Family Stealing System: your wife, mother, sister, all mine now!
Chapter 27: Stronger than Ever

Chapter 27: Stronger than Ever

Absolutely satisfied with himself, Kian walked out of his bath, yawning.

Hua Mia was sitting outside, meditating in an attempt to sense Qi. She had been trying to sense it for the last few years, but she had never had the luck to actually sense it. Qi was far too much of an elucive thing, without sensing it, it practically did not exist to you.

"Any luck today?" Kian asked as he sat down, looking at Jiao Yin from the corner of his eyes.

It seemed the girl’s Qi leaking situation was pretty bad. Her looks had not changed, but there was a certain lifelessness to her now. He wondered why that was.

"No luck," Mia said, her face downcast. "Anyway, where is Jia?"

"She is too tired, currently sleeping soundly. I think she’d wake up after a few hours. Forget that, tell me about your cultivation."

"I think I don’t have the talent for this, Kian. It might be time for me to give up."

"You would regret giving up. Giving up is never the choice."

"I would be miserable either way. If I kept trying and never succeeded, what’s the difference?"

Jiao Yin flinched when he said her name. Her shoulders jerked up toward her ears and stayed there, a turtle trying to retreat into a shell it didn’t have.

"I’m not downcast," she said. Her voice came out flat, the words landing limp. "I’m fine."

Kian leaned back against the seat, the morning sun warm on his freshly-bathed skin.

He didn’t push.

He just watched her—the way her fingers kept moving, her eyes not facing him.

"What’s up?"

She looked up.

The answer didn’t come right away. She looked at her hands—still the same hands that had unbuttoned his pants that first day, still the same dry knuckles from village work, but now they smelled like the floral wash from the sect baths instead of river water and root vegetables.

That should have been an improvement. She’d thought it would be an improvement. She had always wanted to live like an immortal, after all. That’s why she had left her home behing to come here.

"When I left," she said, "my brother was angry at me, but I was so happy."

Kian looked at her.

"I thought my life would finally start. You know? Like in the stories. The servant who follows the immortal up the mountain and everything changes."

Kian said nothing. The morning breeze stirred the room, carrying the lotus-scent from the lake below.

"But I don’t do anything here." Her voice cracked on the last word, a thin fracture she couldn’t smooth over. "I clean rooms that are already clean. I stand in corners while you three eat together. I sleep alone in the servant’s room and wake up and nothing is different and I just keep doing it. I miss my friends back home, or... maybe not, I am lying. I miss knowing what I was supposed to do."

She didn’t cry—her eyes stayed unfocused, burning a little, but dry—and that almost made it worse.

Here, only Kian even really knew her. The sisters barely gave her any words, not to mention attention or care.

She felt so supressed.

If she cried, she could pretend this was just a mood, a passing thing, but the dry-eyed truth of it sat in her chest like a stone she’d swallowed by accident and couldn’t cough back up.

"But you want to stay?" Kian said.

Jiao Yin’s jaw tightened.

Her mother’s words came back to her not as a memory but as a physical sensation.

As he watched her, Kian remembered what the system had said about the girl.

[You have only met Jiao Yin a day ago, but she felt destined to be your servant the moment you called upon her. A past memory of her mother still echoes within the girl: An immortal will come, she had said, and will heal her illnesses. She is hoping to suck you off and dedicate her life to you in return for salvation. You truly are a hero.]

In fact, that prophecy was exactly what Jiao Yin was thinking about as well. She’d thought the prophecy meant power. She’d thought it meant becoming someone who mattered.

Now she thought maybe it just meant this: sitting on a terrace in a beautiful place with a hollow feeling in her stomach. She didn’t know what her role was, she didn’t know what her use was other than enjoying sex every day and cleaning.

Was this it?

She said her realest feelings: "I still want to stay. I like this place, I like... servicing you. Both of it is amazing! But other than that, I am so useless. I have nothing to do, I am just wasting my time."

Kian didn’t answer right away.

"You’re not useless," he said finally. "You’re just not yet that useful. There’s a difference."

Jiao Yin’s mouth twisted. "That sounds like something people say to be nice."

"I don’t say things to be nice." Kian stretched his arms over his head, joints popping. "I say things because they’re true. You’re a mortal who walked into an immortal sect with nothing but some clothes. You havent even been initiaited into cultivation."

"Eh...?"

Kian shrugged, then said to Mia: "Mia, teach the girl basic training methods you use to sense Qi. Let’s see if she has some talent."

Mia nodded. "I will."

Jiao Yin’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. No sound came out. She looked like a fish—a very startled, very mortal fish who had just been told someone was going to teach her how to breathe fire.

Kian ignored her and turned to look at thin air.

His status window popped into view.

[ Status Window ]

[Name: Kian]

[Talent: Sucking Hero (Black), Twin Heart (Black)]

[Cultivation Realm: Qi Building Stage 5]

[Qi Sparks: 16,307 / 100,000]

[Heroic Vessels: Jiao Yin, Hua Mia]

[Fortune: 0]

[Body Gamble Shop: Available (0 unopened Body Box)]

Stage 5.

Kian smiled at the sight, a unique, carefree smile. And the girls looked at him, sort of mesmerized by the silence.