If The Persona Is Wrong, Everything Else Is In Vain - Chapter 30

“What do you mean?” Lin Luo pointed at himself, utterly incredulous. “This matter has something to do with me too?”

Wei An shrugged, wearing an air of complete detachment as if it were none of his business. “You said it yourself, not me.”

Xiao Yang tugged at Wei An’s sleeve and shot him a warning glance. Wei An didn’t care, he merely spared a brief, indifferent glance, completely ignored the warning, and continued to provoke Lin Luo. “If you want to know something, you can go ask Zhou Wan.”

With that, he grabbed Xiao Yang’s hand instead, bypassed the chaotic crowd, and walked away.

“Make yourself clear!” Lin Luo shouted behind his back. Just as he was about to give chase, Zhou Wan blocked his path.

Being half a head taller than Lin Luo, Zhou Wan perfectly cut off his line of sight, entirely dominating his field of vision. “No need to look for him.”

Lin Luo looked up at him. “What kind of ‘deal’ is actually between you two?”

Zhou Wan’s eyes brewed like a pool of stagnant water, and his lips remained tightly sealed. “None.”

“None?” Lin Luo let out a cold laugh.

The implied meaning behind Wei An’s words echoed in his ears just now. He shoved Zhou Wan aside. “If there’s none, then beat it. Mind your own business.”

Like a rooted door plank, Zhou Wan stood firmly in front of Lin Luo, completely motionless. Frowning slightly, he said, “Can you calm down a bit?”

Lin Luo laughed out of sheer anger. “Right, it has nothing to do with you, so it’s easy for you to stand there and talk, isn’t it? You don’t know…”

His voice stopped abruptly, and he didn’t continue.

Zhou Wan asked, “I don’t know what?”

Lin Luo glanced at him sideways, paused for a moment, and squeezed out a smile. “Nothing.”

Immediately afterward, his knee drove straight toward Zhou Wan’s old injury. Zhou Wan quickly dodged it, but in the next second, his abdomen took a heavy, blunt punch. Seizing the moment when Zhou Wan bent over in pain, Lin Luo slipped past him without another word.

Clutching his stomach, Zhou Wan’s dry, hoarse voice rang out from behind: “Stay away from him!”

Lin Luo didn’t even turn his head, merely raising a middle finger over his shoulder.

There was bound to be some secret between Wei An and Zhou Wan. However, Wei An seemed not the least bit afraid of others knowing; he had even proactively brought it up to Lin Luo, as if desperately fearing Lin Luo might remain in the dark.

In stark contrast, Zhou Wan kept a deadpan expression and insisted they had nothing to do with each other. Yet, this exact behavior was the most abnormal.

Lin Luo knew Zhou Wan’s usual temperament all too well. If it really had nothing to do with him, Zhou Wan wouldn’t even deign to discuss it, rolling his eyes all the way to the back of his head.

As for what their relationship or secret was, Lin Luo neither wanted to care nor was it his place to care.

But this matter seemingly involved himself, and…

The scene he witnessed in the ancestral hall that day replayed repeatedly in Lin Luo’s mind.

Lin Er-mao had made a massive fuss and come knocking on their door just because an apple went missing from the ancestral hall. The conditions he laid out were so preposterous that his sole purpose was clearly to provoke trouble. Even his final sentence carried an underlying meaning. Who on earth had instigated him? What kind of benefits were promised, or was that person of a higher “rank” than him?

Only after the incident did Lin Luo realize that on that particular night, it wasn’t just the production crew who went up the mountain. In fact, the crew members had never even been to the ancestral hall. The only ones who had actually been there were Wei An and that middle school student.

No one knows how wronged you are better than yourself, except for the actual mastermind behind the scenes.

Lin Er-mao had already been sent behind bars due to the various pieces of evidence gathered by Ming Songqin. Of course, he brought it upon himself; he had been unrepentant for so many years, repeatedly entering and leaving prison, yet still dared to commit crimes frequently.

