What if I don't want to ascend to immortality?

Chapter 12 Deepening Understanding
"What's wrong? Is it not good?" Meng Qingtong blinked, hurriedly swallowed the roasted meat in her mouth, and asked cautiously, "Or is it just not to your liking?"

Han Jie looked at the chopsticks that had been put down in front of him and realized that she had probably misunderstood. "I'm not a big fan of food. What I just ate was enough."

With his abundant inner spiritual energy, the hunger wouldn't be fatal no matter how long it lasted. Besides, the food at this all-you-can-eat barbecue restaurant didn't taste as good as the home-cooked meals Lin Sisi had personally prepared for him at noon.

It's not a problem with the taste of the food.

This bustling inn, overflowing with the warmth of everyday life, was a kind of worldly noise that he didn't like.

The simple meal at noon, however, brought back a taste of home that he had almost forgotten.

Seeing the grease on Meng Qingtong's lips, he couldn't help but ask again, "You really like to eat that?"

Meng Qingtong deftly picked up the scissors and cut the meat slices on the grill into small pieces. "When you're eating at a buffet, you definitely have to eat your fill and try to get your money's worth. Listen to me, you should eat more too. There are only a few pieces of meat, what can you do with them? After you've eaten most of the meat, have some dessert and some chilled shrimp, and finish with a drink. I got a coupon, so you won't regret it."

Han Jie, who had been observing his surroundings, smiled and said, "Not many other girls eat like you."

“I’m really exhausted,” she patted the tough muscles on her arms. “Do you know how hard I train? Let me tell you, I’m not bragging, if all the female cultivators in the Second Academy, including teachers and students, were to seal their spiritual power and fight me one-on-one, not one of them could beat me.”

Han Jie had already realized this during his battle with the monstrous beast. Her physical training far exceeded the requirements of a spirit mage, surpassing even professional athletes without spiritual power. Her tight, strong, and youthful curves were indeed completely different from the female cultivators he remembered.

He couldn't help but think of his former senior sisters. If he had sealed his spiritual power and hadn't used his Heart Sword to fight Meng Qingtong purely by hand-to-hand combat, he probably would have been beaten to a pulp and fled after three to five rounds.

Seeing that he didn't respond, Meng Qingtong continued to throw the more valuable meats onto the grill, while rambling on about things in this world that he might need to pay attention to.

After thinking about it, the money had already been paid, and it was up to him how much he ate. If eating more would make his partner feel like he had gotten a good deal, it didn't seem to matter. Han Jie smiled, picked up his chopsticks again, and interjected, "Qing Tong, this world is so big and so complicated. You don't need to rush me to understand everything at once."

Meng Qingtong cut off two pieces of good meat and handed them to him in the dipping sauce with tongs. She paused for a moment, then said in a slightly nervous voice, "Oh, you... you think I'm too long-winded, right? Tsk, I do have a bit of a motherly personality in front of people I know well, and I know it's quite annoying, but it's hard to change. Eat, eat, eat, I'll shut up and not say anything more."

Han Jie quickly replied, "That's not what I meant. I just feel that since we're going to be working together on something big that can't be accomplished in a short time, it's more important to get to know you better for now."

Meng Qingtong froze, a piece of meat still dangling from her mouth, forgetting to bite into it. After a few seconds, she rolled the meat in with her tongue and said somewhat embarrassedly, "You mean... you want me to talk more about myself?"

Han Jie nodded, then immediately added, "However, if there has been any offense, then so be it."

She waved her hand, picked up her drink and took a nice sip. "It's nothing, it's just... I don't know where to start. Most of the self-introductions I've ever done in my life have just been about stating my name. Anyway, nobody cares about anything else."

She is a young girl with a pretty and charming appearance, so why does she look so lonely and dejected?
As if seeing through Han Jie's doubts, Meng Qingtong moved a plate of Arctic shrimp onto the baking tray, lowered her gaze, and looked at the ice shards that were rapidly melting in the high temperature. She whispered, "Do you think I'm being overly dramatic?"

"No, I just thought you should have a lot of friends. Wasn't my status as a spirit mage expedited by your senior sister?"

In just a few hours, Han Jie had become a registered temporary traveling spirit master at a branch of the Spirit Security Bureau. His electronic information was complete, and his special spirit pattern ID card was even delivered to Meng Qingtong by a deliveryman.

After analyzing this astonishing efficiency using the information in his mind's eye, he guessed that the senior sister must owe this girl a huge favor.

