Chapter 64: Youthful Matters (Continued)
“There’s actually such a method?” Rong Xie couldn’t believe it.
If such an evil control method truly existed, once discovered, the Lu family would become a target of public criticism. Why hadn’t it been exposed until now?
“Yes… at first, I didn’t believe it either. I found many medical cultivators to look at him, but none could find the problem. Their diagnosis was that Xiao Ya’s spirit roots were very short and inherently unsuitable for cultivation, so lack of progress was normal,” Lu Yinglin said.
“This… but didn’t Xiao Ya have good talent?” Rong Xie was puzzled.
“Exactly because of that, I believed there was an external force at work. When Xiao Ya entered the Heavenly Mystic Sect, his spirit roots were tested. Back then, his spirit roots were normal. Not exceptionally gifted, but reaching Foundation Establishment shouldn’t have been a problem. Otherwise, the Heavenly Mystic Sect wouldn’t have accepted him into the inner sect, right?” Lu Yinglin analyzed.
“Mn… indeed.”
“I told those medical cultivators the same thing. I said since the spirit roots are so short, there must be a problem, it must be caused by external force, and asked them to diagnose again. But they said it’s not impossible for spirit roots to be normal at first and shorten later. There is a type called ‘Consumable Spirit Root’ that behaves like this.”
“Ah…” Rong Xie muttered to himself. “Consumable Spirit Root. A spirit root that consumes itself after overuse. Among people with average talent, a large portion have Consumable Spirit Roots that prevent them from reaching Foundation Establishment.”
“Correct. I didn’t expect Junior Brother Rong to know this so well.” Lu Yinglin nodded. “That control method disguises itself exactly as a Consumable Spirit Root. Even the best medical cultivator can’t diagnose it. Even if I talked until my lips were worn out, no one believed me, let alone prescribed a cure.”
Rong Xie’s ears buzzed. No wonder the Lu family hadn’t been discovered. Consumable Spirit Root… could it be the result of someone’s control? Could it be…?
He couldn’t help but let his thoughts run wild. He had also entered the inner sect through the Lingjing Sect’s spirit root test, reached the tenth level of Qi Refining, but couldn’t break through to Foundation Establishment no matter what. In the end, he was also diagnosed with a Consumable Spirit Root.
His background was also vague. If not for Shen Bingsi’s insistence, he might have entered the slave registry and become Shen Bingsi’s Attendant Boy, just like Xiao Ya… They were too similar in some aspects.
If the Lu family could control Xiao Ya and make him lose the ability to cultivate, what about the Shen family? The Shen family ancestors were old friends with the Lu family, and both fled to Heyang together. It wasn’t impossible for them to exchange secret methods of controlling people, right??
“Junior Brother Rong? Junior Brother Rong?” Lu Yinglin’s voice called out.
Rong Xie snapped back to reality and looked at Lu Yinglin. A strong urge to get to the bottom of things surged in his heart. He sat up straight: “What happened next? You didn’t just give up because they couldn’t diagnose it, did you?”
Lu Yinglin was stunned. “Of course not… I just saw your face didn’t look good. Is the wind on the river too strong…”
“I’m fine. Keep talking,” Rong Xie urged.
Lu Yinglin didn’t know why Rong Xie suddenly became so interested in Xiao Ya’s story, but for Lu Yinglin, this played right into his hands.
He continued:
“Of course I didn’t give up. I thought of every way to beg the Clan Head to spare Xiao Ya. I said all those bastard things I did before were my fault and had nothing to do with Xiao Ya. Xiao Ya tried to persuade me, but I didn’t listen. If anyone should be punished, it should be me. Why punish Xiao Ya?”
“But the Clan Head wouldn’t relent at all, refusing to withdraw the punishment no matter what. The Clan Head told me this was the consequence of my disobedience. They wouldn’t punish me directly; they would punish the Attendant Boy beside me. Only then did I understand why they arranged an Attendant Boy for every Lu family child with spirit roots. Why they turned a blind eye to the intimate relationships between us and the Attendant Boys, even secretly promoting it. It turns out this Attendant Boy was not only their spy to monitor us but also a tool to kill the chicken to scare the monkey.”
