Xi Yu felt as though Luo Cheng’an was about to stare a hole through his clothes.
……
After more than ten minutes, Xi Yu sighed. “If you want to ask something, just ask.”
Luo Cheng’an seemed to have been waiting for precisely those words. The questions poured out of his mouth like a machine gun.
“After the Er Ya incident ended, you often fell unconscious. Was it because you were injured? Have you recovered? Do you still lose consciousness now? Are there any aftereffects? Do you still feel unwell?”
Shen Qing and Luo Yuan leaned forward at the same time. Shen Qing added, “Did you have enough to eat back then? Were you afraid living alone?”
Xi Yu was stunned by the barrage of questions.
He had thought they would ask how he had sent Er Ya and Liu Tanghuan away.
But no.
Every word and every sentence was filled with concern and worry for him.
Xi Yu’s expression softened slightly.
At this moment, the word family suddenly became something tangible.
Recalling their questions, Xi Yu answered Shen Qing seriously, “I had enough to eat. I wasn’t afraid of living alone.”
Then he answered Luo Cheng’an’s questions. “I was indeed injured a little. I’ve recovered now. I don’t lose consciousness anymore, and there are no aftereffects. I don’t feel uncomfortable either.”
At that time, his soul had been unstable, and his memories were somewhat disordered. He was rarely conscious, and most of the time, he was just like an ordinary infant.
The villagers had raised him and hadn’t let him starve to death immediately after his rebirth.
Besides, life had been difficult for every household back then. No one could leave the village, and the rice wouldn’t grow. Some of the poorest villagers even had to go into the mountains to dig for wild vegetables.
Yet Aunt Hua and several others had still set aside some of their food rations for him.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep him from starving to death.
When he was conscious, the Er Ya incident had already occurred. He had sensed that a vengeful ghost was wreaking havoc, but he hadn’t intervened.
At that time, he couldn’t do anything about it—or rather, he hadn’t wanted to.
Because not all the people who had committed evil had died.
Xi Yu was a god, but he did not possess an abundance of compassion.
Bad people deserved punishment.
Er Ya had only killed those who had entered the cellar. Her resentment was too deep; only by killing those people could her resentment gradually diminish.
Originally, Xi Yu had planned to wait until Er Ya had taken her revenge, then quietly resolve the matter one night.
But before he could find an opportunity, the villagers ran into the fields on the night of the fifteenth.
Those villagers had never entered the cellar. Some had even helped Er Ya before. Most of those who hadn’t helped her had never done anything to harm her either.
But Er Ya was a vengeful ghost. How could a vengeful ghost possess any reason?
With every person she killed, the resentment within her would dissipate a little, but her murderous hostility would grow heavier.
She hated the villagers for standing by coldly.
She hated those people for not daring to confront the widower and save her.
She hated this village. She hated everyone.
She wanted everyone in the village to be buried alongside her.
Xi Yu’s abilities had been limited at that time. He possessed almost no spiritual power, yet he knew that the remaining villagers were not bad people.
Those villagers had never left the village. Every day, all they thought about was whether the rice in the fields was growing well and whether their families would have plenty of children.
There had been someone who went to save Er Ya and had one leg broken for his efforts. To them, the police officer in town was practically an official of immense authority, yet that officer had colluded with the widower.
The man who had broken his leg had acted out of kindness but ended up disabled, and this gave him tremendous influence over the villagers.
Within the limits of what they could do, they tried their best to help others—for example, taking turns caring for him.
Then, when faced with matters beyond their abilities, they chose silence, such as when dealing with the widower and the police officer they could not afford to offend.
This was simply the norm of the mortal world.
Xi Yu could watch evil people die. It was the retribution they deserved.
But he could not watch ordinary people die.
He had no spiritual power, and the villagers had entered the fields precisely when the vengeful ghost’s resentment was at its strongest on the fifteenth.
He had only one option: use his own vital essence and blood to nourish the vengeful ghost, call back her consciousness, and help her reincarnate.
With his blood, Er Ya’s next life would surely be smooth and free of worries.
To ease the atmosphere, after answering everyone’s questions, Xi Yu also told them a few amusing stories from his childhood.
Luo Cheng’an was amused into giggling.
Shen Qing hesitated for a long while before finally asking, “Xiao Yu, how did the Liu family’s daughter end up in Qingliang Village? The charity gala is in two days. I haven’t heard that girl went missing.”
If there had been any rumors, something should have reached them somehow.
Xi Yu glanced at Shen Qing through the rearview mirror and said slowly, “She didn’t go missing.”
There were simply two of them.
The real heiress and the fake heiress.
…………………….
Xi Yu didn’t say much. He still hadn’t figured out exactly what had happened.
After arriving home, Xi Yu hurried back to his room, only to see Lu Zhixing curled up in his sofa, waiting for him for who knew how long.
Hearing the sound of movement, Lu Zhixing lifted his eyelids and lazily said, “I’ve been waiting for you for so long.”
Lu Zhixing leaned against the sofa, his legs slightly bent and his chin resting on a throw pillow. Perhaps because he had just woken up, his voice was somewhat hoarse. There was a natural intimacy and mild reproach in his tone as he spoke.
It wasn’t quite reproach, though. It leaned more toward acting spoiled.
Xi Yu’s footsteps stopped.
Luo Cheng’an often spoke to him in this tone as well.
Spoiled. Pitiful.
But there was a difference.
Luo Cheng’an was like the sun at noon, scorching heat spilled across the ground.
Even with the same tone, Lu Zhixing was like a fine drizzle in the night, damp and moist as it seeped into the earth.
It made Xi Yu suddenly recall, as though in a daze, a clear, crisp voice beside his ear saying:
“Shizun~ This is too difficult. I can’t learn it.”
