Love letters are not allowed in the exorcism notebook!-Chapter 707 - 129: The Life Pressure of a Middle-Aged Man

This damned weather, it’s started to snow again.

Chen Laosi, carrying a bundle of firewood, trudged back to his own courtyard with uneven steps.

After closing the door and shaking off the snowflakes on his body, he heard his old mother calling softly from the bed in the inner room.

"Laosi! Laosi!"

"Eh!"

He scooped a ladle of cold water into the kettle and set it on the stove; as Chen Laosi walked into the room, he saw his old mother anxiously propped on the edge of the bed.

"Laosi, come quickly and see, Xiao Shitou’s fever is severe!"

Upon hearing this, Chen Laosi hurried to look at his little son lying motionless under the quilts. Stretching out his hand to touch the boy’s forehead, it was scalding hot.

"What’s this all about?"

"He must be frozen, loves to kick off his covers while sleeping, right when it suddenly started to snow outside..."

The old mother lamented, "Check if there is any of the medicine I had left from last time at home, brew some for him."

"Can the medicine you take be the same as what the child takes?"

Chen Laosi replied irritably: "First wrap him up, let him sweat it out, and then we’ll see. If he doesn’t recover after sleeping, I’ll go find a doctor."

"But he can’t keep burning up with a fever, children can easily suffer brain damage if the fever persists, your elder brother back then..."

"Enough, stop nagging, let me breathe. You have no idea how far I ran just to buy this bit of firewood."

"You still need to find yourself another wife."

"With an elderly and a child to care for, our home is so poor that we don’t even have a single valuable thing, what woman could set her sights on me?"

"How will you ever find one if you don’t try..."

At middle age, the pressure is immense.

Listening to his old mother’s intermittent nagging and looking at his son on the bed whose fever wouldn’t subside, Chen Laosi took a deep breath, squatted by the door, and silently lit a cigarette.

Thump Thump Thump—

The urgent knocking on the door jolted him from the brief respite brought by nicotine, and he quickly stood up and went to the door.

The moment he opened the door, the chill wind mixed with snow hit him in the face.

Chen Laosi instinctively stepped back a few paces, not because of the wind and snow, but because of the person standing outside the door. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Fully armed, in pitch black, with rifles and guns on their backs, at first glance, they looked very intimidating.

"Offic... Officer?"

Chen Laosi trembled, not knowing how to address the person.

"Are you Chen Laosi?"

"It’s me."

"No need to be nervous, we are from the police station, we came to find out some information from you."

Hearing that it was the police, Chen Laosi’s heart slightly settled, but then it became anxious again.

When the police visit a home, it’s never without reason.

"Officer, I’m a law-abiding citizen..."

"We’re not saying you’re not, let’s find a place to sit and have a chat."

Wang Yunxiao put away his notebook and glanced around at the belongings inside Chen Laosi’s home.

To say the house was bare would be an exaggeration, but indeed, there wasn’t much.

Still, even so, to have a small courtyard and a mud house in the city, and to be able to afford food and firewood, that could be considered a middle-class household.

Youtiao and Little Gourd followed in, heading straight for the inner room.

Chen Laosi was shocked and stretched out his hand to stop them.

"Officer, there’s no one else here, just my old mother and child!"

"Hmm, no problem, don’t be afraid."

Wang Yunxiao sniffed the lingering smell of smoke in the house, took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and handed one over to Chen Laosi.

"Ah, Officer, I really shouldn’t, I couldn’t!"

Chen Laosi hurriedly refused.

"The child has a high fever."

Little Gourd came out of the inner room, saying softly.

"Do you have any fever medicine there?"

"Yes."

"Give one pill to the child."

"Okay."

Seeing that these officers indeed had no intention of making things difficult for him, and judging by the sound, not very old either, Chen Laosifu finally began to relax slowly.

"Do you know why we’ve come to find you?"

"I don’t know... I know."

Now that they’ve come to him, after much hesitation, Chen Laosifu didn’t dare to lie.

"The person who slew the demon at the South Market a few days ago was you, right?"

"Yes..."

"Who did you learn your skills from, becoming so powerful all of a sudden?"

"On my own... from reading books."

Chen Laosifu walked to the stove, took out a thread-bound book from a crevice, and respectfully handed it to Wang Yunxiao: "Your Excellency, this is the book that someone gave me. They said it’s some martial arts secret book. Actually, I didn’t quite understand it either, but somehow, I just suddenly understood..."

"You can read?"

"I recognize some characters, not too many."

"Who gave you the book?"

"A schoolteacher, met him by chance on the road. I helped him carry some things and he said..."

Chen Laosifu stole a glance at Wang Yunxiao and, gritting his teeth, said: "He told me this is the Secret Technique of Divine Power newly compiled by the President, originally only promoted within the military. Seeing that I was strong, and... and honest and straightforward, he let me try practicing it."

Wang Yunxiao nodded. This explanation did sound plausible, no wonder he believed it so easily.

The President indeed had such precedents.

Back when she was stationed at Tianmen, she promoted new cultural developments, personally wrote many textbooks, and popularized them in all regions among the common people. Some were exclusively about geography of human cultures around the world, some were new military drill manuals, and even cookbooks and music scores were included.

In Wang Yunxiao’s hands was a new martial arts compendium titled "Ten Thousand Mountains and Rivers," personally compiled by her.

Beyond that, she also organized a group of people to translate Western books, compile new legal codes, and new martial arts... The current official Twelve Laws system was led by her, collaborating with experts from all sides to compile it.

Even the former courtiers who couldn’t stand the President would not describe her in private as a "mere nobody," a "shrew," or "brave but lacking in strategy."

She was truly cultured, and neither her civil governance nor her martial skills were weak.

To the Old Tianmen People, the President’s love of writing books was no longer a surprise.

"Let me see this book of yours ... the ’Book of Qimen Dunjia’, sounds quite formidable. Didn’t you ever consider that practicing such an origin-unknown technique could have unfavorable consequences?"

Chen Laosifu touched his head, at a loss for words.

"I didn’t think I could really learn any significant skill..."

Yet, he couldn’t help but practice it.

Until death, men are always boys— who can resist the temptation to defy destiny?

"After you killed that demon, you took the Demon Core?"

"Um..."

"Did you eat it?"

"No, I hid it. I read in the book that it can be used to refine Elixirs..."

At this point, as if remembering something, Chen Laosifu’s face suddenly changed, and he turned and rummaged through a cabinet on the kang bed in the inner room. Raising his voice, he asked: "Mom! Where’s the thing I brought back the day before yesterday?"

"What did you bring back? I didn’t see anything!"

Chen Laosifu abruptly turned his head, looking towards his son who was not recovering from the high fever.

"Your Excellency! Your Excellency! That thing is gone! I..."

"Did your son eat it?"

"I... I don’t know!"

He was at a loss for a moment, his face filled with helplessness.

Little Gourd was about to take out some money to help, but he saw Wang Yunxiao give him a look.

Not in a hurry.

Wang Yunxiao thought to himself, I want to see where this act of yours will go.