Chapter 85: The Promise-Breaker (Part 4): She’s So Beautiful

Mu Qian Tan was used to suppressing her emotions. She smiled faintly and let it fade. She patted the spine of the book. “Whoever makes you upset, just go beat them up. What’s the point of telling me?”

Shang Shan sighed and flopped half her face onto the bed. “I don’t want to beat anyone up. I just want to talk to you.”

“So I’m the unlucky one, huh.” Mu Qian Tan spoke coldly and glanced at her again. The girl’s half-blue face puffed out as she lay on the bed. Her brain overheated whenever it encountered information it couldn’t process, turning her cheeks red. Unable to cool down, she blew air out of her mouth repeatedly.

After blowing for a while, her chest still felt stuffy. She sniffled and blurted out, “I’m going to drown my sorro—”

“Don’t. Don’t you know drowning your sorrows in alcohol only makes them worse?” Before she could get up, Mu Qian Tan slapped the book over her face. “Your brain’s already not working great. If you pick up a drinking habit on top of that, you’re done for.”

She had the worst tolerance for alcohol—one sip and she was out, her mind going foggy but her energy surging. Last time in East City, she could at least go out for a run to vent. But now the streets were packed with people, leaving nowhere for her to make a scene. She could only go crazy in the room. Neither beating nor scolding would drive her away, and in the end, Mu Qian Tan herself would suffer. So it had to be nipped in the bud.

Half her face covered by the book, Shang Shan stayed silent for a moment before mumbling, “This book smells so good.”

Mu Qian Tan pulled the blanket up to her waist and replied indifferently, “Of course it does. It’s full of knowledge, after all.”

That had been one of her favorite jokes as a kid. Around ten years old, she was obsessed with cheese and wanted to eat it every meal. But that high-calorie food made her bloat up like a balloon, and she had a body that gained weight easily. If she couldn’t control her mouth, her face would puff up. Her image-conscious mother wouldn’t allow her daughter to have even the slightest flaw in appearance, so such food never appeared on the family table.

At that age, she was growing and had a big appetite with heavy tastes, but she could only go hungry, eating bland, portion-controlled food. The result of her bird-like stomach was a slender figure—slim enough to look good in clothes, but actually thinner than healthy.

Even at that level, she still had to “diet,” or she wouldn’t be worthy of the killer dresses her mother picked out for her.

Imperfect people chasing perfection always paid a price.

During that time, hunger burned in her gut, cravings gnawed at her, and munching on greens made her dizzy. While reading, she’d hallucinate food from the words between the lines—knowledge in class became cheese, skin layers turned into mille-feuille, Roman shields into pizza. It faded once she got used to it.

Without the power to change reality, one could only adapt.

Mu Qian Tan stared at the folds in the blanket, as if they were her mother’s perpetually furrowed brows. Even after fully obeying that woman’s orders and enduring those inhuman modifications, all her passion earned was cold indifference.

Her mother was another promise-breaker. The joy of seeking her out, only to end up with nothing—she had felt that disappointment too.

Was that why she had acted on those words?

Before she realized it, the Freezing Technique had already activated.

No, she almost forgot. That was no longer her mother.

“It’s not the smell of the book, it’s the scent on it…” Shang Shan pressed the book down against her face, letting the pages cling closer to her cheek.

She took a deep breath, tilted her chin up to meet the book, immersed in it. The hand holding the cover curled slightly, fingertips turning white. Then she pulled it down a bit, revealing her eyes over the top of the book. “It’s your scent.”

“…” Mu Qian Tan snapped back to reality, gazing back at her with complicated eyes.

Such an action and words from anyone else would absolutely count as harassment. But on this stupid dragon, there was no such intent.

With the book covering everything below her eyes, those eyes stood out even more—pure and clear, the unique innocence of a girl, without offense or aggression. She was just voicing her honest thoughts, like a heartfelt sigh drawn out by a beautiful sight.

The spark of anger that had just risen in her heart died down again. Having spent so much time with her, Mu Qian Tan knew this was a straightforward girl with a simple mind. In a flat tone, she said, “If you were a guy, you’d be dead many times over by now.”

Shang Shan said, “I’m a girl.”

“…Shut up.”

Mu Qian Tan pinched the bridge of her nose, planning to lift the blanket and sleep. Shang Shan mumbled again, “They didn’t expect me to come, so why did they say it before and make me want to go?”

“He already said it, didn’t he? He was joking. Who told you to take it seriously?”

“How can you joke about something like that? That would just be lying to me.”

“Just treat it as a lie then.”

Shang Shan picked up the book, closed it properly, and set it aside. Her palm rubbed over the cover. “Why lie to me?”

Mu Qian Tan said, “Because you’re easy to fool.”

Shang Shan said, “So if someone’s easy to fool, they get fooled.”

“Nonsense. You think they’d go fool the hard-to-fool ones? You’re the fool; others aren’t.” Not knowing how long this stupid dragon would keep bothering her, Mu Qian Tan wanted to end the topic quickly. She poked her forehead. “Let me ask you, what were you doing following them around before?”

