This Damned Thirst for Survival
chapter-7

But Jiang Luo still has a note of caution in his mind.

It was late and the police officers were very considerate and arranged a hotel for them and left them to rest.

The moon is sparse and Jiang Luo is staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head as the memory of his boss’s wife flashes through his mind.

Protection.

It was the only obsession that made a mother get back up and stand by her child.

This kind of emotion was too foreign to Jiang Luo, who had few friends and had never felt such affection. Even his colleagues at the design institute, with whom Jiang Luo had a good relationship on the surface, never got to know Jiang Luo’s personal life.

For Jiang Luo, living alone, dying alone, eating alone and not going hungry is the best way to live.

He slowly drained away these thick emotions that did not belong to him and closed his eyes.

One night of peace.

When they went downstairs for breakfast the next day, a young policeman who looked to be in his twenties sat at the table and greeted them, “Buns, doughnuts and hoisin soup, is that OK?”

Jiang Luo took the fritters and ripped them into small pieces to soak in the hoisin soup as the policeman boy said, “The owner of Hotel 129 is awake, he’s in a bit of a bad state of mind.”

The police showed them a video of the boss lying in a hospital bed holding his son and not letting go, in tears and panic, mouthing the words, “Wife, I’m sorry, wife ……”

The child cried out in shock at his appearance and the owner immediately held the child close as he kept stroking the child’s fine, soft hair for a long time, shedding silent tears.

Because of the business, the boss really neglected his family a lot. When he had money, he didn’t have time for his family, and when he didn’t have money, he didn’t have the patience to spend time with them.

One day, the owner came up with a new promotional technique.

He plans to get his old lady, whom he hasn’t seen for a long time, into the hotel and shoot some fun videos of the old lady to make her an internet sensation to attract traffic. With short videos nowadays, people are more tolerant of children and the elderly, and with fame, his hotel is unlikely to catch fire again.

The boss took his mother back to the hotel. He hadn’t lived with her for a long time, but after all, he was his own mother and son, and the more time passed, the more he felt that something was wrong. But the boss didn’t look into these irregularities, all his thoughts were on his career, thinking that nothing big would happen anyway.

But it was his neglect, because of his perfunctory thoughts, that led to such consequences.

Jiang Luo watched as the black mist on the child’s arm faded away to the sound of his boss’s cries. He swallowed his last bite of doughnut and turned his head to ask Ye Xun, “Did you see that?”

Ye Xun put down the bun and looked back indifferently, “What do you see?”

“A black mist,” Jiang Luo said, “on the left arm of a small child.”

Ye Xun frowned and looked intently at the small child in the video, shaking his head after a long moment, “I didn’t see it.”

Jiang Luo is thoughtful.

Even someone as powerful as Ye Xun could not see such a black mist, and the original body had never seen it either, so why could he see it?

The only difference between him and the original is the difference in soul, and the death of Chi You.

Did his soul cause this change, or was it because Chi You was by his side that Jiang Luo saw the black mist?

Jiang Luo hopes it will be the former.

After all, nobody doesn’t want to be a genius.

After eating, the police officer smiled as he picked up a backpack from under the table and handed it to them, “We checked the life of this severed-headed ghost and he really hasn’t done anything evil. After we consulted with him personally, he wants to be taken back to the school for you to keep.”

The bag was placed in Jiang Luo’s arms, Jiang Luo unzipped it and looked down with a shy smile on his green-faced head, “Little friend, I am saluted.”

Jiang Luo tossed the bag to Lu Youyi and said with little interest, “There you go.”

Lu Youyi held the severed head of the ghost and wondered, “Raise it, how? Bury it in the earth?”

The broken-headed ghost was in tears, “Yesterday he called people Ning Xiu elder brother, today he gives them away at will, really the prettier they are the more they know how to break my life’s heart.”

Lu Youyi’s ears hurt and she brushed up her zip, “You’re so noisy.”

The police officer continued, “We searched every room toilet in Hotel 129 this morning and found plutonium coins wrapped in the toilet flush in every room. We’ll investigate the clientele afterwards and find out who used these tactics, but you don’t have to worry about these things.”

Ye Xun nodded, “The window on the first floor of the hotel is guilty of window bane, so have him use the Dragon’s Fifth Son ‘Paddy Vipers’ pendulum to place it on the window to break the bane.”

The police officer took note of these one by one and smiled brightly, “Good work, students.”

After saying their goodbyes, the three men slowly prepared to return.

On the way back to school, Lu Youyi and Ye Xun were playing with their mobile phones, so Jiang Luo was surprised to see them chatting in a group with Yu Guang.

The name of the group is “Please burn incense” and the number of people in the group is eight.

The more Jiang Luo looked at it, the more familiar it became. It suddenly dawned on him that this was the class group that had been blocked by the original owner, wasn’t it?

