Put Away Your Divine Techniques Now! Chapter 1333 - 396: Gu Qingyi’s Change of Heart

Chapter 396 [The Changing Gu Qingyi]

In the end, the beating never happened.

But once Chen Yan threw out lines like "I am my own dad" and "we’re not really mother and son," Gu Qingyi realized their conversation couldn’t go on.

Young Lady Gu flushed red, waving her fists more to scare him than anything. After she’d frightened Chen Yan into running off, she didn’t chase him too hard, just retreated back into the house.

·

Chen Yan ran all the way out of the neighborhood in one breath, then went for a lap around the back mountain. When he saw that Gu Qingyi wasn’t coming after him, he waited quite a while before slowly wandering back home.

When he got back, the floor‑to‑ceiling window in the living room was still that huge broken hole, glass shards scattered all over the floor.

And Gu Qingyi was sitting on the living room sofa, head tilted up, staring blankly at nothing, no one knew what she was thinking.

Seeing Chen Yan return, Gu Qingyi lifted her gaze to him, then waved her hand, her tone very calm: "Don’t be scared, I’m not going to beat you anymore."

She paused, then slowly added, "And I’m not going to try to persuade you to come Returning to the Domain Realm with me anymore either."

Chen Yan nodded. "How come you suddenly figured it out?"

"The rest of your nonsense I can ignore, but... what you said, about your grandmother, the Ghost Race ancestor, sealing off your passage to the Domain Realm at this point in time—maybe... you really can’t go to the Domain Realm for a Realm Breakthrough."

Chen Yan let out a breath of relief. "As long as you’ve thought it through, that’s good."

"However!" Gu Qingyi’s expression turned stern. "About you doing Tribulation Crossing in this world, I still can’t feel at ease! You... unless you can find a safe way, otherwise, I still have to stop you."

Chen Yan laughed.

He simply strode over, soles crunching on the broken glass on the living room floor, and walked right up to Gu Qingyi.

In the past, when Chen Yan came close to Gu Qingyi, she never thought much of it. But now, watching him walk over like this, stand in front of her, then slowly sit down, sitting right by her side...

Gu Qingyi suddenly felt like her heartbeat had just skipped a beat.

But she forcibly pressed down that faint strangeness in her heart, merely lifting her eyelids to look at Chen Yan—she herself had no idea that she was already doing her utmost to act calm, yet her eyelids were pulled tight with tension.

"I’m not going to do a Realm Breakthrough right this instant. I’ve thought of a direction, and that direction shouldn’t be that dangerous, but it’ll take time."

"I..." Gu Qingyi frowned. "I can’t stay here forever."

"You don’t need to worry. When I say ’it’ll take time,’ I don’t mean a day or two, and definitely not three to five months, but that it’ll probably take quite a long stretch."

Only then did Gu Qingyi truly feel relieved.

She pondered for a moment. "I’ll stay a few more days, then I have to go back... there’s still military business at the border defenses. In the last big battle, Snow Cliff Pass took heavy losses. I spent a lot of effort, even risked offending the Immortal Platform Chief, and lodged a complaint to... to ’her’ before I managed to get the military supplies replenished. I have to go back and see that matter through."

Chen Yan nodded. "When are you leaving?"

Looking into Chen Yan’s eyes, Gu Qingyi had originally planned to say, "The sooner the better," but when the words reached her lips, somehow they changed into, "There’s still five or six days."

"Five, six days, huh." Chen Yan thought for a moment, then smiled lightly. "Then for these next few days, I won’t cultivate, won’t think about that Broken Mirror stuff. Let’s just kick back and take a little vacation together."

Gu Qingyi looked at Chen Yan and said nothing.

·

"So, the moment I leave, you two go traveling, huh? Just had to go have fun without me, huh?"

On the phone, Chu Keqing’s tone carried a bit of plaintive resentment—though mostly it was deliberate, playful whining.

Chen Yan chuckled. "If you come back early, you can come meet up with us."

"Probably... no. I’ve still got a few days of work here. The terms the local officials are offering are a bit harsh, and the people from the Association have been begging me nonstop to come help them out and stand in for a few days. I owed them a favor before, so it’d be bad not to pay it back now."

In the end, Chu Keqing still sighed over the phone. "You two enjoy yourselves. Once I’m done here, I’ll let you know. Then... we’ll see how things look."

After Chen Yan hung up with a smile, he turned his head to look at Gu Qingyi sitting in the front passenger seat of the car.

Gu Qingyi was sitting there with a big bag of snacks in her arms. She’d even taken off her shoes, curled up in the seat into a little ball, lazy and totally at ease.

Chen Yan pressed his lips into a smile and murmured, "Does this look familiar?"

"Look like what?"

"Like that time I drove you Returning to the Domain Realm, when we went all the way north from Jinling Prefecture, over two thousand kilometers. I did all the driving, you sat in the passenger seat eating snacks, and we drove while you watched the scenery."

Hearing this, Gu Qingyi shifted her gaze away, turned her head to look out the window, and said lightly, "Mm, that trip was pretty fun too."

She didn’t dare let Chen Yan see that the corners of her mouth had already curled up into a faint, uncontrollable smile.

"So, where are we going to play?" Chen Yan patted the steering wheel.

"Anywhere." Gu Qingyi tossed a potato chip into her mouth. "Just drive. Once we get out of the neighborhood, turn left, then keep going in that direction, all the way."

·

Out the neighborhood gate, turning left just happened to be directly north.

So, they headed north.

Driving north, from the southern part of Jinling Prefecture’s city all the way up, cutting straight through Jinling’s urban area, then once they reached the river at the northern edge of the city, they got on the Yangtze River Bridge.

This road was one they’d once traveled together before. Walking it again this time, it felt a bit different—less of that desolate sense of parting, and a bit more quiet peace.