88: Chapter 88 Sisters

"Brother, you, you guys..."

Wang Qingcheng looked at Wang Qingxin, and then glanced at her eldest brother holding that girl's hand. The light in her eyes gradually dimmed bit by bit.

She pulled the Puppet Rat closer into her embrace, lifted her chin slightly, and stared at her with a look she herself hadn't even realized.

Wang Qingxin felt that gaze.

She was far too familiar with this feeling of being scrutinized. It was like this when the villagers looked at her, when her adoptive parents looked at her, and when that young master of the Yan Family looked at her.

She subconsciously shrank half a step behind Wang Shouren, lowered her head, and didn't dare to look into Wang Qingcheng's eyes.

"Her name is Qingxin." Wang Shouren gently squeezed that tightly clenched little hand, led her over in front of Wang Qingcheng, and said, "From now on, she will be your younger sister."

Wang Qingcheng's lips pressed into a thin line.

A younger sister? She had just returned a few days early, so how did she suddenly gain a younger sister out of nowhere?

The fire in her heart surged upwards, ceng ceng ceng. She just stared at Wang Qingxin for a good while before turning her face away and muttering sullenly: "Mother is in the kitchen."

With that, she turned around and ran off with a patter-patter. The tail of the Puppet Rat slipped out from the crook of her arm, dragging along the ground and bouncing all the way.

"Is this jealousy?"

Wang Shouren gazed at that huffy figure and let out a slight sigh; this matter was indeed a lapse in his consideration.

He hurriedly took Wang Qingxin by the hand and walked towards the back courtyard.

In the small kitchen of the back courtyard, Chen Yirou was rolling up her sleeves and busying herself in front of the stove.

When Wang Shouren pushed open the door and entered, she didn't even look back, simply saying with a smile, "You're back? Go wash your hands and eat."

But when she turned around and saw a thin, frail little girl following behind her son, the spatula in her hand paused mid-air.

"Whose child is this?" Chen Yirou put down the spatula, wiped her hands on her apron, and swept her gaze back and forth across the girl's face several times.

Wang Qingxin felt completely uneasy under her scrutiny, and subconsciously shrank behind Wang Shouren.

Those hollow eyes were filled with panic.

In the village, unfamiliar women would only chase her away upon seeing her, telling her to scram far off.

"Mother, her name is Wang Qingxin, and I brought her back from outside." Wang Shouren turned sideways and gently led the girl forward a bit. "Let's eat first, we'll talk after the meal."

Hearing the three characters "Wang Qingxin", Chen Yirou tightly clutched the corner of her apron.

Qingcheng, Qingxin—how did these two names sound like a pair of sisters?

Her heart skipped a beat, and her gaze fell once more onto the girl's face, looking even more carefully this time.

Their face shapes were dissimilar, and their eyebrows and eyes didn't match either, which made her secretly heave a sigh of relief. But right after, another thought popped up: her own old man had gone into seclusion; if he hadn't, she would definitely drag him out of the secret room and fiercely interrogate him!

Suppressing that absurd suspicion in her heart, she looked back at the girl and only then noticed the bruises on the child's face that hadn't completely faded, as well as the footprints on her clothes.

Those messy thoughts in her heart were instantly overwhelmed by a wave of sour heartache. She squatted down and said gently, "Are you hungry? There is freshly steamed Cloud Carp on the stove. Sit down first, and I'll dish you a bowl."

Wang Qingxin didn't move, nor did she look at the food on the table. She only turned her head slightly to search for Wang Shouren with her eyes, a look that seemed to be asking: Can I?

Will this person be Life Qi?

Wang Shouren moved a stool, placed it next to his own seat, patted the surface of the stool, and nodded at her.

Only then did she walk over, sitting down cautiously with her two hands resting on her knees. Her back was held straight, and she didn't dare to move a muscle.

Chen Yirou took in this scene without saying anything, simply turning around to grab another set of tableware and setting it on the table.

Wang Qingcheng sat opposite the dining table, poking the rice in her bowl stroke by stroke with her chopsticks, poking hole after hole into it.

Ever since her elder brother brought this girl in by the hand, her gaze hadn't moved away from those two intertwined hands even once.

Whenever they ate in the past, the seat next to the eldest brother belonged to her.

Now that spot had been taken by some little girl who popped out of nowhere, and the eldest brother even personally moved a stool for her.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. She slammed her bowl down onto the table and asked sullenly, "Where is she going to live from now on?"