He opened his phone and found the class group and clicked in to see that the group message was already 99 .

Jiang Luo scrolled up and, goodness, the group had no regard for the fact that he was still in the group and the chat messages were full of gossip between him and Chi You.

[ Zhuo Zhongqiu : When are you coming back? I definitely don’t believe you guys about Chi You and Jiang Luo until I see someone].

[Ge Zhu: Strange, how could I not see this kind of connection between these two?]

Lu Youyi gushed: [ Chi You’s death is of course not destined to happen, in fact, Chi You’s brother’s performance is already very obvious, but you just don’t see it. But I had a vague sense that something was wrong, I just didn’t say anything.]

[ Ye Xun: You’ve only ever said bad things about Jiang Luo].

Lu Youyi’s heart leapt, and he carefully glanced up from his mobile phone to see Jiang Luo’s face was unchanged before he was relieved. He had indeed scolded Jiang Luo for many things in the past, but now he felt too weak to let Jiang Luo know.

Because Lu Youyi discovered that Jiang Luo was not really what he thought he was.

Jiang Luo finished reading the message and it turned out to be Lu Youyi and Ye Xun telling the group the story of his two-way crush with Chi You.

The group was in a trance, unable to believe that what they both said was true.

Did Chi You already have a deep love for Jiang Luo? You even confessed your love to Jiang Luo?

You used to leave Jiang Luo alone to make up for the time you spent with him?

Hahahaha, are Ye Xun and Lu Youyi getting nightmares?

They are more likely to believe that Lu Youyi and Ye Xun are making up stories to deceive people than that Chi You and Jiang Luo like each other.

[ Zhuo Zhongqiu : How can Chi You like Jiang Luo ?]

Lu Youyi said slyly: [Think of Jiang Luo’s face].

The group was silent for a few seconds before Lu Youyi said again in a twisted voice: [Actually, Jiang Luo is quite nice].

Ye Xun said: [ Lu Youyi is right].

The group’s attitude of “disbelief and scorn” changed to “half-belief” as the two of them spoke with conviction. Jiang Luo took one look at Ye Xun and Lu Youyi with relief and knew he had chosen the right people.

It was easy to fool them both, but it was hard to fool the rest of the class.

Jiang Luo, both the original and the current Jiang Luo, is an outsider to the class. In this case, with Lu Youyi, who has always hated Jiang Luo, and Ye Xun, who is aloof, the class would be more convinced by the message that “Chi You likes Jiang Luo”.

Clearly better than Jiang Luo’s own words.

The first thing you need to do is to make up your own mind to make the sugar more realistic.

Lu Youyi shook off his sore fingers and sent out his last words: [We’ll be at school soon, ask Jiang Luo if you don’t believe me, and besides, even if you don’t believe Chi You will like Jiang Luo, you have to believe in Chi You’s aesthetics.]

Jiang Luo : “……”

For the umpteenth time since he crossed over, he was thankful for this face of his.

Jiang Luo puts his phone away and thinks for a moment about how to act out his love for Chi You while still showing the determination of a scumbag prodigal son to come back.

Unlike Ye Xun and Lu Youyi, three of the remaining five in the class are not easy to deal with.

One is Ge Zhu, the son of a Taoist family; the other is Zhuo Zhongqiu, the daughter of the Zhuo family, who is a dual-cultivator of body and soul among the six schools; and the other is Wen Renlian, whose eyes are always smiling in a way that makes it impossible to see through his heart.

One relies on intuition, the other on experience, the other on reading hearts, and neither is a good cajoler.

Ten minutes later, the three arrived at the entrance to the school.

As soon as they got out of the car, they saw a handsome man standing outside the entrance to the school.

The handsome man was wearing casual short sleeves and shorts, and his two straight legs were whiter than a girl’s. He was leaning against the wall with a duck-tongue hat on, dealing with the group of girls that surrounded him.

Lu Youyi staggered at the sight of the handsome man: “I can’t believe they’ve come to pick us up, this one is so gossipy.”

Jiang Luo squinted to see who the man was, and before he could get a good look, the handsome man spotted them and stepped out of the group of girls. Walking straight up to them, he expertly extended his hand in greeting, “What’s with bringing back a ghost?”

The voice is husky and neutral, as if soaked in tobacco and alcohol.

The handsome man is looking at the backpack behind Lu Youyi, in which the severed ghost’s head is being carried. Yet the severed head had not yet revealed a hint of something wrong before the other man had discovered its presence.

Ye Xun and Lu Youyi were not surprised, Ye Xun grumbling slightly, “It’s haunting Jiang Luo.”

The handsome man looks over at Jiang Luo, who is slightly shorter than Jiang Luo, and raises his head slightly, revealing a sharp but feminine face beneath a duck-top hat.

