Lan Jin looks at Qiang Yu and feels a little bad for her. Her hands are clenched, her shoulders tight, and her face looks positively distraught. Even Lulu, who Lan Jin doesn’t like at all, seems anxious as she looks between him and Qiang Yu and, given the circumstances, he can’t blame either of them.
But though he feels bad for Qiang Yu, he really doesn’t know what he can do about it. This situation is just a coincidence. He had no way of knowing he would encounter them, or that Qiang Yu would be wearing a blue dress when it happened.
He also doesn’t feel like he should have to do anything to make her feel better. He already explained the situation to her, and whether or not she believed him, it had nothing to do with him any longer. Now, they were just two people walking in opposite directions on the same street.
With that thought in mind, Lan Jin decides to just leave to spare himself the burden of trying to soothe Qiang Yu’s feelings any further.
“Excuse me,” he says before stepping off to the side and attempting to walk around the two girls.
However, having only taken a few steps, Qiang Yu speaks up, “You’re leaving? Just like this?”
Lan Jin turns his head and sees a disbelieving expression on Qiang Yu’s face.
Not knowing why she’s so surprised at the fact that he’s trying to leave an uncomfortable situation, Lan Jin shrugs his shoulders and says, “Yeah, that’s the plan.”
Then he continues walking.
But, just like before, Qiang Yu stops him. “Wait!”
Lan Jin turns his head again, a frown on his face, and wonders what Qiang Yu could want with him.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want you wearing those clothes,” Qiang Yu says, her voice calm despite her expression saying she is anything but.
“Yeah… that’s not going to happen.” Lan Jin says, holding back a scoff. “Look, I get that you’re upset, and I understand why you’re upset and I even think it’s reasonable. But this is a coincidence, and this is a pretty big city. If you don’t like me wearing these clothes, then don’t stop me from walking away and you won’t have to see me wearing them for much longer.”
Qiang Yu scowls at him, but Lan Jin doesn’t really care as he attempts to walk away again.
“Stop!” Qiang Yu orders and Lan Jin can’t help but roll his eyes.
“Look,” he says as he turns back to face her once again, “Do you actually have something to say? Because I’m not changing my clothes for you.”
Qiang Yu meets his gaze with a glare and, her voice firm, says, “I already said I don’t want you wearing those clothes!”
“And?” Lan Jin lets out the scoff he had been holding back. “Aren’t you the one who told me you have no position in the city? What do I care if you want me to do something?”
Qiang Yu narrows her eyes at him and says, “You wearing those clothes makes me uncomfortable. If you want, I will pay for you to have new clothing made. But you absolutely cannot wear those!”
Lan Jin sneers at her and says, “And I don’t really care if they make you uncomfortable." Then he changes tack, "Look, my goal is not to make you uncomfortable, but I don’t know you, we’re not friends, and the fact that we somehow managed to encounter one another in such a large city is just bad lu—“
All of a sudden, an idea enters Lan Jin’s head and he narrows his eyes at Qiang Yu.
“Your mom said you absorbed the energy out of the spirit stone— the one that had been glowing purple. Is that true?”
“You met my mother?” Qiang Yu asks, skepticism clear in her voice. But even as she says that, her glare fades slightly and she looks Lan Jin over.
Not hearing her deny it, Lan Jin assumes what her mother said earlier was the truth, and that Qiang Yu had inadvertently absorbed a relatively large amount of Providence at once. And though he has no way of measuring what the effects of Providence are, or what can be considered to be a beneficial outcome for somebody else, the idea that Qiang Yu absorbed Providence and almost immediately encountered him makes him think that Providence might be at play here.
After all, even though Lan Jin doesn’t think too highly of his own capabilities right now, he does know that the Omega Browser is something incredible. Not only that but he also has the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame which can generate Providence, the Three Realms Fate-Guiding Verse that can let a person’s soul travel through space to a magical land, the Heaven Supporting Pillar Body Strengthening Technique which is probably an ancient and powerful body cultivation method, and more.