But the person behind him was still lurking in the shadows…

Lin Luo looked back at Wei An’s name against the large red background in the center of the stage, his expression gradually turning grave.

The man and the name “Wei An” seemed to involve a wide web, he had a hand in absolutely everything.

To think that Zhou Wan was actually entangled with him too. Zhou Wan’s refusal to let him get close to Wei An seemed like protection on the surface. But upon closer inspection, it looked more like he didn’t want Lin Luo to approach and dig out Wei An’s “secret” he was protecting Wei An.

Just like that time in the Youshan Cave Dwelling, Zhou Wan had written a reminder in Lin Luo’s palm, almost obsessively refusing to let Lin Luo leave. If Lin Luo had stopped climbing because of that, he wouldn’t have caught a glimpse of Wei An inside the ancestral hall.

Coupled with Zhou Wan’s infuriating attitude just now, Lin Luo, driven by emotion, projected the worst malicious assumptions onto him.

Gnashing his teeth in resentment, he kicked away a stone by his foot. As the stone flew out and landed on the slope, it startled a few birds that had just settled on the tall trees.

“Who made you angry?” Ming Songqin walked up to Lin Luo’s side afterward and stuffed a piece of candy into his mouth.

Before it even entered his mouth, his sense of smell detected the refreshing mint fragrance. As the sweet and sharp flavors countered and balanced each other, his taste buds were activated. Lin Luo tilted his head to look at him. “It’s nothing.”

“Lying means you’ll be carried away and eaten by monsters at night,” Ming Songqin said with a completely serious face.

Lin Luo’s expression was complicated. The chaotic thoughts in his mind were somewhat diluted by this childhood horror story that served as a dry joke. “How old are you? Even if you tell that to kids nowadays, no one will believe it.”

Ming Songqin didn’t care. “Who says so? If you tell me, I’ll believe it.”

Lin Luo fell silent for a moment. “Are you… serious?”

Ming Songqin nodded earnestly. “Dead serious.”

After a long while, just as Lin Luo was silently pondering how to respond, Ming Songqin finally burst out laughing with a pfft. “Just kidding, you actually took it seriously.”

“However,” he paused, offering a faint smile, “in my eyes, you’ll always look like a kid.”

The vast, distant loneliness in his eyes was hidden beneath his thick eyelashes, and even his tone was perfectly steady. “You will always be my most, most favorite good younger brother.”

After a period of silence, Lin Luo lowered his gaze, curled his lips, and nodded. “And you will always be my brother.”

“Then you won’t hold a grudge against me for shelving your career before?” Ming Songqin asked.

“I really never held a grudge against you.” Lin Luo awkwardly weighed his words and smiled. “It’s just… it felt a bit awkward, I suppose.”

Ming Songqin pretended to be angry. “Then you’re quite petty.”

Lin Luo laughed and cursed, “You have the nerve to call me petty? Back then, if it weren’t for you…”

Before he could finish his sentence, he saw Ming Songqin pointing at himself with an “I knew it” look, which perfectly corresponded to the question he just asked. Lin Luo shut his mouth. “Fine, I hold a grudge against you.”

Ming Songqin puckered his lips, ruffled Lin Luo’s hair, and said with a faint smile, “Then may I still have an opportunity to make amends?”

“Isn’t right now your ‘amends’?” Lin Luo asked, puzzled.

“Without you, I probably wouldn’t have had the chance to participate in this show. Who knows, I might have been unable to survive in the industry due to the chain reaction caused by the failed filming of The Unquestionable. Let alone gaining today’s traffic.” He smiled. “Thank you.”

This was true. The popularity brought by The Realm of Pursuit. Hydro Chapter gave him more exposure, and his commercial value had been developed to some extent, thereby gaining him many job opportunities. By the time The Unquestionable, a drama already backed by capital and hype, finished filming, his market value would highly likely rise again.

