Free Web NovelChapter 142: Chapter 142: The Performance of the Two Cubs
Kaelen was stirring the porridge. Hearing the cub’s retching sounds in the bathroom, he hurriedly threw the ladle down and rushed in. Sane said guiltily:
"It’s not my fault! I don’t know what this kid was thinking, but he didn’t spit the toothpaste out and just swallowed it."
Kaelen rubbed his forehead helplessly. This little mouse cub was smart at times, but at other times, he was just somehow foolish. He could only wait for Ryder to vomit everything up, then handed Ryder a cup of warm water to cleanse his stomach.
"Once you’re done, come out and have breakfast."
After feeding the three little ones, the two adults also grabbed a quick bite, then busily headed to the administrative area. Along the way, Kaelen pointed helplessly at his two children and said:
"Lord Chief, our family is about to be issued a poverty certificate. You have no idea what your two children have done..."
Kaelen opened his hand and counted every single thing the two children had done. Being told on by their Papa, the two little ones played dead. One intently licked its claws, while the other pretended to doze off. Sane chuckled, pinched the cheeks of the two children, and then turned to say to Kaelen:
"Don’t worry. Once all the money is paid in compensation, I will just earn it back, as long as they didn’t cause anything irreparable."
Kaelen pouted. Having saved up for so long only to become a proletarian in a single afternoon, who could possibly be happy about that? However, he gave birth to these children, so if they caused destruction, he just had to bear it. He grumbled in frustration:
"Now the whole tribe is terrified just hearing their names. They are even more mischievous than when they were still in their eggs."
"What did the younger brothers do when they were still in their eggs?" Ryder asked curiously. The boy couldn’t understand; what kind of trouble could an egg possibly cause?
Kaelen pouted and said, "They constantly sneaked out of the isolation room. This kid Finnick even buried himself underground. If an Earth-attribute warrior hadn’t noticed the abnormal ground and dug him up, he might have laid down there until he sprouted!
"As for this brat Oliver, he let himself drift along the river. If people hadn’t spotted him, he might have floated away to who knows where!"
There was also the fact that they constantly interrupted the private life of Zale and his wife, or sneaked into the tribe’s warehouse to steal magic cores. Kaelen recounted every single incident without leaving anything out. Ryder covered his mouth and giggled, while Finnick and Oliver embarrassedly buried their faces into their Daddy’s chest. Papa really didn’t leave any face for his two precious children at all! Furthermore, why did you only list our crimes and not Brother Edward’s! He was the one who led us to sneak out!
There wasn’t much work in the morning. After handling the important matters, Sane and Kaelen sat down and opened the map that Kaelen had compiled.
Kaelen pointed to a location not far from the coal mine and said: "Weston said there is another piece of land on this side, but it is too close to the black fog at the edge of the continent, so almost no one goes there. I think we can go there and take a look."
"Yeah." Sane nodded: "Aaron has already explored the area from Obsidian onwards. I think we don’t need to waste time circling back. From the point you mentioned, we will loop upwards, cut across the demonic beast forest, and search the upper half."
He paused for a moment and said: "We should strive to search the entire Southern Continent within a year. Next spring will mark exactly three years, and the Beast City will host the Spring Festival. If we still haven’t found Edward by then, we will take this opportunity to go to the Northern Continent and conduct a search."
Hearing their Daddy mention the Beast City and the Northern Continent, Finnick and Oliver couldn’t help but feel anxious. A year seemed quite long, but with their two fathers’ current strength, it was still too soon. Although Edward possessed Space Divine Energy, his strength was still too weak, so he couldn’t teleport too far.
The key lay with Uncle Wofu. As long as Wofu restored his Divine Energy to its peak, jumping from the Northern Continent back to the Southern Continent in the blink of an eye would no longer be a major issue. It was just that right now, Wofu’s whereabouts were unknown, and he had even regressed to a cub state. They were completely in a passive position.
No way, at least before finding an optimal plan, they absolutely could not let their two fathers go to the Northern Continent!
"Aooo!"
Just as Sane opened the preliminary map of the Beast City described by Collins, Finnick let out a tender roar, his tiny body shooting forward like a cannonball.
The cub pounced straight at the sheepskin map in Sane’s hand, opening his mouth full of baby teeth to bite down tightly, forcefully tearing half of it off. Oliver joined forces to help Finnick tear it to pieces. Finnick hurriedly swept it all into his mouth, chewed a few times, and spat the crumpled, saliva-soaked wad of skin right under the table.
Once done, Finnick plopped down on the table, raised his claws, and scratched up the surface of the remaining half of the map, looking at Sane with an extremely innocent expression.
Sane: "..."
Kaelen: "..."
"Finnick! Oliver! You two are itching for a beating, aren’t you!"
Ryder huddled in the corner, blankly watching the series of crazy and manic actions from Finnick and Oliver, then witnessed the scene of them being strung up by Kaelen and whipped on the buttocks with a few vines.
The boy crawled onto the table, looking at the map that had been tormented beyond recognition, then looked at the large dark-purple light snake in front of him. His nose twitched, and he raised his right paw to scratch his face, saying in a low voice:
"You can’t go..."
Sane, who was trying to restore the map, paused slightly upon hearing Ryder say this and asked in confusion: "What did you just say?"
Ryder raised his two forelimbs to rub his ears again, then said slowly: "Northern Continent... Temple... dangerous. You cannot go there..."
After speaking, the boy’s face went blank again, his expression dazed as if he didn’t understand why he had said that.
Sane narrowed his eyes at the boy, carefully pondering over the words Ryder had spoken. He rearranged every detail that had happened from the past until now, linking all the events together. A thought flashed through Sane’s mind. He wasn’t very sure and asked Ryder softly:
"Did Edward tell you this? Is he in the Northern Continent? Specifically in the Beast City or the Temple?"