Even if he isn’t vain, he knows that being on his good side is probably the best ‘favorable outcome’ that anyone could come across. Unless they were like him and accidentally bumbled into an unfathomable power just by downloading a program. So imagining himself being a ‘favorable outcome’ for Qiang Yu makes him feel a little funny.
“Has anything… strange happened to you today?” Lan Jin asks Qiang Yu, curious to see how much her situation might relate to his own with him being able to sense danger to his life after only absorbing a few strands of purple mist.
Unfortunately for Lan Jin, Qiang Yu misunderstands his question entirely. And as her face turns bright red and Lulu lets out a loud guffaw before looking embarrassed, Lan Jin realizes that his words could be taken in another way.
It’s just that he doesn’t have enough time to explain himself before Qiang Yu pulls back her arm and punches him in the face with her small fist.
She punches harder than anyone a few inches shorter and fifty or sixty pounds lighter than him has any right to punch. And when her fist collides with his eye, it hurts.
If not for the fact that she held back at the last possible second, Lan Jin feels as though she could have knocked his block off with that punch. But even still, she easily manages to knock him flat on his back.
He’s both amazed with and horrified by her strength.
Looking at her bright red face and the stars circling around it, he can’t help but dazedly think that she is cute— adorable, even, given her embarrassed expression right now. But her slim figure belies a monstrous strength and he doubts that many adult men back on Earth would be capable of dealing with her if she chose to be violent. And all of that is before drawing her sword.
Lan Jin has a newfound respect for some of the fighting he had seen last night. At that time, he had thought it was pretty juvenile. But now, having experienced a single, light blow from Qiang Yu, he realizes that cultivation is a lot more terrifying than he had originally thought.
He also decides that he really doesn’t want to deal with her anymore. Twice in as many days, he’d ended up on the ground because of her. And just as she hurt his nose last night, today it was his left eye that was hurting. He can already imagine the shiner he is going to have later, and all of this was caused by a simple misunderstanding of his words. Granted, he does take some delight in the fact that she clearly had a very strong reaction to the purple mist, and he makes note of that in case he wants to poke fun at her later.
Lan Jin lets out a pained groan and slowly sits up from where he is laying on the ground. He doesn’t have it in him to be mad at Qiang Yu, but he’s pretty sure that’s because he’s so busy being shocked that she was actually capable of laying him out.
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Qiang Yu, even now, looks embarrassed. He’d like to think that she’s embarrassed about punching him considering she held back, but he still writes down today’s event inside of his mind so that he can get even with her later. How he’s going to do that, he doesn’t know yet, but he thinks he has infinite possibilities at his disposal, and if cultivation can allow people to live longer lives, then he probably has a lot of time to work with if he doesn’t slack off.
As for Lulu, she’s busy laughing her ass off while pointing at him. And she’s doing it so openly that Lan Jin even thinks she wishes she could have done it herself. And considering how she kicked him in the leg last night and the looks she gave him after the fact, he thinks she would have done it if he gave her an excuse. It’s just that Qiang Yu got to it first.
Lan Jin sighs and forces himself to his feet before wiping off some dirt from his new clothes. Thankfully, the street is clean and it doesn’t look like they were damaged from his fall. But seeing how he had only donned them less than five minutes ago and they were already being dragged across the street, he feels a little irritated with Qiang Yu.
He starts thinking about ways he could get back at the two of them, but he’s very limited in what he can do right now. Qiang Yu is already so much more powerful than him, and he has no clue how Lulu compares to her. And if just one of them could deal with him so easily, then fighting both of them is off the table entirely.
He could technically use the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame, but that would be a death sentence both for them and for himself, so there’s no way he’s going to cross that bridge for something as petty as this.
It would be interesting if he could force them to listen to the Three Realms Fate-Guiding Verse so he could drag them through some mud while their souls were out of their bodies, but he has no way of doing that right now so it is just wishful thinking.