“Ah…” Rong Xie showed a look of intolerance. “That’s too cruel. They simply don’t treat people as humans. How could they do such a thing?”
“Yes. That’s why whenever they wanted to arrange another Attendant Boy for me, I refused them all. So, you should understand why I did what I did this morning, right?” Lu Yinglin sighed, looking gloomy.
“So that’s it. Then… I can’t blame you.” Rong Xie understood Lu Yinglin’s dilemma. “Then… what happened to Xiao Ya later?”
Lu Yinglin didn’t speak. He stared silently at the river surface, his eyes weighed down by heavy sorrow.
Rong Xie knew it was rude to keep probing, and he knew Lu Yinglin had said from the start that Xiao Ya passed away more than ten years ago. But he couldn’t help it; he desperately wanted to know what happened to Xiao Ya after his spirit roots were exhausted.
“He encountered the worst-case scenario. Because his spirit roots were exhausted and his spiritual power was given to me, he… suffered the backlash of the Heavenly Dao, the Five Decays of Heaven and Man,” Lu Yinglin uttered those cruel words.
The Five Decays of Heaven and Man—one of the most terrifying conditions in cultivation. A person would age overnight, becoming a wretched dried corpse, yet they wouldn’t die immediately. They would watch themselves age and rot while fully conscious.
“I’m sorry…” Rong Xie’s body swayed. He grabbed the gunwale to steady his tottering body.
Lu Yinglin shook his head slowly, controlling his voice to keep it from trembling. He told Rong Xie about Xiao Ya originally to gain Rong Xie’s sympathy and close the distance between them again. But speaking up to this point, he was completely immersed in the pain of memory. He hadn’t intended to go this deep.
“A few days before the onset, he even comforted me, saying he finally didn’t have to go against his conscience, being my intimate partner while monitoring me and reporting my every move to the family.”
“He said he had enough of such days. Now that he finally didn’t have to be an Attendant Boy, I should congratulate him. He told me many plans for the future. He wanted to go to the mortal world, to the cities, to those noisy places. Since he wasn’t cultivating anymore, he had plenty of time to play recklessly and experience all the fun things in the mortal world so that his trip in life wouldn’t be in vain.”
Lu Yinglin’s voice finally couldn’t help trembling. He covered his forehead.
“He said I was right, that we should just have fun. Life should be used for pleasure; the happiness of every day and every moment is what’s real.”
“I promised him I would take him to experience all the fun and delicious things I knew. Who knew that just a few days later, he…”
Lu Yinglin couldn’t continue, a blurry sound coming from his throat.
Rong Xie took out an unused handkerchief from his pouch and handed it to Lu Yinglin. Lu Yinglin thanked him in a low voice, took the handkerchief, and wiped his face.
Rong Xie held his shoulder and patted it gently.
After a while, Lu Yinglin’s emotions stabilized. He tucked Rong Xie’s handkerchief into his bosom.
“In his last few days, I really couldn’t take it anymore. I went home and knelt before the Clan Head, begging him to let Xiao Ya go. As long as he let Xiao Ya go, I would do anything. Even if they used the method to control Xiao Ya on me—wouldn’t controlling me directly be faster than controlling the Attendant Boy beside me?”
Lu Yinglin shook his head.
“But it was useless. No matter how I begged or threatened, the Clan Head wouldn’t relent. In the end, when I threatened suicide, the Clan Head had no choice but to tell me that the control method could only be used once. After using it, the Attendant Boy’s spirit roots are ruined. It’s irreversible and cannot be recovered. As for spiritual exhaustion and the Five Decays of Heaven and Man, that was even less within his control…”
“…”
Speaking up to here, Xiao Ya’s story ended.
Just as Lu Yinglin said, he still didn’t know what that control method was, but he told Rong Xie some useful information.
That control method could only be used once. After one use, the Attendant Boy’s spirit roots would immediately be ruined and could never cultivate again.
As for the Heavenly Dao backlash and the Five Decays of Heaven and Man, they weren’t directly caused by that control method. It was because Lu Yinglin took away Xiao Ya’s spiritual power without knowing the truth, leading to a superposition of malignant effects that drove things to the extreme.
