[GL] I'm Just A Side Character... So Why Is The Heroine Chasing Me?!-Chapter 42: What she carries

The silence after Bai Xuelan’s words lasted long enough to hear General Fluffbottom squawking through the wall.

Lan Yue broke it first.

"An entire mountain?"

"Gone," Bai Xuelan confirmed. "The Wuying Mountain Range, northern border, eight hundred and twelve years ago. One day it was there. The next morning, it wasn’t. The crater is still visible today. People call it the Devil’s Bowl. Nothing grows there."

Zhao Lingxi hadn’t moved. She sat at her desk, her hands flat on the surface, staring at the ancient scroll. Her face was unreadable, but Lan Yue could see the tightness in her jaw. The subtle rigidity in her shoulders.

"The cultivator," Zhao Lingxi said. "What was her name?"

"Xu Minglan. She was a disciple at an Academy much like this one. Brilliant. Powerful. Feared by everyone who knew what she was." Bai Xuelan’s voice was measured, careful. "According to the records, she lost control during a breakthrough attempt. The golden energy inside her erupted outward. Everything within a fifty li radius was erased."

"Including her," Zhao Lingxi said.

"Including her."

Another silence.

Lan Yue’s hands had curled into fists on her knees. She wanted to say something reassuring. Something brave. Something that would erase the weight she could see settling on Zhao Lingxi’s shoulders.

But what do you say to someone who just learned they might be a living weapon?

"Why are you telling me this?" Zhao Lingxi asked. Her voice was steady but thin, like ice over deep water. "If this power is so dangerous, what exactly do you expect me to do about it?"

"Learn to control it." Bai Xuelan pulled out another scroll, this one newer, written in her own careful handwriting. "Xu Minglan failed because she didn’t understand what she had. She tried to cultivate like a normal person, forcing spiritual energy through standard meridian pathways. But Shattered Heaven Roots don’t work that way. The energy needs to be distributed evenly, across the entire body, at all times. If it accumulates in one place..."

"Boom," Lan Yue said flatly.

"Eloquently put, but yes." Bai Xuelan spread her notes across the desk. "I’ve spent three years developing a theoretical cultivation method specifically designed for Shattered Heaven Roots. Based on the ancient texts, Xu Minglan’s journals, and my own research into spiritual energy distribution."

She pushed the notes toward Zhao Lingxi.

"It’s theoretical. Untested. And possibly wrong. But it’s the best chance you have of mastering this power without ending up like Xu Minglan."

Zhao Lingxi looked at the notes. Then at Bai Xuelan.

"You spent three years developing a cultivation method for a condition you had never actually seen."

"I’m thorough."

"You didn’t know I existed three months ago."

"I knew someone like you would appear eventually. Shattered Heaven Roots surface roughly once every few centuries. The timing was right." Bai Xuelan folded her arms. "I positioned myself at the Academy and waited. And then you walked in and lit up the Spirit Measuring Stone like a golden bonfire."

Lan Yue couldn’t decide if this woman was brilliant or terrifying. Probably both.

"What do you want in return?" Zhao Lingxi asked.

"To study you." Bai Xuelan’s honesty was almost brutal. "Your condition is the rarest phenomenon in cultivation history. If I can document your progress, understand how the roots actually function in a living person, it would be the most important research of the century. My name would be remembered forever."

"So this is about your legacy."

"Partly. I won’t pretend otherwise." Bai Xuelan paused. Something softer crossed her face, brief and quickly hidden. "But it’s also because nobody deserves to explode on a Tuesday afternoon because they didn’t have the right information. And right now, I’m the only person alive who has that information."

The room went quiet again.

Zhao Lingxi picked up Bai Xuelan’s notes and began reading. Her eyes moved across the pages with intense focus, absorbing cultivation theory that would have taken most students weeks to process.

Minutes passed.

Finally, she set the notes down.

"I’ll try your method," she said. "On one condition."

"Name it."

"Everything you learn about me stays between us. No publications. No reports. No sharing with other researchers. Not until I decide otherwise."

Bai Xuelan considered this. Then she nodded.

"Agreed."

They shook hands across the desk. It looked like a business arrangement, but Lan Yue could feel the gravity of it. Two brilliant women forming an alliance that could change the world.

Or destroy a mountain.

Hopefully the first one.

---

Bai Xuelan left after midnight.

The moment the door closed, the composure Zhao Lingxi had maintained all evening began to crack.

She stood at the window, arms wrapped around herself, staring at nothing. Her breathing was controlled but shallow. The kind of breathing someone does when they’re trying very hard not to fall apart.

Lan Yue watched her from across the room. She had cleared the tea cups and tidied the scrolls, giving her mistress space. But the silence was becoming unbearable.

"Young Miss."

