Chapter 113 Words by the Bedside:
Lu Yingqi carefully analyzed it for a while.
Then, pointing to the one on the right, he said, "You're fake."
Rong Xie on the left laughed, while the one on the right raised his eyebrows, both surprised and puzzled: "Why am I fake? Senior Brother Lu, are you sure you're not mistaken?"
“Shen Bingsi, stop pretending,” Rong Xie couldn’t help but push Shen Bingsi’s arm. “Quickly ask Senior Brother Lu where you’ve gone wrong. It’s not too late to change.”
Shen Bingsi had initially thought he had become exceptionally good, but he hadn't expected Lu Yingqi to be able to tell so easily. He was also curious and stared at Lu Yingqi with a questioning look.
Lu Yingqi said calmly, "There's nothing special about it. It's just that the junior brother Rong that Shen Jiansheng transformed into has a hazy light emanating from him, making him look like a monster with illusion magic rather than a real person."
"..."
Rong Xie and Shen Bingsi both fell silent, neither of them having expected this reason.
Rong Xie took a few steps back and looked Shen Bingsi up and down, and found that it was indeed true.
The form Shen Bingsi took as him emitted an unreal light, as if he were standing under moonlight, but there was no moonlight here, so this sense of incongruity became apparent.
Rong Xie had only been paying attention to the details and hadn't looked at the overall picture, so he hadn't noticed this obvious problem.
"Light? Where's the light?" Shen Bingsi was still searching herself. "You don't have something wrong with your eyes, do you?!"
Lu Yingqi scoffed lightly: "If you can't even see the problem yourself, of course you can't fix it."
Shen Bingsi looked up at him angrily: "You want a one-on-one fight, huh? Let's go, let's go find a place to fight right now!"
“Shen Bingsi.” Rong Xie tugged at him. “Don’t forget what you said before you came here. Now that Senior Brother Lu has seen through your act, instead of correcting your bad habits, you’re still trying to argue your way out of line. That’s going too far.”
"..." Shen Bingsi muttered, "But where is the light? How can I change something that's not there?"
"It's easy to change," Lu Yingqi said calmly.
"How should it be changed?" Rong Xie hurriedly asked, "Please advise me, Senior Brother Lu."
"When the Sword Saint transforms, don't transform according to the image in your memory, just transform according to the image in reality," Lu Yingqi said.
“Don’t follow what you remember…” Rong Xie looked at Shen Bing Si, “Did you transform according to what you remember?”
Shen Bingsi remained silent, which meant she acquiesced.
"Senior Brother Lu is amazing." Rong Xie praised, "No wonder I felt something was off. It turns out it was based on my memory. Sometimes memories can be distorted. In that case, let's wait until tomorrow morning, after the sun comes up, and then Shen Bing Si can transform into my appearance again. That way there won't be any problems."
“Hmm,” Lu Yingqi agreed.
With the transformation settled, Shen Bingsi seemed somewhat dejected, lost in thought.
Rong Xie tugged at his sleeve, signaling him to come back to the study with him. Shen Bingsi followed Rong Xie and stopped at the door.
"Besides the light?" Shen Bingsi asked, "Besides the light, what else did you notice that was different?"
Lu Yingqi was about to enter a meditative state when he heard Shen Bingsi's question, and he shook his head: "I didn't find anything."
Shen Bingsi's expression softened slightly upon hearing this, meaning that apart from the strange "light," Lu Yingqi couldn't tell who was real and who was fake between him and Rong Xie.
Yes, how could anyone understand Rong Xie better than him?
Rong Xie led Shen Bingsi back to the study and instructed him to transform according to his own image tomorrow and not to improvise.
“Just like when I became Qu Huaiyan,” Rong Xie said.
Shen Bingsi was still somewhat indignant, feeling that Lu Yingqi's assessment was unfair: "He has only met you for a few days, but I have seen you every day since I was a child. I know what you look like better than Granny Wang."
