Chapter 226: Connections (2)

[ Red String of Fate ]

Are you looking for your next possible match?

Gain Access to the God of Love and Marriage: Yue Xia Lao Ren's special red string of fate that can help locate potential couples. If you'd like, you could potentially tie yourself to another individual.

The One Who Slaughters: This deity sells these strings? How mercantile.

The Observer 'Apache' Doesn't Bat An Eye 

Owl Brain: The Points that Yue Xia Lao Ren earns from this transaction might help them

Sea Foam: Psh, I doubt it will work

DatPeach: I saw 'Cupid Love Gun Ray' or whatever earlier. No need to mock others.

Sea Foam: ...hmph.

The Observer 'Pomegranate' Is Interested In Seeing It Work

"We're back to square one again, aren't we?" Li Yang muttered underneath his breath. Potential couples. Would it work with him and Luo Ju Di? They already had a child didn't they? That should account for far more potential than others.

"What are you staring at?" Thana blinked.

There was a sudden great reading of energy like no other, but even to a Grim Reaper like herself, there were no visible signs of change in the atmosphere where she was at her strongest.

As if a veil was also placed on her own eyes.

Thana didn't like it one bit at all—even when she was supposed to stay neutral.

While the Grim Reaper was able to collect and clean up the filth of Sluagh around the immediate area, it was clear that she was nothing more but a small cog in how the world around them functioned.

And there was supposed to be nothing wrong with that.

But once again, it was a stark reminder of how it was like to be favored by the Gods.

Li Yang finally answered. "I'm looking for items that I can acquire to help me find her—"

Thana stared at the human and actually smiled. "It's amazing that you're doing this for a person to whom you have no connection at all except for the child?"

"Life isn't so pleasant that every family ends up living together underneath one roof."

Thana crossed her arms, still unconvinced. "Surely you can do something without relying on 'items' meant to find her."

Li Yang stared at the items on the screen with a deep-set frown. Maybe there was something else besides the strings? He didn't think of Luo Ju Di as an enemy at all, so those items meant to attack a target from afar didn't work either.

Thana interrupted his thoughts. "This kind of search is a little saddening when there's nothing at all that binds you to her—I think, even a memory would have worked. Something that ties you together, no matter how briefly. You can do that, right?"

"Just a memory is enough?" Li Yang raised a brow.

"Souls are far more connected to one another than you think."

There was nothing for him to lose. "I can try."

"Good, I'll go do something useful so tell me if you find something."

She disappeared in a blink of an eye.

Li Yang was sure that if it was Setsuko he had lost, he'd find her in this strange world within a heartbeat. The System itself confirmed an Energy Bond worked nicely. It was probably as useful or even better than this red string of fate to him that he still had to attach.

But he really had nothing—

Except for that memory in the rain.

The heavens sudden downpour and Chunhua in his arms, running across the city to find her.

A clock—a timer set loose upon him, and it was only when his company mattered, the child and his mother were nothing but an additional task for him—but then it stopped feeling that way, just suddenly.

Or maybe it was just that small conversation in the building where she worked.

The way they started talking in her workplace even briefly and her rather-awkward reaction. Luo Ju Di had stopped being so cold and blunt, and even talked about herself.

It was at that moment that they stopped at merely just discussing Chunhua's life akin to a business transaction.

Perhaps it was at that point that maybe an actual partnership could have worked out. It could have been an ideal ending—mutual trust and concern for their child, perhaps even a friendship that might have grown on its own if Li Yang wasn't bound to the Heavens.

He neglected that chance and now he was here and looking for her.

Luo Ju Di was as good as dead, she already was—unless he found her.

Li Yang sighed heavily and lifted his gaze… and finally saw something in front of him. The Grim Reaper was still pillaging the dead Sluaghs when he noticed the thin cord appearing in front of him, faint and glimmering of blue.

A memory of bittersweet regret and what might have been… it was already disappearing as he looked at it. Even his own attempt at trying to find her was only borne too quickly and flickering away like candles.

The man quickly moved up to his feet and traveled down the enclave of the city streets.

The Grim Reaper Thana looked up from the corpses of the Sluaghs only a second late, the CEO of Olympian Corp disappearing into the thick rows and pillars of the pseudo-temple. No. It wasn't pseudo at all.

Her eyes widened at the manifestation of a Sanctum of Death.

As to which deity or being it belonged to, the Grim Reaper herself had no idea. But all it proved to her was that perhaps the Heavens themselves were truly blocking the man's attempt to find this Luo Ju Di. 

Was this a chance for her to finally leave and exit?

Thana told him to tell her when he found something, but he didn't wait at all.

She loathed that.

And yet although the immaterial planes were something that any spirit, human or non-human, can traverse to—the same couldn't be said for manifestations of domains. Thana hesitated for a couple of minutes.

It was stupid to involve herself, dangerous too.

Thana couldn't exactly die, but there worse punishments than death.

… If Li Yang unfortunately died, she needed to be there to at least collect him, right?

Surely, a deity who respected the cycles of life and death would let a poor Grim Reaper like herself go if she told them that she was only doing her job.

—-—-

Author's Note: Not every person would throw their life away for someone they just met. I mean maybe they would—I've seen a lot of selfless isekai protagonists jumping in front of trucks to save somebody else xD On other stories, some protagonists are in a bleak point of their life and may also just grimly want to end things ;-; I've seen stories start with that too.

But all I wanted to say is that Thana's sort of cute in wanting to enter the dangerous domain to collect his soul. People are bound to give excuses to their actions and she has hers. So yeah we're entering the Domains of a Deity? Think Jujutsu Kaisen, I guess? If you haven't watched that, go do that. I'll wait.

Any guesses to which deity/death-related individual, we'll meet?