At the mention of "yesterday," Qin Yi immediately stripped off the shirt he had only half-put-on. Ruan Su looked at his behavior with a strange expression and asked curiously:
"What... are you doing?"
Qin Yi rolled over and climbed onto the bed, countering with a question:
"Wasn't it hard enough getting people to believe I have a brain disease? If I don't take advantage of it, wouldn't all that effort have been wasted?"
"Mm... oh, oh."
Ruan Su suddenly understood. Little Yi was so clever.
Seeing that she actually bought it, Qin Yi shook his head and said, "I was just joking. I was originally planning to head into town to find that Meng Peijiu to pick up the clothes and silver, but since only a day has passed, there's no need to rush."
Ruan Su pouted her lips, a hint of reproach flickering in her eyes, but she quickly cast the matter aside. She lifted the bucket that had half its water splashed out, walked over to the heated brick bed, leaned down to wet the towel, wrung it out, then turned sideways to look at Qin Yi. She covered the half of her face that was scarred by burns, blinked, and her eyes carried a tentative expectation.
Qin Yi glanced at her with slight curiosity, thought for a moment, then tilted his face upward.
Ruan Su's eyes curved into crescents. She quickly leaned in and gently wiped the boy's cheeks with the towel.As the towel glided across his face, Qin Yi closed his eyes, thought for a moment, then spoke softly:
"Since yesterday, the boss should have given you a rest day, right? But today, I still want you to take that paper slip I gave you yesterday and go see the boss. But don't ask him to exchange it for a cultivation technique anymore..."
"Eh... why?"
Ruan Su's body trembled slightly. Uncharacteristically, she interrupted Qin Yi.
She was asking both why he wanted to stop exchanging for a cultivation technique, and whether it meant she no longer needed to practice internal energy.
Qin Yi immediately opened his eyes, his gaze calm.
For a moment, their eyes met.
Ruan Su's hand holding the towel froze mid-air, a hint of nervousness visible on her face.
The air went silent.
Ever since he had picked up this older sister of his, Qin Yi had been conducting gradual obedience training on her through subtle influence.
And the most fundamental rule,
was that whenever he was speaking about serious matters, she must always shut up and listen.
She didn't need to ask why, didn't need to know the reason. She only needed to follow his instructions, and he would lead her down the right path.
Since heading south from the Great Qin, they had traveled an unknowable distance. Qin Yi had kept his promise, so naturally, Ruan Su had to hold up her end as well.
But this time, Qin Yi didn't follow his old pattern of suppressing the girl. Instead, he smiled and explained along with her question:
"Because our family has a better cultivation technique now. We can use that paper slip to exchange for other things, like silver."
"Oh..."
Ruan Su responded, letting out a long breath of relief. She had thought Little Yi was going to "scold" her again, but he hadn't.
Qin Yi reached out and rubbed her head to comfort her.
Ruan Su glared at him with her beautiful eyes and immediately rubbed his head right back.
Qin Yi resisted.
Ruan Su declared the resistance invalid.
The siblings tussled for a while, finally ending with Qin Yi pinned to the bed by Ruan Su's single hand, his hair mussed into a bird's nest.
Qin Yi sat on the edge of the bed, breathing lightly, watching Ruan Su carry the wooden bucket and walk off contentedly to dump the water. Deep in his pitch-black pupils was a hint of contemplation.
Suppressing and locking down Ruan Su's subjective initiative wasn't actually his personal preference. It was simply the optimal solution under the circumstances.
Playing with people's hearts was a game where the slightest error led to a world of difference.
Especially when using various methods of suppression to achieve mental control, one careless mistake could result in backlash.
The way he had treated Ruan Su before was entirely because Qin Yi had run out of options.
Just like with physical constitution, there were gaps in talent between individuals.
Ruan Su's natural instincts were just as terrifyingly high as her absurdly unreasonable physical abilities.
Qin Yi didn't know how long Ruan Su had been abandoned by her family before he found her. But when he picked her up, judging from the dust and grime all over her, this older sister had survived alone in the mountains for at least a year or more.
And after he began systematically training her, her rate of growth gave Qin Yi a feeling that she might spiral out of control at any moment.
Take yesterday, for example.
When he had snuck out of the Immortal Guest Lodge, Qin Yi had left absolutely no trace, nor had he told anyone where he was going.
Yet this older sister had still managed to find him almost immediately.
Thinking of this, Qin Yi called out toward the outside:
"Sis, how did you know I was at Meng's Clothing Workshop yesterday?"
Accompanied by the sound of splashing water, Ruan Su's answer came with a pause, as if she were seriously thinking it over. Her hoarse voice drifted back from the small courtyard:
"...Just had a feeling... you'd be there."
A feeling...
What a fascinating pair of words.
If it really was a feeling, then this older sister's intuition was far too accurate. In all the years they had spent together, the decisions she made based on her feelings had almost never been wrong.