Jiang Luo’s eyes are sharp and deep, his features are androgynous, and his face is soft and feminine.

Zhuo Zhongqiu’s gaze roamed over Jiang Luo’s body as if it had substance, and suddenly whistled, “Chi You has a good eye.”

The girls at the back of the room timidly caught up, stopping two meters away with a light blush on their faces, “Schoolgirl ……”

Zhuo Zhongqiu turned around helplessly and pointed a backhanded finger at Jiang Luo , “Sisters, Sister likes this kind of looks.” She paused and smiled, “Preferably with big breasts, after all, Sister is a flat-chested girl herself.”

The girls’ cheeks burst into red and they all scattered in one breath.

Lu Youyi : “…… So jealous.”

Ye Xun nods silently.

Zhuo Zhongqiu was very curious about Jiang Luo and asked him many questions on the way back, “So, Chi You’s death was not an accident?”

She wrapped her arms around her chest and rubbed her chin, suddenly letting out a laugh, “Interesting.”

Jiang Luo also found it interesting, but he couldn’t show it. He smiled, saw the young couple next to him making out on the pathway seats, and had an idea, and suddenly stopped in his tracks in a daze.

Zhuo Zhongqiu followed his gaze and realised, “You’ve been here on dates before?”

The pretty young man with dark hair smiled, “Not really a date.”

Chi You did bring the original here, however it was to humiliate it in front of those ordinary students.

Jiang Luo’s eyes are gentle as he looks at the flowers. He loves plants, and after his sophomore year, when he finished his foundation in design, he took up landscape design for this reason. He looks as if his jewels have been wiped with a silk cloth and dusted with a sublimated dazzle.

Her eyes are soft, her smile is like a breeze with dew, she looks ethereal and fairy-like, but her bones hide a few hidden demons, a kind of contradictory charm.

Zhuo Zhongqiu couldn’t help but look at him for a few more moments, thinking that love is something that can really transform a person. Even Jiang Luo, the scum of the earth, has come back, but a prodigal son never returns, and Zhuo Zhongqiu is not the kind of person to judge people by stereotypes.

She interpreted Jiang Luo’s expression of tenderness as nostalgia for Chi You, glanced at Jiang Luo’s neck again, and said tentatively, “I heard from Lu Youyi that Chi You showed up last night?”

The dark haired young man looked a little abstinent with two layers of gauze wrapped around his neck by the paramedics. He raised a hand to his neck, remembering his last meeting with Chi You, but the smile on his face grew, “Yeah, he came to see me.”

Jiang Luo could still laugh when an evil spirit who wanted to take him away had strangled his neck like this, and Zhuo Zhongqiu was convinced that he was in love with Chi You. Zhuo Zhongqiu rubbed his brow with a headache, “No way, you can still laugh? He came to you because he wants you dead.”

Jiang Luo, with a look of “I won’t listen, I won’t listen”, said stubbornly, “Chi You won’t do anything against me, he just misses me.”

Zhuo Zhongqiu : “……” is really the exact same as the group of love brains who are on top of the relationship.

Lu Youyi couldn’t even look at it, he wanted to say, “But your neck ……”

Jiang Luo showed a sweet smile and said softly, “It must have been his excitement, I know, he didn’t mean it.”

Zhuo Zhongqiu moved over to Ye Xun and quietly pointed at his brain, “Is he under the spell of Chi You?”

Ye Xun sighed, “He loves Chi You and feels guilty about Chi You, he just fears that if Chi You really let him die, he will do so without hesitation.”

“That won’t do,” Zhuo Zhongqiu said promptly, “Chi You must not be allowed to kill Jiang Luo.”

Even if it was for Chi You, they couldn’t stand by and watch Chi You do something like this.

This was definitely not the other man’s intention; Chi You had turned into a ghostly creature, and the idea of killing his lover to keep him company may have become his obsession; they had to stop Chi You before he came to his senses and remembered what he had done and fell into an abyss of regret and pain.

Zhuo Zhongqiu and Ye Xun looked at each other and nodded in silence.

The old campus of Bai Hua University is in the centre of the city, which is a very small area given the amount of land available. The Faculty of Natural Sciences and Social Studies is in the deepest part of the campus, and Jiang Luo followed them left and right, making many detours before a brand new road suddenly appeared in a remote corner that he had not seen before.

Two words rise up in Jiang Luo’s mind: formation.

The view opens up behind the pathway, with the tall school building built on the banks of a semi-circular lake of clear water, forming a ‘jade belt around the waist’ feng shui pattern.

Jiang Luo’s first glance reveals a golden mist overhead, the auspicious aura of a feng shui site.

On closer inspection, the Qi of the sky, the spirit of the earth, the sun, the moon, the mountains, the rivers, the grass, the trees and the flowers, all of which are gathered around the water’s edge, give this place the effect of a dragon vein, making it a superior layout.

