:(

Im pretty sure the biggest reason why this story will not progress that much romantically anymore past vague flirting compared to in the past is because of the new cyber-security law in China meant to protect "social morality". This means that Weibo (Chinese sharing site that old Xian uses) is actively censoring LGBT content of all types from the sale of LGBT items to gay webcomics and stories. If there was anymore the author could end up like Chai Jidan, a BL author who's worked got banned back in 2016-2019 for having explicit homosexual relationships. The law is not very transparent to the public since it was only passed a couple months ago and gay censorship has been only been accelerating. Since 19 days is one of the top Chinese BL comics on Weibo and internationally Old Xian has to be careful when it comes to storytelling if they want to still continue the production of merch and stories as of late.