“I have a lot of friends.” Meng Qingtong smiled, picked up a shrimp and slowly peeled it. “Who told me to be the famous genius girl in Dongding City?”

Han Jie couldn't decipher the implied meaning, but he could sense that she didn't want to talk about it anymore, so he stopped speaking.

He ate one shrimp himself, then put the next one into his dipping sauce bowl. Meng Qingtong peeled them alternately, and the table remained silent for the time being.

After a while, she looked up and smiled. "It's not that you said anything wrong, it's my own problem. How about this, if you want to know something, just ask. You ask, I'll tell you. I promise I won't lie about what I can tell you, and if I don't want to tell you, I'll tell you what I don't want to tell you."

“When I was six, my entire family was killed by demons,” Han Jie said slowly. “I don’t even know how I survived. What about you? How did you become an orphan?”

Meng Qingtong looked at him with some surprise, "I didn't ask you."

Han Jie said calmly, "I like fairness. I'll tell you what I want to know about you first."

“Oh…” she said thoughtfully, “I really don’t know what my parents are like. I’ve been in an orphanage since I can remember. I cried and begged for their help when I was little, but who had time to listen to me? About half a year after I came to the Second Hospital, I asked Director Fang to help me look into it. Now two years have passed, and a lot of relatives back home know, but my parents haven’t given me any news.”

Seeing Han Jie deep in thought about what to ask, she quickly added, "Then it's my turn to ask. Hmm... the only people I can truly consider family now are Dean Fang and Aunt Huang. What about you? For so long in your life... were you all alone?"

“Others are unwilling to follow my path,” Han Jie sighed softly. “Then, I shall walk alone.”

Meng Qingtong's eyes brightened instantly. She picked up her cup, took a small sip, her dark eyes darting around, and said, "Your turn."

"When did the signs of your constitution attracting demons first appear?"

She pursed her lips slightly. “I had it when I was little. Back then, Dean Fang and Aunt Huang always helped me. Later, my talent was discovered, and I gradually learned how to handle it, so I stopped bothering them. That uncle who was recruiting at the First Affiliated Hospital even had the nerve to ask me why I didn’t choose their school. Tch, when I was so scared that I had nightmares every day, no one ever asked me a single question.”

"My turn." Patting her belly, she stopped eating and focused on peeling shrimp for Han Jie, asking, "Is your ability to draw swords from your body to fight easy to learn?"

“It’s difficult.” He glanced at Meng Qingtong’s eyes and said, “But if you are willing to put in a lot of hard work, you may be able to master it.”

The most important quality for the Heart Sword Formation is unwavering resolve, not the amount of spiritual power one possesses. Based on this alone, he believed Meng Qingtong was a prodigy not far inferior to himself. "Never mind. Don't bite off more than you can chew," Meng Qingtong sighed. "My current income is already barely enough to support my talisman-making; I can't afford to learn anything else."

Han Jie was just about to ask this when he said, "Are there very few ways to make money through spiritual cultivation these days?"

He never cared about this before, but now he had to do as the Romans do; it wouldn't be right to rely on a young girl to support him forever.

"If you want to get things done quickly, you have to do what I do and take on commissions. It would be even better if you had the personal qualifications to start your own firm. If not, you can get work by affiliating with the college's external affairs department. I'm an orphan, so Dean Fang isn't asking for a share of the profits yet; all the income after taxes goes to me. After graduation, I'll have to rely on my own channels, so I need to work hard and build my reputation as soon as possible."

"If you don't mind being managed and not having much freedom, the border countermeasures departments of various regions in the Ling'an System are constantly recruiting capable spirit masters. You're so skilled, and you're not afraid of exposing your secrets, so you could probably earn a sky-high salary there. That's also a stepping stone into the Ling'an System. At least 40% of the senior students who graduated from the Second Academy chose that path."

"The next level down is working for those entrepreneurs. A few days ago, my senior brother Sun helped me find a client. He went down that path after retiring due to injury. Society is developing so fast now, big companies inevitably have to deal with spiritual practitioners, so they simply hire some spiritual practitioners at high salaries to be consultants or assistants. It's convenient to communicate with them, and it's prestigious to take them out."

"The more stable but lower-paying jobs are mostly in the spiritual technology and theoretical research field, or you could simply be a teacher at a spiritual academy. I'm not interested in those, and I haven't looked into them much. If you ask me, since we're going to have a long-term collaboration and work on the Encyclopedia of Demons, you should start by doing commissions with me. Forget about the previous profit-sharing agreement; we'll split all the income 50/50. If your expenses aren't too high, it should be enough for you to eat, wear, and live on."

