Chapter 6: Mom (Seeking Monthly Votes)

"Mom, what's wrong?" Dou Dou stepped forward and asked sweetly.

"N-nothing, Mommy is fine."

Dou Dou seemed to give Jiang Wenxin enough courage. She straightened up, pulled her into her arms, and sat down on the sofa with her.

She pulled out her phone, wanting to call her husband and ask him to come home early, but she hesitated.

The old man was still wandering outside their door. If Dou Dou's father came home, would it put him in danger?

Thinking of the evil spirits haunting people in movies, she couldn't help but shiver.

She looked down at Dou Dou in her arms and asked, "Dou Dou, tell Mommy, after someone becomes a ghost, can they... do bad things?"

Hearing this, Dou Dou scratched her little head and said, "Mommy, I'm a good girl, I don't do bad things."

It seemed she wouldn't get any answers from her. She thought for a moment and asked, "Do you often run into Grandpa Lu?"

Dou Dou nodded and said innocently, "Yes, Grandpa Lu can't bear to leave Brother Zixu, so he circles around here every day."

Jiang Wenxin pondered this. She figured that if the old man really had the ability to harm people, he would have done so already; she hadn't heard of any families in this building running into trouble.

With that thought, she finally dialed her husband Tao Guangxia's number. Being home alone as a woman was truly frightening; without a man, she felt like she had no backbone.

"Honey, where are you?"

"I'm on the road, I'll be home soon."

Tao Guangxia's voice came through the phone. Dou Dou immediately leaned in and called out "Daddy," but Tao Guangxia didn't seem to hear her.

"Be careful on the way."

Jiang Wenxin reminded him and hung up. However, she didn't put the phone away; instead, she opened the company's messaging app.

As an expatriate financial officer, her rank wasn't high, but her authority was immense. In the company group, she could see the information of everyone, from the CEO down to the regular employees.

Although she didn't even know Shen Siyuan's full name, she knew he was an employee in the Operations Department.

She clicked on the Operations Department group and scrolled through the list. With only a dozen or so employees, she quickly found Shen Siyuan's name. She was certain it was him because the profile pictures were all personal photos.

As the largest gaming company in Binhai City, Glory Animation managed everything in a very professional manner.

With his name, Jiang Wenxin was able to find Shen Siyuan's contact information and address directly in the company directory.

After finding the contact details, Jiang Wenxin didn't hesitate and dialed the number immediately.

At that moment, Shen Siyuan was eating dinner while studying the Banner of Ten Thousand Souls.

His dinner, brought up from downstairs, was a simple meal of beef fried rice and a bottle of iced black tea.

With one hand, he shoveled rice into his mouth; with the other, he turned the tattered Banner of Ten Thousand Souls over and over.

Because he had devoured the Nine Nether Demon Lord, he didn't need to refine the banner from scratch. It was as easy to use as an extension of his own arm, responding perfectly to his will, changing size and shape at his command.

The purple fabric of the banner was riddled with holes, the edges of which were scorched, and even the pole showed faint cracks. It looked quite miserable.

Shen Siyuan probed it with his spiritual sense, attempting to open the space within the banner, but it felt like touching a dark abyss—an empty void that seemed intent on swallowing him whole. Frightened, he quickly retracted his spiritual sense.

The reason Shen Siyuan possessed spiritual sense was that it was a power he had gained after consuming the remnant soul of the Nine Nether Demon Lord. It was similar to psychic or telekinetic power, but not strong—at most, he could only roll a ballpoint pen across the table.

However, its utility was significant. With spiritual sense, he could see in a full three-hundred-sixty-degree circle within a three-foot radius.

With it, he could also look inward at his own internal organs, meridians, and every part of his body, which would be of great benefit to his future path of physical cultivation.

Of course, it wasn't as if Shen Siyuan hadn't tried internal cultivation. Armed with the experiences of the Nine Nether Demon Lord, he was quite familiar with the process.

He quickly entered a state of meditation to absorb energy, but the moment he took a deep breath, he swallowed only the turbid air of the mortal world. It was like swallowing a mouthful of filth; he nearly retched his internal organs out, and he abandoned such naive ideas entirely.

