For Miss Ling, a certain scumbag had painted the boldest stroke of color in the canvas of her life.
Fifty thousand years ago, her sister had died. She herself, having lost control of her emotions, had revealed a weakness that Mei exploited, leading to her being sealed away.
Then came a long slumber.
Then, her awakening five hundred years in the modern era.
Then, she was beaten into submission, implanted with false memories, and locked in a five-hundred-year cycle of loving and trying to kill Yae Sakura.
After that came reconciliation, becoming something akin to family with Sakura.
From that point on, wanting nothing more than to quietly enjoy the warmth of family, she had refused contact with almost everyone.
But—
A certain scumbag was the exception. Like an unbridled wild horse, he had charged forcefully into her world.
In a very physical sense.
Every time she recalled her true first meeting with him, Ling wanted to skin the guy alive.
Five hundred years ago, he had beaten her senseless.
Five hundred years later, he brought others to beat her senseless again.
He then used every excuse to drag her into battles against various enemies, sometimes even taking her to other worlds to provoke monsters that could burn the Earth to glass. He even sealed her within his own Herrscher core, making her a second personality to clean up his negative emotions…
He was, without a doubt, the scumbag of all scumbags.
And yet, it was this very scumbag who had become the most vivid color in her life.
Miss Ling knew this with perfect clarity.
Although Ling disliked being near him, their circumstances forced them to maintain a connection. Unwittingly, he had become the only other color in her life besides Sakura.
If he had been even a remotely decent person when it came to romance, I would have fallen in love with him long ago.
This was a truth Ling was unwilling to examine too closely.
And now, the very man who had left such a profound mark on her life had appeared at its periphery.
Ling stared at the young man who should have been getting cozy with Yae Sakura, her expression one of utter shock.
"Hey, hey, how did you get out here?"
"After helping my girlfriend bathe, is it really so strange to come out for a walk?"
The young man, who in Ling's perception of time should still be in the middle of a marathon session with Miss Sakura, tilted his head and glanced at her, his expression one of genuine surprise.
His words, pregnant with an enormous amount of information, fell upon Ling's ears, and her expression grew complicated.
She looked at the scumbag who, in her experience, would typically go at it until dawn, and a look of pity entered her eyes. She sighed.
"You finished the act and the bath in a total of five minutes? Did your overindulgence finally lead to premature ejaculation?"
"You know I'm a time wielder and you still say that to me? Am I to take that as a provocation?"
The young man, for whom stretching a single second into an hour or even a day was no difficult task, looked at the person clearly trying to get a rise out of him, a half-smile playing on his lips.
"As the old saying goes, practice is the sole criterion for truth. Would you like to test just how long I can last?"
"Who knows, maybe I really can only last a few seconds."
The blatantly crude words reached Ling's ears, causing the corners of her eyes and mouth to twitch.
For this scumbag who specialized in toying with time, especially stretching it out, was there any difference between a few seconds, a few days, or even a few months?
Test him?
If she actually tested him, her belly would likely be swollen before three seconds were up.
"Cut the lewd jokes."
Ling shot him an irritated glare and warned him offhandedly.
"And what if I don't?"
As if deliberately looking for a fight, a supremely punchable grin spread across the young man's handsome face.
For a moment, Ling was at a loss for words.
If this scumbag was truly determined to be crude, there was little she could do about it.
She couldn't even defeat the Li Zihan from their first meeting, let alone this current Scumbag-Herrscher. The consequence of recklessly resorting to violence would most likely be getting pinned to the ground and utterly dominated.
"Then… then I won't help you with anything in the future."
After a long pause, the rather feeble threat escaped Miss Ling's lips.
As the Herrscher of Erosion, capable of corroding anything that wasn't a conceptual phenomenon, Ling was undoubtedly a top-tier tool.
However—
Li Zihan himself was also a Herrscher of Erosion, and with a precision more than five times her own.
Essentially, anything she could do, he could do better. Her threat of withholding help held no real weight.
"Okay, okay."
The young man, whose own mastery of Erosion far surpassed Ling's, shrugged and sat down right beside her.
The sudden presence of another person made Ling, who had wanted some quiet time to contemplate the course of her life, feel slightly uncomfortable. She wanted to think in peace, but the man beside her was far too distracting. For a moment, she couldn't quiet her mind at all.
"By the way, what are you even doing here?"
Finally giving up on finding any inner peace, the girl turned her head to look at the man who was so perfectly at ease that he was admiring the sparse stars in the distant sky.
"I saw you looking as miserable as a puppy who had its food stolen, so I was thinking about whether I should invite you on a trip to lift your spirits."
The words, seemingly designed to infuriate her, made Ling's blood boil.
"Who are you calling a puppy?!" she shouted, as if he had struck a nerve.
"So you're not denying that something was stolen from you?"
With great interest, the young man spoke to the girl who had been starved of affection since childhood.
As if a polar wind had swept over her, Ling froze instantly, then fell silent.
After a long silence, she twisted her head away, not wanting him to see her expression.
"Yae Sakura was never my sister in the first place. There's nothing to be stolen, or not stolen."
"But you don't look happy."
Watching the girl turn away, the smile on the young man's face gradually faded.
"To see a girl who was so aggressive and overbearing just a while ago suddenly wearing such an abandoned expression… it's quite heartbreaking."
Heartbreaking?
As if she had heard something utterly astonishing, the girl turned her head back and stared at the young man's face.
The look on his handsome features held no trace of falsehood.
Inexplicably, Ling felt a gentle stir in her heart.
As if realizing something, a look of disgust flashed across her face, masking the emotion that had flickered there for an instant.
"You see a pretty girl looking sad, so you feel sorry for her and want to invite her on a trip to cheer her up?"
"Tsk tsk—you really are a playboy."
"I've always been a playboy."
The young man admitted it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Then, his tone shifted, and a smile returned to his face as he looked at the perpetually sullen girl.
"So, are you willing to accompany me on a journey?"