Long Aotian’s Beautiful Butler Has Run Away chapter 5

Chapter 5: A Prophetic Dream

“What? How could the Sky Mirror pick him?”

“He’s… a man.”

“So what if he’s a man? I’m a man too, and I still came when the Mirror Palace summoned, didn’t I?”

“You’re just delusional. How could Brother Shen possibly like you?”

“It’s not like Brother Shen likes you either! Your name wasn’t on the Sky Mirror.”

“That’s… that’s the person Brother Shen loves most. Right, the Sky Mirror shows the person Brother Shen loves most! I must be second… or third…”

“Pfft!”

A commotion erupted around him.

The result shown by the Sky Mirror… was the person Shen Bingsi loved most.

And the person Shen Bingsi loved most was him.

It was like biting into a sour plum; slowly, a sweet aftertaste filled his mouth.

His heart began to pound faster—thump, thump.

Rong Xie lowered his gaze slightly, avoiding Shen Bingsi’s stare. He wasn’t ready to respond yet. Was it really okay to confess in public like this?

Although, he had long harbored a premonition. In terms of depth of affection, he might not lose to any of Shen Bingsi’s other admirers. After all, they were lifelong friends, growing up together since childhood…

Wait, something wasn’t right.

Rong Xie looked up again, stealing a glance at Shen Bingsi’s expression.

Since coming out, Shen Bingsi’s eyes had been lifeless, his face pale and green. He looked utterly soul-lost and desolate. Up close, it was even more apparent. Rong Xie had never seen him look like this.

Rong Xie’s joy extinguished instantly.

He asked, “What’s wrong? Why do you look so terrible?”

Shen Bingsi didn’t answer. His jaw was clenched so tight that the muscles on his cheeks bulged. He was forcefully suppressing something, unable to even open his mouth to speak.

Rong Xie tentatively reached out to touch Shen Bingsi’s hand. It felt like a piece of cold stone, the veins and knuckles on the back protruding roughly against his skin. The moment Rong Xie touched him, Shen Bingsi pulled away.

Rong Xie’s fingers lingered in mid-air.

“All of you… get out,” Shen Bingsi said darkly.

Though the beauties yearned to speak with Shen Bingsi, they obediently withdrew upon hearing his command.

As Fairy Xing Miao left, she lightly supported Shen Bingsi’s shoulder for a moment, then cast a complicated look at Rong Xie.

Finally, only the round-faced Taoist remained. He stared at Rong Xie in shock, frozen like a statue, failing to present the sword he held.

Shen Bingsi extended his hand toward him. “Sword.”

The Taoist jolted awake. He fumbled at his waist for a moment before remembering the sword was already in his hand, and hurriedly tossed it to Shen Bingsi.

Shen Bingsi’s hand was as steady as ever, catching the hilt amidst the Taoist’s clumsy throw.

He looked down at his palm, as if gazing upon his own fate.

“You leave too.”

Before Shen Bingsi even finished speaking, the round-faced Taoist had already vanished like smoke.

The sky had darkened unnoticed. The moon had yet to rise, but stars pierced the clouds one by one, their faint light shrouding the two figures in the courtyard.

“This is… Photoelectric White Orchid.” A self-mocking smile seemed to lace Shen Bingsi’s voice.

“Yes.” Rong Xie didn’t understand why he looked so sad. “Just now, that Taoist asked me to pick a weapon you use when you’re in a bad mood. I didn’t know what you used besides Sheng Xie, but we bought this sword at an auction together. At the time, your entire fortune was only thirty-two thousand spiritual stones, and you spent thirty thousand on it. I figured you must really like this sword.”

Shen Bingsi let out another short laugh. He drew the sword from its sheath and examined it under the starlight. The snow-bright blade reflected his crimson eyes.

Rong Xie’s heart skipped a beat.

“Rong Er, it won’t hurt much.” Shen Bingsi stepped closer to Rong Xie, reaching out to pull him into an embrace. His palm stroked upward along Rong Xie’s spine until it reached the back of his neck, his cold hand cupping the vertebrae there.

