This Damned Thirst for Survival

Jiang Luo\'s palms are hot and he wipes away the drops with a piece of paper, a little distracted.

Chi You rarely hit me back?

Chuckle, he can\'t beat me, can he?

When they saw him looking a bit lost in thought, Wen Renlian and Ye Xun remembered that Jiang Luo and Chi You were already separated from each other and could never be together. They shut their mouths and stopped saying such things as if they were implying a match.

Ye Xun even broke out in a cold sweat, cursing himself with chagrin.

Jiang Luo has already let go of Chi You, and you\'re still talking about ambiguity.

Afraid they won\'t rekindle their love affair?

After finishing the meal, Jiang Luo was about to go to rest when Zhuo Zhongqiu remembered something, "Jiang Luo, Qi Ye has something for me to give you."

"Ever since we came back from the sea, we haven\'t seen Qi Ye and we can\'t contact him. It wasn\'t until the time my dad and Tian Shifu went to Qi Ye\'s house to seek justice for us that he realised that Qi Ye had put his hand in the content of our examination and that we were going to have a trial with Qi Ye," Zhuo Zhongqiu explained, "When my dad and I walked out of Qi Ye\'s house, he appeared from nowhere, covered in covered in grass clippings, told me he was sorry with red eyes, and slipped me a note for you."

She walked over to the cupboard and took the note out and handed it to Jiang Luo, "This is the note."

The note was balled up into a crumpled shape and Jiang Luo opened it to reveal a single sentence scrawled as if it had been written in haste: "I\'m sorry."

He turned the note over to the back and read it over with some surprise, looking up at Zhuo Zhongqiu, "Just a \'sorry\'?"

Zhuo Zhongqiu nodded his head.

Jiang Luo folded up the note, he could almost imagine the look on Qi Ye\'s face when he wrote that, and he said calmly, "He is him, and his father is his father. The others dealing with us has nothing to do with him, and I\'m not taking it out on him, so there\'s no need to say sorry."

"Come on," he turned with a wave of his hand, "I\'m going to bed."

*

The Kee family.

Liao Si walks unhurriedly through the corridor to the door of Qi Ye\'s room and raises his hand to knock.

The door was quickly opened and Qi Ye yelled, propped up against the door frame, "What are you doing?"

His eyes were red and bloodshot, his clothes were dishevelled, his stubble was on his head, and he looked like he hadn\'t slept in days. When he saw that the person at the door was Liao Si, Qi Ye\'s fretful, annoyed face narrowed slightly and he said stiffly, "What is it?"

Liao Si eyed Qi Ye\'s body with greed, "Mr Qi asked me to call you to the living room."

Qi Ye frowned in annoyance and was about to say no when Liao Si duly said, "It seems to be very important and Mr Chi is here."

Qi Ye clenched his fists furiously, and without a word, he closed the door and sulked off to the living room.

The day after tomorrow is the trial, and the Chi family is definitely coming to see his dad about the trial. They might be trying to do something to Jiang Luo and the others, so Qi Ye has to go over and take a look.

Watching his back, Liao Si whistles and leaves at a leisurely pace.

His brow and eyes were all gloating at the prospect of seeing a good show, and his gentle expression became eerily intertwined, "The great dog-eat-dog show is about to begin."

*

Qi Ye has heavy feet.

The closer the trial gets, the harder Qi Ye\'s life gets. He couldn\'t believe that his father had joined forces with the head of the Chi family to have his classmate killed. When he received the news, he thought it was a joke, but when he was told that the joke had come true, Qi Ye felt that the whole sky had fallen.

These days, he and his father have had numerous arguments and Qi Ye is in so much pain that his soul seems to be splitting in two, and he feels guilt and shame towards Jiang Luo and the others, whom he hopes will win the trial.

But the person accused was his own father, a family member who had loved Qi Ye since he was a child and had high hopes for him, and Qi Ye could not imagine what would happen if his father lost the trial.

Such a mental tearing made Qi Ye feel powerless and disgusted with himself for being so uncertain of right and wrong. He feels as if he is stuck in the sand, and the more he struggles, the faster he is swallowed up.

Before he reached the living room, Qi Ye heard his father\'s incredulous voice suddenly ring out, "This can\'t be!"

Qi Ye is on his feet.

"This is absolutely impossible! Chi Zhongye, you\'re lying to me, aren\'t you? You must be lying to me!"

Chi Zhongye said numbly, "What am I lying to you for, this is what the predestined man himself said, he gave up on us. The Xuan Ling Joint Office will definitely be fair and impartial this time. Since that cunning old man Xu Duan Deng dared to bring his students to sue us up, he must have hard evidence. Qi Yuan, it\'s over, it\'s all over this time. I told you before that we should delay the trial, but you were so confident that you thought that the Fates would protect us. And now? Now it\'s too late for us to do anything about it."