Sure enough, her eyes lit up and she spoke faster and became more animated when the topic of making money came up.

Han Jie smiled slightly and said, "You still have your studies to do. When you're busy, I can't just sit idle."

“Cultivation,” Meng Qingtong said immediately. “It seems you’ve encountered some problems in your cultivation. So don’t worry about other things.”

He shook his head. "My problem cannot be solved by cultivation alone."

"Uh... Could you tell me what the problem is? I can ask Dean Fang for you. I know you probably look down on the strength of cultivators in our era, but honestly, in terms of research on spiritual techniques, those ancient predecessors are definitely not as good as us. You're used to flying through the clouds, so you probably wouldn't bother thinking about using spiritual techniques to build airplanes, right?" Meng Qingtong didn't dare to be too certain and added, "Of course, you've been in seclusion for over 1,800 years and still haven't solved it, so I'm just suggesting it as a last resort."

"For over 1,800 years, I've only done one thing," Han Jie said softly, stroking the muscles on his forearm. "That is, to reshape this body. Otherwise, I would have been annihilated long ago."

Meng Qingtong's eyes widened, and she hurriedly picked up a peeled shrimp, stood up, and brought it to his lips across the table to stop him from speaking again. She lowered her voice and said nervously, "You can do whatever you want with other secrets, but this matter of reshaping your body must not be known to a third person. This method is equivalent to immortality, and some people will go crazy if they find out."

"Actually, that was just..."

She picked up another piece of meat and stuffed it into Han Jie's mouth, glaring at him even more fiercely. "Don't tell anyone. I don't want to know. I'll forget about it soon. You should forget about it too. Keep it to yourself and don't tell anyone."

Han Jie chewed a couple of times, then asked, puzzled, "If one cultivates for 1,800 years, it won't be a problem?"

Meng Qingtong whispered, "It's not that it's harmless, it's just relatively safe. If it's possible to be completely foolproof, of course it's best to keep it all a secret. If something really happens, it's obviously better to say that you're an old monster who has cultivated for 1,800 years. First, it shows that you are strong and can intimidate those who aren't crazy enough. Second, cultivation methods rely on self-improvement; if you don't have the aptitude, you simply can't do it."

Her expression grew increasingly serious. "Being able to shape and refine one's body is another matter entirely. Powerful spiritualists can temporarily preserve the souls of others. If you can reshape the body of that soul, wouldn't that be equivalent to being reborn with the power of others? I guarantee that as long as there is even the slightest possibility, those madmen who have no time to cultivate but only time to fight for power and profit will immediately start chasing you like a cat chasing a mouse."

"They're no match for me," Han Jie had intended to say, but then realized that it was no different from arguing and being stubborn. Less trouble is always better.

"Understood. Thank you."

Meng Qingtong breathed a sigh of relief, sat back down and continued peeling shrimp. Then, as if remembering something, she chuckled, "Oh, if you think about it this way, you only recently recovered from your illness, and you're not even a year old yet. Should I call you Little Brother Han?"

“One hundred years is one year old,” he said lazily. “Eighteen years is still older than you, isn’t it?”

"When they asked me how to fill out the form for the certificate, I said I was eighteen. Turns out I wasn't just saying that offhand."

"I'm not good at lying."

"The more someone says that, the more capable they are of deceiving people to death."

For cultivators, using spiritual power to alter their physical state is a basic skill, merely a matter of degree. However, highly skilled spiritual practitioners are generally not short of money, so the buffet owner naturally wouldn't be wary of them.

So, Meng Qingtong and Han Jie chatted and ate, and made a good profit.

The time wasn't wasted either; not only did they get to know each other much better, but the messages Meng Qingtong had been waiting for were also sent to her phone one by one during this period.

One is a receipt for a recent transfer of 180,000 yuan to the Dongding City Orphanage.

One was the approval of the next commission application. Dean Fang noted in the remarks that when she returned from Suiyin City, she should bring some local dried sweet potatoes, and the cost would be doubled.

The last piece of news finally made Meng Qingtong willing to end the dinner.

"Alright, we've found a suitable house. Let's go take a look."

Before leaving, Han Jie glanced back, estimating the amount they had eaten, and roughly searched the relevant data in his mind. He then discovered that Meng Qingtong had controlled her portions quite precisely; she had only eaten about the right amount to break even. Considering fluctuations in material procurement costs, the boss could even make a small profit from her.

What an interesting girl...

(End of this chapter)