Rong Xie felt Shen Bingsi’s shoulder press down on him. It was broad, like a heavy quilt, and nestling in his arms felt comfortable. But Rong Xie’s stomach hurt terribly, as if it were shattering.

He looked up and saw the stars in the sky turning blood-red one by one.

…

A force grabbed the back of Rong Xie’s head, lifting him off the ground.

As he floated into mid-air, he saw his own body collapse like a boneless sack, and Shen Bingsi kneeling on the ground beside it.

The courtyard shrank below him, the two figures becoming as negligible as ants.

The majestic Mirror Palace crouched atop the highest peak of the towering mountains—Mystic Peak. In the distance, the earth was shrouded in a grim black mist.

Far away, the moon rose. A strange, bloody mist erupted, instantly seizing the moon. Just as it had dyed the stars, it soaked the moonlight, casting a ferocious blood-red glow over everything on earth!

The Heavenly Demon!

This was the Heavenly Demon that would “ascend” as soon as darkness fell!

He never imagined it “ascended” like this.

The hairs on Rong Xie’s back stood up. Suspended in mid-air, he faced the cataclysm sweeping across heaven and earth directly. The terror, mixed with a tragic grandeur, left him both frightened and awestruck.

The shock and doubt of being stabbed in the back by Shen Bingsi were temporarily thrown to the back of his mind. Rong Xie hugged himself, shivering, his eyes wide open, unwilling to miss a single detail of the anomaly.

Just then, a blinding golden light shot up from below.

The golden light slashed across half the sky, striking the blood moon with lightning speed. It traversed ten thousand miles of rivers and mountains, cleaving the heavy night, searing a brilliant blade of light into Rong Xie’s eyes.

Buzz—

The vibration of a Transmission Jade rang out. Rong Xie snapped his eyes open. The golden light and blood moon vanished from his vision, replaced by a purely white background.

He lay where he was, motionless, staring blankly upward, his eyes unfocused.

It hurt. His stomach hurt, and his chest felt so tight he could barely breathe.

After a long while, he slowly raised his hand and touched the spot where the Photoelectric White Orchid had pierced him. It was intact; there was no terrifying hole.

A breath escaped him slowly, very slowly.

It was a dream.

But the thought of Shen Bingsi calling his name so gently, holding him, only to drive the sword Rong Xie had personally chosen for him into his body… Rong Xie couldn’t stop shaking, realizing his cheeks were wet with tears.

That dream was too real.

Everything felt as if it had truly happened.

Buzz—

The Transmission Jade kept buzzing.

Rong Xie reached out and touched something cold. He picked it up and habitually placed it to his ear.

Realizing something was wrong, he brought it in front of his eyes. It was a black slab, light and thin, made of a strange material. It wasn’t a Transmission Jade, but a weird gadget Rong Xie had never seen before.

“This is…”

The black surface suddenly lit up, startling Rong Xie. He threw it away, and the slab hit the ground, sliding far away like a spinning top.

Rong Xie sat up, his body still weak. He looked around and found that there was nothing in this place—only a white ceiling and floor.

…And that glowing black slab.

“Excuse me, is anyone here?” Rong Xie asked tentatively as he quickly retrieved the fallen object.

No one answered.

Rong Xie looked down at the black slab. Thankfully, it hadn’t cracked. Barging into someone’s home by mistake and breaking their things would have been terribly rude.

Suddenly, the slab buzzed again. The front lit up, and a very beautiful small picture appeared on the screen, with a line of small text floating above it.

The characters were different from what Rong Xie was used to, but that didn’t stump him. With a little guessing, he realized they were simplified versions of certain characters.

Banxia Novels Friendly Reminder: The work you subscribed to, “Offering the Dragon Aotian to the World,” has been updated! Click to view.

Rong Xie was confused. What is a “Dragon Aotian”? Why offer this heaven to the world? And “click”—did that mean tapping it with a finger?

As the thought crossed his mind, his finger tapped the text. The image on the slab changed as expected, presenting a full page of text to Rong Xie.

