Lu Jiuxiao fell asleep without another word. Not only did this leave Gu Su dumbfounded, even Qin Jingzhou raised his eyebrows at the sight.
Gu Su was using all her strength, the gray mist in his foolish son's mind spinning like a tornado. By all rights, he should've been crying, laughing, making a scene, rambling incoherently—his emotions should have been completely frenzied. Yet, in the midst of these violent mood swings, his son actually fell asleep. Only his tense brows and lips showed he wasn't sleeping soundly—most likely lost in a nightmare.
After her moment of shock, Gu Su clearly realized this herself. At least her power hadn't failed; when Lu Jiuxiao woke, the gray mist would still wreak havoc and cause him to collapse emotionally. That was good enough.
From the start, her plan was merely for her and Lu Jiuxiao to “gaze at each other through tears,” for him to have an episode right in front of his birth father and the uncle who almost became his stepfather. What benefit could come from that? It would only force both Gu martial master fathers to “pay attention” to her.
At that thought, she turned to look at the two masters standing side by side outside the glass door on the balcony, reaching up to adjust the earring in her ear. She didn't have enough gray mist in storage to control even one of them. If she forced it, she would only startle the snakes in the grass.
She didn't want to take that risk.
She glanced at Lu Jiuxiao again, feeling the massive accumulation of negative emotions, which she was sincerely reluctant to let go of. She took a deep breath. There would be time for this in the future.
Making up her mind, she wiped her eyes and put on a pitifully aggrieved look, calling out to the two men outside the glass door, “Am I really so boring to be around? Jiuxiao actually fell asleep!”
Qin Jingzhou stood in place, cigarette between his fingers. “When are you getting divorced? If you want to sign the divorce papers,” he pointed at Lin Baiming beside him, “he can take care of it right now.”
Gu Su’s eyes reddened again, her tone gloomy, “Mr. Cheng, I know you look down on me, but divorce is between Jiuxiao and me, you have no say in it.”
Qin Jingzhou said nothing. He put out his cigarette and entered the room, giving his foolish son a light smack on the back of the head and channeling a touch of spiritual energy into him. “Wake up.”
Lu Jiuxiao’s eyes immediately opened. He looked confusedly at him, “Huh? Oh… I was having a nightmare. Luckily you woke me up.” Without thinking, he stretched out his hands.
Qin Jingzhou deliberately frowned. “What else do you know except asking for a hug?”
Lu Jiuxiao instantly looked downcast, “Oh.” He slowly drew back his hands. “I’m mentally deficient, after all.”
A foolish son craving affection had to be teased, but a father had to keep up appearances in front of outsiders. Qin Jingzhou sat down beside his son, put an arm around his shoulders, and gave him a proper hug. “Well, you’re my own flesh and blood.” After a moment he asked, “Are you still getting divorced?”
It was as if Lu Jiuxiao just remembered his purpose here. He raised his head from his father’s arms and looked toward the stunned Gu Su. “We got married back then because both of us wanted to get back at Lu Zhentong. I don’t care what happened that made you crawl back to him, and just knowing your son isn’t mine is reason enough to end it.”
Gu Su’s heart gave a jolt. With a birth father who was outwardly critical but truly doted on him, Lu Jiuxiao could let go of the Lu family shares without a second thought. It was clear he wouldn’t put much stock in her companionship or those scraps of affection.
She was actually clear-eyed about her worth. Without the gray mist, her meager, feigned affection wasn't worth anything. However mercurial Lu Jiuxiao’s moods were, he was always generous and had actually helped her deal with the trouble her own father caused.
But knowing all that didn’t mean she wouldn’t continue using Lu Jiuxiao.
She gathered her emotions and spoke, “So all those feelings before were fake? Have you forgotten them already?” As she spoke, she channeled the gray mist with everything she had.
Gray mist couldn’t directly control emotions like joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness, but it could guide the target to recall memories that would rouse those feelings. What Gu Su was doing now was making Lu Jiuxiao remember the time after the car accident when she had painstakingly cared for and comforted him.
Suddenly, Lu Jiuxiao’s mind played a slideshow—scenes of him and Gu Su deeply in love. These memories stirred some emotion in him, and when he met Gu Su’s tear-filled eyes, “I’ll think about it” was on the tip of his tongue. Sensing danger, he dove headlong into his father’s arms, muttering, “You’re bullying me…” Was he a lunatic, a fool? Before he could finish the thought, the gray mist abruptly reversed. He suddenly remembered being paralyzed, the agony and fury when his face was slammed by a scalding pot by the culprit. He gripped his father’s sleeve, veins popping on the back of his hand, and gritted his teeth. “I want to file for divorce!”
Actually, when Lu Jiuxiao threw himself into his father’s arms, Gu Su’s instincts were already uneasy, and she hurried to salvage the situation. Who would have expected that negative emotion to spike in Lu Jiuxiao’s mind in an instant, and before she could even feel a flash of satisfaction, she heard the words “file for divorce.” The look of wanting to laugh but not daring to was frozen on her face.
Lin Baiming stubbed out his cigarette, entered the room, and sat across from Gu Su. He used his bandaged left hand to take the ready-made contract from his briefcase. “We know your little tricks. My advice, girl, is to quit while you're ahead.”
She’d been found out after all.
Gu Su had already received intel from the earring. Channeling basic gray mist at full power made enough “noise” that it probably wouldn’t escape the notice of a Gu martial master. But the Gu martial masters didn’t know the exact effects of the gray mist, otherwise... how could they have let her “run wild” this long? Not to mention the newly-advanced Cheng Jingzhou, she’d dealt with Lin Baiming many times after getting the earring!
