ATAC Chapter 72: Calming Shao Yanxi Down

You should read this chapter over at Travis Translations – It’s free and the ad revenue is much better for me!

It’s barely past the nighttime rush hour at this point so the roads are still packed. Shao Yanxi continues to sulk and Liu Yu’an can’t dig anything out of him no matter how he asked. He even closed his eyes to run away metaphorically.

Liu Yu’an is really frustrated that he just keeps everything to himself instead. He feels like beating someone up, but of course he treasures him too much to do that.

They thus drive home like this. When they arrive, Liu Yu’an calls out to him, saying, “we’re home,” and unfastens his seatbelt. Shao Yanxi pulls his arm back though.

“I need to ask you something,” Shao Yanxi, despite his comically engorged eyes, has a seriousness to his expression, “is this world the first world you have ever been to?”

Oh? Liu Yu’an’s mind quickly grasps what he’s getting at. He smiles a little and leans forward, kissing him on the eye, and says, “this is not the first world, but, it is the first ever world in which I had a partner. I never thought about it, but the cannon fodder is usually single in these virtual worlds, huh. Now that I think about it, perhaps the reason I’ve been single despite going to so many worlds before, is so that I can finally meet you, clean. To meet my bestest best baby, Yanxi. I love you. So stop overthinking it, ok?”

Shao Yanxi tears up again. His tear glands really are oversensitive.

The more Liu Yu’an said, the more he felt like crying, first from sadness, then from surprise and happiness.

He sniffles, but still tries to act calm. He slowly leans over towards Liu Yu’an under his gentle, loving gaze, and hugs his waist, before burying his head in his chest.

Soon enough, Liu Yu’an’s puffer coat is wet. He has enough clothes on inside and doesn’t notice it for now. He holds Shao Yanxi’s waist with one hand, and caress his head with the other. Rubbing through his hair, he kisses Shao Yanxi’s ear.

The tingling sensation makes Shao Yanxi shudder slightly, but he doesn’t object, letting Liu Yu’an’s tongue run the shape of his ear. He gets the seatbelt out of the way, so that Liu Yu’an’s hand can sneak into his clothes, and touch him on his chest. He can’t help but start expecting something inside.

He ‘mm’s quietly and closes his eyes, feeling how Liu Yu’an’s tongue moves from his ear towards his lips, and pry it open, stretching inside and establishing itself within his mouth. It dances with his own tongue, asserting himself, dominating him.

Shao Yanxi feels slightly out of breath, but he doesn’t want to push Liu Yu’an away either; he likes the feeling, the feeling that he is deeply loved and cherished by Liu Yu’an. He also likes the feeling when they are ‘interacting’ in bed at a negative distance away as well.

Liu Yu’an seems to know exactly what he is thinking. “Want me?” And he goes on to satisfy him here and now.

Uh, in the car park. Even though he knows it’s practically deserted most of the time, when his mind calms back down a little, Shao Yanxi angrily complains, “Liu Yu’an, you bastard, you can’t wait until we’re back at home? What if we were seen?”

While Shao Yanxi is grinding his teeth, Liu Yu’an kisses his eyes again, “there’s nobody here. Don’t worry.”

Qingjiangshui is developed by Shao Yanxi, and as mentioned before, it’s rather expensive as well. In this particular building, besides them and Shao Yanxi’s guards, there’s barely anyone living here.

Their car is parked in the corner, blocked by pillars and other cars too. Liu Yu’an of course thought about privacy before committing to act; he doesn’t have that kind of fetish, to want to be seen in the act.

Shao Yanxi understands that as well, of course, but with his tummy full of Liu Yu’an’s stuff, that keeps sloshing around and would threaten to flow outside when he walks so Liu Yu’an had to carry him, he’s just angry, and decides to assign all blame to Liu Yu’an.

Liu Yu’an knows how shy he is, and he did bonk him a bit hard just now, so he complies with whatever Shao Yanxi says, until they’re back home.

When Liu Yu’an is carrying him to the bathroom to get cleaned up, Shao Yanxi stops him, and asks, “when I die, and you finally go to another world, would you ever find someone else…”

Though he says it in as unfriendly a tone as possible, but he looks really down saying that.

Shao Yanxi himself knows how unreasonable it is to demand Liu Yu’an never to have someone else in this or another world or even the main world forever. He should be happy that Liu Yu’an is wholly dedicated to him his entire life here, but, when he imagines him being with someone else in the future, to kiss them, to hug them, to call them baby, to flirt with them… He just can’t help it.

He would want to cry, to throw a tantrum, to kill them.

Liu Yu’an really is right about his antagonistic tendencies. He has no morals. He is beyond salvation.

Though Liu Yu’an has considered the question already. He is certain that he likes Shao Yanxi, so much so that he doesn’t want to separate from him.

He thus thought about bringing him outside to his world. What makes it more difficult though is… mainly the difference between them, in a broad sense.

Humanity is already galactic, of course. The labour force is entirely automated. People have a lot of free time.

Too much free time, in fact, that they’re restless and do reckless things, like having wars and fighting. Not the formal ‘I hereby declare war’ kind, but the sneaky, guerilla, undercurrent kind.

Most importantly, he ranks triple-S in psychic strength. At his adulthood ceremony, that warmongering dad of his wanted him to expand territory and influence for him. So he ran and assumed a fake identity.

