Qin Xun had been a little busy these past few days.
When Feng Yuan ran over, he happened to bump into him right at the doorway.
“Qin Xun, are you going out?”
Dragging along his own fertilizer sack, Feng Yuan tilted up his pretty little face, looking eagerly at Qin Xun.
Although before, he had always gone to scavenge scraps by himself, now that Qin Xun was here, he wanted to go scavenging together with him!
Qin Xun had originally been about to leave. But after glancing at Feng Yuan, in less than a second, he changed his mind: “I’m not going out. You want me to go scavenging with you?”
“Mm! My dad’s birthday is coming soon. I want to save money to buy a gift for him.”
The moment he heard it was to buy a birthday gift for Feng Qi, Qin Xun immediately wanted to sponsor Feng Yuan.
“How much money do you need? I’ll give it to you, I have a lot of pocket money.”
Qin Xun’s parents had long ago entrusted a trust company to leave assets for him.
His current net worth, although not as great as Li Sheng’s, was definitely not weak.
Feng Yuan knew he was rich.
But Feng Yuan didn’t want his money: “I want to save up myself.”
Seeing Feng Yuan so determined, Qin Xun went back into the house and brought out a little yellow sun hat for him.
Feng Yuan was wearing a small white T-shirt, paired with sky-blue shorts, with a brightly colored water bottle slung across his shoulder.
Qin Xun placed the little yellow sun hat on his head, feeling that this color actually suited his tender, fair little face quite well.
“Yuan Yuan’s not afraid of the sun.”
Feng Yuan lifted his chubby little hand to touch the hat, feeling that whether he wore it or not didn’t really matter.
Qin Xun moved his small hand away and coaxed him: “Better to keep it on, it looks really nice.”
Feng Yuan: “!”
The little chubby Yuan, who was always vain, instantly stopped fussing with the hat the moment he heard the words “looks nice”.
He curved his eyes into little crescents, happily pulling out a palm-sized mirror from his pocket.
This little mirror, he had picked up from a trash bin on Huasheng Street.
He had been using it for a long time already!
After checking himself in the mirror, Feng Yuan gave his approval to Qin Xun’s praise.
“Yuan Yuan wearing the little yellow hat, looks good!”
“Mm, you’re good-looking, so no matter what, you’ll always look good.”
Qin Xun usually wasn’t talkative with others, but when it came to Feng Yuan, he never held back his words.
After praising Feng Yuan, he helped take over Feng Yuan’s fertilizer sack.
Feng Yuan, being tactful, also shoved his own chubby little hand over, letting Qin Xun hold it.
The two little fellows swept around the villa district together.
But they hadn’t picked the right timing. Auntie, the cleaner, had already come to tidy the trash bins a little after five.
And now it was past eight, so there weren’t many people who had thrown trash in yet.
“Yuan Yuan, let’s go pick outside instead. This time, I’ll make sure to keep a close eye on you.”
Qin Xun still felt lingering fear from the time Feng Yuan had been kidnapped. But he believed that this time, he wouldn’t let anything go wrong again.
Feng Yuan also happened to want to go out, so their thoughts matched perfectly. Right then and there, they held hands and went out together.
They followed the road leading out of the villa district, picking up bit by bit along the way.
Under Feng Yuan’s guidance, Qin Xun had already learned what things to pick up and what not to.
They gradually collected half a sack of scraps.
Feng Yuan was a little cub with veteran experience in scavenging. Besides rummaging through trash bins and picking things along the roadside, he was also skilled at finding scraps in some hidden little paths!
Following him, Qin Xun grew a bit hesitant as they walked farther.
“Yuan Yuan, we’re going further and further off track. How about we go back?”
Qin Xun himself wasn’t afraid of danger, but he worried Feng Yuan might run into it.
Feng Yuan held a little stick, opening the path in front.
His chubby face was calm and steady: “I smell water. There’s a pond ahead. By ponds like that, there are always the most bottles.”
Qin Xun was puzzled: “Why would there be more bottles by the water?”
