"Take Me. Or No One is Leaving."

When the first rays of the morning sun appeared, it was blocked by the mist shrouding the top of Elegant Jade Snowy Mountains as the temperature gradually decreased.

When Gu Feidi got up, he went to the kitchen to get Su Yang’s herbal soup, added another heated cover and put it by Su Yang’s quilt nest. He could see colour had returned to Su Yang’s sleeping face. He didn’t appear as pale and weak as before with the soft blush on his face.

After the morning preparations, Gu Feidi changed into his form-fitting garment and went to the yard to hone his skill.

After he did two rounds of sword practice, there was a burst of applause from the window.

Su Yang sat by the window in his fox fur coat and said with a smile, “What a beautiful performance.”

Gu Feidi smiled back, sheathed his sword and returned to the room.

Su Yang took the bowl from the top of the heated pot, drank the herbal soup in one gulp, and approached Gu Feidi for a kiss.

Gu Feidi raised his hand, took off his wrist guard and placed it on the shelf beside the folding screen. He paused his action suddenly as he stared at one of the two wristbands. At the mended marks left from a sword cut, deep in thought.

“What’s wrong?” Su Yang noticed Gu Feidi’s strange gaze.

“Do you remember…” As Gu Feidi spoke, he came forward with a wrist guard, opened the inner layer and showed the pieces of papers hidden inside.

Speechless, Su Yang certainly remembered these.

Not long after he transmigrated, when he still couldn’t accept that the people who should only exist in the script were real, he treated them as if they were only characters in the plot. So he did a lot of very stupid things and thought that the other party wouldn’t figure them out. These purposefully burned pieces of paper were one of them. They were little notes of hints, and one of his skeletons in the closet.

...The end result was Gu Feidi keeping these as his precious keepsake!

Su Yang rolled his eyes and asked, “Why are you taking them out?”

Gu Feidi didn’t answer.

His handling was gentle as he flipped out one of the pieces, and held it in his hand with bright eyes.

“Calamity Phoenix’s Everlasting Fire…” He murmured as he spread out all the pieces of paper inside of the wrist guard. The papers were face upward, so the words written on them were visible—

‘Pavilion of Infinite Knowledge’

‘highest floor’

‘southeast corner’

‘Calamity Phoenix’s Everlasting Fire’

Gu Feidi glanced at Su Yang with his eyes glistening like a starry night. He shared excitedly, “On the top of the Pavilion of Infinite Knowledge are stored all sorts of intense sun and intense blaze mental skills, especially on the bookshelf in the southeast corner… At first, Returning to the Nest was still hidden in this manual called Calamity Phoenix’s Everlasting Fire. Now I put more thought into it. I think Shizun might have expected this from the beginning. This Calamity Phoenix’s Everlasting Fire must be something extraordinary…” 

Su Yang frowned and asked, “What do you mean?”

Gu Feidi pinched the last piece of paper in his hand. “This intense heated mental skill should be enough to suppress Half-Withered Crimson. You see, this might be our lead. I need to return to the House of Jade and borrow this manual from the Pavilion of Infinite Knowledge…As long as I practice this set of mental skills, and dual cultivation with you after I complete it, it should help you tremendously.” 

“You are crazy!” Su Yang blurted in surprise. “Have you forgotten what the doctor told us? You can’t dual cultivate with me, or the extreme cold inside of me will hurt you.”

“The reason the senior told us that was because my internal energy is not strong enough to suppress the Apparition and the Half-Withered Crimson.” Gu Feidi shook his head while smiling. “But if I practice a heated nature mental skill to counter your Half-Withered Crimson, I can at least suppress the extreme cold internal energy in your body.”

This statement seemed slightly logical, but inside, Su Yang felt that something was wrong. There seemed to be a missing blank, which he couldn’t think of at present. So he could only veto by instinct. 

“No, I still don’t think this assumption is reliable.” Su Yang argued. “Plus, I still need to take my daily dose of herbal soup and spend my time close to the hot spring for winter. If you are going to the House of Jade, doesn’t that mean we would be separated?”