A familiar name caught his eye:

The Great Dao has been proven. The Demon-Slaying Sword Saint, Shen Bingsi, transformed into a streak of golden lightning, cleaving heaven and earth, splitting the World-Destroying Heavenly Demon in two!

Stars tainted with demonic energy fell like rain, as if mourning his dead beloved… Shen Bingsi had finally succeeded in Killing his Wife to Prove the Dao. Only, no one could have guessed that the “Wife” in his heart was actually that man!

The Head Butler of Huanxue Villa, the forever reliable rear guard, his lifelong bosom friend—Rong Xie!

Rong Xie jumped in fright, almost throwing the slab away again.

“Why are Bingsi’s and my names on this? W-what nonsense is this spouting?”

Full of suspicion, he looked closer. With each tap of his finger, the simulated book pages on the screen turned one by one. Unknowingly, he finished reading the content surrounding that page.

His legs gave way, and he slowly sank back to the floor. Rong Xie sat there, curled up, burying his face in his knees.

He wanted quiet.

He needed quiet.

This “Offering the Dragon Aotian to the World” was a popular storybook novel. The phrasing and sentence structures were different from what Rong Xie was used to. He forced himself to read through it, then read the even messier comments section, roughly understanding what this book was about.

Though unbelievable, it was indeed the story of his best friend, Shen Bingsi.

The novel started from Shen Bingsi’s childhood, chronicling his entry into the Lingjing Sect, his cultivation of the Heartless Path, his rise to become the youngest Adjudicator in the cultivation world, and his adventures slaying demons and traveling the four seas, leading a group of young male and female cultivators to fight against the final villain, the World-Destroying Heavenly Demon.

The novel was over three thousand chapters long, rich in content, depicting the protagonist Shen Bingsi’s adventures, his battles against various types of demons, and his bonds formed with handsome men and beautiful women from different regions. The “Dragon Aotian” in the title was a term describing protagonists like Shen Bingsi: those with tragic backgrounds who endured dark periods, but through sheer will and luck, counterattacked all the way to the peak of the world, becoming a legend.

Of course, Rong Xie couldn’t read all of it. He found this information in the synopsis and reviews.

What he focused on was the ending.

In the end, to fight the Heavenly Demon and save the world, Shen Bingsi needed to rapidly increase his power. The Sky Mirror revealed that as long as he could achieve “Killing the Wife to Prove the Dao,” he could ascend on the spot and reach the realm of Great Perfection, gaining enough power to rival the Heavenly Demon.

But Shen Bingsi didn’t have a “Wife.”

The Sky Mirror represented the will of the Heavenly Dao and never made mistakes.

It told him that this “Wife” did not mean a wife or Dao Companion in the secular sense, but represented the truest love in his heart. Shen Bingsi might have suppressed this feeling, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist.

Shen Bingsi pondered repeatedly with no result, and could only ask the Sky Mirror for clarity.

And so, the novel progressed to the scene in the Mirror Palace, exactly the same as what Rong Xie had experienced.

Only this time, he was outside the situation. From the perspective of a bystander, he saw more information. He saw those young men and women rushing to the Mirror Palace from the Four Continents and Seven Seas, ready to sacrifice themselves to let Shen Bingsi prove his Dao. He saw Shen Bingsi’s Dao Heart on the verge of shattering when the Sky Mirror’s result appeared. He saw that after his death, Shen Bingsi successfully proved his Dao, defeated the World-Destroying Heavenly Demon, and saved the world.

At the end of the story, Shen Bingsi stood alone, facing the setting sun. Behind him, two beautiful silhouettes followed quietly…

Reading this, Rong Xie’s emotions surged, and his eyes grew moist. It turned out he had died for Shen Bingsi’s love. He was the biggest obstacle to Shen Bingsi proving his Dao. Faced with a great enemy, Shen Bingsi had no other choice but to kill him.

The reason was entirely justified, yet Rong Xie’s mood didn’t improve in the slightest.

His mind was a mess. He picked up the slab again and slid his finger, causing many comments to pop up.

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