Dual Cultivation God Returns

Chapter 745: Warm, isn’t it?



"Da-rli-ng-!", Hong Ye caught Wu long on the way out of the meeting room a few hours after his conversation with Madam Liang, during which he finished up the rest of reports and gave out instructions.

He chuckled, embracing her, as she fell into his arms.

"Did you solve your problem?", she asked, her eyes turning up to meet his gaze.

"Mm, I'm alright now", he nodded, giving her a kiss on the forehead.

Her smile turned shiny at that answer. It always amazed him how she looked so innocent in these moments, like a normal girl in love.

They turned to take a walk as Butler Bang silently bowed and gave them some privacy.

"Darling, did you teach Sister Yue about empathy and conscience?", she suddenly asked after they walked hand in hand on one of the fortress walls in a peaceful atmosphere.

His eyebrow went up, but there was no shock in his eyes, only confirmation of his earlier suspicions.

"As I thought, unlike her you weren't oblivious about it", he smiled.

"Hahaha, despite how she looks, Sister Yue can be surprisingly naive"

"You've kept quite a lot of secrets from your Sister"

"Well, I didn't want her to turn out as twisted as I am", she spoke with a smile that slightly wrinkled the smooth skin around her eyes, as he could practically see her grinning under her mask without using any techniques to actually peer through it. Her distant gaze hovering on a spot on the distant horizon.

"You're not mad I went ahead and told her without consulting you first?", he asked as she turned eyes filled with mischief toward him.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Yes, I'm mad", she spoke with a gleeful teasing expression, "I'm absolutely furious, what are you going to do about it?"

"Hahaha, I'm serious, Ye'er", he chuckled, stopping their walk and fully turning to her, as he once more pulled her closer to him. He still had the light smile on his face, but there was a sincere look in his eyes as he looked into hers.

"I can't be mad at you, Darling. I'm too busy being in love to waste time on such things", her expression also left traces of the previous playfulness, but there was a genuine feeling to her voice now.

She then shrugged her shoulders as she leaned her head to his chest and spoke in a lower voice, "Besides, it's not like it could be avoided forever, now that we both survived and continue on living. I guess dealing with it now would have been better than later"

"You were worrying about timing", he spoke while stroking her head over the luscious black hair.

"Mm", she nodded with her cheek pressed against his chest, "I couldn't pick a right moment to teach her about it, so I guess I should be thanking you instead"

She snuggled a bit in his embrace, and then her eyes opened, as if something came to her mind.

"I don't resent you for teaching her about it... and I don't resent you for teaching me. Hehe, I guess we both learned about emotions from one person, as expected of twins", she giggled, prompting him to raise his eyebrow.

She turned her face up again, without leaving his embrace, as their eyes met once more, "You don't remember, do you?"

Approximately 13 years prior.

A city in the prefecture under the control of the Wu Family of the Wood Spirit Empire.

A girl with black hair, about 10-11 years old, wearing festival clothes and a wooden festival mask cleaned off a bloodied dagger with a piece of cloth, as a man was lying in a growing puddle of blood not far from her.

"Mission complete", she spoke in a monotone, emotionless voice, and something in the shadow of the back alley moved in response.

The dark openings of the wooden mask turned to that spot, and confirming the observer had left after witnessing the satisfactory results, the girl was about to go off as well, but for some reason stopped, turning to look at one end of the back alley, where warm lights and lively noises of the festival were coming from.

She hesitated for a bit, and then stepped in that direction, as if beckoned by something.

As she reached it, she suddenly froze, hesitating whether to step into that light.

"Are you lost?", a voice called out to her, and as she turned the eyes beneath the wooden mask widened, as the boy who was a few years younger than her looked very handsome even at this young age. The girl had never seen someone who looked like that.

"...", she didn't answer, not sure what to do in this situation.

The boy smiled, carrying a kind of charm that a little kid should not have, "Hehe, actually, I'm the one who's lost", but his words as he scratched the back of his head with an expression that quickly turned awkward made the girl question his intellect.

The silence became a bit tense as the girl still did not know how to react in this situation while the boy's expression became increasingly awkward.

"Ehm, want to try and search for the way back together?", he then asked, seemingly no longer able to endure this atmosphere.

"Why?", she finally spoke.

"Eh?"

"Why should I help you find your way? And why would I ask you for it if I were lost?", she spoke in a slightly monotone tone of voice.

"Because... that's just what people do?", he spoke seemingly unsure of the answer himself. There was a sense of being taken by surprise by that question.

She didn't answer, but a puzzled look appeared in the crimson eyes beneath the mask. His answer seemed to confuse her just as much, if not more, than her question confused him.

"Come on, let's go", the boy stretched out his hand to her.

The girl silently turned her gaze to the hand. There wasn't any killing intent, or really any sense of danger. This further confused her.

"Uhm... are you going to give me your hand?", he asked after a few moments in awkward

silence.

"Why?"

"Do you always ask so many questions?", the boy sighed with a bit of exasperation, sliding the palm of his other hand across his face downward.

The girl didn't answer, although this time the boy seemingly wasn't expecting an answer

either.

"Haa~", the boy slumped down on the spot, seemingly having lost the hope of getting or giving help. He sat down on the wooden stairs of a nearby closed shop, staring off toward the lights of the festival, propping his head with both hands, elbows on his thighs.

