Turning the tables

Murder?

Lin Qi was a little surprised by the answer.

After speaking, Lü Yuan smiled faintly and watched her in silence, his chin resting between his joined hands.

He said nothing more.

He seemed to be waiting for Lin Qi to ask him more.

Outside the window, the sky was growing dark, and the neon lights ubiquitous in this cultivation-punk world shone inside.

The room's lights were off, and the two figures were surrounded by neon light. Together with what Lü Yuan had just said,

the air fell silent for a moment, and the atmosphere took on an eerie quality.

But capitalist cultivation wasn't about to switch to the suspense channel. In fact, horror movies had long since died out in this world.

What a joke. If I cultivated to immortality and was still afraid of a bunch of demons and ghosts, wouldn't all that cultivation have been for nothing?!

So Lin Qi's surprise wasn't because the subject had frightened her. Besides, she had been a dignified Purple Mansion True Person in her previous life. No matter how far she had fallen, something like this wasn't enough to scare her.

She was simply surprised that Lü Yuan had killed someone.

This was the Lower City, and until recently, the two of them had lived together in the same orphanage for eight years.

Although they weren't close, murder was far too remote from their lives.

Lin Qi knew that better than anyone.

Unlike in the ancient cultivation era, it was a serious crime in this age for people of the same level to kill one another.

Just consider how even a higher cultivator who killed a lower cultivator without a killing license actually had to pay compensation, and you could see how serious it was.

On top of that, with the information age reaching everyone, murder normally couldn't be concealed at all.

After all, the cultivators of the Lower City Security Mobile Unit could locate a target and bring them in within minutes.

They would then assign the person somewhere suitable until every last drop of their remaining value had been squeezed out.

So such things rarely happened.

Something like that shouldn't have had anything to do with Lü Yuan, who had worked for eight years to become a factory-recommended student...

Much less when he was plainly safe and sound now!

Lin Qi gently breathed out a stale breath, and the white mist slowly dispersed. "That answer really is surprising..."

She had thought Lü Yuan would say that he had encountered an opportunity too. After all, everything he did showed that he was definitely more than just precocious.

The fact that he knew his precise Spiritual Qi Aptitude in advance without anyone else knowing was proof enough.

Even Lin Qi herself had only estimated hers based on her past life's experience.

Given how Lü Yuan behaved, who would believe he hadn't encountered an opportunity?

Would you?

I wouldn't, anyway.

Still, it actually made no difference to her what he said. She had only wanted to see whether he could do this much for a friend.

It's just that I really am a little curious about the circumstances behind this killing-

Now that he's said this much, presumably he won't hide that.

Lin Qi blinked. Her thoughts had taken only an instant, and she was just about to ask him herself.

But Lü Yuan leaned forward a little and took a gentle sniff. "Huh, it's actually a little fragrant. What toothpaste do you use?" he exclaimed.

"Are you a pervert?!"

Even after living two lives, Lin Qi was a little exasperated with the fellow before her.

If you called him normal, he always managed to do something a little improper yet harmless.

But if you called him abnormal, his precociousness, far beyond his age, was no act.

"Since we've been open with each other now, why bother worrying about these little details?"

Lü Yuan shrugged, looking every bit like a little demon.

Still, he wasn't the sort to keep someone in suspense forever. Before Lin Qi could come to her senses and ask, he took the initiative to speak of the past.

"Are you curious about the circumstances behind my killing someone, and why I wasn't found out after I did it?"

Lin Qi didn't deliberately contradict him. She simply asked, "So... is it really all right to tell me the details of something like that?"

Lü Yuan yawned. "Would you hurt the enemy by eight hundred while losing ten thousand yourself?"

"No."

"Then, according to the agreement we made during our deal just now, are we friends now?"

"After all, you said we'd advance and retreat together and keep each other in check?"

Lin Qi looked at him with a complicated expression. "I suppose so."

Lü Yuan spoke lightly. "There you go, then. What is there to worry about?"

In fact, Lü Yuan was even more certain of this than Lin Qi herself, because although he didn't know his present value, she certainly did.

So she must understand that telling anyone about this would be useless.

After all, given her status in her previous life, Lin Qi definitely knew that he, the bearer of a top-grade Pseudo Spirit Root, had caught the eye of a certain important person at a subsidiary.

And until his value had been squeezed dry, that person wouldn't abandon him for the time being.

He had said all that merely to build goodwill and lay the groundwork for squeezing Lin Qi's value dry later.

But in Lin Qi's eyes, his behavior, combined with the lengths he could go to for his friend Wang Yan...

Made him the very image of the old-era cultivators she had so often heard her grandfather talk about.

Just because I said I'd use our secrets to keep us balanced and advance and retreat with him, he's willing to go this far...

Is it just because he understood that to mean "friends"?

Lin Qi gritted her teeth inwardly. He's this naive. Can he really make it all the way and get into junior college alive?

The importance of even a top-grade Pseudo Spirit Root to the Purple Mansion cultivator stationed in the Lower City goes without saying, but the death rate still isn't zero-

Forget it. The deal is done, after all. With me by his side from now on, I might as well help him out more so I can return to the Upper City myself.

Otherwise, if he dies, the easiest path back to the Upper City for me will be blocked.

While Lin Qi was thinking, Lü Yuan spoke again, seeing that he had been silent for a long time.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing. I was just guessing that you had an opportunity to do it at some point in the past."

Lü Yuan raised an eyebrow. "Did you guess when?"

Lin Qi answered quickly. It was a question, but her tone was quite the opposite, almost certain.

"Was it three years ago?"

Lü Yuan clapped his hands. "Pretty easy to guess, wasn't it?"

"After all, the Eight-Hour Workday Cult rioted that year. For a short while, there were things the surveillance cameras couldn't capture."

"And quite a few people went missing or died in that riot. I barely had to do anything to escape suspicion."

"Of course, of course... it wouldn't be very fair to you if I only said that, so I'll just tell you who I killed-"

Lü Yuan calmly spoke the name. "Li Jinglian. Do you remember her?"

Lin Qi shook her head. It was an obscure name.

"It's only natural you don't remember her. Compared to you, who was practically untouchable during those years at the orphanage, she was a little lower on the social ladder."

"You could say there should have been no chance at all for us to meet, but fate is a curious thing. Because of a little incident, we became friends."

"Friends..."

"My first friend. I believe I took good care of her and never did anything to wrong her."

"Even that day, when we found that cultist's corpse and found 2,000 Spirit Stone Vouchers on him, I thought about sharing half with her."

There was no need to say any more. Lin Qi already understood why Lü Yuan had killed her.

"But she wanted to kill you then, for the 2,000 Spirit Stone Vouchers, right?"

It hadn't been a deliberate murder, but a counter-kill.