The problem is, that fake identity doesn’t have the points nor the authority to coerce the Centre into cooperating. He has to use his real identity… Which will mean his dad will find him.

Oh, where will his fair halcyon days with Shao Yanxi go then? He’ll either be on the battlefield or on his way to the battlefield. The kind of battlefield that he can’t even have Shao Yanxi tune into on TV to watch his valiant form.

What a mess.

Shao Yanxi doesn’t know what Liu Yu’an is thinking of course, so when Liu Yu’an is silent, he can’t help but feel more and more in the dumps. He knows he can’t just hold onto Liu Yu’an forever, but… Can’t he at least lie to him and cheer him up, just for a moment?

He feels like crying again.

He doesn’t want to cry in front of Liu Yu’an for this either. He pushes him away and quickly walks into the bathroom with wobbly steps, locking the door in the process.

“Yanxi!”

Liu Yu’an understands Shao Yanxi’s thought process soon enough, especially seeing how upset he seemed.

Through the glass door of the bathroom, he can see Shao Yanxi leaning on the door with his back, and slowly slouching to the floor.

He didn’t even need to see his shoulders shaking to imagine he’s crying inside.

It pains him to see that. So Liu Yu’an wants to explain. Before he does, though, he asks him a question, “Yanxi, are you willing to go back into the main world with me?”

When Shao Yanxi hears it, he wants to tell him ‘yes’ while tears still trickled down his face.

Liu Yu’an explains before he’s calmed enough to answer, “I have to tell you something before you make your final decision. One, technology has advanced. It’s a galactic civilisation there. Two, labour force is replaced by autonomous robots, so humans have too much free time. Three, endless free time means they’re restless. So the world isn’t at peace. People fight for power in proxy wars and skirmishes. Four, they normally happen under wraps, and most people are virtually unaffected, but… If it’s me, if I go back out, I’ll definitely be dragged into the battlefield. If you follow me, it’ll be really painful for you without psychic strength; if you stayed somewhere safe, we won’t be able to see each other.”

Shao Yanxi ponders his words carefully, before asking, “why would you definitely be dragged into the battlefield.”

“…”

Because I dodged my conscription?

True, but it sounds really sketchy like that.

He decides to tell Shao Yanxi this instead, “because our ambitious Emperor is a warmonger that keeps mongering wars to secure power and influence from other factions. He forces all residents at psychic strength A or above into conscription at 18. I dodged mine.”

Shao Yanxi is actually most shocked by the word ’emperor’ in that explanation.

Their worlds really are very different, huh.

Another question strikes his mind, though. He asks, “how old are you?”

“24.”

“I mean in your world.”

“Also 24.”

“Oh.” Shao Yanxi mutters. So he’s still younger than he is. He’s unhappy.

“What did you do these six years?”

“Working in the centre and going to the different worlds,” Liu Yu’an turns around, sitting on the glass door, back-to-back with Shao Yanxi, “you remember ‘Evernight,’ right? The last world I went to was a virtual world born from ‘Evernight.'”

Liu Yu’an can hear Shao Yanxi gasp slightly. He smiles to himself and continues, “yeah, ‘Evernight.’ I was the Emperor of the Yaoguai. For over a hundred years.”

“Oh… No wonder your Emperor of the Yaoguai character looked so strikingly realistic. But wait, you… You act really differently to the previous ‘Liu Yu’an,’ didn’t you?”

Liu Yu’an knows what he’s referring to.

If he could act so out-of-character as ‘Liu Yu’an,’ then he wouldn’t have had to act exactly like the ‘Emperor of the Yaoguai’ did, would he?

Liu Yu’an explains to him, “because this world is no longer bound by plot, so I could just be myself, but I was maintaining the consistency of the character of the ‘Emperor of the Yaoguai’ in my Evernight job.”

“Why is this world no longer bound by plot?” Something seems to almost connect in this mind. He has even started holding his breath.

Liu Yu’an says, “because this virtual world has collapsed, and its timeline has been reset by us at great cost.”

Collapse, reset…

Shao Yanxi could work out what they mean from the definition alone. He suspects it’s his fault too. Otherwise, Liu Yu’an wouldn’t have had to ‘capture’ him either.

‘Capture’… He doesn’t like the word.

Thankfully Liu Yu’an distracts him with his unfortunate career, “I had to be the Emperor for over a century… A century! Can you even imagine? Waking up every morning and narcissistically praising myself, and then for everyone else to praise myself; repeat the entire praising verbatim… or not, because the praise must be unique per day, before I could go to sleep…”

When Shao Yanxi recalls how Liu Yu’an was in the TV drama, and multiply that for the number of days in a century, he can’t help but laugh.

Liu Yu’an hears it, and decides to add to it, “it’s really, really painful. Excruciating. Ah, I thought my ears would learn to flap shut in the end. It was super embarrassing in the beginning, that I even want to slap myself when I did it. Narcissist. No, not even the word narcissist can describe what’s happening.”

“It really was.”

Then Liu Yu’an shares his experience in some other worlds with him. When Shao Yanxi finally calms down a little, Liu Yu’an tells him to open the door back up.

When Shao Yanxi does though, something starts flowing outside from his nether regions. Shao Yanxi’s face immediately goes blank and then furious. He scolds Liu Yu’an inside, but still opens the door.

Prev | Index | Next

Buy me a coffee?

TL’s notes: Liu Yu’an has a hidden identity! Didn’t expect that at all, did you?