"What are you doing?", after a very long silence, the girl asked.

"Keeping you company?"

"Why?"

"I don't know, I can't just leave you here can I? It's not like I know my way around either", he

spoke in a slightly grumbling voice.

"Why can't you leave me here?"

"Uh... it's sad?"

"Sad?"

"Umm..."

The 'conversation' if it could be called one continued for quite some time, as the boy

answered questions of the girl as much as he could.

He didn't do a good job of explaining, since she seemed to question things he didn't even think about. He just knew things were the way they were, and never had to think about why it

was so.

However, from a certain point on, he began to mimic a girl that he knew, who was the one that made him think that his way of thinking was normal. The conversation proceeded a lot smoother from that point on, as what that girl did was not explain things to him, but letting

him 'feel'.

He did the same, as he gradually got the girl to give him her hand, making her feel how warm it felt to touch hands, and things like that.

From there she started asking questions that he could answer drawing from his own feelings and emotions, and what he knew about the world.

But as the conversation went on and on, at one moment the girl suddenly jolted, and looked back into the darkness of the alley.

"... so the husband and wife would call each other 'Darling' as a term of endearment... eh... well, basically it shows their feelings for each other, and-...", the boy spoke in a confident tone, as a kid would speak about how adults behaved and what they did.

"I have to go", the girl suddenly said, and turned to leave into the darkness of the alley.

"H-hey!", the boy was surprised by the abrupt announcement.

But the girl didn't give him any explanation or time to come to terms with it, swiftly moving away, and it was as if the darkness of the alley swallowed her, as he quickly lost sight of her.

As he tried to take a step after her, "There you are, Wu Long!", a girl's voice resounded from

behind him.

"M-Mengqi!", the boy turned to the sound of that voice, still disoriented by the sudden change of the situation, but genuinely glad to see her "I found the hairpin you dropped, but

got lost..."

"We eh... got caught, Butler Bang found me waiting for you at the mansion's garden", the girl spoke with a slightly sour and awkward expression, and the boy could see a figure of an elderly man in Wu Family butler's clothing, appear from the crowd behind her.

The boy's attention instantly shifted from the mysterious girl who left him just moments before, as he and the girl before him now were in deep trouble, caught sneaking away. They almost got away with it too, but as the girl noticed a missing hairpin that the boy once gave her as they were coming back, he left her at the mansion and sneaked out again. However, as he was going away with her, the elderly butler and about a dozen guards and

servants around them, he still cast a last look to the dark alley, while the girl was complaining that she couldn't leave him alone for a minute, since all he could answer when asked what he was doing at that spot, was that "Ah... there was a girl here..."

Meanwhile, a white-haired girl met up with the black-haired girl that the boy met, the two standing at a very long distance away from the festival, both wearing the same outfit and

same wooden masks.

"You're late. I came to pick you up", the white-haired girl spoke.

"Mm", the black-haired girl nodded, but as the white-haired one turned seemingly to go away, the black-haired one suddenly grabbed her hand, causing her to freeze. "What are you doing?", the white-haired girl turned back, the dark openings in the mask looking toward the hand which was held by the other.

"... It's... warm, isn't it?", the black-haired girl said after a short pause.

The white-haired girl didn't answer, seemingly puzzled by this situation. The black-haired girl turned to give a last look to the distant warm lights, and then said "Come on, let's go", being the first one to disappear from that spot. However, there was now something in her voice, a tinge of something new that had not been there before...

"... I was told about the ritual by the Matriarch two years after, after our initial training was complete, but by that time, I already knew what it was like to have a 'Sister', a true sister who I cared about", Hong Ye spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper as Wu Long looked at her with

wide eyes.

He always knew that it was strange for someone with Hong Ye's upbringing to develop a sisterly love, and infect with it her older sister. In fact, it was far more normal if the twins never developed any emotional attachments at all.

It was also a source of his misconception that led him to believe both twins knew all about

empathy before, which, much to his surprise, was proven false with Hong Yue not long ago. However, he never imagined that the source of that anomaly was none other than himself, with a chance meeting that changed the course of Hong Ye's life.

After all, the memory of this incident was buried deep in the memories he only briefly looked through when he unlocked them. And it was quite hazy as it was a memory of a genuine child Wu Long. In fact, the trouble he and Wu Mengqi got into for sneaking away to play at the festival was far more vivid in those memories. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?", he asked, not sure how to react.

"Hahaha, I didn't recognize you at first too... I only got suspicious when you returned to the Wood Spirit Continent, and was more and more confident in that suspicion as your background was revealed. I only really became almost sure after we met in the Blade Empress's Throne Room... but at that time I still thought I would die some time later in the ritual", she spoke with a chuckle.

She continued as she leaned to him once more, "When you took me to that date at the Fantian Kingdom festival... you can't imagine how it felt...", her arms tightened around his waist.

His arms tightened around her as well, as he kissed her on the head, "There will be many more

dates, Ye'er. I'll show you the biggest most beautiful festivals of the Seven Boundless Worlds"

"Hehe, Darling is so kind to me", she chuckled with a genuine smile, as they continued to embrace each other tightly.