Wang Qingxin was startled by her tone, her shoulders shrinking slightly. Lowering her head to look at the rice in her bowl, she spoke in a muffled, quiet voice, as if talking to herself: "Did I cause trouble..."

She could tell that the master's younger sister didn't like her.

She was all too familiar with the look the master's younger sister gave her; she had seen that kind of gaze many times before. The villagers looked at her just like that—disgusted that she was dirty, finding her an eyesore, and considering her completely redundant.

"That's not the case." Wang Shouren clipped a piece of fish and placed it into her bowl, his tone as casual as an offhand remark. "Qingcheng just has this kind of temper, it has nothing to do with you. Just coax her later and it'll be fine."

"This time coaxing won't work!" Wang Qingcheng slapped her chopsticks onto the table, her eye sockets already turning red. "You think every time is like before, where giving a piece of candy makes it pass? Eldest brother, you just..."

"Eat first." Chen Yirou placed a bowl of hot soup in front of Wang Qingcheng, her tone gentle yet allowing no room for discussion. "Whatever the matter is, we'll talk after the meal."

Wang Qingcheng's lips moved, but in the end, she choked back the words in her mouth. Lifting her bowl to shield her reddening eye sockets, her tears spun around in her tear ducts before finally failing to hold back, dropping with a pat into her rice bowl.

The dining table fell quiet for a fleeting moment.

Chen Yirou set the soup bowl down on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. Her gaze lingered on Wang Shouren's face for quite a while before she slowly spoke: "Shouren, what on earth is going on with this child?"

Wang Shouren put down his chopsticks, picked up his teacup, and took a gulp, speaking as if he were recounting the most ordinary chore: encountering injustice on the road, dealing with a few people from the Yan Family, she has no parents and looks quite pitiful, and so on. Yet, he didn't mention a single word about Wang Qingxin actively killing people and employing such a cruel method of slicing meat.

He spoke carelessly and downplayed it, not even blinking his eyelids when mentioning the word "dealing with". After hearing this, Chen Yirou's hand picking up food paused slightly, but she didn't say much else.

None knows a son better than his mother; the words spoken by this son of hers historically only revealed seventy percent of the truth.

She didn't press further, only turning her head to glance once more at the bruise on Wang Qingxin's face, before transferring the untouched piece of fish meat from her own bowl into the girl's bowl.

Wang Qingxin sat on the stool, holding half a bowl of rice in her hands and keeping her head lowered the entire time.

"Did the master not mention that I killed people because he thinks I did something wrong? Or does he feel that speaking of it would bring trouble to the master?"

She buried her face into the bowl, slowly shoveling a mouthful of rice, but her throat felt as though it was blocked by something, unable to swallow that bite of rice no matter what.

Wang Qingcheng across the table had already put down her bowl. "You're so thin, do you always go hungry? When those people hit you, why didn't you run?"

Wang Qingxin raised her head, gave Wang Qingcheng a look with those hollow eyes, and then lowered her head again. "I ran before, but I couldn't escape."

Wang Qingcheng froze for a split second, and then her eye sockets turned red once more.

She didn't say anything more, only pushing the plate of sugar cakes in front of her towards Wang Qingxin's direction and turning her face away.

"Fine, I forgive you, but I won't forgive the eldest brother! Hmph!!!"

Wang Shouren was quite helpless; a girl's thoughts were simply too hard to guess. How wonderful men were—decisive in killing and cutting, swift and resolute.

Mn, Qingxin was also quite decisive.

"I see that the side room on the west side is still empty. Let Qingxin live there from now on, how about that?"

Chen Yirou nodded gently. "Alright, then I'll go tidy it up in a bit."

The west room was originally meant for Wang Shouren to live in, but after Wang Shouren went into seclusion, it basically remained vacant. By the time he came out of seclusion, he was already able to stand on his own two feet and had many affairs to manage, so the Family arranged a separate residence for him.

The meal was finished amidst heart-pounding suspense, and Qingxin was temporarily entrusted to his mother.

"I still need to handle some clan admission procedures for Qingxin, and by the way, apply to use the clan's Spiritual Testing Platform to test her Spiritual Root separately."

Scarcely had Wang Shouren stood up and walked far from the door when he saw Wang Qingxin trot over to follow him.

"I, I... I want to follow you."