099: The Merciless Iron Hand?

The deep-fried bamboo worms were seasoned with salt and pepper, crisp, salty, and numbing, while the slices of meat with bamboo fungus only looked strange at a closer glance; once tasted, they were delicious as well.

It was only a slightly more generous spread of local homestyle dishes, but with Chen Jue, an outsider, at the table, the atmosphere was a little stiff at first.

In particular, Biao's eight-year-old son, who had just come home from school, sat at the table with extraordinary quietness. Every so often, however, he would steal a glance at Chen Jue, this striking stranger, who somehow felt even kinder and more approachable than the teachers at school.

In truth, this was because Chen Jue had entered the door of inner alchemy cultivation and stepped into the state of embryonic breathing. He had acquired some of the qualities of a true master who had gathered the elixir and, in part, returned to an innate state. In a child's eyes, he seemed gentle and warm, easy to draw close to without even meaning to.

Besides that, while eating, Chen Jue also sensed the unborn child in Sister-in-law Biao's belly several times, and in passing he also sensed the aura around Biao's eight-year-old son.

Sadly, there was no feeling of that innate vital essence found in an unborn fetus. Instead, there was liveliness and restlessness, a vigorous energy of growth and development, the distinctive temperament of a young child, something a greasy middle-aged man could never compare with.

"An unborn fetus has it... but children don't... then once they're born and polluted by the turbid qi of the world, the innate no longer exists. Is that what it means?" Chen Jue guessed silently, though he still felt it wasn't quite right. He planned to go back, take up those classics again, and study them in depth.

...

After a brief period of restraint, once everyone had settled in, the whole table gradually grew lively, eating and talking with smiles.

Most of the conversation was between Chen Jue and Wang Biao. Now and then they mentioned funny and embarrassing things from their university dormitory days, which made the atmosphere at home much more cheerful.

After the meal, they sat down with a cup of hot tea. It was not ordinary green tea or black tea, but the oil-and-salt tea used by the Lisu people to receive guests, made personally by Wang Biao's mother.

She first had to roast the tea leaves in a small clay pot so they would heat evenly. When the aroma of caramel began to rise, she added a small amount of cooking oil and salt, then poured in water and brought it to a boil.

Its taste was astringent yet sweet, salty yet fragrant, leaving an endless aftertaste.

To taste tea is to taste life itself; only after walking many roads and visiting many places can one drink such a wholly different flavor.

By a little after one in the afternoon, Wang Biao finally told his parents and wife, then took Chen Jue downstairs, first sending him off to the nearby elementary school with his son, who was lively and mischievous in his true nature. Then he got into the car, lit a cigarette, and while smoking drove Chen Jue toward his hometown.

Taking Chen Jue to wander around his hometown for a few days, without staying at his house, had already been agreed upon with Wang Biao over WeChat before Chen Jue came.

Wang Biao had a large family and no spare room. On top of that, he still had to work, so carving out half a day to entertain Chen Jue was already no easy matter.

On the drive, Wang Biao smoked while talking about the trivial burdens of life and the pressure of earning money to support a family. Chen Jue could see a trace of weariness from facing life in this old roommate of his.

Bao City still had a fairly decent economy, with an annual GDP in the hundreds of billions, unlike many inland regions that were somewhat underdeveloped. Though it could not compare with the coastal areas in terms of prosperity, it now had high-speed rail, and thanks to tourism, as well as the development of mining and agriculture, local incomes were steadily rising, all of them moving toward a comfortable life.

Though he did not have to shoulder the burden of buying a house or paying a mortgage, his parents were already nearing retirement age, and with another child about to be added to the family before the end of the year, Wang Biao, who drew a fixed wage at his workplace, still felt crushing pressure day after day. By now, he had even learned to smoke after graduation, and from the look of it he was already quite practiced, smelling very much like a veteran smoker.

In this era, when everything seems tied to money, having children is an extremely expensive affair. From the moment of pregnancy, hospital checkups cost money; childbirth and confinement cost money; after the baby is born, formula and diapers cost money; when the child gets sick, that costs money too.

Later on, when the child grows up, nursery school, primary school, middle school, high school, and university all cost money. If the grades are poor, tutoring classes and interest classes are needed as well. In between, parents must also buy toys, clothes, shoes, and all the rest. In short, an invisible competition forms between parents, and no one wants their child to suffer.

Even for schooling, those with money must grit their teeth and plan to buy a home in a good school district, so their child will not start behind others in educational resources.

Back when Chen Jue was in school, he often heard so-called experts online say, "The post-90s generation is a generation that has collapsed."

To Chen Jue, this "collapse" was not the collapse of self-indulgence or lack of ambition. Rather, it was that most of the post-90s generation, while still in the ivory tower of school, had unknowingly been left behind by the dividends of rapid economic growth. Then, the moment they stepped into society and suddenly woke up, they found that the great cake of profits had basically already been eaten by those who came before them. What was left for them was only a tiny scrap, and in the end the only collapse was being completely crushed by the weight of life.

If Chen Jue had not set foot on the path of cultivation, he probably would have ended up just like Wang Biao, helplessly sinking into the mundane world, drifting with the tide, taking each day as it came.

...

"Biao, you should smoke a little less in the future. It's bad for your health, and you've got a wife and kid at home. You can't have them breathing secondhand smoke."

From the passenger seat, Chen Jue reached over, pinched with two fingers, and snuffed out the cigarette that had just been lit.

"Fuck!"

"Old Cat, that's what people online call an iron hand with no mercy, isn't it?"

Wang Biao was startled by Chen Jue's action. He held the dying cigarette in his mouth and hurriedly tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

Fortunately, the car was on the highway, with little traffic nearby, so the road remained smooth all the way and nothing went wrong.

One should know that after a cigarette is lit, the temperature at the center of the ember can reach seven to eight hundred degrees Celsius. If an ordinary person touches it, it can burn off a layer of skin.

Only those who have smoked for many years, with very thick calluses on their hands, would dare to extinguish a cigarette butt so boldly with their bare fingers. Most people would simply throw it underfoot and crush it out.

Those with worse habits either do not put it out at all or casually toss it everywhere, which can lead to fires; news reports often show accidents caused by cigarettes smoldering unnoticed.

And yet Chen Jue's two fingers, which looked so tender and pink-white, had actually dared to crush out the cigarette by hand. It nearly made Wang Biao's eyes pop out.

"It doesn't count as an iron hand with no mercy. I just want you to smoke less."

"You know what's up with Old Dog. Since he started his business, he's been smoking like a chimney every day, and he still stays up all night all the time. Last year he even had to go to the hospital several times for tests and IV drips," Chen Jue said. After cultivating for a while, he had become more and more concerned with bodily health.

He hoped that he could succeed in cultivation and break the tragic fate of his family's short-lived men. He also hoped that the friends and roommates he cared about could live longer and healthier lives, so that after several decades, when he looked back, he would not suddenly find himself alone.