Rong Xie realized that this matter with Shen Bing Si was not going to be resolved. In order to ensure the smooth progress of tomorrow's main event, Rong Xie reassured her, "Yes, yes, you know best what I look like."
"You're so fair-skinned, with so much hair, so black and soft, a slender neck, and a round head..." Shen Bingsi searched for words to describe her best friend's appearance, "You are the most beautiful person in the world."
Rong Xie remained silent.
To be honest, when Rong Xie heard those rough descriptions, he suspected that the person Shen Bingsi remembered was a thin-necked monster with a watermelon-sized head. But when he heard the rest, without any transition, he was suddenly showered with compliments.
Rong Xie's feelings were mixed for a moment.
If he hadn't known that Shen Bingsi didn't have those feelings, he would have misunderstood again.
"Thank you, you look good too," Rong Xie replied.
However, Shen Bingsi did not show any smugness, nor did he take the opportunity to boast about his appearance. He still looked a little disappointed, as if he was not satisfied with Rong Xie's answer.
"Change back first." Rong Xie patted his shoulder; the feeling of him being addressed like this was really strange.
"oh."
Thousands of golden threads burst forth from Shen Bingsi's body, and his form began to grow larger, while Rong Xie's clothes made the sound of threads being stretched open.
A moment later, Shen Bingsi reappeared in front of Rong Xie, wearing the shrunken casual clothes.
Even though they were all the same size, the one that Shen Bingsi wore looked particularly small.
With a touch of heartache, Rong Xie took the clothes off Shen Bingsi. Before he knew it, the clothes were torn and unwearable. This was one of the few new casual clothes he had ever had made.
Shen Bingsi scratched the back of her head: "Let's go back and find a tailor to make a few more. Is this fabric from Huahong Clothing Workshop?"
“Yes…” Rong Xie folded up the torn clothes and put them away. “I’ll find a tailor to alter them later.”
"By the way, shouldn't you mend these pants too?" Rong Xie looked down and saw that Shen Bing Si's pants still had a big hole in them. They hadn't been visible before because Rong Xie's casual clothes were covering them, but now they were showing again.
“No need,” Shen Bingsi said. “I have plenty of other pants, one more won’t make a difference.”
"But we can't just throw it away." Rong Xie felt that Shen Bing Si's extravagant behavior was not good.
“I won’t throw it away, I’ll keep it,” Shen Bingsi said.
Rong Xie felt that he was being too nosy. They were both living their own lives now, so why was he bothering about what to do with someone else's torn pants?
"It's getting late." Shen Bingsi turned around, picked up the small table in the middle of the couch, put it aside, and smoothed out the cushions on the couch. "Aren't you going to rest?"
"I don't need to rest," Rong Xie said.
"That won't do. You go upstairs and rest. I'll meditate here." Shen Bingsi nudged Rong Xie, took a chair from a distance, placed it next to the couch, and sat down cross-legged.
Rong Xie really wanted to rest. He had important things to do tomorrow, and being only human, he might not have the energy to stay up all night.
Rong Xie took out a mattress from his brocade pouch, spread it on the couch, and lay down on his side.
After lying down for a while, he felt a gaze intently fixed on his back.
...
Rong Xie turned around and saw that Shen Bingsi had moved her chair to a position directly opposite the couch at some point. She wasn't meditating; she was just sitting there, staring blankly at him.
"What are you doing?" Rong Xie couldn't help but ask.
"Hmm?" Shen Bingsi snapped out of her reverie. "I'm looking at you."
"I know you're looking at me, why are you looking at me?" Rong Xie asked, puzzled.
“Observe...it will become even more similar tomorrow,” Shen Bingsi said.
"Really?" Rong Xie was skeptical. He was sleeping with his back to Shen Bing Si. What could Shen Bing Si possibly observe?
"Did it disturb your rest?" Shen Bingsi raised an eyebrow. "Then I won't watch it."
