Condensation from the beer bottle dripped onto Jiang Luo’s fingers.
His palm felt warm. He grabbed a napkin to wipe away the moisture, clearly distracted.
Chi You rarely fought back?
Pfft. More like he couldn’t beat me.
Seeing him spacing out a bit, Wenren Lian and Ye Xun suddenly remembered that Jiang Luo and Chi You were now worlds apart—one living, one dead—and could never be together. The two quickly shut up and stopped making those matchmaker-like remarks.
Ye Xun even broke into a cold sweat, inwardly cursing himself.
Jiang Luo had finally let go of Chi You, and here he was bringing up things like “intimacy.”
What if that rekindled old feelings?
After dinner, Jiang Luo was about to rest when Zhuo Zhongqiu suddenly remembered something. “Jiang Luo, Qi Ye left something for you.”
“Ever since we got back from the sea, I haven’t seen him—couldn’t even get in touch. It wasn’t until my dad and the Heavenly Master’s people went to confront the Qi family about the sabotage during our exam that he found out what they’d done, and that we were preparing to hold a family trial against them,” she explained. “When my dad and I were leaving the Qi house, he suddenly popped out of nowhere, covered in grass and red-eyed. He just said ‘sorry’ and shoved this note into my hand.”
She went to the cabinet, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and handed it to Jiang Luo. “Here it is.”
The note was wrinkled and messy. Jiang Luo unfolded it. Only one hastily scrawled sentence: “I’m sorry.”
He looked surprised, flipped the note over just in case, then glanced up at Zhuo Zhongqiu. “Just ‘I’m sorry’?”
Zhuo Zhongqiu nodded.
Jiang Luo folded the note back up. He could almost picture Qi Ye’s expression when he wrote it. Calmly, he said, “He is him. His father is his father. What the others did has nothing to do with him—I never blamed him, so there’s no need to say sorry.”
“Alright,” he waved and turned to leave, “I’m going to bed.”
***
Qi Family.
Liao Si walked unhurriedly down the corridor and stopped in front of Qi Ye’s room. He raised a hand and knocked.
The door was quickly opened. Qi Ye leaned against the frame and snapped, “What?!”
His eyes were bloodshot, clothes wrinkled, stubble showing—he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. When he saw it was Liao Si, the irritability on his face toned down slightly. In a stiff voice, he asked, “What is it?”
Liao Si’s eyes swept greedily over Qi Ye’s figure. “Mr. Qi asked me to call you to the living room.”
Qi Ye frowned in frustration, just about to refuse, but Liao Si added, right on cue, “Seems like something important. Mr. Chi is here too.”
Qi Ye’s fists clenched tightly. He didn’t say another word, just shut the door behind him and stormed toward the living room.
The family trial was the day after tomorrow. If the Chi family came to meet with his father, it had to be about that. Who knows what kind of tricks they were planning to use on Jiang Luo and the others—Qi Ye had to be there to find out.
As he watched him walk away, Liao Si let out a whistle and strolled off, leisurely.
His eyes gleamed with malicious glee, a twisted mix of gentleness and schadenfreude at the upcoming spectacle. “The dogfight’s about to begin.”
***
Qi Ye’s steps were heavy.
The closer the family trial came, the more unbearable everything felt.
He still couldn’t believe that his father had actually colluded with the Chi family patriarch to kill his classmates. When he first heard the news, he thought it was a bad joke. But when others confirmed it had really happened, Qi Ye felt like the sky had collapsed.
These past few days, he and his father had erupted into countless arguments. Qi Ye felt as though his soul had been torn in two. He was wracked with guilt and shame toward Jiang Luo and the others. He hoped they would win the trial.
But the defendant was his own father—the man who had loved him dearly since he was a child, who had placed all his hopes on him. Qi Ye couldn’t bear to imagine what would become of his father if he lost the trial.
This inner turmoil left Qi Ye feeling powerless and disgusted with himself for being so morally ambiguous. It felt like he was trapped in sand—the more he struggled, the faster he sank.
Before he even reached the living room, he suddenly heard his father’s incredulous voice cry out: “That’s impossible!”
Qi Ye halted in his tracks.
“This is absolutely impossible! Chi Zhongye, you’re lying to me, aren’t you? You must be lying!”
Chi Zhongye replied numbly, “Why would I lie to you? Those were the exact words of the Fated One. He’s abandoned us. The Xuanling Alliance will conduct the trial in complete fairness this time. That old fox Xu Diandeng—he wouldn’t have brought his students to sue us unless he had solid evidence. Qi Yuan, we’re finished. It’s all over. I told you before—should we act now to delay the trial? But you were so sure of yourself, thinking the Fated One would protect us. And now? Now it’s too late to do anything.”
