My Mother Has a System but Won't Use It

Yue Li harassed Han Li a lot that day. The word 'Old Hag' seemed to have really pressed some buttons in her. She, as usual, tried to beat Han Li up, only to realize once again that his skin was too thick; then she tried to bite his hand, only to realize her teeth were too weak, and realizing that nothing worked on him, chose just to use Ruo to manipulate him.

This devious woman!

Han Li was, of course, not an easy man to trick into something, but pretty soon, he was talking to Yue Li like he was a vassal and she was a queen. The most amazing part?

His mother almost seemed the part in her mockeries. But when he would be about to reach his 'annoyed' level, when he might probably stop caring about the game and just start sexually harassing his mom, she would stop. As usual, she was an expert when it came to him. Even though she would be quite foolish otherwise…

Anyway, just like that, Han Li had to waste about an hour of precious meditation time, but he was pretty sure that he couldn't focus anyway with Ruo being so close. Every time the girl's gaze moved from his mother to him, he would feel his heart thump and his hand clench.

He wished to hug her. Tell her it was alright now. Tell her that her big brother had arrived to save her. Feed her the tasty candy. Show her what lay beyond survival. But he didn't dare to even go close enough to touch her. Her frightened face gave him bad memories.

By the end, even Yue Li realized how profoundly impactful the little girl was to Han Li and grew more and more curious while also thinking about why the girl was so weird. But Han Li seemed to avoid the matter for a long time before he sighed at her glare.

"So, here is the proposition, Xiao Li," Yue Li said, closing Ruo's ears with her palms. "If you tell me her story now, we will end the bad tension brewing between us with a kiss, and that's it. You and me stay the same, fooling around couple of a mother and son. If not, I bet you I won't let you touch me in any way that is even a bit sexual."

Han Li clicked his tongue. "There is no tension between us. What are you talking about?"

Yue Li smiled. "You know, so many hidden secrets, so many confusions, so many doubts. And I don't deserve to know this, too?"

He looked at his mother with a sigh. "Your cheeks have accumulated a bit of fat after eating all the time. So cute."

"No, I puffed it by myself, but don't change the subject."

"Ruo…" Han Li said, and the girl looked at him with wide eyes, almost making his heart jump. 'Damn, I am almost afraid of her at this point…'

Sighing aloud, he murmured, "Ruo is a very pitiful child, as pitiful as they come. You won't believe, or you won't wish to believe her true story."

"Tell me," Yue Li said with a solemn tone. "I expected to see some kind of wounds or something when washing her, but other than her acting meek and fearful, she seems entirely healthy. That is even more unnerving though… and the fact that she lacks the intelligence to even speak clearly makes me worried too."

"There is this tradition in some of the Brothels across Sacred Lust…" he looked at Ruo, knowing she understood what he was speaking of even though she seemed rather unwell in the mind department. "The brothels create some families solely meant to generate beautiful women throughout the ages, and one of these families was the Fang Family in a faraway city from here. They have all sorts of beautiful women and handsome men they use to gain beautiful and handsome offspring."

"For what?" Yue Li asked with disgust.

"To sell, to use as 'vases,' or to just become usual brothel women."

"Vases?" Yue Li asked, feeling the girl shiver on her lap.

"Basically, they would be the most beautiful of all the brothel's women and would not be allowed to be touched by any man but instead used as an advertisement. Just due to their beauty and attracted by their purity alone, hundreds would visit the brothel, it is a marketing method."

"And Ruo… she?"

"She was born to this Fang Family, and from the day she was born, she decided to be a future 'vase,' her beauty was too powerful, and her talent even more wondrous, as you can see, since she is here, she obviously has Sacred Talent. And even her Spark is special. White Sparrow Spark is a transformation spark of the bird variant. She could fly when she becomes an Evolved."

"I don't care about her, Spark; tell me why she has this kind of mental scars."

Han Li's gaze grew cold. "The Fang Family saw potential in her and began to teach her the true way of cultivation. She Awakened like everyone at the age of 13 about three months ago today, and seeing her Spark, all of them rejoiced and were over the moon. And do you know what her current situation is?"

Yue Li shook her head, a bad premonition in her heart.

"I told you before about Beasts, right? Just like ordinary animals with Beast Cores, there are insects with Beast Cores, too, and they are called Gu Worms. Some people tame these insects or even nurture them by themselves, like the Raven Clan in Southern Lust City, and they can be used to make people act like slaves. "And they planted more than three of these Gu Worms in Ruo; her heart is currently a worm, her stomach is also currently a worm, while the most problematic thing about her is her wings in case she Evolved, her backbone is also a sort of Gu Worm."

Yue Li felt her own face pale, and her hold over the girl tightened… she felt as if the girl would break at a touch. And there was this frailty in her that just made Yue Li's motherly instinct scream. That made her bite her lips.

Another thought haunted her mind.

'Just like her, there are a lot of kids currently in this Demon World…' her mind muttered, 'and some of them might die somehow. How cruel was the Sacred Demon? can't he keep the children out of this? I have to ask Xiao Li for help…'

"So how did that make her like this? Her eyes are so blank…"

Han Li extended his hand and gently patted Ruo's white hair. She felt warm to the touch.

"They did all that because her Spark was an absolute rarity, it appeared somehow by luck, in a sense, like two chickens mating to birth a phoenix. They wanted her to be the start of another great Clan, White Sparrow Clan.

"But these Gu were not just simple things like changed circumstances; her spine was literally replaced with a worm that now acted as her spine, and the same went to the other two. And moreover, the Fang Family also held the connected Twin Gu of her heart, as in, if they killed it, she would die."

"What kind of lunatics are these bitches?!" Yue Li hissed. "Why do it? To their own child nonetheless."

"This is actually considered a surefire training to achieve Evolution for the Transformation Type cultivators. They could endure the Evolution time's pain easily, but they had underestimated the Gu Worm's lasting effect and overestimated Little Ruo's endurance. They had believed the pain to vanish and her mind to work okayi'sh after a while, and they didn't need her to be intelligent; they wanted her to be working."

Han Li looked profoundly at his Mother and her pale expression along with her bloodshot eyes. His own eyes, on the other hand, grew calm and callous.

"But only when she became around 16 years old did they realize their plan totally backfired, and by the time she became that age, her mind was entirely broken by the pain, suffering, and pressure. She had become a doll, and they couldn't even use her as a vase at that point. Since the damned Demon Restraining Temple liked to keep appearances clean at the very least. "Even though they knew it, they would turn a blind eye, of course, unless it is a publically known evil. And then the only way for them to use Ruo was to do the greatest evil, which I don't want to even speak about, but luckily, her sister, by blood, couldn't bear to see it and, in a nice and sneaky way, went to sell her out to the brothel as a badly functioning 'Vase', but two people intervened on the way and bought her with a high price, and those two people were you and me."

Yue Li looked at him with a stunned expression. "What again?"

"Those are just speculations of how it would have ended up, just that I gave it a happy ending by including us in the story, but the logical part, without including the future, the story is accurate."

Even the future part was real, just that it won't repeat. And just that he had omitted a lot of the story, about how he had lost his mother to longevity and lost Ruo to the schemes of the Fang Clan soon after.

Yue Li felt something amiss, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She just looked at him dubiously.

Han Li chuckled wryly and gently took the shivering girl from his mother. He could feel the girl almost cry out loud in fear, and that made his heart ache.

"Ah, don't cry, it's just your big brother..."