"Hmm... never mind, I can't sleep anyway." Rong Xie turned over to face Shen Bing Si. "It wasn't convenient to talk about this in front of Lu Ying Qi, so let me tell you about the case I'm investigating now."
Shen Bingsi leaned forward, looking very interested.
Rong Xie didn't know where to begin. This matter involved a wide range of issues, and he had never mentioned it to Shen Bing Si. During the time they were apart, a lot of things had unknowingly accumulated up in his mind that Shen Bing Si didn't know about, and just thinking about it made him feel very troubled.
“Let’s start with the well,” Rong Xie said. “The Lu family has a well that is said to produce spiritual spring water. If you drink from the spring water, even children without spiritual roots will grow them and be able to cultivate.”
"Oh?" Shen Bingsi exclaimed in surprise, "Lu Yingqi was able to cultivate after drinking this water?"
"Pfft, no." Rong Xie hadn't expected Shen Bingsi to think that way. "They're their servants. They adopt children from all over the surrounding area. If a family can't afford to raise a child or doesn't want to, they'll send them to the Lu family..."
Rong Xie originally thought it would take a long time to finish telling these stories, but he didn't expect that once he started, he couldn't stop. Shen Bingsi always managed to interrupt at strange points and ask some unexpected questions. Before he knew it, Rong Xie had talked for a long time, explaining and recounting the stories of the Lu family's servants, from Lu Yinglin and Xiao Ya to Lu Yingqi and Xiao Zhi. Shen Bingsi listened very attentively, and he believed whatever Rong Xie said. Some of the content was so bizarre that Rong Xie thought it was absurd at the time, but Shen Bingsi accepted it all without a doubt, unless Rong Xie told him later that there was another hidden story.
Rong Xie wasn't good at storytelling and lacked any storytelling skills. When he did tell a story, he always tried to explain the cause and effect clearly, which made it particularly boring. However, he found that as long as he had an audience who believed everything, he could tell the story smoothly and, upon reflection, he didn't miss anything.
"That's it." After recounting his encounter with Madam Mei today and the wild boar he had killed in the servants' quarters, Rong Xie breathed a sigh of relief, feeling a sense of accomplishment.
"How could such a ridiculous thing happen!" Shen Bingsi slammed her hand on the armrest of her chair. "The Lu family is blatantly disregarding human life, and their two young masters are turning a blind eye?"
“Hmm…” Rong Xie thought to himself, Shen Bing Si’s reaction was exactly as he had guessed, “It’s not that we’re ignoring it, Lu Ying Lin had no choice, but Lu Ying Qi came back to ask, but…”
“He should have asked long ago. The Lu family provided him with this opportunity, and he knew there was something fishy about them, yet he still dragged it out until today!” Shen Bingsi said. “No, their family even has such a dangerous creature as wild boar. I wonder what’s in that well. I still have to go with you tomorrow.”
“You can’t come with me. You’ve forgotten, Xiaozhi is still in Madam Mei’s hands, and there are so many innocent servants. Madam Mei has all the evidence against them,” Rong Xie reminded him. “You have to stay here and keep an eye on things. Madam Mei can’t find out I’m missing. Also, you have to keep Lu Yingqi calm.”
“But…” Shen Bingsi knew that the key problem lay with Lu Yingqi. Lu Yingqi was still wavering in his attitude, otherwise Rong Xie wouldn’t have had to go through such a long and complicated process.
“If there is any danger, I will call you,” Rong Xie said. “If there really are demons and monsters in the well, Lu Yingqi will also stand on our side. Is there anything in the world that the two of you Nascent Soul cultivators cannot solve together? So, I am not worried at all. This case is a sure thing.”
Shen Bingsi still frowned, looking anxious, as if Rong Xie was about to jump into some terrible abyss.
Rong Xie had no choice but to open her hand and extend it to him: "Give it to me."
"What?"
"Sound-transmitting jade pendant".
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I'm going down the mine tomorrow!
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