Just like a thirsty traveler who had been walking in the desert for a long time and suddenly saw a pool of bright red water, Xanthippe's expression became extremely complicated, with joy as if he had been pardoned, confusion and surprise, and a bit of unspeakable vigilance.
"Will you?" she stammered. "Will you really, you kind soul?"
Xie Ning smiled, his expression showing no emotion, "Why wouldn't I want to?"
At this time, his mind was calm and clear, like an outsider whose soul had left his body, watching the secret being revealed. The common language he spoke became much more fluent.
"But after this incident, you can't stay here anymore," Xie Ning said, "Whether it's Mount Olympus or the secular kingdom, leave Arima and live somewhere under the sun. The gods' demands on you will only become more and more excessive."
Xanthippe hesitated, "But..."
"No buts," Xie Ning shook her head. "After you tell Echidna my secret, run away from the underground palace. You can tell the gods that you escaped from the pursuit of the demon god."
Xanthippe's lips moved slightly. She wanted to say something, but when she saw Xie Ning's eyes, she closed her lips tightly.
Finally, she lifted her skirt and stood up, saying gratefully: "Doros, you really have a saintly soul! May the goddess of goodness and dignity bless you. I will not forget you, and I don't want to know that good and just people will not be rewarded."
After saying this, she took off her cloak, lowered her head and walked out.
Xie Ning watched her leaving, then turned to look at his drawing paper. He didn't have much white paper left, so since he had smooth and fine parchment, he sealed up the precious white paper.
After thinking for a while, he turned over a blank page, pinched the charcoal stick, and drew a line, but the line was trembling.
He took a deep breath, and moved to another place to start the draft. He wrote with great force and speed, and quickly finalized the shape. In the quiet room, only the rustling sound could be heard, but after painting for a long time, the tone became more and more blurred, and the object he depicted became more and more unclear.
Xie Ning stopped and stared at the paper as if he was staring at a mess of garbage.
He sat motionless for a long time, then suddenly reached out his hand, tore off the paper, crumpled it into a ball in his palm, and threw it away.
Forget it, he thought, I won’t paint anymore.
It was impossible to distinguish between day and night in the underground palace, and there were no clocks to tell time, but Xie Ning stared at the rock wall, and his mind spontaneously imagined a ticking clock, with each tick of the second hand making a small, crisp sound.
How long had Xanthippe been gone? Xie Ning asked herself, ten minutes, twenty minutes? What a pity, I spend my days like years, unable to tell whether time is actually passing by...
To his shame, he had lived a poor and smooth life in the first twenty years of his life. Apart from going to school, training camp and the college entrance examination, he could not pick out any impressive and thrilling events. The only thing that matched the current scene was perhaps the night before the college entrance examination results were released - the summer breeze in the evening was still strong, blowing sultry on the asphalt road, and the bricks and stones were filled with the fire of the day. As soon as the left foot stepped down, the right foot could not wait to be lifted up, and the prospective college students rushed to school in groups of two or three to check the answers to the college entrance examination papers.