Free Web NovelChapter 346: Chapter 196: The Later an Egg Hatches, the Weirder It Gets
Lu Yuan was quite satisfied on his way back from the Martial Hall. Sparring with the Grand Celestial Master had been exhilarating. The flames he could conjure in his hand were more potent than before, several times more powerful in fact. If they were little fireballs before, now they were great big ones.
Lu Yuan looked at his own two hands, which had never seen much hardship. They weren’t rough and calloused like a farmer’s, but still had the soft, slender fingers of a scholar.
"These hands of mine are for caressing my wife and conquering the world."
After Lu Yuan returned to the residence, Su Liyan told him her idea for her and her mother to take Bengbeng back to the village, adding that Bengbeng could already walk now.
He naturally agreed to the trip and said he wanted to go with them.
As for the fact that his daughter could already walk, Lu Yuan was quite unperturbed. It seemed he was getting used to her peculiarities.
’She’d even started calling him "daddy" a few days ago.’
His daughter was indeed a bit different from the rest.
Su Liyan knew he had been very busy recently, so she said, "Honey, it’s fine if we go back by ourselves this time. You still have a lot to do, and Aunt Zhao needs your company too. You don’t have to come with us."
Seeing this, Lu Yuan didn’t insist. "When are you planning to go back to the village?" he asked. "And how long will you stay?"
Su Liyan said, "Let’s leave tomorrow morning. That way, it won’t be dark when we get home."
"Alright," Lu Yuan said, agreeing with his wife’s idea. "In that case, I’ll have the servants prepare some things this afternoon for you to take back with you."
"Honey~ You’re so good to me. But you don’t need to bring so much. You brought so much last time that Dad gave most of it away to friends and relatives, and it still took us over a month to finish what was left," Su Liyan said, pressing herself against him.
Lu Yuan said, "It’s not just for your dad. Even the Xingzi at the large reservoir south of the village will get a share."
Su Liyan tilted her head up slightly to look at Lu Yuan and asked curiously, "Honey, what is it that you need to give to the Da Xingzi in the village?"
"The corpse of the Ancient Poison Scorpion," Lu Yuan said plainly.
"That thing? Didn’t we leave it at the mountain pass?" Su Liyan didn’t understand what he was talking about. ’Has he gone mad?’
’I’ve been with him this whole time, from Taiping City to the Northern battlefront, and then to Dongchang City. It’s safe to say he’s almost never been out of my sight.’
Lu Yuan thought for a moment. ’The System Space is difficult to explain,’ he mused. ’Liyan is with me day in and day out; it’ll be hard to hide something like this from her for long.’
Back at the Dongchang City Prefecture Yamen, Lu Yuan had read about a type of Storage Device in a dilapidated ancient book. It was a device that could infinitely compress objects and then store them inside.
The illustration in the ancient book depicted something about the size of a Rubik’s Cube, or perhaps more like a Pandora’s Box.
In all his time since transmigrating to the Divine Ling Empire, Lu Yuan had never seen such a Divine Artifact.
The only things he knew of that could store items were perhaps the Top Grade Spirit Capturing Devices, which could hold the Void Bodies of Xingzi.
Even Middle Lower Grade Spirit Capturing Devices couldn’t do that.
Therefore, the things recorded in that ancient book were probably fake. After all, Lu Yuan had been here for almost two years and had never heard of any storage-type Divine Artifact.
Even so, Lu Yuan had still placed that tattered, incomplete ancient book into his System Space to carry with him. He felt that many of the things recorded in it were quite advanced and modern.
Lu Yuan took an exquisite little box from his robes and said, "This is a treasure I found. It can store any item inside. The corpse is in here."
The small box in Lu Yuan’s hand was quite exquisite. Its four corners were inlaid with several sapphires, and a single ruby was embedded in the very center of its lid.
Lu Yuan had made this Treasure Box himself and had always kept it in his System Space. The gems on it were ones he had purchased back in Yandu, which he later inlaid on it.
This Treasure Box also resembled that Pandora’s Box a little. ’It must be a coincidence,’ he thought.
Su Liyan looked at the little trinket in his hand and naturally didn’t believe him, thinking he was just teasing her.
Actions speak louder than words.
In front of his wife, Lu Yuan plucked a tiny black bean from inside the box. He placed it in his hand, where it slowly expanded, and then he tossed it onto the ground.
What finally appeared before the two of them was a scorpion’s tail stinger weighing over ten jin.
Only then was Su Liyan forced to believe her husband. An object that could overturn her entire worldview was indeed difficult to accept in such a short time.
