Chapter 45: The Twelve Steps of the Moon Goddess

In contrast, Jiang Xiaoyu’s mouth was twitching, the expression on his face a masterpiece of complexity.

What he saw… was a completely different scene—Jiaoyue gave him a deep look, then unhurriedly, step by step, walked out of the grand hall. In the blink of an eye, she walked right back in from the outside, step by step. After… pausing for a fraction of a second, she glanced at Jiang Xiaoyu and stated: “I have attained godhood, and am no longer an immortal. From this moment on, everything in the mortal world has no further relation to me!”

A boom went off in Jiang Xiaoyu’s head, leaving only a single thought.

“She… is she walking a runway?”

After blanking for a good while, he realized the four elders were still staring in dumbfounded awe, wearing the exaggerated expressions of someone witnessing a divine miracle. He immediately realized he couldn’t leave the room hanging in dead silence.

So he raised both hands and started clapping. Clap, clap, clap.

Shaking his head from side to side, he clicked his tongue in admiration: “Beautiful! Wonderful! Awesome! Truly breathtaking! Simply breathtaking!”

As those words fell, the entire room was shaken.

Hearing this, Lady Wang let out a “wah” and began to weep, stumbling blindly toward Jiang Xiaoyu and pulling him into a tight embrace, sobbing so hard her entire body trembled.

Jiang Xiaoyu was utterly bewildered, forced to stiffen his neck and cast appeals for help in all directions. Suddenly, his eyes collided with Madam Zhao’s evasive gaze.

Madam Zhao hastily smiled a bitter smile, stood up, and dragged her stumbling self over to Jiang Xiaoyu’s side. Wrapping her arms around Lady Wang’s back, she joined in with a chorus of “ying-ying-ying” weeping.

Jiang Xiaoyu’s mouth twitched frantically!

“What is the meaning of this? Do they think my praise was too spot-on?”

He offered gentle words of comfort to the “Wang-Zhao Twin Hanging Ornaments” clinging to him: “My two dear mothers, your child was just speaking from the heart, it’s nothing worth crying over. Little sister Jiaoyue is so enchanting, every frown and smile so natural—such a masterpiece of beauty cannot go unpraised… It’s just that the dark-ink stone slabs of this grand hall don’t quite fit the mood. If we replaced them with a magnificent banquet hall, she’d certainly shine even brighter.”

The moment he finished speaking, both Lady Wang and Madam Zhao—who had just lifted their heads—let out another synchronized “wah” of weeping, wailing three parts more miserably than before.

“Huan’er… Huan’er… he feels he’s unworthy… and has given up!”

Naturally, Jiang Xiaoyu had no idea what was going through their heads, turning to seek help from Ye Lingtian, Leng Feng, and Jiaoyue, his face plastered with the four massive words: I have no desire to live.

Ye Lingtian’s face was ashen. He grabbed the wine pitcher from the table, tilted his head back to chug it dry, slammed the empty pitcher down onto the table with a thud, turned his head away, and said nothing.

Leng Feng stared fixedly at Jiang Xiaoyu, his gaze brimming with bitter pity.

As for Jiaoyue—that was even more dramatic. First, she stared fixedly at Jiang Xiaoyu, tears rolling down in heavy drops. Then she raised her right hand and flashed a “five” at Jiang Xiaoyu. Following that, she jerked her hand back, her lips moving in several aborted attempts to speak, before ultimately swallowing her words and letting out a heavy sigh.

Jiang Xiaoyu was completely lost.

He could read his father Ye Lingtian’s performance: unable to stomach something, refusing to face reality.

He could also read his prospective father-in-law Leng Feng’s performance: looking at him with bitter pity, seemingly harboring a guilty conscience.

As for his prospective wife Jiaoyue, he was completely baffled: changing her expression a dozen times in a few seconds, flashing a “five,” waving her hand, seemingly wanting to chase him and the four elders all out! What on earth… had her so rushed?

Suddenly, a flash of insight struck! A terrifying thought burst into his mind.

“Could it be… could it be… this future wife of mine is intermittently insane!”

Good grief!

The moment that thought struck, all the clues locked into place instantly.

His mother wailing and crying meant she was weeping for her wretched child—sacrificed to a family alliance.

His mother-in-law wailing and crying meant she figured that rather than trying to persuade Jiang Xiaoyu to take the bullet, it was better to cling to the future mother-in-law’s coattails for backing—after all, in this ancient era, filial piety was greater than the heavens.

And… Jiaoyue was the only one being entirely honest from start to finish. She gave them the rundown right at the start—she was a goddess…

“My god… turns out the only honest person in the whole room was Jiaoyue!”

Yet this entire scene played out before the four elders in a way completely devoid of the absurdity Jiang Xiaoyu had imagined.