Gu Feidi gazed into Su Yang’s eyes for a moment and sighed helplessly. “I’ll travel as fast as possible with no rest. I’ll make a copy of Calamity Phoenix’s Everlasting Fire and be back by your side before you know it. Alright?”

Su Yang didn’t want to be separated from Gu Feidi, especially…after learning about the curse on his back...

They may not have much time together, every remaining day becomes more and more precious. 

Gu Feidi came next to him and held his soft cheeks in his hands, coaxing him in a low voice, “I’ll be back soon…Once you are back on your feet and fully recovered, we can be together for a very long time, right? I want to spend every day with you, but I also don’t want…to lose you.”

Su Yang lowered his eyes, feeling the nervousness wrapped around his heart become tighter and tighter. 

“What if that mental skill can’t help me?” He curled his lips and whispered. “What if I…leave during your absence?”

Startled, Gu Feidi was at a loss for words.

Su Yang continued, “I don’t want to be separated from you, even just for one day. If you must go back to the House of Jade, then…you have to take me with you. We already planned our return there, after we removed the Poisonous Gu, right?”

Studying the determined look on Su Yang’s face, Gu Feidi’s eyes softened by a large amount.

He put his arms around the man and held him tightly. After a long silence, Gu Feidi turned down, “It’s difficult to travel down the snowy mountain, especially with winter upon us. The snow on the mountain road is thicker. It won’t be easy for you to go down the mountain when you’re ill-protected from the cold. It’s unsuitable for you to follow.”

Logically, Su Yang also knew that he shouldn’t stop Gu Feidi from going. After all, the other party wanted to spend a long time together just as much as he did. That was why the younger man came up with a plan to seek after the mental skill from the House of Jade. And it was really inconvenient for him to leave the hot spring courtyard during winter.

Emotionally, he just didn’t want Gu Feidi to leave.

Thinking of the curse, the Apparition and the three cold nature mental skills, the conclusion to the Evil Sect’s Young Master’s story is this winter…Su Yang didn’t want to play the sensible child. 

“I don’t want to be separated from you.” He argued stubbornly. “If you want to go to the House of Jade, you have to take me with you.”

The two debated this problem, which Su Yang resolutely refused to give in on, and Gu Feidi couldn’t persuade him otherwise.

This lasted until Luo Yu came to check on Su Yang’s pulse. Su Yang right away asked the doctor whether an intense heated mental skill had the potential to suppress the Apparition and the Half-Withered Crimson in his body.

Luo Yu’s expression suddenly turned grave and gloomy. He frowned and said toward Gu Feidi, “Although the path you took in the beginning was the pure fundamental, you still learn a mental skill of righteous sun. If you learn another intense heated mental skill, your internal energy would be too strong to be contained. There is nothing in this world that doesn’t follow the principle of harm from excess amounts. The intense sun mental skill will definitely be harmful to your body. As a doctor, I advise you not to put yourself at risk.”

Hearing Luo Yu’s words, Su Yang finally realised where the lingering worry at the bottom of his heart came from.

The combination of the Apparition and the Half-Withered Crimson created the unbalanced cold inside of his body, which in terms turned what was formerly helpful internal energy into something that slowly consumed his life. Vice versa, why wouldn’t an intense heated mental skill that could rival the Half-Withered Crimson be harmful to the host?

Luo Yu’s words were not wrong. Anything could be harmful when over a safe threshold, and this mental skill was no exception.

Gu Feidi stubbornly said, “Even if my internal energy becomes too intense, as long as I can dual cultivate with Shixiong, we will neutralise our imbalance. We can go through this hardship together.”

Luo Yu snapped, “So you think dual cultivation is some kind of maths equation? Something as simple as adding and subtracting? If you don’t have the proper guidance, you’ll only endanger both of your lives!”

Gu Feidi stared at Luo Yu and slowly asked, one word at a time, “Then, would the senior please enlighten me. What do I need to do in order to save him?”

