Aha froze for a long moment before stammering:
"Dear friend, is this how you welcome me after so long apart? Such enthusiasm. I really can't handle it..."
Xianyu laughed in sheer fury, anger clouding his mind.
As the saying went, judge deeds, not intentions.
The Masked Fool and Aha had thrown the Yaoqing into chaos, then handed over six billion.
Whatever their motives had been, that money had genuinely resolved the Yaoqing's immediate crisis.
He could call it even.
Xianyu had even thought that if they wanted some harmless fun that wouldn't affect the Yaoqing, he would gladly play along.
And the facts proved that the Aha in his memories hadn't affected the Yaoqing.
Aha had singled him out for torment instead!!
Aha must have come up with some new stunt to pull on him!
Surely Aha had pretended to be his child and played pitiful in front of everyone on the Yaoqing, utterly destroying his reputation. Left with no choice, he could only swallow the grievance in silence and give Aha the royal treatment at the General's Residence, as though Aha really were his own child.
At that moment, Xianyu had no time to consider whether Elation's appearance would cause an uproar on the Luofu or affect his peaceful life of slacking off.
All he wanted now was to throw Aha into the toilet.
Seeing this, Aha hurriedly added, "I'm your dear friend! I've bled for you and worked hard for you! You can't treat me like this!"
Xianyu spat out a Xianzhou curse.
Dear friend, my ass!
The thought of Aha staying on the Yaoqing made Xianyu's scalp prickle, but there were still things he wanted to know. He could only force his anger down.
His mind split in two. One half urged him to beat Aha senseless, while the other drove him to seize this chance to pry out some information.
In the end, his rational side prevailed.
With an expression so foul he didn't need to fake it, he resorted to a painfully clumsy taunt and said disdainfully, "What could you possibly have done for me?"
Sure enough, Aha grew agitated and spoke at lightning speed. "Everyone on the Yaoqing knows! I'm your child, and I'm also your old lover who bore your child-"
Xianyu's CPU was about to fry.
What? What child? What lover?
What, pretending to be his child hadn't been enough for Aha? Aha had even changed sexes and posed as a woman just to mess with him?
What had he done to deserve an Aeon going to such lengths?
"They all know! I met you when I was being... you know what, for the Swarm-"
Xianyu: "..."
He had never imagined that this boomerang could come back to hit him like this.
His reputation! Aaaaaah!
The thread holding his reason together snapped completely.
To hell with reason!
Xianyu chuckled a few times, then viciously hurled the head he was holding toward the toilet:
"I'm flushing this toilet today, no matter what-"
Aha let out a piercing shriek. Ignoring the pain of hair tearing from the scalp, Aha sacrificed a tuft of hair and scrambled free of Xianyu's grasp.
Aha screamed, "I was kidding! I was kidding! Really! I'm not lying, I only pretended to be your child-"
Xianyu had clashed with Aha many times. He knew all too well what Aha was like.
Aha, not pulling stunts? Actually considering him a dear friend? What a joke.
How could Aeons consider humans their friends? They probably viewed humans much the way humans viewed cats and dogs.
To Aeons, humans were nothing more than entertainment when they were bored.
Xianyu enunciated every word. "I won't believe a single word you say."
The head floating in the air, dodging left and right, suddenly stopped.
Aha sounded deeply dejected, speaking in a low voice. "Yes, you don't believe me. I was there first, yet you would only trust Akivili... and what happened? Akivili wouldn't even shed a single tear over your death!"
Besides Aha, had his past self also known the Aeon of Trailblaze? And from the sound of it, had their relationship been terrible?
Xianyu froze for a moment at those words, then lowered his eyes and waited for Aha to continue.
He waited for ages, but Aha said nothing more.
When he looked up again, the head flew toward the living room with a whoosh.
Without the slightest hesitation, Aha tilted the head and tried to press the television's power button with the chin.
Unfortunately, with only a head to work with, Aha failed to turn it on despite several attempts, then called in a bright voice, "Dear friend, give me a hand!"
Only after Xianyu had watched enough of Aha's ridiculous antics did he step forward and turn on the television.