Jiaoyue stared fixedly at Jiang Xiaoyu, her eyes brimming with an unshakeable, bitter sorrow. A sharp pain pierced her heart, and her tears could no longer be contained, rolling down drop by drop. Just as those tears were about to fall into the moonlit sea, she splayed the five fingers of her right hand, and the falling teardrops instantly froze into ice crystals. Following that, she threw her arm out, the ice crystals wrapped in lunar radiance unfurling layer upon layer in mid-air, weaving into twelve tiers of lunar stairs in the blink of an eye.

Ye Lingtian and Leng Feng exchanged a glance, tacitly reaching for fresh pitchers of wine. Eyeing each other with gazes as deep as abysses, the wine pitchers in their hands trembled slightly, spilling quite a bit of liquor. After a long silence, the two simultaneously spat out the line, “So be it,” and tilted their heads back to drink deeply.

Lady Wang and Madam Zhao exchanged a similar look, their lips trembling and failing to form words. Yet when they saw Jiang Xiaoyu’s bewildered eyes turned toward them, their eye sockets instantly grew red again, before they threw their arms around each other once more and wailed at the top of their lungs.

Seeing this, Jiang Xiaoyu felt as though he’d been struck by lightning, a buzzing explosion going off in his head!

“So… be it?! Hugging… each other?! This is… this is a consensus reached, they’re dead set on selling me out?!”

Jiaoyue let out a heavy sigh, turning to ascend the stairs step by step until she reached the summit. A pristine moon boat slowly sailed out from the void, and she sat sideways upon it, maintaining a cold, aloof posture like a fairy of the palace of the moon. Countless moon spirits flew out from around her, fluttering in a graceful dance. She curled the corners of her mouth upward, extended the index finger of her right hand, and gently flicked it; a moon spirit landed on her fingertip, dancing delicately. The scene froze right there.

As for Jiang Xiaoyu, he was left utterly speechless. To his eyes, there were no moon stairs or worshiping moon spirits—it was clearly just Jiaoyue hitching up her skirt, squatting slightly into a horse stance in the grand hall of the Spirit-Taming Sect, and playing a one-woman show of charades:

Jiaoyue had started with her head down, taking it step by step as if hesitant and indecisive; as she walked, she seemed to figure something out, her steps growing light and brisk; after that, she lifted her chin, walking with an aura of looking down upon the entire world. As for that astonishing, earth-shattering grand finale—she had clearly gone into a side-squat, planted a stable horse stance, and pointed a finger steadily toward the direction of the latrine at the back of the grand hall.

Jiang Xiaoyu ground his teeth: “Are none of you blessed with common sense? The little fairy needs to relieve herself! Won’t someone with conditions please go help her?”

Sigh…

Jiaoyue was indeed beautiful, beautiful beyond mortal standards—yet she happened to be a mental patient. Heaven envies the beautiful, heaven envies the beautiful indeed! What on earth was he supposed to do now?

Did he want this wife or not?

If not, the four elders certainly wouldn’t let him off.

If yes, it was nothing short of suffering. If she needed help even to use the latrine, how was he supposed to live out the rest of his days?

Amidst his wild hallucinations, his mother raised her head, her face tracked with tears, and reached out to touch Jiang Xiaoyu’s forehead before letting out a long breath of relief: “Son, you must… you must be strong…”

Before she could finish, she let out another “awoo” and burst into fresh wails.

Seeing his older sister cry, Madam Zhao naturally had no reason to sit idle, immediately joining in with her own chorus of “ying-ying-ying.”

The weeping drove Jiang Xiaoyu utterly mad. Amidst the chaos, a thought struck like a thunderbolt, violently crashing into his brain—it was a mind-bender of a riddle.

“Whose back can you have pimples on without worrying?”

“Answer: Someone else’s.”

“Right, I’m damn well Jiang Xiaoyu, not Ye Xunhuan. Those two are willing participants, their relationship is great—why should I, a transmigrator through a dream, be the one losing sleep over it?”

Realizing this, Jiang Xiaoyu let out a long breath of relief, the heavy boulder pressing down on his chest finally rolling away.

“Not my circus, not my monkeys!”

However, driven by a final shred of respect for the original owner, Ye Xunhuan, he couldn’t let the man’s wife drop a load inside the grand hall.

So Jiang Xiaoyu imitated Wang Xiulan’s tone and shouted toward Ye Lingtian and Leng Feng, who were still chugging away: “Are you two just going to keep running from this?! Drinking, drinking, drinking—drinking endlessly! Can one of you actually step up and handle this?!”

Ye Lingtian and Leng Feng froze simultaneously, their faces painted with unspeakable bitterness, yet neither of them dared to make a move.

Seeing neither of them move, Jiang Xiaoyu sighed. Jiaoyue was a woman after all, and presumably, it wasn’t appropriate for two grown men to step in.

He turned to look at the Wang-Zhao Twin Hanging Ornaments still weeping into their hands: “My two dear mothers, can you two pause the waterworks for a second? Send someone to look after Jiaoyue, otherwise none of us are ever going to eat this meal!”