And all of this was brought by Ming Songqin. Lin Luo knew very well in his heart that The Realm of Pursuit was not a project that absolutely required him, and Ming Songqin had plenty of artists under his wing who were much more suitable.

Since Ming Songqin participated in person, he could have easily brought his own people. The excuse that “outsiders don’t understand local customs” didn’t hold up at all. Furthermore, as far as the program recording had gone, they hadn’t used the “cheat code” of being a local at all.

Ming Songqin shook his head and said, “It’s not this.”

Lin Luo waited in silence for him to continue.

“What is the reason… that you haven’t dared to step foot into the village for all these years?” Ming Songqin asked.

This question came so suddenly that it caught Lin Luo completely off guard. “Huh?”

Ming Songqin didn’t speak further, he just looked at him, waiting for his answer.

“What, what other reason could there be,” Lin Luo tried to laugh it off. “They didn’t let my old man be buried back here to return to his roots, so I… I hold a grudge against them.”

“You know me, I’m very good at holding grudges,” Lin Luo added. It sounded a bit like trying to hide a secret only to make it more obvious.

Ming Songqin remained silent for a moment, then straightened Lin Luo’s head to make him look into his eyes. “Do you dare to look into my eyes and say that again?”

“I…”

The smile froze on Lin Luo’s face. His facial muscles gradually relaxed. After an unknown amount of time, the fake smile completely vanished from his face, and he finally uttered those two words. “I can’t.” At the same time, he pulled down Ming Songqin’s hand.

“Since you already know, why bother asking me?”

He looked at Ming Songqin, his expression indifferent and carrying a sense of detachment. “Since you know everything, then why did you bring me here to do this show and return to Shuihe Village?”

“Don’t say it’s for my own good.” He seemingly guessed what Ming Songqin would say next and directly cut off the words before they could be spoken. “Many people have said things were for my own good, but I have never felt that those things were ‘good’.”

After a moment of silence, Ming Songqin said, “That wasn’t what I wanted to say.”

He let out a sigh and said, “You are afraid of facing the villagers’ past attitude toward you again, and you’re afraid of triggering… unpleasant memories, so you have been avoiding and shrinking back. But, as you can see, nothing happened today.”

There is nothing wrong with you liking men, either.

“I just want to say that your business is nothing more than post-dinner gossip from many years ago to them. They forgot about it long ago, just like how no one can remember what they ate for breakfast on a perfectly ordinary day years ago. The only person still trapped inside it is you, still repeatedly enduring that heavy downpour.”

Ming Songqin weighed his words for a moment and said, “This is unfair, and it’s not worth it.”

“Unfair? Then what do you think is fair?” Lin Luo took a deep breath. “The relationship between us was never fair from the very beginning. Only the person who was bullied will remember how bad the wound hurt. Are you saying I shouldn’t even have the right to cry out in pain?”

“Just because they all forgot, does that mean my wound won’t hurt anymore? Even a scarred wound will itch whenever it’s touched. That kind of abnormal sensation can never dissipate, do you understand?”

Ming Songqin explained, “I just want you to be able to let go… If you keep thinking about it, the only person who will ultimately continue to suffer harm is yourself.”

“Is this why you specifically came to find me and brought me back?” Lin Luo let out a cold laugh. “So what? After the blood on the knife is washed clean and a decision is made to seal the blade and never kill again, do I have to use the scar to thank the knife for giving the wound a chance to become a scar?”

Ming Songqin frowned. “No, that’s not what I meant…”

“It’s quite meaningless,” Lin Luo flipped the annoying shattered hair away from his forehead and sneered, “Desensitization therapy, is it? Is it fun?”

He stood up. “Have fun playing by yourself.”

“Xiao Luo…” Ming Songqin called out softly behind him, feeling vexed at his own clumsy tongue for messing everything up.

Lin Luo suddenly halted his steps. Without turning around, he said, “I really don’t hold a grudge against you, so don’t do anything unnecessary anymore.”