For external cultivation, Shen Siyuan had found a technique in the Nine Nether Demon Lord's memories called "The Eighteen Phases of the Great Arhat."

This technique was obtained when the Demon Lord destroyed a Buddhist sect called the Lesser Nalanda Monastery.

It was somewhat similar to modern yoga, consisting of eighteen sets of movements. With sufficient food, constant and diligent practice could lead to physical transcendence.

In modern society, food was the least of his worries, especially high-energy food, making this technique the most suitable for Shen Siyuan at present.

This technique could only lead one to the Marrow Cleansing Realm, but for modern society, that was more than enough.

These realms were categorized according to the cultivation levels of the Great Desolation. The path of external cultivation was divided into: Refining Force, Muscle Building, Tendon Forging, Bone Tempering, Marrow Cleansing, Blood Changing, Aperture Opening, and Human Immortal.

However, given the resources of the modern world, reaching the final three stages was basically impossible, so it made no difference to Shen Siyuan whether there were subsequent techniques or not.

Shen Siyuan attempted the first movement and immediately broke into a cold sweat, his whole body shaking, and he nearly gasped for breath. This body was simply too weak to even complete the first move.

There were two ways forward: one was to persist in exercise and improve his physical condition—a very long process with uncertain results.

The other way was to repair the Banner of Ten Thousand Souls, open its internal space, and obtain the treasures plundered by the Nine Nether Demon Lord.

Just as Shen Siyuan was thinking about this, his phone rang. He picked it up and saw it was his mother.

"Xiao Yuan, have you had dinner yet?"

As soon as the call connected, his mother, Huang Huijuan, shouted at the top of her lungs.

This was his mother's habit; she always spoke extra loudly on the phone, as if she were afraid the other person wouldn't hear her.

"I'm eating now. Is something the matter?"

Shen Siyuan knew that his mother wouldn't call him unless there was a reason.

"Are you free this weekend? Can you come home?" Huang Huijuan asked.

"What for?" Shen Siyuan asked with surprise.

Shen Siyuan's hometown wasn't far from Binhai City, only an hour or so by car, so he visited often. It was unlikely Huang Huijuan was calling just because she missed him.

"I pickled some salted long beans; come back and take some," Huang Huijuan said.

"Liar. Mom, tell me the truth."

With his mother's stingy nature, she would never make him drive all the way back for a bit of pickles—it wouldn't even cover the gas money.

"Is that any way to talk to your mother? Do you think I'd lie to you?"

Huang Huijuan grew anxious on the other end, her voice rising an octave, making Shen Siyuan's ears buzz. She certainly had a powerful set of lungs.

"Pfft—last time I went back, you lied and said the milk in the fridge was fresh. I got diarrhea and only later found out it had expired."

"I was just afraid of wasting it! It had only expired by one day; how was I to know it had gone bad? You can't blame me for that," Huang Huijuan insisted.

"Then why didn't you let Dad drink it?"

"I was afraid he'd get a stomachache!"

"You really... am I even your biological child?" Shen Siyuan was speechless.

"I don't know, you'll have to ask your grandmother."

"You don't know if I'm your son and have to ask Grandma?"

"Because when I gave birth to you, your grandmother was the one who delivered you. I've always suspected I gave birth to a girl, but your grandmother loves boys and wanted to pass on the Shen family line. I suspect she might have swapped you..."

"Why would you think you gave birth to a girl?"

"Because 'sour for a boy, spicy for a girl.' I loved eating spicy food when I was pregnant."

"That's just because you love spicy food normally! Don't give me that, just tell me the truth..."

Before Shen Siyuan could finish his sentence, the phone clicked and went dead.

Clearly, Huang Huijuan didn't want to talk about it and was too lazy to come up with another excuse, so she just hung up.

Looking at the disconnected phone, Shen Siyuan was speechless.

His mother, Huang Huijuan, was an elementary school teacher, so her personality retained a childish streak. Even in her fifties, she could be quite erratic, and at home, his father and he usually had to indulge her.

Just then, the phone rang again. Shen Siyuan thought his mother was calling back to "repent," but he realized he had thought too much; it was an unfamiliar number.