The Treasure Box in Lu Yuan’s hand was not, as he had claimed, a Storage Device.
Lu Yuan didn’t have a Storage Device.
He had tampered with this Treasure Box. A sliver of the Power of Space was circulating within it.
Ever since Lu Yuan had discovered the Long Snake’s corpse rotting away in his System Space, he had observed it carefully and had unexpectedly discovered the Power of Space operating within it.
Lu Yuan had tried more than ten times before he barely managed to inscribe a trace of the Power of Space onto the inner wall of the Treasure Box in his hand.
Because of this, the Treasure Box gained the ability to store things, and it was also connected to his System Space.
Lu Yuan looked at his wife’s expression and thought to himself, ’Framing it this way should make it a little easier for her to accept.’
Su Liyan took the Treasure Box from his hand and said, "Alright, honey. When the time comes, we’ll just turn this box over and sprinkle the contents by the reservoir."
"Yes. For your dad, just prepare some health supplements. Give him some silver taels, too. If he’s willing to come live in the city, we can have him move in with us," Lu Yuan said.
As a son-in-law, no one could compare to Lu Yuan.
While his wife was back in the village, Lu Yuan could use the time to focus on his training, refine the cluster of ethereal blue flame from the Flying Corpse, and then work on the surveillance camera matter.
「The next morning.」
Su Liyan, her mother, and Bengbeng (in her arms) set off for Changliu Village in a horse-drawn carriage.
Since Su Liyan’s mother didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle, and it was inconvenient to travel with a baby like Bengbeng, they had to take a carriage back to the village.
To Su Liyan, a motorcycle would have been much faster, so the sudden switch to a carriage made it feel incredibly slow.
Just as the carriage reached the village entrance, Yunyun floated over, landed on the carriage roof, and sat down, crossing her legs casually.
The groom couldn’t see the little ghost sitting on the carriage.
Su Liyan’s mother pulled a Talisman from her sleeve, tied a knot in its end, and stuck it to the inside of the carriage’s doorway.
"Aren’t you coming down?" Su Liyan’s mother whispered. The Talisman she had just posted was also to avoid startling their groom.
Only then did Yunyun float in through the carriage’s window—or rather, it was less like floating and more like she squeezed her way in.
Yunyun sat down next to Su Liyan and pouted, "Grandma, why are you treating me like this? It was perfectly fine sitting on the roof."
Su Liyan’s mother said, "You’re always playing around. What made you think to come and meet us at the village entrance?"
Yunyun smiled and said, "I sensed you and Big Sis arriving a long time ago, I just got here a little late."
The groom driving the carriage heard nothing from inside, focusing solely on the road.
"Oh my, this must be our little Princess! She’s so exquisite, just like Big Sis," Yunyun said, looking at the baby in Su Liyan’s arms.
Bengbeng pointed at the empty space next to Su Liyan and said, "Ghostie, ghostie..."
Yunyun looked around but didn’t notice anything unusual. She said, "Grandma, what is our little Princess talking about? ’Ghostie, ghostie?’"
Su Liyan and her mother were also surprised. Su Liyan’s mother pointed at Yunyun and asked her granddaughter, "Bengbeng, is the male ghost right here?"
Bengbeng nodded, then shook her head and said, "Girl ghostie."
Well now, she had just called the adorable little girl Yunyun a female ghost.
Hearing this, Yunyun wasn’t happy. She complained, "Grandma, Big Sis, look! This little brat is calling me a ghostie~"
Yunyun was indeed a Xingzi, so neither Su Liyan nor her mother came to her defense.
Su Liyan asked, "Mom, I remember I couldn’t see Yunyun until I was seven or eight, right?"
Su Liyan’s mother replied, "That’s right. Around that time, you were just about to undergo atavistic regression."
Yunyun chimed in, "Grandma, Grandma, do you remember when you sent me to find out why Big Sis laid an egg, and why it didn’t hatch for so long?"
Su Liyan’s mother shot her a sideways glance and said, "You have the nerve to bring that up? I sent you to investigate back then, and by the time Bengbeng hatched, you still hadn’t come back with any news."
The matter was eventually dropped.
"Something like that happened?" Su Liyan asked, having overheard their conversation.
"Of course! Back when Grandma was in Taiping City, she summoned me over. I had to float for quite a while to get there."
Yunyun paused, then said, "Later, I asked the other Xingzi in our village, and they said that the later an egg hatches, the stranger it is. But as for how it’s strange, I don’t really know."
"So you’re saying you found out nothing?"
...