Jiang Luo marvelled as he walked towards the class, which was watching them through the window.

With his hair pinned in a bun and dressed in loose Taoist clothes, Ge Zhu looked out with a smile at the three men approaching, his face calm and his eyes bright and clean, giving him a sense of freedom from the world, “Look, they’re back.

The tall man sitting opposite him answered in silence, looked out for a long time and then suddenly said, ” Ye Xun had the doll in his hand used.”

Ge Zhu was slightly shocked, “A commission for a B&B shop, and you’re using a ghost doll?”

The mountainous and sullen Kuang Zheng gave a “hmmm”, he was a smith and had a telepathic ability with the tools he made, “Don’t worry, it’s just been used a little.”

Ge Zhu wiped the cold sweat from his head, “Scared the hell out of the Taoist priest, I thought Xiao Fen had messed up his food again.”

As they spoke, the four men outside had walked in. Ge Zhu, with a sunny smile, waved enthusiastically at them, “Welcome back.”

Kuang Zheng gets up, a big man, but he looks extraordinarily restrained, silently pulling out chairs for a few people.

Jiang Luo Yu Guang glanced at the two students, Ge Zhu, a friendly Taoist priest, and Kuang Zheng, a smith with the skin of a wheaten bricklayer.

Kuang Zheng is a remarkable figure, as the number of talented people in the arcane world is decreasing, and one in a hundred is a smith, but Kuang Zheng has a great talent for smithing.

Ge Zhu and Kuang Zheng are also looking at him, and Jiang Luo sits down by the window, smiling slightly at them with his cheeks.

Ge Zhu also smiled faintly and fixed his eyes on Jiang Luo.

The human being is supported by the skeleton, just like a house, and the five senses are the windows of the house. Therefore, when a face reader reads the face of a person, he or she must first look at the bones and the face.

Bones need to be touched by hand, but faces do not. Ge Zhu has been a student of face reading for a long time, and with just one glance, he could tell the success or failure of an ordinary person’s life. But at this moment, all Ge Zhu could see in Jiang Luo’s body was a fog that covered him tightly!

He was so shocked that he stood up with a start and stammered, “This this this ……”

Jiang Luo tangled a strand of black hair around his finger and looked at him with interest, “Hmm?”

Ge Zhu walked quickly to his side and held out his hand solemnly, ” Fellow Jiang Luo, can I show you my palm?”

Jiang Luo smiled and extended his left hand to him, “Please.”

Ge Zhu took his hand in his.

The hand is delicate and smooth, as soft as moss, and the fingertips are long and slender, indicating that the person is intelligent and handsome, and has the appearance of great wealth and prosperity. This is only the most basic of palmistry characteristics, Ge Zhu wanted to look more closely, but his eyes were dazzled by the chaotic palm lines, and his eyes were wide with bells, but he could not tell the slightest bit.

The people around him were quiet, afraid to disturb him. After a long time, Ge Zhu dropped Jiang Luo’s hand with a sweaty head and returned to his seat in a trance, holding a thermos cup and smiling weakly, “There is nothing to do, there are people outside the world, there are mountains outside the mountains, how can one’s life be so easily understood? The only way to get better and better is to work hard, not to mess with your heart, not to be trapped in your feelings, to get through the cold, in order to usher in peace. Know that a life that looks at the end at a glance can be very miserable.”

A laugh came from outside, ” Ge Zhu, what’s that chicken soup for the soul stew you’re making again?”

Before the words were out of his mouth, two people came in the back door. The one who spoke was a lady in a red dress, her hair long and flowing, her eyes narrowed together with a smile, a beige shawl draped over her dress, pacing elegantly on high heels.

“She is tall, very tall, taller and slimmer than the blonde, blue-eyed foreign boy behind her. This beautiful, dignified and elegant-looking woman is none other than the understated and mysterious Wen Renlian.

A man with a female fetish.

Sai Liaoer, the beautiful foreign boy behind Wen Renlian, scratched his head apologetically and said awkwardly in a foreigner’s accent, “Sorry we’re late.”

Ge Zhu sighed, ” Wen Ren , here you are.”

Wen Renlian gathers his shawl and sits across from Jiang Luo with a smile on his face, his eyes squinted into slits with lashes so thick that one wonders if he can see clearly.

” Ge Zhu , what do you see?”

“I can’t see anything,” Ge Zhu said honestly, “do you want to try?”

Ge Zhu studied philology and Wen Renlian studied divination.

Wen Renlian smiled at his words, still smiling, and refused, “If you can’t even see it, I won’t insult myself. I’d rather ask fellow Jiang Luo something than all this arcane stuff.”

He followed Jiang Luo’s example and held his cheeks up, his satin wig sliding down his chest, and Wen Renlian asked curiously, “Jiang Luo, have you ever slept with Chi You?”