"I..."
Mo Fan opened his mouth.
Looking at the flawlessly beautiful face so close at hand, made even more vivid and radiant by anger, Mo Fan's brain actually went blank for half a second.
She really is beautiful. Moreover, in this simple and dilapidated servant courtyard, the cold, faint fragrance wafting from her hair was actually so pleasant that it made his mind ripple slightly.
But immediately after, Mo Fan pinched his own thigh hard, forcibly jolting himself awake.
Now was not the time to be a simp! His shady secret of being a Necromancer absolutely could not be exposed at this critical juncture.
Therefore, after the initial panic, his "corporate veteran heart"—tempered thousands of times from rolling in the bottom-tier mud—began to stir again.
Looking at the ice beauty before him, Mo Fan keenly perceived one point.
Although Shen Qiu's current appearance was aggressive and overbearing, her eyes lacked the pure "killing intent" that high-tier cultivators showed when looking at ants.
On the contrary, in those clear eyes, there was more grievance, curiosity, and even... a trace of naïve, sheltered adorkableness.
Mo Fan thought it over. Since his lie had been forced to the edge of a cliff by the opponent's straightball, relying on making up more nonsense to muddle through was clearly impossible.
Then the best defense is offense!
Play along, go for broke, and defeat magic with magic!
"Hooo..."
Mo Fan let out a long breath.
The trace of constraint and panic originally on his face slowly faded, replaced by a calmness as if he had been driven to a dead end and finally dropped all his disguises.
Even in the depths of his eyes, a faint trace of self-deprecation and deep affection was revealed at precisely the right magnitude.
The Oscar-winning actor possessed him once again.
"Miss Shen."
Mo Fan didn't retreat. Instead, he looked directly into Shen Qiu's anger-burning eyes, his voice low and hoarse. "To tell you the truth, that day at the martial arena, I did it on purpose."
Shen Qiu sneered. She was just about to flare up and say, "You really are a lecher," but was forcibly blocked by Mo Fan's next words.
"But, if I didn't do that, would you ever look down at me in this lifetime?"
Mo Fan laughed self-deprecatingly. He pointed at his washed-out coarse cloth shirt, then pointed at this dilapidated mud hut.
"You are the highly anticipated championship seed. And me? I am just a bottom-tier servant without even a Spirit Root."
Mo Fan's voice even appropriately carried a deep sense of helplessness and fatalism.
"If I followed the rules, acting subserviently like an honest man, the distance between you and me would be the difference between the clouds and the mud! You would never know there was a person named Lu Xiaoqi in the outer court, let alone stand alive in front of my door like you are now."
Mo Fan took half a step forward. His eyes were so fervent they seemed capable of melting icebergs.
"I know I am not worthy of you. Therefore, I could only use the quarterfinals—the only opportunity to stand on the same stage as you."
"I only ask to leave a name in your world, even if it is a cursed one."
After finishing this soul-stirring, tragic romance confession, Mo Fan didn't hesitate at all. He took a step back very bachelor-like and bowed deeply to Shen Qiu.
He even closed his eyes, adopting a posture of offering his neck to the executioner.
"It is my crudeness and vulgarity that offended the young lady's pure reputation. If Miss Shen feels humiliated, then kill me right here tonight to apologize for my crime."
"I, Lu Xiaoqi... will absolutely not fight back."
The night wind blew past.
The courtyard plunged into a deathly silence.
Mo Fan kept his eyes closed, but his heart was beating like a drum crazily.
"Don't actually do it, Big Sis. I'm just being polite. If you really pull out your whip, I'll have to risk exposure and let Mo Yan out to fight you..."
However, the whip he anticipated never fell.
After all, at this moment, Shen Qiu's entire being was completely dumbfounded.
From childhood to adulthood, she had been cultivating bitterly deep in the mountains. The male cultivators she interacted with either kept a respectful distance due to her aptitude, or treated her with hypocritical politeness for various ulterior motives.
When had she ever experienced a battle formation like this?
This kind of "modern straightball"—carrying a heavy sense of fatalism and helplessness, yet extremely direct and passionate—acted like a massive iron hammer, directly frying the CPU of this ice beauty!
The bellyful of anger and questions she had originally prepared felt like a heavy punch landing on a ball of cotton when faced with Mo Fan's "If I didn't do that, would you ever look at me in this lifetime?" It was soft, and even tasted a bit sweet.
Shen Qiu looked at the youth before her, bowing deeply with his eyes closed waiting for death.
Stripped of the blood, grime, and arrogance from the arena stage, he stood quietly under the moonlight. That handsome face carried a resolution of "viewing death as going home."
