Of course, he did look like someone who hadn’t seen the sun, appearance-wise. The old man wasn’t wrong to make a comment on that but they were in jail. What did he expect?
...
Ye Yaming looked around, the old man did not seem to have made any changes to his residence. It looked ransacked, poor.
Also, the man seemed exceptionally malnourished. Perhaps the stigma of being a demonic faction warrior also affected his life inside the jail.
He faced Lu Wang who seemed to be slumping against the wall, ignored the comments and got straight to the point.
"I felt some resistance when trying to master the technique. It was like my Beast Soul was resisting me."
It was his gut feeling, his intuition, warning him to not proceed further with the technique. So, he stopped.
But he wanted to know, Why?
"Resistance? You don’t mean the Beast Soul forcefully trying to complete the technique, do you?" Lu Wang looked confused as he asked. The resistance word did not sound right to him. It should have been the boy who resisted.
"No, it was resisting the technique but my Beast Qi circulation to gather more Beast Qi was happening passively."
His Qi circulation to gather more Beast Qi was indeed happening passively as if it got integrated with his breathing.
The progress with Demonic technique, however, faced resistance. He knew he could push through with his enhanced talent at the moment but he had faced the same issue before his seclusion too.
"You don’t look like you lack Beast Qi. Hmmm." Lu Wang sat up straight as he looked at Ye Yaming.
Experienced as he was, he could sense a vague amount of Beast Qi from the boy and it was not tiny. So, there could be only one reason behind this.
"It must be your aptitude. Your Beast Soul is mutated?" If an individual possessed a mutated Beast Soul then the situation could be explained.
Ye Yaming nodded, revealing that he had a mutated Beast Soul.
"I see. That indeed makes sense." Lu Wang nodded sagely. Having a mutated Beast Soul explained various situations.
"As long as you’re not getting addicted to the sensation from the Demonic technique practice, it’s good." Normally, what happened was that the practitioner would go in a frenzy, wanting to devote all his time to training.
That was the situation a practitioner should aim to avoid. Everything else was fine.
He had experience. He could guess that the Beast Soul was actively resisting the technique because it did not have the upper hand.
With a slightly better technique, the boy could indeed go further in this path, he seemed to possess the mental resistance and talent for this path.
Unfortunately, Lu Wang did not have the advanced techniques to give to Ye Yaming.
Ye Yaming looked at the old man and smiled. He suspected that the old man had played foul with him and given him a faulty technique but he could not prove it.
Since the old man confidently said it was alright, the adult inside him was even more convinced that the man had played foul.
But what could he do? Consult another demonic faction prisoner?
How would he trust that guy? Could he even find one willing to teach him?
"Don’t worry. Demonic techniques are demonic because practitioners are always people with low aptitude and tend to lose control of their Beast Soul."
There was a reason it was called demonic.
"As long as you have them under control and don’t mindlessly indulge in that practice, it’s good."
The practitioner just needed to resist the temptation. Excessive training with little control over the Beast Soul corrupted them most.
"Look at me. People my age have already gone eccentric. On the other hand, I am completely sane." He tried to sit straight with his malnourished body as he explained.
However, Ye Yaming looked at Lu Wang’s dirty residence with no food in sight with a scrutinising glance.
It would be difficult for a normal person to accept that the old man was anything but sane. However, he ignored it because they were all prisoners.
.....
"Youre saying he killed those two?" The Ye clan was holding yet another meeting after over a month of sending Ye Yaming, a seven year old, to the prison.
However, they were not debating their ruthless nature against an orphan.
With the information they had received from inside the prison, it would be wrong to claim that their decision was poor, cruel.
"How can we trust the words of prisoners?"
It was one thing that the boy killed one of their clan warriors by mistake but another two?
How could they even begin to trust this?
And how did two of their battle hardened warriors just get defeated by that boy?
They looked at each other with suspicion, believing that someone among them had gone ahead and managed to assist Ye Yaming first.
But it was hard to guess who. Everyone acted innocent or at least looked.
"He has the history of.."
One of the elders glanced at others before beginning to mention the ominous part that Ye Zhenyu kept mentioning.
The boy had indeed been the center for many deaths. It wouldn’t be wrong to call him ominous.
"How do you know he did it? It could be self defense."
But not everyone was convinced. Ye Yaming’s core hater, Ye Zhenyu was barred from attending the Elder’s meeting after Elder Xuanming found out about Ye Yaming being forced into prison.
Elder Xuanming was still outside of the clan but his orders were strict to not let Ye Zhenyu make decisions in the clan, especially regarding Ye Yaming.
The other Elders also decided to give the boy some benefit of doubt and did not jump to conclusion.
What if they became the next Elder Zhenyu?
What would happen to their resources and power in the clan?
They could not risk it even though the information was from trusted sources.
"Very likely. We cannot say anything about it."
"The leader has already criticised our previous decision." Elder Ye Canglan nodded in agreement.
He was against the decision to punish Ye Yaming from the very beginning.
He did not want to traumatise the boy even further because of their greed.