She made a show of wiping her tears, then looked up to meet the icy stare from Lu Jiuxiao’s father. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Quit while I’m ahead? No, I disagree. All right. File for divorce!” With that, she stood up, grabbed her assistant—who’d been spacing out the whole time thanks to the gray mist—and strode out the door.
More than a minute after Gu Su left, Lu Jiuxiao finally let out a howl of pain.
Qin Jingzhou once again sent a wisp of spiritual energy into his foolish son's head. The crying instantly shifted to whimpering.
Lin Baiming looked on with concern. “What’s happening?”
Qin Jingzhou replied, “It’s like phantom limb pain.”
Lin Baiming had done his homework and knew how severe Lu Jiuxiao's burns had been. He leaned in, lowering his voice, “PTSD?”
“That’s it, but not exactly.”
Seeing the furrows in Lu Jiuxiao’s brow relax, Lin Baiming dared to crack a joke, “Raising a son really isn’t easy.”
Qin Jingzhou rubbed his son’s head twice. The foolish son looked up at him, forced a smile, then closed his eyes and dozed off. Qin then asked Lin Baiming, “Out with it.”
He could more or less guess what someone who could speak for the association like Lin Baiming wanted to talk about.
Think about the requirements to register as a Gu martial master: no criminal record, true qi cultivation, and the complete martial arts code or a guide filed with the association. Even if they weren’t all upstanding, most were inclined toward the right path.
As for those who cultivated true qi but had a criminal record, or whose inheritances had to be kept secret—those who didn’t go through proper channels, or worse, who used flesh and blood to train, the evil sect martial artists probably outnumbered the proper Gu martial masters ten or even a hundred to one.
And it wasn’t just Hua Country with Gu martial masters. There were cultivation systems and extraodinary powers unique to each country, so the open conflicts and rivalries were often quietly coordinated and resolved by these masters and extraordinary individuals.
The day-to-day job of the Gu martial master was handling these “internal and external” problems.
Whether dealing with domestic or foreign threats, Hua Country’s Gu martial masters had held an absolute advantage for nearly a hundred years, but in the past three to five years, the situation had sharply deteriorated. Last year alone, the association lost one percent of its members.
It wasn’t always death in combat; some, like the master with the neck injury and Lin Baiming himself, suffered grave wounds, relying on true qi to prop themselves up until they couldn’t go on anymore. If he didn’t step in, that neck-injured master or Lin Baiming would drag an “old enemy” down with them the moment they could hold out no longer. That was how Lin Baiming died in the original story, and if he were still around, he’d never let Gu Su rise.
So he added, “Any rumors?”
Lin Baiming grinned, shaking his bandaged left hand. “Almost healed. When I went back to the association on business yesterday, the old guys pinned me down, ripped the bandages off… They’re all itching to charge in here and kneel to you.”
Qin Jingzhou laughed. “What good would that do? Even the cleverest woman can’t cook a meal without rice, you know that.”
At the association, everyone knows the score. Qin Er and the others only process the initial batches of herbal medicine. For those medicines to become truly miraculous, Master Cheng himself has to handle them. But both decocting and needling burned through true qi, and they’d max out at four patients a day, including Master Cheng’s own son.
Lin Baiming chuckled, “So am I and Qin Er almost healed up?”
Qin Jingzhou said, “Qin Er needs at least another half month. If you don’t mind going home for three or five days, I’ll cook you a heavy batch now, and the rest you can heal up yourself.”
Lin Baiming wasn't surprised. “Knew it. Well, I’ll trouble you to help me heal. By the way, the association recently collected some intel on you.”
Qin Jingzhou asked offhandedly, “Got the evil sects targeting me?”
Lin Baiming nodded seriously. “It’s that old demon who messed up Xi Lao. He bragged Xi Lao would die any day, but Xi Lao's jumping around as lively as ever… so he went poking around.”
Xi Lao was the master with the injured neck.
Qin Jingzhou cooperated, “The old demon traced things back to me? Got his sights on me?”
“You’re the divine doctor. How could he touch you? He’ll just force your hand, that’s all.” Lin Baiming’s smile faded. “Actually, I had a daughter with Xiao Lu, but she passed away before she was five.”
Xiao Lu was the original host’s ex-wife, Lu Jiuxiao’s biological mother. Qin Jingzhou’s face was expressionless. “You think your daughter might still be alive?”
Lin Baiming nodded heavily. “Yes. Yesterday a girl brushed past me, and I just felt… she was my daughter.”
Qin Jingzhou patted Lin Baiming’s shoulder. “Then there’s no need to rush. She’ll show up in front of you sooner or later.”
Meanwhile, Gu Su dragged her assistant into the car, just as an incoming video call from Xiang Feng appeared.
Because Xiang Feng had inadvertently botched several of her plans before, she wasn’t in the mood to deal with him, but even so she wasn’t going to ignore the call. When she answered, seeing the image on her phone screen, she couldn't help but be startled. “You’re...”
The young woman on the other side smiled brilliantly. “I’m your husband Lu Jiuxiao’s half-sister. My biological father is Lin Baiming. If you don’t want to leave Lu Jiuxiao, you’ll need to get rid of his father. Luckily, I want to kill him too… I think it won’t be hard to have my guilt-ridden dad do something big for me, so how about we join forces?”
Gu Su scrutinized her, and admitted the girl did bear quite a resemblance to Lu Jiuxiao. But being cautious, she didn’t agree right away. “Let’s meet up first.”