Qianye suddenly let out a laugh at that. It was faint and strained however it was from genuine surprise. After all, he had not been thinking about that.

Although now that she had asked... after discovering the special nature of his soul, and after the results of his... desperation against the oversized bitch, as his expression sobered it genuinely looked thoughtful.

Then it hardened, and he intoned, "I don’t know yet." His brows furrowed, "But unlike before, I can at least now say that I believe that there is a chance."

Even if the rewards from his trial period ending didn’t give him something that was able to restore his cultivation, if with such huge amounts of fortuity earned from killing the wench and consequentially plundering from Chu Xuan, he still couldn’t do something about it then he would really begin to question the worth of the system.

Thereafter, she remained silent for a few moments, and then her expression returned to the evenness that it could muster.

In those moments, paying such attention to her, Qianye appreciated the change in what he knew of her character from the original novel.

’It is a little strange though... to see someone that was often always described as an aloof character be so expressive. Maybe it’s because I scolded her?’

After all, ultimately in conversation people responded to the energy that they were afforded. Because he was able to be so honestly frustrated with her, she had now become able to be that degree more expressive with him even if she still trailed off into consideration of her words.

’Or is it just me?’ With that thought he silently caressed the ego that had been slain through years of being crippled.

After all, even with her should have been love interest, Chu Xuan, for a very long time, she was nowhere near so expressive. And this was in cultivator age years. He did not remember exactly but it took several hundreds of years for them to even become friends. Not to mention lovers; that, he hadn’t seen written.

Then, she dragged herself out of her stupor, and releasing a light sigh that straightened her chin to look at him properly, she asked, "What does this mean for what happened to you just now?"

Qianye appreciated her prioritisation. If she had asked him any follow up questions, there wasn’t to much more than the vague details that he remembered from the wiki that he could have regurgitated to her, or spun some kind of fairy tale derived from what he had actually experienced after death.

This nonsense risk as why he didn’t want to lie in the first place! Why should he have to stress himself with keeping up some kind of fable when the truth would rid him of the misery?

Ultimately, it was for the best.

Thus, he moved on.

"I was a... wandering sage of sorts in my last life."

Qianye’s attention shifted over to the brick. He had to use both his hands to bring it back over his hip.

"And his memories taught me that this thing is actually a remarkably special artifact," he knocked on it too many times for it to be enough to simply gesture at it, and then he glanced back up at her. "Now that I think about it, perhaps it might have been why Chu Xuan and Meng Jue tried to assassinate me. They might have known about its true nature."

The elven woman’s gaze had drifted down to look at the artifact, and as he mentioned Chu Xuan and Meng Jue her eyes narrowed, a flinty glare hazing through them.

"Understanding what it was, and I suppose..." Qianye laughed self-deprecatingly, and then continued as he glanced down back at the thing, "taken by my desperation for a solution to my circumstances, I rashly tried to explore its mysteries."

Qianye pulled the thing off of his lap, putting it back down over to his side as he went on to say, "Little did I know that there was an ancient existence waiting for the perfect opportunity to make their escape. All they needed was some ignorant fool with a strong enough soul to recover at least a little of their strength by devouring the fools soul, and taking over their body."

He looked back up at her, "Shameful, isn’t it? The reason you found me with my soul collapsing is little more than the fact that I made a huge mistake after just escaping death. If not for the facts that she had been weakened by being sealed for an extreme amount of time, the seals within the artifact degraded her soul to keep her weak, and that she had to expend even more strength to break out, I would have died. I managed to kill her, but without you, she would have taken me down with her."

Celosia should have been one of the most central contributors to Chu Xuan’s journey. And that was not limited to the fact that she had served as a mentor figure for him.

She had been one of the main long term love interests.

And if he were being honest, even as a reader, Qianye had romanticized her as well.

How could he, the forced ascetic, escape the allure of a supreme demoness?

At many points, as a female character there were even points where he preferred her over even the elf before him.

However, he had swiftly been given a reality check.

Thus, he did not give a damn about how consequential her existence was, or about his then intangible infatuations. She had tried to kill him, so she was an enemy.

By contrast, he found himself feeling shameful before the elven woman kneeling before him.

"Are you not worried that I’ve been possessed and I’m just that demoness pretending to be me?"

"No." She had immediately declared with a dignified calm to her countenance. "If it were the you of before... the assassination, I would have had doubts. However," and here, she shook her head, and he caught the fondness flicker through her eyes as their lids lowered a little, in thought about something else as she continued, "With who you’ve become... when I can feel your soul so clearly, I would never doubt you."

"..."

"...I should go wash in the lake."