No response.

"Zhao Lingxi."

Still nothing.

Lan Yue walked over and stood beside her at the window. The moon was full tonight, casting silver light across the Academy grounds. Below them, the training courtyards were empty. The pavilion rooftops gleamed like dark mirrors.

"I’m a weapon," Zhao Lingxi said quietly.

"You’re a person."

"A person who could accidentally destroy everything around her." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Everyone I care about. Xiao Han. Liu Ruyan. Chen Mei." She paused. "You."

"That’s not going to happen."

"You don’t know that."

"I know you." Lan Yue turned to face her. "I know you spent ten years in exile and came out stronger. I know you survived poison, assassination attempts, and a father who doesn’t deserve the title. I know you walked into a room full of enemies tonight and didn’t flinch."

She reached out and took Zhao Lingxi’s hand. Her mistress flinched at the contact but didn’t pull away. Her fingers were cold.

"You are not a weapon, Zhao Lingxi. You are the most stubborn, brilliant, terrifying woman I have ever met. And if some ancient cultivator couldn’t handle this power, that’s her problem. She wasn’t you."

Zhao Lingxi looked down at their joined hands. Then up at Lan Yue.

Her eyes were glassy. Not crying. Zhao Lingxi didn’t cry. But close. Closer than Lan Yue had ever seen.

"You have a very high opinion of me," Zhao Lingxi murmured.

"Somebody has to. You’re terrible at having opinions of yourself."

A shaky exhale. Almost a laugh.

"What if I lose control?" Zhao Lingxi whispered.

"Then I’ll be there." Lan Yue squeezed her hand. "Remember my Spirit Devouring ability? I absorb energy. If your golden power ever starts going haywire, I’m literally the one person in this world who might be able to pull it back."

Zhao Lingxi stared at her.

"You would do that? Absorb energy powerful enough to erase a mountain?"

"I absorbed a room full of poison gas for you. A mountain is just a really big room."

"That logic is terrible."

"But it made you almost smile."

Zhao Lingxi’s lips trembled. Not quite a smile. But the tension in her shoulders eased, just slightly. Her fingers tightened around Lan Yue’s hand instead of pulling away.

They stood like that at the window, hand in hand, watching the moonlight paint the world silver.

"Stay tonight," Zhao Lingxi said quietly.

Lan Yue’s heart stumbled. "What?"

"In my room. Not..." She paused, and Lan Yue caught the faintest color on her cheeks again. That impossible blush. "I just don’t want to be alone tonight."

Every survival instinct Lan Yue had screamed that this was dangerous. That sharing a bed with the woman she was definitely not developing feelings for was a catastrophically bad idea.

"Okay," she said.

Because apparently her mouth didn’t listen to her brain. Ever.

---

They lay side by side in the darkness.

This time there was no pretending it was about the cold or the small bed. The bed was perfectly large enough for both of them with space to spare.

They lay in the middle anyway. Close but not touching. Facing the ceiling.

"Lan Yue."

"Hm?"

"When you absorbed the poison gas that night. At the Zhao Residence. What did it feel like?"

Lan Yue thought about it. "Like drinking something too hot, too fast. It burned going in. But once it settled, it just became energy. Clean energy. Like my body converted it into something useful."

"Do you think you could do that with golden spiritual energy?"

"Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve never tried absorbing cultivation energy. Just poison and ambient spiritual energy from the furnace with Tang Xiaoli." She paused. "But I’m willing to try. If it comes to that."

"It might kill you."

"Lots of things might kill me. I’ve got a list. It’s very long."

A quiet breath from beside her. Closer to a laugh than anything.

"You’re impossible," Zhao Lingxi said.

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

Silence settled between them. Warm. Comfortable. The kind of silence that doesn’t need filling.

Then Zhao Lingxi’s hand found hers under the blanket. Their fingers interlaced slowly. Deliberately.

Neither of them acknowledged it.

Neither of them let go.

"Good night, Lan Yue."

"Good night, Zhao Lingxi."

Outside, the moon drifted behind a cloud, and the room went dark. Inside, two hands held on to each other like anchors in a storm.

Lan Yue lay awake for a long time after Zhao Lingxi’s breathing slowed.

She was not thinking about how perfectly their fingers fit together.

She was not thinking about the warmth of Zhao Lingxi’s palm against hers.

She was absolutely not thinking about the fact that Zhao Lingxi had asked her to stay. Had wanted her close. Had reached for her hand in the dark.

She was thinking about cultivation theory. And combat techniques. And the proper way to organize herb pouches.

Very boring, very professional things.

Her thumb traced a small circle against Zhao Lingxi’s knuckle. Completely by accident.

She did not do it again.

She did it three more times.

Then she closed her eyes and finally, eventually, fell asleep.