Rong Xie thought about it carefully. His situation seemed different from Xiao Ya’s.
After Xiao Ya’s spirit roots were ruined, he couldn’t cultivate at all, but Rong Xie still could.
During those days in the Fan Shi Pavilion, Shen Bingsi transferred spiritual power to him during the day and grabbed him to meditate and refine it at night. Although the experience was poor, his cultivation had indeed increased, going from the seventh level of Qi Refining to the tenth level in just seven days.
Calming down and thinking about it, with the Shen family’s temper, if they had such a powerful method of controlling people, they would have slaughtered their way through Huanxue Villa long ago. Why would they swallow their pride like this?
However, the fact that the Lu family had such means still made Rong Xie very uneasy. Even for the sake of more Attendant Boys like Xiao Ya, he couldn’t sit by and watch.
It was just that with his current strength, he wasn’t even as good as Lu Yinglin back then. If Lu Yinglin couldn’t solve it back then, the current him shouldn’t even think about it.
Could he only ask Shen Bingsi for help…?
Shen Bingsi’s red eyes and agitated shouting immediately floated before Rong Xie’s eyes: “Did you really sell the Lightning White Orchid?!”
“…” Better to wait a bit.
After Lu Yinglin finished speaking, it took a while for him to pull himself out of his emotions.
He didn’t expect to tell it so emotionally this time. In fact, more than ten years had passed, and his feelings were not as deep as before. Time could smooth over everything. Over the ten-plus years, he had used this story a few times to gain the sympathy of new lovers, but never as emotionally as this time.
“Sorry, I lost control a bit,” Lu Yinglin smiled bitterly. “I didn’t expect that at my age, speaking of past events would still make me look so unsightly. I made a fool of myself.”
Lu Yinglin looked up, expecting to see a deeply moved face. Instead, he saw Rong Xie looking into mid-air, absent-mindedly thinking about something else.
…Just like earlier.
Lu Yinglin felt a slight sense of defeat. Whether in the business world or the flower streets and wine halls, as long as he wanted, there was no attention he couldn’t capture, no heart he couldn’t manipulate. Let alone someone with little social experience like Rong Xie.
“Junior Brother Rong? Junior Brother Rong?” Lu Yinglin called again. “Was my story too long-winded? You seem to be zoning out often…”
Rong Xie immediately felt apologetic. “No, I was just thinking that this control method is truly too terrifying. I don’t know how many people have fallen victim to it. If…”
“Yes, but that is the Lu family after all, the Lu family connected to me by blood,” Lu Yinglin said helplessly. “I can’t do anything to them. I can only refuse them arranging Attendant Boys for me… Perhaps, if I encounter such a thing again, I will remind that ignorant Lu family disciple, just like me, to cherish the Attendant Boy by his side.”
“…” Rong Xie frowned slightly, wanting to say something, but held back.
Lu Yinglin felt this topic had gone on long enough. He changed the subject and looked deeply at Rong Xie. “I haven’t confided in anyone so deeply for a long time. I think it might be because, Junior Brother Rong, there are parts of you that are very much like Xiao Ya.”
Rong Xie looked over in surprise, as expected, satisfying part of the self-esteem Lu Yinglin had just lost.
“You were both bound to one person, suffered many grievances, and only thought of leaving when you couldn’t go on, yet feared the outside world.”
“The words I wanted to say to Xiao Ya back then but didn’t have time to say, I’ve unwittingly said to you: Don’t be afraid. The outside world isn’t that scary. A person as good as you will surely have your own world.”
As Lu Yinglin spoke, he leaned closer to Rong Xie. Just as he planned to press his advantage and leave an unforgettable memory for Rong Xie, Rong Xie spoke first:
“That’s not true. I thought it was a bit similar at first too, but later I found it’s different. Bingsi treats me very well. I left him only because of myself… Besides, he never treated me as a servant. He treats me as a best friend, the unique kind in this world.”
At this point, Rong Xie gave a laugh filled with complex emotions.
However, hearing these words, to Lu Yinglin’s ears, was undoubtedly the gong sounding a retreat in defeat.
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