Chương 75: Chapter 74 — Like a Cat

Trapped in a safehouse without his phone or Elder Wong's core or much else to distract himself, Lin Che set himself a goal: make amends with his wife. She must have completely misunderstood who he was, partly because he wanted her to when he pretended to be much stronger than he really was, but also because he murdered a sect elder before her very eyes. And rather violently at that, too.

He noticed, thankfully, that there was no camera in the bathroom — a small pocket of privacy within the entire compound, he'd grown to call it. Whatever agency this was that impounded cultivators at least drew the line somewhere. Lin Che took the smaller of the two rooms as Shen Yue had already laid claim to the larger one. He wasn't about to fight her for it, as he really did not want to ruin his relationship with her even further.

There was a chance that she would have conceded immediately given the fear she now had of him, but what use was a larger room when it was a prison nevertheless?

That next morning, Lin Che stood at the kitchen counter with the kettle heating and reached inwards to feel for his Qi. Instead of the familiar rise of warmth, he felt some kind of resistance — one which he could potentially overcome, but it pushed back harder the deeper he went. He managed to externalise a small wisp of his cultivation, which meant he hadn't completely been neutralised, but also showed that it was very much not worth attempting to push further ahead.

He could summon perhaps a tenth of what he could before a sharp headache arrived. It was gone the moment he stopped pushing. Lin Che set both hands on the counter and exhaled slowly to recover.

"If you're wondering," said a voice from the small speaker mounted above the doorframe, "the whole property is warded. I'm not sure how strong the limits are, but I can promise that you don't want to see what happens if you attempt to bypass them." Lin Che looked up at the speaker like he would to a person.

"Makes sense to me," he said, straightening up and rubbing his temple.

"Do I get a name to talk to, or do I just keep addressing the speakers and cameras like this?" There was a pause and the low noise of feedback from the speakers disappeared. The lady behind the voice had clearly turned off the microphone whilst contemplating her answer.

"Ying Rui," she said.

"Ying Rui," he repeated.

"Well, Officer Ying, is there any chance of getting real tea in this house? I don't think I can survive with just bags."

"This isn't room service, Mr. Lin."

"But I'm sure you understand just how inhumane it is to be keeping me here, tealess." A soft exhale crackled through the speaker.

"I'll see what I can arrange." The kettle clicked off and Lin Che poured two cups of hot water into each mug containing cheap tea bags. He'd been here for three days and his tongue still wasn't used to the taste of a miserly supplier. He carried both cups up the narrow staircase.

Shen Yue's door was shut, just as it had been all night. He knocked with his foot, giving a couple of light kicks to the door to signal his arrival as his hands were too full to spare a knuckle.

"It's me," he said, which felt like an unnecessary thing to announce, given that there were exactly two people in the house and the other one was behind the door.

"I made tea. I'll leave it outside if you don't want to open the door." Nothing. No response. He waited for a count of ten seconds before setting one of the cups down carefully on the floor beside her door. Then, he walked away, not expecting much — he'd offered her tea in this manner for the past few days, and had always come back to find a cold cup left untouched in front of the door. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

That usually meant he had a hot cup of tea for himself, and then would punish himself with a cold cup. Lin Che was a firm believer that one should not reheat tea or throw it away — the punishment for letting tea get cold was having to drink something slightly unpleasant. This time, however, as he descended the stairs, he heard the door open slightly. He turned around and saw a pale hand dart out of the crack, take the cup, and vanish once again. The latch clicked shut half a second later.

"Progress," he said to himself, as we went back downstairs to drink his tea alone.

Lin Che had come to realise that Shen Yue would only leave her room when she believed that he was elsewhere. She came down for food whenever he was in the bathroom, presumably sprinting down the stairs and scraping some rice and vegetables into a bowl before scrambling back to her room. Lin Che was worried that she would not consume anything he cooked, but his concerns turned out to be nothing. It seemed her appetite was much larger than his, despite locking herself in her room and being inactive all day.