“Because I don’t know how to save him. I don’t even know the right direction to look.” He clenched his teeth. “Now there’s a chance to save him, I’ll grasp it with my dying breath, even if I know it’s a supposed remedy that would only make matters worse for me…As long as it is beneficial to Shixiong, I must try it.”

As he spoke, he cast his eyes toward Su Yang, and an indescribably bitter smile appeared on his face. “I…already have nothing else that I fear the most…”

Being watched by Gu Feidi’s profound, loving and bitter eyes, and listening to such deep words of despair…For a moment, Su Yang didn’t know what to do.

He couldn’t force Gu Feidi to stop just because it was ‘for your own good’. After careful consideration, if they switched places, he would seize every opportunity to save Gu Feidi. Just like the time in the pitch-black stone room in the Evil Sect’s Forbidden Ground, he recalled Di Ling Shijie’s warning, yet he disregarded it as he continued his path to master the Half-Withered Crimson.

But he couldn’t let Gu Feidi continue his path to self-destruction. 

Sadly, the advantage of knowing the plot in advance as a transmigrator was completely gone the moment he decided to let himself stay with Gu Feidi.

Therefore, even if he had a higher understanding of the world, he had nothing that could contribute to helping the one he loved.

Luo Yu argued with Gu Feidi more about something, which Su Yang paid zero attention to. He only knew that in the end, Luo Yu got up from the chair with a snort. 

“I won’t let you go.” He said firmly. “Your father entrusted me with caring for you two when he gave you two the jade pendant. I can’t let you take such a risk.”

With that, he left the room with a fling of his sleeves and slammed the courtyard’s gate closed.

Gu Feidi stared at the closed gate. He gradually furrowed his eyebrows as his expression became dignified. 

Su Yang sighed and reached out to hook his pinky with Gu Feidi’s and pulled the younger man out from his thoughts.

“Have you decided?” Su Yang asked. “All your effort might not be effective. You may not be able to save me, but we know you will definitely hurt yourself.”

Gu Feidi turned to face Su Yang and whispered, “But if I do nothing, I’ll definitely hate myself in the future…”

Su Yang thought for a moment and comforted, “You don’t only have me. You have your father, your friends, and all your shixiong and shidi back in the Tengyun Pavilion.”

Gu Feidi cried, “But you are the only one I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

After a moment of silence, Su Yang bit his lower lip. “...If you said it like that, your father would be very sad. After all, you are his only child.”

Gu Feidi sighed. “Although filial piety comes first…Since I’m doomed to be the last of my family line, I’m willing to be judged as a villain and enter hell for you…What I owed to my father in this life, I’ll repay it tenfold in my next life.”

For a long time, neither of them opened their mouths.

Su Yang avoided Gu Feidi’s line of sight, as he gazed toward the hot spring outside the door, which was still calm and steaming with fog. Then he shifted to the snow-capped rooftop to the never-ending peaks in the distance. 

Gu Feidi pulled on Su Yang’s hand and stood quietly on the side, facing slightly downward to stare into Su Yang’s calm face.

“Fine…” Finally, Su Yang smiled. “But I have only one request.”

Gu Feidi asked, “What’s your request?”

Su Yang got up, levelled his eyes with Gu Feidi, tilted his head without losing their eye contact, and said in a very serious tone, “If you must go back to the House of Jade, you must take me with you.”

“But your body…” Gu Feidi was obviously very reluctant. 

“If one day I wake up to find that you left me alone.” Su Yang narrowed his eyes threateningly and interrupted Gu Feidi. “I’ll travel down the snowy mountain and hunt you down by any means. Even if I have no choice but to use my light movement skill or any internal energy…If by chance I suffered from cold sickness and there was no one to warm me up…Hey! Don’t think I’m kidding, I always keep my promises.”

In the end, he added, “You also know that I don’t fear death.”

Gu Feidi was left speechless.

“Take me.” Su Yang smiled at the corner of his lips. “Or no one is leaving.”