With a *poof*, the little mouse transformed into a fair-skinned boy sitting blankly on the table. His tightly shut eyes had opened at some point; the irises inside were purely pitch-black. If one didn’t look closely, they would think he only had eye sockets and no irises.
Ryder scratched his head as if trying to think really hard, but a moment later he shook his head: "I don’t know, I can’t remember... I just know it’s very dangerous, you guys cannot go there."
"Kaelen!" Sane hurriedly called out: "Bring the children back here, I have something to ask them."
Finnick and Oliver had been whipped a few times and were in stinging pain. They wanted to cry but didn’t dare to cry out loud, only able to sniffle through their noses. Sane stared intently at his two children, not comforting them, and asked sternly: "Daddy is asking, so you must answer honestly. Have you met Edward?"
The two children stiffened, forgetting to even cry. Seeing their expressions, Kaelen also tightly gripped the lapels of his shirt over his chest, holding his breath as he waited.
"Daddy will state his guesses, you just need to nod and shake your heads. If you can’t speak, sit still. You only go in to lie with Ryder when he lies in Edward’s nest; is it because you can meet Edward through Ryder?"
Finnick and Oliver looked at each other.
Oliver: [Should we nod or shake our heads, brother?]
Finnick: [Daddy is very smart, we can’t fool him. Let’s just answer honestly.]
After exchanging thoughts silently, the two of them slowly nodded at Sane. Kaelen raised a hand to cover his mouth to prevent himself from making a sound, his eye sockets turning red. So, in a place he and Sane didn’t know about, their children had reunited in some miraculous way. It was just that the little ones couldn’t explain it clearly to the two of them.
Sane took a deep breath, pointing a slightly trembling finger at the half of the map Finnick had shredded: "Edward is in the Beast City, right inside the Temple?"
The two children nodded again.
Sane continued to ask: "Did Edward tell you not to let your two fathers go to the Northern Continent?"
This time, not only did Finnick and Oliver nod, but Ryder also nodded profusely. Even though he remembered nothing, his intuition told him that it was exactly like that.
"Why? Why can’t we go and bring him back?"
The one asking was Kaelen, his voice already choked up. Finnick and Oliver scratched their heads, not knowing how to answer. Finnick shook his small head, then unsteadily crawled forward, opening his mouth to bite a bamboo pen, and placed it in front of Oliver.
Oliver transformed his two legs into a tail, lifted his body to sit up straight, and reached out a hand to grab the pen, adjusting it repeatedly but not knowing how to hold it correctly.
Kaelen stepped forward and helped Oliver correct his pen-holding posture. Oliver swung the pen with a few swishes, drawing scribbled lines on Finnick’s body. Finnick propped himself up on his hind legs, trying to make himself look ferocious, and opened his mouth to give two ’roars’.
The two fathers watched their children perform. Even though they were very tense, they still wanted to burst out laughing a little. However, so as not to make the children feel self-conscious, the two of them suppressed their smiles and offered all sorts of guesses. In the end, it was Kaelen who guessed correctly:
"A tiger?"
The two little ones nodded profusely. Sane’s eyes flickered slightly: "Are you talking about Wofu? Wofu is still alive?"
*Nodding* [Right, right, Daddy is so smart!]
"So that means Edward is with Wofu... Was it that time, Sane, the time when Wofu was leveling up?"
"Probably. The situation that day was too chaotic. Everyone thought Wofu had met with a mishap, and we didn’t pay attention, so we didn’t know when Edward went missing. It seems that the moment Wofu vanished, Edward also followed him."
Kaelen breathed a sigh of relief: "It’s good that Wofu is alive. My lie to comfort Draven coincidentally turned out to be the truth."
Seeing that this method could make their two fathers understand, Finnick and Oliver performed even more enthusiastically. Kaelen, Sane, and Ryder watched seriously, then offered their guesses.
When Oliver placed a small, round grape on his head and walked back and forth, Kaelen guessed that the grape represented Edward when he was still in his egg, being carried on Wofu’s head. Afterwards, Oliver placed the grape down on a piece of paper, drew a circle above it, and then drew a few crooked straight lines connecting from that circle to the grape.
"Rain? No?... Hmm... is it a lightning strike? Did lightning strike down when Edward broke out of his shell?"
Oliver nodded again and pointed at Finnick. Finnick growled again, imitating a tiger’s voice. Then Oliver moved the grape aside and smeared a pitch-black pile right where the grape had just been placed.
"Ah, Daddy understands this one. Your Uncle Wofu was struck and turned into charcoal, right?"
Oliver admired his Daddy immensely, throwing the pen down and clapping his hands in cheer. Next, Finnick sprawled out flat, spreading his legs wide to depict the moment he first broke out of his shell, and let out a few whimpering sounds.
Kaelen clapped his hands with a smack: "Wofu was beaten back into his cub form?!"
Oliver and Finnick became even more fired up, using every method they knew to convey the message to their two fathers. Oliver drew a worm, then Finnick stepped his paw into the ink and stamped a plum-blossom paw print right next to it. Oliver continued by drawing an arrow and a roof. Sane instantly guessed that the two of them had been taken back to the Temple.
Oliver tossed the pen aside again and pulled Ryder to stand next to Finnick. He even used his hands to adjust Ryder’s standing posture to look truly majestic. Then, Oliver slithered out in front of the two of them, raising his rear end to assume an incredibly devout kneeling posture.
Finnick gave a hmph, puffing out his chest and holding his head high, looking extremely punchable.
Kaelen & Sane: "..."
It seems those two brats are living quite luxuriously at the Temple, huh! They even have people kneeling to them!
