Chapter 84: The Unblessed Ability

When Du Zhengyi dragged Luo Qi along and burst into Majiang's new home in the Ancient Town, Majiang was eating breakfast with Guan Xinyue.

"Damn it." Majiang jumped in fright, glared at the two of them, and cast an uneasy glance at Guan Xinyue. "Do you have any manners? Can you knock on the door? Do you know how to make an appointment before coming over?"

Du Zhengyi's face was already as dark as the bottom of a pot, though he also looked at Guan Xinyue with a hint of worry. Guan Xinyue was biting her chopsticks, eyes wide, staring at Luo Qi behind him.

Du Zhengyi turned his head back to look at Luo Qi inquiringly; Luo Qi shook his head with a dejected face.

"You didn't go into her mind to hold a carnival, did you?" Du Zhengyi asked.

"No," Luo Qi said with a bitter smile. "My barrier is still standing perfectly intact, and my mind is very quiet; I didn't hear anything. If Guan Xinyue wants to curse me, she can still do it loudly in her heart to her heart's content."

"I always curse to people's faces; I never do things like being one way to someone's face and another behind their back," Guan Xinyue said crisply. As she spoke, her eyes carefully sized up Luo Qi. This was the first time she had seen him since the day Luo Qi was taken away.

Luo Qi looked at her angrily, but because he was feeling so dejected, there was little force behind it; he was immediately crushed by a sharp eye-roll from Guan Xinyue.

Majiang chuckled, "What's wrong with our little sun today?"

Luo Qi didn't speak. He climbed onto Majiang's dining table himself and looked at what they were eating—a mix of northern and southern style breakfast with steamed buns and fried dough sticks—which made him feel hungry. "Can you give me some to eat? I haven't eaten since yesterday; Du Zhengyi is abusing me."

He sat down next to Guan Xinyue. Guan Xinyue served him a bowl of porridge and looked him over again, but she didn't ask anything.

"Why don't you have some too?" Majiang said with a smile, gesturing for Du Zhengyi to sit down, and added a casual compliment, "Luo Qi has improved quite a bit; looking at him like this, he's almost ready to see other people."

Du Zhengyi let out a "hmph," pulled up a chair at the furthest spot from Luo Qi, grabbed a cup of soy milk to drink, and looked at Luo Qi, who was inhaling a bun, with disdain.

"What is wrong with you two?" Majiang asked in surprise. "You can even get into an argument with him?"

"What's wrong?" Du Zhengyi repeated Majiang's question with a cold sneer, then used a highly dramatic tone, dragging out the annoying long vowels as he said lazily, "Luo Qi thinks I don't love him sincerely."

Luo Qi choked on a mouthful of bun juice, Guan Xinyue laughed out loud, and only Majiang looked at Luo Qi with sympathy.

"You..." Luo Qi coughed and said, "How could you... say that?"

"Do you think your behavior is any different from a little girl in love?" Du Zhengyi slapped his chopsticks onto the wooden table.

"Damn, take it easy," Majiang said. "This table is over three hundred years old. Do you have any culture? It's nanmu wood; with your strength, every time you exert yourself, you leave a dent."

"I'm not like that," Guan Xinyue said. "Don't be sexist."

Majiang sighed. "Do you two have any serious business? What exactly is going on? What's the situation with Doctor Luo? Why is Luo Qi still with you? Is his dad not offering refunds after the sale?"

Du Zhengyi sighed with disgust and began to explain the sequence of events to Majiang.

Luo Qi listened from the side with an unhappy expression. Guan Xinyue was also listening, taking the opportunity to carefully observe Luo Qi; the more she heard, the more alarmed she became.