Shen Qiu's heartbeat suddenly skipped half a beat.
An incredibly bizarre thought even uncontrollably popped into her head: He... actually looks quite cute? And, he actually gave up his life just for me?
"You... You..."
The ice beauty instantly broke character.
That blush spread from her snow-white neck all the way to the roots of her ears, astonishingly hot. She stumbled half a step back in a flurry, even stuttering her words.
"Even so, you can't do that! Who... who chases people like this! Do you know what other people are saying about me..."
Hearing this flustered tone, Mo Fan, with his head bowed, breathed a sigh of relief in his heart.
"I have a chance!"
On the surface, however, he still maintained his deep affection and climbed right up the pole she handed him. He slowly raised his head, and with an extremely innocent gaze, even carrying a bit of humbly seeking advice, he asked back:
"Then... how does Miss Shen think I should chase you?"
BOOM!
Shen Qiu's face instantly turned as red as a ripe tomato.
Being asked face-to-face by a boy so directly how to chase her, she was so embarrassed she wanted to find a crack in the ground and crawl in.
But the pride of the ice goddess made her forcibly bite the tip of her tongue to steady her mind, trying to regain the initiative.
"I... I don't care if you truly like me, or if you're just using sweet words to scheme against me!"
Shen Qiu took a deep breath, trying hard to make her voice sound cold and ruthless, speaking seriously.
"But if you think you can use this underhanded pity play to disturb my Dao Heart, so that I will go easy on you in tomorrow's quarterfinals out of guilt from tonight..."
"Then let me tell you, absolutely impossible!"
Hearing this sentence, Mo Fan's eyes lit up abruptly.
Just as planned!
This was the exact sentence he had been waiting for!
Mo Fan immediately put away the deep affection mixed with frivolity and helplessness from just now. The muscles on his face instantly tightened, swapping to an extremely solemn expression, even carrying a fanatical martial arts spirit.
"Miss Shen can rest assured!"
Mo Fan straightened his back, speaking loudly with righteous indignation.
"I admire you precisely because of your unparalleled, peerless elegance on the arena stage! Tomorrow's battle is the greatest glory of my, Lu Xiaoqi's, life!"
"Therefore, please make sure to use 120% of your full strength! Use your strongest killer moves against me! By no means, by no means must you hold even half a bit of pity for me because of tonight's events!"
"If I shrink back even half a step on the stage, I am willing to pay any price!"
Mo Fan spoke with impassioned generosity, but his inner OS was praying frantically.
"Grandma, I beg you, please whip me with all your might tomorrow! Absolutely do not hold back! If you hold back even a single point of strength, it'll be hard for me to fake a forfeit!"
These righteous, self-sacrificing words thoroughly shocked Shen Qiu.
After hearing them, she was completely bewildered.
A Category 10 hurricane whipped up in Shen Qiu's mind.
"Does he really just purely like me? With no other ulterior motives? He doesn't even want his life, just to be able to fight me fair and square in the arena?"
"Could it be... I wrongly blamed him before?"
"But... if I really injure him tomorrow, will it hurt a lot for him? If... if I really date a mixed-Spirit Root disciple... what will the elders in the sect think? Will Mom and Dad beat me to death?"
The more the ice beauty thought about it, the further she drifted. Her thoughts had already flown beyond the ninth heaven.
The more she thought, the shyer she became, her cheeks burning like they were roasting over a stove. Right now, she completely didn't dare to look into Mo Fan's "deeply affectionate" eyes again, terrified that one more glance would make her fall in completely.
"Th-Then fine!"
Shen Qiu abruptly pulled up her hood, tightly covering those flushed red cheeks, and turned around as if running for her life.
Before leaving, she didn't forget to drop a harsh line that she thought sounded very cold and ruthless, but to Mo Fan's ears sounded incredibly tsundere:
"We will see the truth on the battlefield tomorrow! I, Shen Qiu... do not like men who are too weak!"
Before her voice even faded, that gray-black figure acted like a startled rabbit. With a tap of her toes, she disappeared into the vast night with a whoosh, her speed unknown how many times faster than when she arrived.
The night wind blew past again.
Leaving Mo Fan alone, maintaining his righteous posture, standing in front of the broken wooden door, looking at the empty courtyard, silently messy in the wind.
"She... just left?"
Mo Fan scratched his head, his expression becoming extremely bizarre.
"What exactly is this girl trying to do? Not sleeping in the middle of the night, risking being discovered to run over here..."
"Just to notify me, so I can take a harder beating tomorrow?"
Mo Fan shook his head and backhandedly closed the courtyard door.
"Whatever. In any case, tomorrow's wrap-up scene is secured."