In the end, Lan Jin decides that he needs to spend some time looking up different ways to screw with these two girls— preferably ways that wouldn’t get him caught. He even thinks that telekinetic abilities might be best for him because he’d seen both the Great Physician and the old man in the jade using them to grasp the purple mist. And if he could use them as well, then he could easily cause problems for both of the girls without anyone being able to figure it out.
He just wishes he had searched for something useful earlier, because now he had no chance against them.
Lan Jin decides that after he returns home later he is going to absorb as much of the spirit stone as he can. Then, he’s going to fuse fifty percent of whatever he converts into his soul so he can start looking up more useful things with the Omega Browser.
Shaking his head, Lan Jin clears out his thoughts before taking another look at Qiang Yu’s face.
Now that he knows what her mother looks like, he has to admit that they look similar. Though, it’s only in their faces and figures as Qiang Yu seemed to inherit everything else from her dad.
But he makes a point of remembering what she looks like this time before he turns his head and starts walking past her again.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Qiang Yu asks him, her voice heated.
Lan Jin ignores her and continues walking.
Her punching him in the face hadn’t gone unnoticed, and there were many people on the road who were staring at the two of them, aghast at the inexplicable violence Qiang Yu had demonstrated. Nobody had heard what Lan Jin asked her, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have understood his question. All they could tell was that Qiang Yu was the one embarrassed but she was still stopping Lan Jin from leaving.
And though nobody says anything, the number of curious eyes watching them makes Lan Jin feel as though Qiang Yu wouldn’t behave so aggressively without a good excuse. So he keeps his mouth closed and doesn’t give her one.
Unfortunately, Qiang Yu does not follow Lan Jin’s chain of thought at all. Instead, she steps forward and grabs him by the wrist.
“I told you to stop!” She says fiercely, her hand immovable as Lan Jin tries to pull his arm out of her grip.
Rolling his eyes, Lan Jin turns around and impatiently asks, “What. Do. You. Want? We have nothing to do with one another!” Lan Jin complains. “Seriously, let me go and the odds of us seeing each other again are next to nothing! Why does what I’m wearing bother you so much?”
Scowling at him, Qiang Yu says, “I already told you it makes me uncomfortable! Choose something else and I will pay for it, but you cannot wear that!”
“I seriously don’t care what you think I can or can’t wear! I paid for it, it’s mine, I don’t want anything to do with you or your money, so leave me alone!”
Qiang Yu begins scowling at Lan Jin, her grip increasing in pressure incrementally, and Lan Jin wonders what would happen if he let her keep doing it. With her strength, he wouldn’t be surprised if his wrist snapped like a twig.
Lan Jin decides that he’s sick and tired of this situation. He doesn’t understand why she cares so much about his clothes, but her attitude is pissing him off. And though he firmly believes that using his flame to deal with her is a bad idea, with her holding onto his wrist so tightly, he has another idea for forcing her to let go.
Closing his eyes, Lan Jin quickly enters the Omega Browser’s Space and locates the remaining purple mist he had set aside to mess with Moxian. He hadn’t had a chance to send her anymore since this morning, but now he thinks he’s found a better use for the thirty-three remaining strands of purple mist.
Before, he hadn’t known how to move the purple mist from the Space. But after having played around with his spiritual energy the night before, he manages to grasp hold of all thirty-three strands and pulls them out of the Space and into his body. Then, with a small expenditure of spiritual energy, he sends them down his arm and into Qiang Yu’s hand.
It is clear that Qiang Yu is surprised from the moment the purple mist enters her body, and Lan Jin tries to take advantage of that surprise by yanking his arm back and away from her. Unfortunately, what he did not expect to happen was for Qiang Yu’s grip to tighten further with the intrusion of the purple mist. And when he tries pulling back his arm, he does so successfully. It’s just that it has a girl attached to it and she slams roughly into his chest.
With his balance disturbed, Lan Jin once more falls to the ground. Except, this time, it is a more painful experience as his wrist twists in Qiang Yu’s grip and her forehead collides with his chin. Even worse, one of her knees catches him on his inner thigh just a few inches from something very important to him.
