"...All right." Knowing Ning Ke meant well, Lou Yunxiao didn't refuse again.

But lying so close together meant that Ning Ke's unique scent kept washing over Lou Yunxiao's senses without pause.

And at last, it reminded him where he had smelled that familiar scent before.

It was... the scent of his big sister.

In the Demon Abyss, he had always kept his distance from her, but their frequent sparring and contact had still etched that fragrance into his memory.

Before, he had merely found his junior brother's scent familiar, without ever considering that possibility.

Now that he had truly connected the two, Lou Yunxiao couldn't help feeling puzzled.

He couldn't resist asking Ning Ke, "Junior brother, are you wearing a sachet?"

"Hmm?" Hugging Lou Yunxiao like an enormous body pillow, Ning Ke yawned, slipping into hibernation mode ahead of schedule.

"No," he said lazily.

Then he asked with a chuckle, "Why? Do you want to sew one yourself and give it to me as a New Year's gift, senior brother?"

Hand-sewn sachets held a special meaning in the Human Realm.

They were something akin to tokens of love.

Ning Ke was clearly teasing him.

"No." Lou Yunxiao denied it quietly, but his heart had grown unsettled.

After losing his sight, his hearing and sense of smell had become far keener than most people's.

He could distinguish different floral fragrances and grassy scents, and could even identify every kind of animal and each individual person by smell.

He knew that everyone had a scent unique to them.

Then his big sister and his junior brother A Ke...

Could they be the same person?

But big sister was a woman, and junior brother is a man. Big sister was immensely powerful, while A Ke sometimes even loses to me...

Could there really be two people in this world with the same scent?

"Oh, senior brother, you're so heartless." Ning Ke deliberately chided Lou Yunxiao in a coquettish voice, then muttered, "Unlike me. If I ever sewed a sachet myself, you'd be the first person I gave it to."

His words instantly dispelled Lou Yunxiao's suspicion that he was his big sister.

After all, she had said her heart already belonged to someone. How could she joke with him about such tokens of love the way A Ke did?

So he steadied himself, suppressed those suspicions, and told Ning Ke in all seriousness, "Junior brother, a sachet you sew yourself should be given to the person you come to love."

"So I can't accept your sachet."

In the darkness, the corners of Ning Ke's lips lifted, his interest piqued.

He leaned close to Lou Yunxiao's ear and asked with a soft laugh:

"Then what if I said the person I love is you, senior brother?"