“No way,” Father Qi shook his head in disbelief, but seeing the absolute certainty on Chi Zhongye’s face, all strength drained from his body, and he slumped onto the sofa in defeat. “The Fated One… has really abandoned us…”
A wave of anxious fear swept through him. Father Qi suddenly sat up, lips trembling, and pointed at Chi Zhongye. “Chi Zhongye, we can’t both go down for this. At the trial, you take the blame. You were the mastermind. I was just duped by you, an innocent man—I didn’t know a thing! Don’t worry, once you’re in, I’ll take good care of your whole family. For the sake of our relationship, I’ll make sure you live comfortably once you get out.”
Chi Zhongye froze, then burst into fury. “Why should I be the mastermind?! The idea to sabotage the Baihua University assessment came from you!”
Father Qi sneered, “Oh really? Do you have proof? You were the one who arranged everything. In the new trial task after they were swapped out, the blood eels were only tied to you. You were the only one who could get them on the ship and make a move. How will you prove it was my idea?”
Chi Zhongye straightened up with a jolt, seething with rage. “You—!”
Father Qi slammed the table, his face dark. “Chi Zhongye, I haven’t even held you accountable yet, and now you’re trying to play the victim?”
“Don’t think I don’t know. The Qi family members who boarded the ship with you to deal with Chi You—all of them were force-fed female blood eel spawn by you! You really thought I didn’t notice? If I hadn’t realized they were funneling Qi family assets into the hands of the Chi family, I wouldn’t have figured out they were already under your control.”
The more Father Qi spoke, the angrier he became. “Chi Zhongye, you sure played it smart. You couldn’t use puppet soul-refinement openly, so you secretly used blood eels instead. Who would’ve thought of that? If I hadn’t noticed something wrong, by the time those symptoms appeared and exposed the blood eel infection, the entire Qi family would’ve been in your hands!”
“Blood eels? What assets?” Chi Zhongye was completely baffled. He didn’t understand what Qi Yuan was talking about and took it as a baseless accusation. “Qi Yuan, what nonsense are you spouting?”
“Nonsense?” Father Qi clutched his chest, gasping in fury. “You’re saying you didn’t use blood eels to control my family because you covet our family fortune?”
Chi Zhongye laughed bitterly in rage. “Then why don’t I accuse you of coveting the Chi family’s direct line of spiritual bodies? Your Qi family’s three generations of elite spiritual bodies—weren’t they all extracted from our Chi family’s bloodline?!”
That statement struck like thunder, shocking Qi Ye—who had been eavesdropping in the hallway—into freezing in place.
What did he say?
The three generations of Qi family’s spiritual bodies… came from the Chi family?
Impossible.
Qi Ye’s teeth trembled. He had always believed he was a born genius. Since childhood, everyone praised and envied his talent. His father, his grandfather—three brilliant generations of the Qi family—all were prodigies from birth.
No—he refused to believe it. The Chi family elder must be lying. It had to be a lie.
But Qi Ye felt ice creep over his entire body, freezing him to the bone. He didn’t want to hear more, but his legs wouldn’t move, and he couldn’t block his ears. The voices from the living room continued to pierce through him like needles.
“I still have the contract you and your father signed. Did you forget? Your spiritual body was extracted from Chi You’s grandfather’s body just before he died. You were already in your teens then—you expect me to believe you don’t remember?”
Chi Zhongye snorted coldly. “Even if you forgot how your own spiritual body came to be, surely you didn’t forget what’s inside your son’s? Qi Ye is using Chi You’s father’s spiritual body. That contract—you signed it yourself. When Chi You was a child, you even reserved his spiritual body with me in advance. Too bad the Fated One got in the way and turned Chi You’s soul into a Yuan Tian Bead. Chi You’s got plenty of followers—if you try to pin all the blame on me and walk away clean, don’t think I won’t spill all these dirty secrets. Let’s see then who ends up worse off.”
Silence. Then Father Qi’s breath quickened. After a long time, he finally forced a stiff smile and said in a placating tone, “Let’s not get angry. What’s the point of all this yelling? Old Chi, come on, sit down, let’s talk this through.”
Qi Ye’s vision went black. He staggered back to his room, bracing himself against the wall.
His father’s reaction had already told him the answer.
His so-called talent… was never his own.
He had stolen it from someone else.
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