Xuexin immediately objected his Idea. She apparently had another idea for how they should spend the afternoon. Luo He gave her an exasperated look.
"Too much of anything isn't good wifey. Don't be in a hurry I won't be disappearing by tomorrow." He said teasingly.
She pouted.
"You're becoming addicted to this far too quickly." He added, amused. "A young woman should have other interests."
Xuexin lowered her eyes clearly convinced otherwise. So Luo He simply took her by the hand and dragged her outside. The forest proved to be considerably more entertaining than either of them expected.
They did not encounter many animals at first, but as afternoon gradually turned toward evening, creatures began emerging from their hiding places.
Luo He stopped whenever he noticed one, sometimes crouching down to speak with it while Xuexin watched in quiet fascination.
He had always possessed a strange talent for understanding animals.
"Animals are simpler than people," he explained. "You don't always need words. Actions are usually enough." Xuexin nodded as though this were profound wisdom in his words.
Luo He, naturally, neglected to mention that his ability had far more to do with the extremely advanced animal-taming skills he had developed through years of working with massager crows.
The animals seemed to trust him unusually quickly. A small creature allowed him to stroke its fur, while another cautiously approached Xuexin after seeing Luo He interacting with her casually.
He smiled at her. "See? Even the animals think you're harmless." Xuexin immediately pouted. Luo He laughed.
He spent the entire afternoon teasing her whenever he could. Unfortunately for him, Xuexin had almost no experience with flirting with a man.
She understood profound swordsmanship, cultivation, books, and solitude far better than she understood how to tease a man.
Whenever Luo He flirted with her, her response was almost always the same.
A blush. A lowered gaze. And occasionally an embarrassed little pout or two. That only encouraged him.
The two wandered deeper into the forest, stopping whenever they found another creature. Sometimes Luo He spoke to the animals. Sometimes they simply sat beneath the trees and watched them.
For Xuexin, it was an unusually peaceful afternoon. For Luo He, it was simply another opportunity to discover that spending time with his wife could be far more entertaining than he had expected.
They remained in the forest until the sunlight began fading between the trees.
Eventually, with the sky turning light orange beyond the branches, they made their way back toward the camp.
Luo He had originally intended to stay only briefly. Instead, he decided to remain another day. Xuexin, unsurprisingly, seemed very pleased with that decision. The next few days were not much different.
The damp earth of the secret glade smelled of crushed leaves, heavy moss, and the shameless residue of their long afternoon. Xuexin pressed her cheek against Luo He's chest, her fingertips tracing the lazy rhythm of his breathing.
Her childhood sanctuary, a hidden pocket of ancient timber where she used to hide when the clan's expectations suffocated her, was no longer a pristine garden of lonely memories.
They had thoroughly desecrated it, her shameless cries swallowed up by the rustling canopy. Instead of guilt, a fierce, intoxicating pride bloomed in her chest.
Doing it here, right where her younger self had once wept in solitude, had made the pleasure feel like a genuine victory. "You really are a bad person."
She murmured, though her hand was already creeping back down toward his waist. Her cheeks flushed with an truly unquenchable thirst.
"I am a philanthropist." Luo He smiled, adjusting himself on his side. He didn't bother moving much else. He looked entirely, blissfully dead to the world.
Lounging on the damp grass as if it were a high-grade lounge chair. "I am expanding your horizons." He said proudly. Since that first taste, Xuexin had turned into a truly shameless addict.
Thirty-four years of emotional coldness, lonely cultivation, and suppressed desires had exploded all at once. Her young, delicately smooth face made her look twenty, but her actual body had been starved for over three decades.
Now, she was chasing the dopamine rush like a wild beast. She didn't want to leave the forest. She didn't want to leave the bed. She didn't want to leave him.
When she tried to crawl over him again, her eyes wide with needy desire, Luo He caught her by the waist and lazily held her off. "Give it a break, wifey." He sighed, yawning with a board extension.
"A man can only give so much before he turns into a withered corpse. Humbly pace yourself." He said calmly.
"Just once more." She pleaded, dropping all her pride, her voice breathlessly husky. "Husband... please. It feels too good." She tried desperately to make him compliant.
"No means no, go sit over there." He nudged her off with his foot and closed his eyes. Luo He was, by all accounts, an extraordinarily lethargic man.
Unless life-or-death adrenaline called for it, his supreme goal in life was to do absolute nonsense and sleep.
If he could spend eighteen hours a day sprawled on a lounge chair doing nothing, he considered it a day well spent.
Dragging this needy, woman through the wilderness was already testing his patience for physical effort. Suddenly, Luo He's lazy eyes cracked open.
He tilted his head toward a patch of mud near the shattered oak tree. Impressioned into the dirt was a footprint the size of a dinner platter, bearing five razor-sharp claw marks embedded into the ground.
"Ah!" Luo He muttered, sitting up with exhausting slowness. "Look at that. A massive black-bear. Excellent. We're getting you a guardian." He said happily.
Xuexin's eyes widened, her addictive haze momentarily shattering. "A... a guardian? Husband, wild bears are bloodthirsty and ferocious beasts! We should avoid it! Run and inform somebody immediately."
"Too late, I'm bored, and dragging you around on foot is tiring." He said, grabbing her wrist and yanking her along. "Come on."
Deep in the thicket, the air grew heavy with the stench of raw meat and iron.
Standing near a cave entrance was a giant, mountain-like bear, its fur matted and dark, its red eyes glowing with feral hunger.
"Climb a tree or something." Luo He instructed casually. Xuexin looked at the bark, then back at him in sheer panic. "I... I don't know how to climb trees without my proper tools!"
"Fine, hide behind that tree then." Xuexin immediately darted behind a massive tree, peeking out with wide, fearful eyes. Luo He strolled forward, entirely unbothered, hands tucked lazily behind his back.
He walked right up behind the towering, lethal beast, lifted a hand, and SLAM!spanked the bear brutally hard right on its massive ass. The forest went deathly silent.
The giant bear froze, whipped its colossal head around, and roared so loudly the leaves rattled from the branches. It raised a terrifying, iron-like claw to mash this brazen human into jelly.
Luo He didn't move an inch. He simply let out a tiny breath and released a sliver of his vicious aura. It was a suffocating, primordial pressure which made people suffer just by being present near it's source.
The bear's terrifying roar turned into a weak pitiful, squealing choke. Its knees buckled, and it crashed to the dirt, trembling so violently its fat jingled.
Luo He tapped into his beast-taming skill, sending a direct mental link into the beast's terrified mind.
"Friendship and loyalty take too long," Luo He communicated directly with the bear, his voice cold and merciless. "Fear is a much better leash." He said calmly.
"So, here is your choice, big guy. Do you want me to turn your brain into porridge right now, or do you accept me as your master? Serve me well and I'll return the favor to you as well."
The bear didn't hesitate. It frantically plastered its massive snout into the dirt, whimpering like an overly anxious puppy dog, offering its total submission.
"Good boy." Luo He patted its giant head. He turned back to the pine tree. "Hey, get out here wifey. We have a carriage now."
Within minutes, the terrifying wild bear was trotting meekly through the woods like a domesticated golden retriever.
Luo He hauled Xuexin up onto its thick, unbelievably soft fur, climbing up right behind her. Hugging her soft figure.
The two travelled through the forest enjoying their time together, now as a couple the two could wonder without much suspicion and restraint from the elders.