This is a cry frozen for 23 years, so hard and unyielding from the passage of time and cold, it scrapes across one's heart like the blade of a knife.
"Do you still want to listen?"
After a long wait, Li Qingming asked.
Nie Yun nodded through his sobbing: "I want to know! I want to know... whether she hates me... I hope she hates me... It's what I deserve..."
So Li Qingming bent down once more, softly continuing the unfinished story.
"On the 35th day, Jingzhe said he was ready."
"During two days of discussions, I laid out a dozen possible futures for him."
"I even explicitly told him that once he leaves the Secret Realm in the body of a human infant, he is very likely to starve to death, be killed, or have his body collapse."
"Still, he did not care much about death. Faced with novelty, the unknown, and abundance, death seemed trivial."
"Next came the discussion on how to realize it."