“Shizun~ You didn’t pick peaches for me today.”
“Shizun~ Did you secretly drink the pear blossom wine I buried beneath the tree?”
“Shizun……”
“Shizun……”
“Shizun……”
Lu Zhixing blinked at him. Seeing Xi Yu standing still, he called out, “Xi Yu?”
Xi Yu came back to himself. Somewhat annoyed, he patted his own head and muttered, “I’ve lost my mind.”
“Are you crazy?” Lu Zhixing said. “Why are you hitting your own head?”
Xi Yu also felt that he had gone crazy. Ever since seeing Zhuyi in the Misty Forest, he had been thinking about him far more frequently.
After tens of thousands of years of companionship, he truly missed the little one.
Xi Yu walked toward Lu Zhixing. Although he had a different face, still…
Lu Zhixing’s body contained Zhuyi’s spiritual power.
Xi Yu sat down at the other end of the sofa and rested his head against his hand as he looked at Lu Zhixing.
He possessed strikingly beautiful features. His narrow, elongated eyes fixed upon Lu Zhixing, their gaze shimmering with an almost affectionate intensity.
The faint smile that had originally lingered on Lu Zhixing’s lips froze.
Even the arm he had been resting casually suddenly seemed to have nowhere to go.
His heart felt as though someone had abruptly poured an entire jar of honey into it.
For no apparent reason.
But it was sweet to the point of being cloying.
Xi Yu watched with his own eyes as Lu Zhixing’s face gradually turned red. The pink spread to his ears and down his neck, finally disappearing beneath his collar.
“Are you feeling hot?” Xi Yu asked.
Lu Zhixing was silent for a moment. “Mm.”
Xi Yu had no need for air conditioning, but he had forgotten that Lu Zhixing was mortal.
Yet the room had always been kept at a constant temperature.
It shouldn’t have been hot enough to turn him this red, should it?
Xi Yu thought that young people probably had too much internal heat, so he lowered the air-conditioning temperature a little before continuing, “What was so urgent that you called me back?”
While Xi Yu had been in Qingliang Village, Lu Zhixing had called him and said there was something urgent.
As the temperature in the room dropped, Xi Yu’s gaze also settled, becoming somewhat solemn.
Lu Zhixing felt a little disappointed, but also relieved. He pulled out a document from beside him and handed it over, his voice hoarse and low.
“The current Liu Tanghuan might not actually be Liu Tanghuan.”
Xi Yu raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised. He trusted that there must be some substantial evidence in the document.
Lu Zhixing was prone to attracting unclean things and could see many things ordinary people couldn’t. Naturally, he wasn’t an atheist.
He would naturally think of more possibilities than other people as well.
Xi Yu opened the document to see what kind of life history could make Lu Zhixing say something like that.
The first page of the file read:
Liu Tanghuan, twenty-eight years old, female.
There was also a photograph.
The Liu Tanghuan in the photograph appeared to be around twenty years old. Her brows and eyes were confident and striking, and her beautiful face carried an air of arrogance—the appearance of someone raised with excessive pampering.
When Liu Tanghuan’s father was young, he had broken one of his legs while saving Shen Linchuan’s father. Although he could now walk freely and it was almost impossible to tell that he had ever been injured, the injury had affected his reproductive functions.
Fortunately, Liu Tanghuan’s mother had been pregnant at the time.
Shen Linchuan’s father was filled with guilt and remorse. He swore that if Liu Tanghuan’s mother gave birth to a boy, he would give him ten percent of the Shen family’s shares in the future.
If it were a girl, she would marry Shen Linchuan, and in the future, she would still keep the Liu surname.
After Liu Tanghuan was born, she became engaged to Shen Linchuan.
From childhood, she had been surrounded by attention and admiration. Even the Shen family’s parents doted on her more than they did on Shen Linchuan.
When Liu Tanghuan turned eighteen, her parents sent her overseas to study financial management.
During that time, the elders of both families frequently visited her, and Shen Linchuan occasionally went as well. Since childhood, he had been instructed to marry Liu Tanghuan, and he had never been in a relationship with anyone else.
The two families had agreed that they would become engaged once Liu Tanghuan returned to the country.
However, just as Liu Tanghuan returned home, the original plans went awry.
Liu Tanghuan had entered the company directly from outside. Considering that she needed to familiarize herself with the business first, her father hadn’t placed her in a particularly high position. Instead, he had her start from the grassroots level without revealing her identity.
But a grassroots employee named Qian Xiaohu accidentally learned Liu Tanghuan’s identity and began pursuing her fiercely.
At first, Liu Tanghuan did not agree.
Then, one time after a gathering, Liu Tanghuan was intercepted on her way home and nearly ran into trouble. Qian Xiaohu risked his life to save her and was injured badly enough to require hospitalization.
Liu Tanghuan had grown up surrounded by love and was too innocent. She was also accustomed to seeing other people’s flattery and sycophancy.
Toward Qian Xiaohu, who did not know her identity and was willing to risk his life for her, she developed feelings that were different from before.
Qian Xiaohu’s family was poor, but he would spend every penny he had on Liu Tanghuan.
After secretly being together for some time, Liu Tanghuan finally revealed her identity.
Xi Yu smiled when he reached this part.
No matter how Liu Tanghuan started from the grassroots level, her clothing and appearance from childhood onward would not have changed.
Someone dressed in designer brands and spending money so lavishly actually believed that she had done an excellent job disguising herself as an ordinary employee.
Still, this Qian Xiaohu was indeed somewhat capable. He was remarkably composed.
After hearing Liu Tanghuan’s confession, he didn’t show the slightest surprise.
Instead, he immediately broke up with Liu Tanghuan and kept his distance, stating that he was merely an ordinary person who was not worthy of her.