"In love with a treefolk?" Dean Zhu Lao solemnly asked, his eyes boring down on Yang Qing, whose panic and anxiety spiked a hundredfold beneath that stare.
"Y...yes," he meekly answered.
Just as he had prepared himself to be chewed out for his audacity, Dean Zhu Lao suddenly burst into boisterous laughter.
"Love-stricken," he said between spirited laughs that left him wheezing and in tears as he slapped his thighs. "I told him he was cursed," Dean Zhu Lao added, wiping the edges of his eyes as his laughter began to calm, though it was still animated.
"So he wasn't in love with a treefolk?" Yang Qing hesitantly asked.
"Well..." said Dean Zhu Lao, pausing to catch his breath before continuing. "Well, given how passionately obsessed he was with all manner of plants, I guess it wouldn't be a stretch for him to fall in love with a treefolk.