The moment he did, Aha commandeered the remote and urged Xianyu to sit down, acting for all the world like the owner of the house.
Xianyu walked over to the sofa and sat down, saying irritably, "You really do make yourself at home."
"Hehe." Aha chuckled foolishly, casually changing channels with the chin. "Dear friend, your temper is so much better now than it used to be-"
Xianyu leaned back against the sofa, showing no intention of responding.
"The people who crossed you back then... tsk, tsk. How come all you do now is fleece people?"
Unbothered by his coldness, Aha continued,
"Still, you're pretty good this way, too. If that child you raised knew, they'd definitely be glad-"
Xianyu was inwardly startled. The child he had raised? Who? The gray-haired, blue-eyed child he had first seen in his dream?
Calling his behavior in that dream psychotic would already be putting it mildly.
His mental state back then had been little different from being mara-struck, hadn't it?
It would have been a mercy if that child hadn't found someone to arrest him. Why would they have willingly let him raise them?
While Xianyu was lost in thought, Aha, who had been frantically pressing the remote with the chin beside him, stopped moving. The television remained on a channel reporting news from the Luofu.
"If you want to see them, you can do it today-"
Xianyu instinctively looked toward the screen.
Onscreen, a person with long gray-blue hair walked into the distance, surrounded by a crowd.
The camera had captured only a blurry view of their back. He couldn't even make out their gender.
Then a beautiful Foxian appeared onscreen, smiling brightly. "I'm here at the Divination Commission-"
Xianyu took the remote and decisively turned off the television.
"Today, General Teng Xiao accompanied-"
The television's sound cut off abruptly.
Puzzled, Aha tilted the head and asked, "Dear friend, are you... nervous about coming home?"
Afraid Aha would pull another stunt, Xianyu said bluntly, "There's no point."
Leaving aside the upheaval his return from the dead might cause, he had no memories. What would meeting them accomplish?
Whatever their relationship had been before, it meant nothing now.
Even if he still remembered, meeting would only add to the awkwardness.
When he had served as general on the Yaoqing, the Xianzhou had yet to encounter Yaoshi. That had been at least five thousand years ago.
Even if Xianyu had lived longer than a tortoise and taught that child before his death, it had still happened a very long time ago. What would suddenly showing up now make him?
If their relationship had been poor, was there any need for him, a penniless relative, to acknowledge their connection? He would only upset them for nothing.
If they had been close, he had even more reason to tread carefully.
It was like old friends whose lives had taken different paths. Before parting, they had imagined countless futures and had endless things to talk about, only to be forced apart by grades, talent, and all sorts of other factors, each setting off down a different road.
Some achieved fame and success; others were content with what they had. When they finally reunited, their former closeness was gone.
Was it because they no longer cherished that bond? No.
It was because they cherished that shared past too much.
They had missed out on each other's lives and no longer knew each other's sore spots. They could only cautiously feel each other out, trying to find traces of the people they once knew in whatever little clues the other revealed.
The mere thought of it was enough to leave him wistful.
If Xianyu recalled those memories, perhaps he would get in touch with them.
But now, he had lost every memory of this old friend. How could he feel them out? How could he meet them?
If he had raised them, surely they would think much the same way he did.
Xianyu didn't consider himself someone who would dwell on the past. To him, whoever someone was, having the good fortune to walk together for a while was enough.
He would decide once he remembered their time together.
If the opportunity arose, he would meet them.
Aha gave a dry laugh, interrupting Xianyu's thoughts.
Xianyu narrowed his eyes slightly and folded his arms. "You haven't been causing trouble behind my back again, have you?"
"Nope."
The head Aha possessed spun like a top, shaking in denial of Xianyu's accusation.
Xianyu grumbled inwardly. This nuisance had definitely pulled something again. Knowing he wouldn't get anything useful out of asking, he could only drop the subject and offer a perfunctory "Oh."
"Dear friend, you don't need to fish for information from me," Aha said out of nowhere.
"How does that Xianzhou saying go again? Oh, I'll tell you everything I know and hold nothing back-"
Before you continue