However, after listening, Majiang only said "Oh." "I really didn't see that Luo Ruian was so extreme. But it's understandable. Luo Qi, let me give you an analogy: if you were a registered Mind Mage, and now Qionglin sent you to erase Guan Xinyue's memories, how would you feel? Would you feel disgusted after finishing the job? What if Du Zhengyi were a suspect? Now, if you were told to use that interrogation method to torture Du Zhengyi and squeeze the secrets out of his mind, how would you feel after finishing? Once or twice is fine, but what if there were always jobs like that? Mind Mages are a scarce resource; Qionglin has always worked them to death. You can only rely on yourself to repair your own mind. Anyway, if it were me, I wouldn't want the child I brought into the world to have the same Telepathy ability as me."

The three listeners were all silent; for a long while, no one spoke, and the main room was so quiet that only the birds chirping outside could be heard. After a while, Majiang continued, "It's just that Luo Ruian is a bit extreme. Even if Luo Qi is in this situation, he didn't have to go to such lengths. Of two evils, I don't know why he chose the greater one. It's a bit sinister."

"Then..." Guan Xinyue looked at Luo Qi with sympathy and asked hesitantly, "Have other parents done this before?"

"It's not unheard of," Majiang said. "Because Telepaths are relatively rare, some practices might not be well-known to the outside world. But raising a child with high-level Telepathy is indeed not easy. Many people adopt the practice of sealing the child's Telepathy ability during their early years. In families where Telepathy appears across generations, if a pair of low-sensitivity parents happens to have a high-sensitivity infant... this is relatively rare, but the results are always quite horrifying; the children often don't survive. You can imagine that if you were to indulge an infant in everything, it would be destined for doom."

"But..." Du Zhengyi asked inquiringly.

"Yes, there is always a 'but' to everything," Majiang said. "But they usually unlock the barrier when the child is around fifteen, or sometimes they don't make the barrier that thick. Around fifteen is also a natural period for all Mages to achieve a self-breakthrough during their growth process; at this time, children with Telepathy often break through this cocoon on their own. This is the rational way of letting nature take its course."

Du Zhengyi shook his head. "What can be done? His old man thinks he has the right to decide for him."

Majiang thought for a moment, then finally shook his head. "I can't understand him. However, Luo Qi, you don't have to be so bothered and hung up just because of what your dad said. You have to believe that Du Zhengyi truly loves you."

Luo Qi shivered and glared at him in annoyance.

Majiang said with a cheeky grin, "You must get used to the way Mind Mages survive. Most of the time, we survive by attacking the heart. Seeing through the loopholes in others' thoughts and making their minds suffer—this is the essence of our behavior. Your father just saw that Du Zhengyi is a poor wretch without friends, accustomed to being betrayed and abandoned, which is why he poked at that point to irritate him."

Luo Qi looked at Du Zhengyi timidly. The latter continued eating breakfast as if he hadn't heard, almost as if he were tacitly agreeing.

"Then again," Majiang said again, "it is true that you can influence other people's emotions, but so what? A happy ordinary person can often make others happy, and a depressed person often makes those who see them depressed. You loathe others, and others will loathe you. It's just that your radiation is slightly higher than that of an ordinary person, but eating a piece of candy or a sweet treat can also improve one's mood, and sensitive people will get depressed listening to 'Gloomy Sunday,' so you are effectively just a piece of milk chocolate. No matter how much people like you, Guan Xinyue will still roll her eyes when she sees you, and I will still want to send you to the underground of Qionglin. Do you understand?"

Luo Qi glanced at him, gradually becoming thoughtful, while Du Zhengyi beside him let out another hmph and cursed in a low voice, "Fool."

Luo Qi blinked, secretly feeling that what Doctor Majiang said this time made sense, which was a bit awkward.

Guan Xinyue suddenly coughed. "Then my sister... could she also have the same situation as Luo Qi? I'm just guessing, but if my grandfather was also a Telepath, then my sister is exactly one generation removed from him. According to what you said, isn't the probability of her also being a Telepath very high? Luo Qi... said at the time that my sister's disappearance might be related to one of her abilities."

Du Zhengyi suddenly raised his head to look at her, suddenly realizing that this was the piece of the puzzle he had been ignoring all this time.