Because this was clearly following the romantic plotline of the male and female leads, his presence as a supporting male character wasn’t supposed to be too high, so he had no memory of these details at all.
But now, Yun Huizhou was determined to follow them, and Lian Li didn’t feel at ease if he didn’t go along.
“I want to go,” Lian Li said.
Yun Huizhou frowned. “You are not allowed to go. Go back to Drunken Dream Island.”
“I won’t!” Lian Li argued. “How am I supposed to go back? Part ways with you now? The events of this afternoon will spread throughout the Jianghu in a matter of days. Everyone will know that I’m in league with you and Zhao Honglan.”
“Drunken Dream Island is so far from here. If I separate from you, what if that group comes to kidnap me?”
“They had to use gu to kidnap Senior Sister Qu, but kidnapping me would be much easier. They’d only need to send two second-class martial artists to take me by force.”
Yun Huizhou replied, “I will go to the Martial Arts Alliance and hire people to escort you back.”
“No good.” Lian Li rejected him outright, then asked, “Can the people you hire be more powerful than you and Zhao Honglan combined?”
Yun Huizhou: “…”
“They can’t, right?” Seeing him not answer, Lian Li immediately continued, “If the people you hire aren’t even as strong as the two of you combined, how am I safe? It won’t be safe the whole way.”
Yun Huizhou said, “Don’t be unreasonable.”
“I’m not being unreasonable,” Lian Li shot back. “If they aren’t as strong as you, it’s better for me to follow you than for them to follow me.”
“I’ll just ask one thing: if something happens, will they risk their lives to save me? Would you risk your life to save me?”
Yun Huizhou was choked up by these words. He opened his mouth, wanting to say he would, but felt the words were incredibly strange.
Between fellow disciples, it was natural to save each other at the cost of one’s life, but saying it out loud in direct response felt extremely bizarre.
The strange emotions stirred up by Jin Manjue’s earlier antics had been temporarily forgotten while busy with Zhao Honglan and Qu Tingquan’s affairs.
Yet, at this moment, they suddenly resurfaced.
The look in his eyes as he watched Lian Li instantly became somewhat complicated.
Lian Li didn’t know why he had blurted out such a sentence either. He regretted it the moment he finished, because the words sounded ambiguous no matter how one heard them.
It made the two of them seem overly intimate.
Just as he was about to correct himself, Yun Huizhou spoke: “I would.”
After dropping that single sentence, Yun Huizhou turned and walked away.
Lian Li was left stunned on the spot, blinking as he watched the other’s retreating back. A strange and unfamiliar emotion welled up in his heart.
Something was wrong; he actually felt a little touched.
Lian Li rubbed his head and went back to his room to lie down, but he couldn’t fall asleep.
As soon as he closed his eyes, he saw Yun Huizhou standing at the door saying, “I would.”
His thoughts wandered, inevitably drifting to Jin Manjue, and then back to what Yun Huizhou said today.
He suddenly sat up in bed. Could Yun Huizhou possibly…?
Impossible!
Zhang Fei and Guan Yu would risk their lives to save Liu Bei!
Yun Huizhou saying he would risk his life to save him was perfectly fine—it was just like Liu, Guan, and Zhang.
Wait a minute… Yun Huizhou once said he wanted to marry the World’s Number One Beauty.
And the Beauty Ranking… damn it, both men and women can be on it!
By the way, who is the current number one on the Beauty Ranking?
Lian Li hurriedly rummaged through his bundle, pulled out the previous Beauty Ranking booklet, and flipped to the first page.
The first place was a woman from the capital. She was too far away, so he didn’t know much about her; the description in the Beauty Ranking wasn’t very detailed.
See, he knew it. How could a dense straight man like Yun Huizhou possibly like men?
Lian Li put down the booklet, ignored the slight trace of strange emotion in his heart, and lay back down on the bed.
However, the moment he closed his eyes, he remembered Yun Huizhou saying before that he didn’t really pay attention to the Beauty Ranking. Did he really know who the number one was? Did he know if the number one was male or female?
Thinking of this, Lian Li snapped his eyes open again and sat up.
Just as he sat up, he remembered that when he asked Yun Huizhou, it was a year ago. The booklet he was holding now was from the last quarter.
There were three editions in between.
The top ten were usually tallied once a year, so last year’s number one and this year’s number one weren’t necessarily the same person.
When he asked, who was the number one on the Beauty Ranking?
He hurriedly flipped through the booklet again, going through the entire top ten.
He found that the top ten consisted of six women and four men.
And the second place was precisely a man.
He carefully examined the portraits of these beauties, finding that every single one of them was truly good-looking. Just by looking at the drawings, he could feel their distinct temperaments.
It was clear that the goddess Nuwa had put her heart into it when she molded them.
Since he couldn’t sleep anyway, Lian Li simply flipped through the entire Beauty Ranking booklet.
One hundred people—he scrutinized every single portrait.
Just as Jin Manjue had said, everyone who could make it onto this list was very good-looking.
But it was impossible for all one hundred people to be equally beautiful.
If one looked closely, one could see who was slightly more attractive, though the difference wasn’t massive.
However, this also led Lian Li to discover that there was a lot of “fluff” in the rankings between tenth and one hundredth place.
As for the top ten…
If these hundred people were divided into three tiers, the top ten were indeed among the most beautiful group.
According to Lian Li’s personal aesthetics, there were people in other ranks who were better looking than those in the top ten.
But aesthetics were subjective; everyone was different. Perhaps most people felt the current top ten were the most beautiful.
Furthermore… since Jin Manjue said the top ten were compiled with great effort, then popularity must be a very important factor as well.
Although Lian Li didn’t know the number one, he had heard the names of several people in the top ten and often heard others discussing how beautiful they were.
If one’s popularity was too low and too few people knew them, unless they were so beautiful they were in a class of their own, it would likely be hard to get a high rank in an official tally.
Lian Li pondered the ranking methods of the top ten while looking at the booklet.
He didn’t know why he was paying attention to this, especially regarding the top ten rankings and how to enter them.
Before he was on the list, he was just like Yun Huizhou—neither of them cared about it.
As for the descriptions below, he only glanced at them casually. After all, since he was on the list himself, he knew exactly how ridiculous the descriptions written there could be.
Then he hesitated again. Was it really completely ridiculous?
Thinking of this, he felt a jolt. He couldn’t think about this any deeper.
He tossed the booklet away, pulled the quilt over himself, and forced himself to sleep.
Early the next morning, Yun Huizhou came to Lian Li’s door. He raised his hand and then lowered it, looking extremely conflicted.
He stood at the door for about ten minutes until he heard Zhao Honglan’s footsteps coming from the other side. Only then did he make a decision.
Just as he knocked once, the door opened from the inside. Lian Li appeared, sporting the same kind of dark circles under his eyes that Yun Huizhou had yesterday morning.
Yun Huizhou was startled to see him like this. “Why is it so dark under your eyes? Did you not sleep well last night?”