And to figure out exactly how this worked, Qin Yi had conducted several variable experiments on Ruan Su.
He would feed her pieces of information intermittently, some true, some false, some that seemed true but were actually false, and some that seemed false but were actually true. Then, at some sudden juncture, he would make her make a choice.
The results of the experiments spoke for themselves.
Every single time, Ruan Su could eliminate all the distracting options and directly arrive at the most correct choice for the moment.
When asked why she chose that way, she said she felt it was the right thing to do.
After running through this series of verifications, Qin Yi realized that Ruan Su was a true hexagonal monster.
When facing a problem, he needed to first absorb information, then filter it, connect it with past knowledge, and go through an entire chain of logical deductions before arriving at an answer.
But Ruan Su didn't need any of that.
As long as she had absorbed enough information, she didn't need to go through the chain of deductions like he did. Her brain would instinctively and directly produce an optimal "feeling."
Moreover,
it was efficient and cold-blooded.
Two adopted Calamity Seeds had been discarded as expendable pieces precisely because of Ruan Su's judgment.
Of course, Qin Yi had tacitly approved of this matter.
But from that point on, Qin Yi stopped cultivating Ruan Su and instead began progressively suppressing her, trying to strangle that monstrous natural instinct of hers.
If he could stay clear-headed around the clock, Qin Yi wouldn't have minded continuing to nurture Ruan Su. But the existence of his brain disease truly left him with no other options.
A thin mountain breeze carried the slight chill of autumn.
Ruan Su returned to the small room, sat down beside Qin Yi, and secretly scooted her butt closer to him, pressing up against him. Then, suddenly, she asked in a cautious voice:
"Little Yi... is your brain disease... cured?"
The room fell silent. Qin Yi collected his thoughts and turned his head back to see the timid look in the girl's eyes. A hint of confusion rose in his heart.
Because of her nature, Ruan Su rarely displayed such emotions.
During the life-and-death moments of their journey south, when other Calamity Seeds had been straightened out by Qin Yi a few times, all of them, except for one or two stubborn troublemakers whose mouths wouldn't admit defeat, would automatically regard him as their pillar of strength, some even developing a religious-like reverence.
But Ruan Su was different.
Even after years of targeted conditioning by Qin Yi, her natural instincts remained merely suppressed.
She never cowered before him,
showed him no reverence whatsoever,
and occasionally even directly resorted to hitting him.
The dignity of an older sister.
So what did this reaction now... mean?
"Mm, it should be cured." Qin Yi gave a slight nod and said slowly, "But it might still need some confirmation."
"Oh..."
Ruan Su instinctively looked away. Qin Yi could tell there wasn't much happiness in her demeanor.
Qin Yi tried to understand this emotional shift in her.
Actually, the moment the bucket had hit the ground, he had noticed that Ruan Su's state was a bit strange.
She had become cautious and tentative.
Even when he deliberately roughhoused with her to get close, she carried a kind of restrained aloofness, as if she were afraid of provoking him.
Because of the silence, an awkward atmosphere rarely seen in the small room began to settle.
"Slap!"
Ruan Su suddenly clapped both hands against her cheeks, stood up, and turned back with a smile:
"I... gonna go to town... buy a lamb leg... celebrate!"
Qin Yi, lost in thought, casually replied:
"No need for that. Don't we still have meat at home that hasn't been finished?"
Upon hearing this,
Ruan Su's body stiffened violently, and she even looked somewhat at a loss.
Qin Yi caught it from the corner of his eye, but he didn't move.
After a long pause,
Pinch.
Ruan Su reached out and pinched Qin Yi's cheeks, forcibly lifting his chin. There was no trace of the older sister's dignity in her eyes like before. Instead, she looked utterly lacking in confidence, as if she were terrified he might refuse:
"Gotta... celebrate. I... am the older sister!"
"......"
They stared at each other for a few breaths. Then Qin Yi laughed.
Oh... He understood now.
Finally getting it, Qin Yi curved his eyes into a smile:
"Alright then, let's celebrate. I'll cook lunch."
Ruan Su looked pleasantly surprised and immediately nodded. She let go of his face, got dressed, and was about to rush out the door in a flurry:
"Heh... heh... I'm off then."
Qin Yi called after her:
"Remember to take that paper slip and exchange it with the boss for silver. He shouldn't cheat you."
Ruan Su ran to the door and opened the courtyard gate:
"...Okay."
Just as she was about to step out of the courtyard,
"Sis."
Qin Yi suddenly called out to the girl again.
"Hm?"
Ruan Su turned back.
The boy's voice drifted softly through the green mountains, carried away by the wind in an instant:
"No matter whether my brain disease is cured or not, you will always be my most important person."
"......"
Ruan Su's body trembled violently. Her eyes blinked rapidly. She bit her lip, sniffled, and seemed about to say something. But in the end, she turned around, let out a light hum, curved her lips upward, waved her hand dismissively behind her, and disappeared down the leafy path in front of the door with little bouncing steps...