Only after thinking for much longer did Lin Che realise that this was because she was freezing due to her bloodline ability backfiring on her. In this life, she had not yet been 'cured' from the fruits of the holy land exploration, and, without access to Hu Baolin, she did not have a steady access to her medication. There was some medication in her bag, he thought to himself. She used some of it when fighting the mannequins.

Seated in the living room and doing not much else, Lin Che coughed out twice to the ceiling.

"Ying Rui," he called. The small electric noise from the speakers sounded for half a second before the response came through.

"Yes, Mr. Lin?"

"I believe my wife is suffering," he said, looking sorry in front of the camera in the ceiling.

"In one of the bags that was left in the train — I'm sure you've already confiscated it for evidence — she has her medication. Without it—" he paused for dramatic effect, "—she might die." The speaker went mute for what seemed to be a minute, which made Lin Che imagine Ying Rui having a discussion with her supervisor. Since he didn't know much about her, aside from the fact that she brought him to this house, he imagined it was the older man who interrogated him at first.

"Request rejected," she said, eventually.

"Is there nothing you can do about it?" he asked.

"Cannot tamper with any potential evidence," she said.

"But if you're requesting medication, I'm sure we can find a substitute."

"I don't know of any substitutes," he replied.

"But I know she feels cold without it — do you have any pills with a strong Yang energy?" he asked.

"We cannot provide you with such materials. Not only are they out of our budget, but you could use them for an escape attempt." Damn it, he swore to himself mentally.

"Can we get an electric blanket for her instead, then?" he pleaded.

"This is a place to keep persons of interest involved in a mass casualty investigation, Mr. Lin. This is not a bed and breakfast."

"I'd still like the blanket, please," he smiled to the camera. Fang Rui exhaled through the speaker, static crackling with it.

"I'll put in a request, but I cannot promise anything specific. Even if we get the blanket, it may take time to arrive." The blanket arrived that afternoon, delivered by a masked courier who looked suspiciously like Ying Rui herself. It was such a pitiful, low budget disguise, that even Lin Che felt bad about her situation. It really seemed like this agency really did not have much money to spare.

She unlocked the door to the building and threw in the cardboard box before slamming the door shut and locking it once again. Lin Che decided not to press his luck by asking Ying Rui about her little delivery round and instead placed the box in front of Shen Yue's door for her to stumble upon next time she disappeared to go to the bathroom or to grab food.

"Plums," he told Fang Rui the next day.

"She likes them."

"Noted."

"I'd like a lot of them."

"How many is 'a lot'?"

"Enough that she doesn't run out. Interpret that however you wish." What arrived the following morning was an excessive quantity of plums, which really confused Lin Che. He assumed that whatever agency this was had no money to spare, yet, for some reason, they could spare bucketloads of plums for one prisoner. He grabbed a plum and ran it under the sink to clean it before taking a large bite. The plum was by all counts one of the best plums he'd ever consumed in his life.

It was as though they were organically farmed and very freshly picked.

"These plums are delicious," he said to a speaker.

"You're welcome," came the response, sounding rather smug about herself. He set out a small dish of the plums on the floor in front of her bedroom door and stepped back to consider his handiwork. An image of himself conjured itself in his head: crouched slightly, arranging treats in the hope that a frightened creature might eventually decide to approach it. He'd done something similar once as a boy with a stray cat that used to linger on his street.

Lin Che straightened up, mortified, and said, out loud, with a sudden realisation.

"I am attempting to tame my own wife." Fang Rui's voice cracked through the speaker with what he was almost certain was suppressed laughter.

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"You didn't have to. I heard myself think it."

"For what it's worth," she added, "the cat method appears to be working." Indeed, the divine offering of plums worked, as just a few minutes later, an empty dish was left in front of Shen Yue's bedroom door. And this time, Lin Che did not hear the door locking after she closed it.