Chapter 108
Chapter 108: A Self-Harm Escape—Fucking Empathic Resonance!
The closed door felt like a wall pressed against Xiao Man’s chest, stuffing cotton into her lungs.
Stifling, yes.
But that was all.
Like a mosquito bite on a summer night—annoying, easily scratched away.
She patted her cheeks, not hard, as if she could knock her own feelings back into place.
“Wake up, Yao Xiao Man.”
Life was short. Enjoy it while it lasted.
Wasn’t making money the sweetest thing in the world?
Why chase that hazy thing called love?
Love was unreliable. Hadn’t she paid for that lesson in her last life?
By the time she reached her room, the heaviness had thinned.
She threw herself onto the bed.
Her eyelids were lead. The moment her head hit the pillow, she sank.
The dream came again.
But this time it wasn’t the strange forest woven with Buddha-light and desire. No ancient trees, no eerie statues, no Lin Qing Xuan.
Only gray.
A boundless drifting mist, empty as an unanswered question.
She stood alone in it, and something in her chest abruptly hollowed out. The loss came like a tide—so sudden it even stung with a childish sense of being abandoned.
She almost laughed at herself in disgust.
What was she doing?
She’d just rejected him with all that righteous clarity, and now she was sulking?
And still—wasn’t he petty? One rejection and he revoked her dream access?
This man’s heart really was smaller than a needle’s tip.
“That’s not quite it.”
Tuan Tuan’s lazy voice drifted through the fog. She heard it, but saw no cat.
“People get hurt, you know.”
The tone was all mischief, like it had bought a front-row seat. “What you said was knife after knife, straight into his softest spots. Brutal.”
“Where’s your body?” Xiao Man demanded, scanning the mist. “Did you disconnect?”
“Asleep,” Tuan Tuan said, faintly offended. “A cat’s shell is a pain. Eat, sleep, eat, sleep. I should borrow a ready-made human body next time.”
“Why not cultivate one yourself?”
Tuan Tuan snorted. “You think it’s like molding clay? Lady Bai had Guan Yin Bodhisattva pulling strings and still cultivated for over a thousand years. Me? A tiny devil born of heaven and earth? Without several times her effort, I couldn’t cultivate my way into anything.”
Xiao Man went quiet.
Then her voice sharpened, cold as steel. “Tuan Tuan, put your hand on your conscience—if you have one—and answer me. Should I really stay in the Heir Apparent Manor as his shameful ‘half-madam’?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Tuan Tuan purred, coaxing.
“Do you know how mocking ‘half’ is?” Xiao Man said flatly. “Not even the right to stand beside him.”
Her calm made the words cut deeper. “Do you think I care about comfort? I worked myself to death at a desk in my last life for what—so this life could hand me a prettier cage? To be a canary with food and clothes placed in my hands? Don’t make me laugh.”
A sharp curl of scorn touched her mouth. “And the ‘love’ you keep talking about—what is it, really? Is it the scent of desire you, as a heart demon, sniffed out? Or is it just his cheap novelty and possessiveness after tasting forbidden fruit?”
She didn’t stop, each question clean and merciless.
“You keep talking about resonance between a Buddha Bone Relic and a soul from another world. Fine. Then answer me this: if another transmigrator stood here—Li Xiao Man, Wang Xiao Man—would she also trigger that so-called resonance? Would his ‘one and only’ love switch over perfectly and replace me without a seam?”
The mist seemed to freeze.
Tuan Tuan—so loud, so smug—fell silent.
Then, deep in the gray, a warm beam split the fog.
Lin Qing Xuan emerged from it, walking toward her step by step until his form sharpened into focus.
“There’s only room for you here,” he said.
His voice carried anger held down by force—and beneath it, thick, bitter grievance.
“None of your what-ifs will ever happen.”
Xiao Man’s heart jumped. Instinct screamed run.
But the world was nothing but gray walls and gray mist. There was nowhere to go.
He closed the distance until he stood before her, his presence pressing the air thin.
“My promise means nothing to you?” he demanded, eyes bloodshot. “My feelings—did you truly notice nothing?”
“Notice what?” Xiao Man turned her face away, stubborn to the end.
“I still haven’t done enough?” His voice dropped into a growl.
When she tried to dodge again, something in him finally snapped.
His arm shot out, fast and sure, catching her wrist. He yanked her forward and locked her into his embrace.
“Why do you always avoid me?”
“Lin Qing Xuan!” Xiao Man struggled, fury and panic twisting together. “Let go!”
“You’re an eminent monk,” she spat. “This is forcing me—this is illegal!”
His arms tightened, but the brute force eased; he held her with unyielding insistence instead, leaving no gap at all.
“I don’t want to let go.”
He buried his face at her neck, voice muffled, stubborn beyond reason.
“Here,” he said, pressing his burning forehead to the top of her head, the words dragged from somewhere deep in his chest, “it can only be you. There is only room for you.”
Even Tuan Tuan couldn’t stand it.
“Ahem,” it said, shamelessly cutting in. “Lin Qing Xuan, she already rejected you. Maybe she’s waiting for me. Once I take human form, I’ll definitely be more handsome than you.”
Xiao Man’s temper detonated.
Waiting for you? Since when?
This heart demon and this Buddhist scion—shameless, the pair of them.
“Both of you—get lost!”
Anger and humiliation surged up, hot and violent. Like an animal cornered, her mind went white, leaving only raw instinct: escape.
She gathered all her strength into her forehead and slammed it into his chest with desperate resolve.
A muffled grunt burst out.
Not from him.
From her.
Pain exploded through her skull and chest at once, and the dream shattered like glass.
Xiao Man jerked awake in her small bed, drenched in cold sweat.
She clutched her throbbing forehead, pressed a hand to her aching chest, and stared up at the ceiling, utterly miserable.
“Fucking empathic resonance,” she hissed. “Isn’t this just self-harm as an escape?”