When Gu Ying and Lizi introduced spiritual wine, Anji protested. However, Mingshen was not soone she could out-talk, and Yihao ended up emptying the jar. Like a cliche plot, her third brother ended up slumped on the dining table after their feast and snored like a bum.
With Gu Ying’s assistance, they carried the deadweight of a muscle bloke to bed. The effects of spiritual wine would not last long. A few hours at most. But it was enough ti for Mingshen, who planned everything from the start.
Giving Lizi and Gu Ying a nod as a signal to be left alone with his younger sister, the scholarly informant waited until Anji had bid them good night.
Finally, they were alone. Mingshen took off the facade of the big brother and donned the cold assassin’s poker face. As expected, his younger sister barely flinched. If anything, she appeared to expect it too and let her cheery mask fall. The childishness was nowhere to be found, and before him stood the real heiress to the Mystical Qilin Sect.
"You’ve changed," he comnted lightly with a smile.
Unfazed, Anji nodded in acknowledgent. It was only a matter of ti before they had this discussion.
"And so have you. Is it disappointing?"
For a mont, they stared at each other wordlessly, sizing each other up. Eventually, it was Mingshen who first caved.
"As expected, I could never win you. How much do you already know?"
Anji chuckled, and her eyes turned molten for a few seconds as if to answer Mingshen. Then, they faded back to a dark hazel.
"Enough to make father and mother sad," Anji replied mysteriously. "Co, give your wrist. I still need to confirm my suspicion."
Not one to defy a skilled physician, Mingshen obediently let Anji take his pulse. Truthfully, he knew better than anyone else just how serious his situation was. However, they were at war. There was no ti to let his guard down until now.
Anji’s frown deepened the longer she took Mingshen’s pulse. It had only been four years since the last ti they parted. Back then, Bai Dajin and Mingshen were also doing sothing dangerous. Although her brothers had beco a lot stronger in the ti they spent apart, it was clear to her that their strength did not co without a price.
"How long has this gone on for?" she asked seriously. "You’d better not hide any details from ."
Flashing her golden eyes for safe asure, Anji held Mingshen’s gaze as hostage.
Normally, Mingshen was the hunter. However, there were only two instances when he was not the apex predator, and they were both in front of powerful won. Only his mother and sisters can make him bow down.
"Since you left for the Mystical Qilin Sect," he admitted. "At first, it was still contained. However, the last two years had been especially brutal. Father was working overti since the ambush, and I had to step up behind the scenes. Bai Dajin cannot handle them all alone. Soone had to stand in for Hong Nian Niang when she was recuperating."
Hearing how much responsibility her seventeen-year-old brother had to shoulder, Anji’s heart broke. It was no exaggeration to say he was doing just as much as their father, who was a war hero. The world was unfair, and Mingshen was too much of a kind-hearted fool to look the other way. Anji could relate. Ignorance was bliss, but at the sa ti, she was thankful for all the inherited knowledge she gained through her training at the Mystical Qilin Sect. Unlike before, she could now shoulder so of that burden her second brother carried. The fact that he told her this much must an that she was at least trusted enough to carry so of his weight. He no longer had to do it alone.
Mingshen half expected Anji to chew his ears off when she found out. However, the girl only appeared thankful. It almost moved him to tears when she did not comnt about his recklessness and only poured her spiritual threads into his ridians to rectify the frayed pathways.
For years after the miasma poisoning, Mingshen battled with controlling the smoothness of his energy flow. The dicine helped to control it, but due to the urgency of the war, he had no ti to properly recuperate. Over ti, it led to the wearing down of his internal network from overuse and lack of rest. To make up for the strain on his body, Mingshen had to deliberately halt all cultivation progress and improve the control of his qi instead. As a result, his precision over energy control reached mastery. Yet, he had to use his skills sparingly to avoid early rupture. Pouring more into a cracking cup will only make it break quicker. Despite knowing the risks, Mingshen still did it, and now, Anji knew it too.
It was funny how their situations are reversed. In the past, Anji was the cracking cup. Now, it was Mingshen. Anji’s cup might have been sealed thanks to the risky spiritual surgery and new artificial cores in place. However, her second brother was running around recklessly, and she now knew how it felt watching him push himself.
"I’m not going to lecture you about it because it would be similar to a pot calling a kettle black. However, I am going to insist on treatnts whenever possible," she declared after rendering first-aid treatnt. "I understand you cannot stop what you are doing completely. However, we both know this is not a long-term solution to continue."
Nodding in agreent, Mingshen thanked Anji and promised not to exert himself unless absolutely necessary.
"Can you keep this from Yihao? He’d try to do everything himself if he knew you and were in the sa boat. Given his recklessness, even with Iron Skin, he might get himself killed or worse."
Raising her hand, Anji swore it on her doctor’s code. Patient confidentiality was key, and she would not betray it. However, they needed to co up with a better excuse if they wanted to fool Yihao. For all his simple-mindedness, their third brother had surprisingly sharp instincts at tis.
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