Shang Shan was stunned for a moment. She reached to grab the finger but missed as it withdrew, so she could only rub her forehead herself. “I always talked a lot, but no one wanted to listen, or they’d stop listening midway, or just not talk to me at all. But they were willing to listen and even respond! I followed behind them playing around, and after a while, we became friends.”

Her voice grew quieter as she spoke. Back then, she’d just been a little over ten. She was smarter now, even with her dim wits. Thinking back to chattering endlessly behind her “friends’ ” butts— even rambling about watching two ants fight—did they really care?

They just occasionally spared her some time amid their laughter, and even in those precious moments she treasured, she’d often do chores for them: sweeping, taking out trash, wiping tables, and so on.

Did they keep her around because they wanted to hear her talk, or because she was quick on her feet and willing to work?

Probably the latter.

Some beautiful memories didn’t hold up to recollection. The same events, fermented over the years, could reveal such ugly details.

But she found it strange—everything related to her master carried anger and sadness, yet recalling it only made her heart ache sweetly and happily.

Why was that?

Shang Shan smiled, bit her lip, and whispered, “Anyway, I was happy back then. I didn’t lose out.”

Mu Qian Tan’s tone grew a bit serious. “You’re a girl, and a somewhat pretty one at that. Following a bunch of men so much older than you around every day—weren’t you afraid of people in your village gossiping? Don’t you know the tongues of men are fearsome?”

She always scorned backbiting, but even so, she made sure not to leave any handles for lewd thoughts. Other people’s eyes and mouths were tolerant and clean toward oneself, but harsh and filthy toward others. Believing that kept life less troublesome.

Shang Shan sat up straight and asked, “What’s that got to do with making friends?”

Mu Qian Tan said, “Nothing, so what was the result?”

The result was obvious. Shang Shan lowered her head and said nothing.

It was a clever way to put it—friendship had no necessary link to age or gender, but talking to this brainless idiot left no room for nuance; it had to be put bluntly. Mu Qian Tan said, “Your worldviews, experiences, ideas—all different. For you to stick together, either they wanted something from you, or they didn’t care about you at all. Easy to fool means you get fooled. Easy to bully means you get bullied.”

The girl buried her face in the blanket and whined twice, trying to escape.

Mu Qian Tan grabbed her ear and yanked her up. “Others have families and careers—do you think they’d play house with you every day? If you hung out more with kids like Qin He, I could praise you for having taste. But those people toyed with you completely. One casual word and you come all the way out here. Hopeless.”

Shang Shan’s head tilted as she was yanked, her cheek puffing out then deflating. “Even if it was casual, once you promise, you have to follow through. A promise worth a thousand gold, right?”

Mu Qian Tan scoffed. “You really think promises are worth that much? Lies and promises are just words. Once spoken, they’re gone—no proof at all. Why would you think they’re worth a thousand gold?”

The woman was somewhat angry, her brows furrowed, lips still pale pink. Under the lamp, her face carried a frosty chill, but it wasn’t as frightening as before. Shang Shan swallowed, placed her hand on the woman’s wrist. The slight coolness transferred from the fingertips, like smooth jade.

She looked straight at her. “But my Female Teacher taught me that way before.”

Mu Qian Tan released her ear and shook her head. “You’ve really been taught wrong. All that ‘a promise worth a thousand gold,’ ‘kindness and integrity’—shaping people toward the light without facing the world’s darkness. That’s the real misleading.”

Shang Shan blinked and said softly, “I just thought the person I wanted to see would want to see me too.”

Not sure who she was talking to, Mu Qian Tan murmured lowly, “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Shang Shan looked troubled. “So should I promise things like that next time?”

Mu Qian Tan said irritably, “Promise whoever you like, whoever matters to you. Don’t promise whoever you hate or whoever’s insignificant. It’s that simple—what’s there to agonize over? Is that big head of yours a watermelon? Does it go thump when you tap it?”

Shang Shan actually patted her own head. “It thumps.”

“…” Mu Qian Tan was speechless.

Shang Shan smiled and reached out to lightly tap the woman’s forehead. “Yours thumps too.”

Mu Qian Tan slapped her hand away with a smack. “Get lost. No guts to discipline others yourself, and your sadness is self-inflicted. Don’t whine to me. Annoying.”

With that, she lay down decisively, facing the wall, as if urging her guest to leave. Shang Shan looked at her back, took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “Then I’ll go make things clear with them now.”

If she went now, who knew what she’d see. Mu Qian Tan said, “What clear? Don’t go. You might not even get to see them.”

Shang Shan said, “Why? Aren’t they right there?”

Just then, several thumps came from the door.

The hard-won conversation time interrupted like this, Shang Shan felt unwilling and was about to speak again when the knocking resumed. Only then did she sense something off.

Normal people knocked from above, even short kids. But these thumps floated up from below.

As if someone was knocking on the door while lying on the ground!