"How is it possible," Qi\'s father couldn\'t believe it, but after seeing Chi Zhongye\'s expression was definitely not fake, he lost his strength and slumped on the sofa in frustration, "that the predestined people have given up on us ...... "

An uneasy fear swept through him. Qi\'s father suddenly sat up with trembling lips and pointed at Chi Zhongye, " Chi Zhongye, we can\'t both be planted here together, wait until the court hearing the day after tomorrow, you take the initiative to take the blame, you are the mastermind, I am an innocent person who was tricked by you, I don\'t know anything! Don\'t worry, I\'ll help you take care of your whole family when you go in, for the sake of our friendship, and later on when you get out, I\'ll make sure you have a good life too."

Chi Zhongye was stunned and then said angrily, "Why should I be the mastermind? You were the one who came up with the idea of hacking the content of Bai Hua University\'s examinations!"

Qi\'s father sneered, "Is that so? Then what proof do you have? You were the one who arranged things, and the blood eels were only related to you in the mission after they were switched to the test content. You were the only one who had the means to get them on board, and to do it to them on board. How do you prove it was my idea?"

Chi Zhongye stood up straight, furious, "You-!"

Qi\'s father slapped the table fiercely, his face grim, " Chi Zhongye, I haven\'t gotten you in trouble yet, so don\'t sell yourself short when you\'ve gotten a bargain."

"Don\'t think I don\'t know that we went on board with you to deal with Chi You\'s Qi family and that you fed them all blood eel females in their stomachs! You still think I don\'t know, don\'t you? If I hadn\'t found out that they had been sending Qi family properties to your Chi You family since their return, I wouldn\'t have found out that they had been controlled as your people."

The more Qi\'s father said, the angrier he became, " Chi Zhongye, you really had a good idea, you couldn\'t turn them into puppets openly with the Puppet Soul Refining Technique, so you used the Blood Eels unknowingly, who would have thought of this trick? If I hadn\'t noticed that something was wrong, I\'m afraid I would have found out the truth a few years later after they had revealed the blood eels\' characteristics, but by that time, the whole Qi family would have become yours!"

"What blood eels? What estate?" Chi Zhongye was baffled, he couldn\'t understand Qi\'s father\'s words and took these as Qi\'s excuses, " Qi Yuan, what nonsense are you talking about!"

"Nonsense?" Qi\'s father was so angry that his heart throbbed, "Are you denying that you coveted our family\'s estate and so used the blood eels to control my clan?"

Chi Zhongye turned angry and laughed, "Then why don\'t you say that you covet the spiritual bodies of the Chi family\'s direct lineage, and that even the excellent spiritual bodies of three generations of your Qi family were taken from our Chi family\'s direct lineage to use?!"

This was a thunderclap that shook Qi Ye, who was eavesdropping in the corridor, to the spot.

What did he say?

Three generations of their Qi family\'s spirit body ...... is on the first line of the Chi family?

How is that possible.

Qi Ye\'s teeth chattered as he was clearly a natural born genius. Since he was a child, everyone had praised and envied his talent. His father, his grandfather, these three amazing generations of the Qi family, weren\'t they all born with pride and talent?

Yes, what the elders of the Chi family said must be a lie, an absolute lie.

Qi Ye\'s whole body chilled, every inch of his skin felt like it was frozen in a thick layer of ice. He didn\'t want to hear any more, but he couldn\'t move his legs and he couldn\'t close his ears, so he just let the voice from the living room burrow into his ears relentlessly, sentence by sentence.

"I still have the contract you signed with your father, have you forgotten? Qi Yuan, your spirit body was drawn from Chi You\'s grandfather\'s body just before he was about to die, you would have been a teenager then, I don\'t believe you don\'t remember anything."

Chi Zhongye snorted coldly, "Even if you have forgotten where your own spirit body came from, you can\'t forget the spirit body in your son\'s body, can you? Qi Ye is using Chi You\'s father\'s spirit body, and you signed the contract yourself. You even booked Chi You\'s spirit body with me when he was little. Unfortunately, the Fates interfered and turned Chi You\'s spirit into Yuan Tianzhu. If you want to get yourself cleaned up and put the blame on me, I\'ll reveal all these secrets and see who\'s worse off than the others!"

In the silence, Qi\'s father breathed heavily, and it was only after a long, long time that he smiled stiffly and said in a slightly curt manner, "Let\'s talk properly, what\'s the point of getting angry? Brother Ji, sit down and let\'s talk slowly."

Qi Ye\'s eyes went black and he stumbled back to his room, holding on to the wall.

The reaction of his father had told him the answer.

His gift, it turns out, is not his own.

He was the one who stole it from someone else.