It takes all of Lan Jin’s effort not to scream out in pain. He doesn’t even notice the countless wide eyes and open mouths staring at him and Qiang Yu as, from their perspective, it looks as though Qiang Yu just jumped on him when he tried to pull away from her.
Even Lulu is confused as she doesn’t know how the situation devolved so quickly, but an instant is all she needs to calm herself and act as she begins taking control of the situation.
“Everyone leave!” Lan Jin hears Lulu shout at the crowd, her voice equal parts anxious, confused, and angry.
And just like that, the scene nearly goes silent as the onlookers disperse faster than Lan Jin would have thought possible. The only noise in the area is Lan Jin’s pained breathing and Qiang Yu’s unusual whimpering.
Looking down through eyes blurry with unshed tears, Lan Jin sees Qiang Yu’s face pressed against his clothing. He can tell she’s embarrassed from her bright red ears, but he can also feel a wet spot forming against his chest that makes Lan Jin think she is crying. And judging by the fact that she’s still holding him, Lan Jin feels as though she’s trying to hide her face from everyone.
However, given that he considers this situation to be her fault, he tries to shove her off of his chest.
It doesn’t work, though. Instead, she tightens her fingers around his wrist and Lan Jin lets out a gasp of pain and stops trying to move her. Then, she does her best impression of a statue and stays disturbingly still as she lays on top of him.
Lan Jin notices that she is very light, and he has a feeling that she is placing most of her weight on the parts of her body not touching him. But even then, he feels uncomfortable when he realizes there is nothing he can do to escape her.
“Sister Yu! What’s wrong!” Lulu asks, her voice full of concern as she gently pats Qiang Yu’s back.
“Don’t touch me!” Qiang Yu calls out, her words shaky in spite of her vicious tone.
Lulu jerks her hand back, her eyes growing wide, and she stares accusingly at Lan Jin.
“What did you do to Sister Yu?”
Lan Jin ignores her.
“Aren’t you her maid or something? Hurry up and get her off of me!” Lan Jin growls.
“Who’s a maid? You’re a maid! Your whole family is a bunch of maids!” Lulu looks like she’s about to kick him, but with Qiang Yu on his chest, she holds back.
“I don’t fucking care! Get her off of me!” Lan Jin breathes out in pain as Qiang Yu tightens her fingers further.
“How am I supposed to do anything?” Lulu asks. “She told me not to touch her. You just have to suffer for a while.”
With that said, Lulu kneels down next to them and, her voice soft, she asks, “Sister Yu, are you okay? What’s wrong? Does something hurt? I didn’t see what happened so you have to tell me.”
Lulu slowly reaches out one palm and lets it hover over Qiang Yu’s shoulder comfortingly, but even that is too much as Qiang Yu’s entire body tightens and begins to tremble so Lulu is forced to retrieve her palm.
Turning to look at Lan Jin, Lulu scowls at him. “Hurry up and tell me what you did to Sister Yu! This is just like…”
Lulu’s eyes widen and she returns her gaze to the trembling Qiang Yu. “Oh…”
Then, her eyes narrowing, she turns back to Lan Jin and examines his pained expression before looking at Qiang Yu again.
“Sister Yu, I think I should use the communication talisman your mama gave me. Can I?”
“Wait, wait, hold up!” Lan Jin calls out in panic the moment he realizes Qiang Yu’s mom might get involved. “Just get her off me first! There’s no way her mom won’t think this is my fault!”
Lulu ignores him, and when Qiang Yu nods her head against his chest, Lan Jin tries to shove her off of him again only for her to squeeze his wrist tightly once more.
Then, when Lan Jin sees Lulu pull a glowing piece of paper out of her dress, he begins to feel nervous. And that nervousness only intensifies as Lulu crushes it in her hand and releases a large sphere of Qi that rapidly rises into the sky and surges toward an area that looks far too close for Lan Jin’s comfort.
All Lan Jin can do after that is curse his luck and begin waiting anxiously for Qiang Yu’s mom to arrive while her daughter lies across his chest.