Feng Yuan glanced at him and said, “Because there are fishing guys here!”
“Fishing guys” was something Feng Yuan had heard the old grandpas chatting about when he was scavenging at the entrance of an alley under a big tree.
They said, those fishing folks get more and more obsessed with fishing day after day. They find some remote waterside spot, and can sit there the whole day. Under a sun like this, they’re not even afraid of being roasted to death.
At that time, Feng Yuan was waiting for the mineral water bottle in Grandpa Liu’s hand. As he stared at the bottle, he chimed in with his soft, milky voice: “When the fishing folks sit there all day, what do they eat for meals-meals?”
Grandpa Liu, who was the closest to him, saw him and raised his brows.
“So it’s Yuan Yuan who’s here.”
Grandpa Liu picked him up. He didn’t mind at all that the boy was dirty from scavenging scraps. Instead, he took the candy from his pocket and handed it to him: “Our Yuan Yuan, when you grow up, you mustn’t become a fishing fellow. Those fishing folks, sitting outside all day long, they only bring a little food and drink with them. Some of them don’t even get to eat a mouthful of hot rice.”
As a little poor brat, Feng Yuan sharply spotted the business opportunity in those fishing fellows.
“Grandpa Liu, if Yuan Yuan delivers meals to the fishing folks, can he make money?”
Grandpa Liu was stunned for a moment, then broke into laughter: “You little money-grubber, do you even know where the fishing folks are? The places they go are out of the way. Our Yuan Yuan is so small, you can’t go there. It would be dangerous.”
But listening to Grandpa Liu’s words didn’t discourage Feng Yuan in the slightest.
Later on, he really did find a few ponds.
At the pondsides, he even encountered the legendary fishing folks!
With the money he earned from selling scraps, he went to the store and bought hot rice balls and some other food. Then, he successfully sold these things to the fishing folks.
Besides selling things, he also picked up all the piles of water bottles, cigarette boxes, and such scattered around the pondsides.
Having once made money off the fishing folks, Feng Yuan was still very motivated in seeking them out.
They continued walking forward.
On the small path, there was shade from trees every now and then. But most of the time, there was nothing to block the sun. It was scorching.
“Yuan Yuan, how much longer do we have to walk?”
“We’re almost there!”
Just as Qin Xun grew more and more inexplicably uneasy, Feng Yuan’s cheerful little voice rang out: “Look! A big pond!”
A hidden large pond appeared not far ahead of them.
Feng Yuan, with his short little legs, ran over.
When he ran over, at the lower side of the pond’s ditch, he ran into an uncle dressed in work clothes.
The uncle was wearing a mask and a baseball cap. In the middle of summer, he even had a pair of white gloves on his hands.
Feng Yuan tilted his head, looking at him curiously, and asked: “Uncle, are you here to fish?”
The man in the black cap and black mask had been standing there normally, but when he suddenly heard the abrupt childish voice from behind, he snapped his head up.
The gaze of the big one and the little one met. In the instant their eyes locked, before the man could say anything, Feng Yuan was already so frightened that he plopped down on his bottom with a thud.
Feng Yuan did not have Qin Xun’s yin–yang eyes, but he could see ghostly energy, demonic energy, resentful energy—certain strong auras with form.
The moment the man raised his head, the surging ghostly energy wrapped all around him crashed over Feng Yuan, making the small body tremble.
“Yuan Yuan, what’s wrong?”
Qin Xun, who had fallen a couple of steps behind, caught up and picked up Feng Yuan, who was sitting on the ground. His gaze followed Feng Yuan’s line of sight and saw the man below.
He saw the man. Even more clearly, he saw a soaking-wet female ghost clinging to the man’s body.
His pupils suddenly contracted, but on the surface, he forcibly kept himself calm.
“Uncle, are you here to fish? Our family’s grown-ups are fishing at the nearby pond. They told me to ask if there are a lot of fish here.”
Qin Xun’s voice was steady as usual, his little face showing no sign of strangeness.
The man below scrutinized him, as if pondering something.
After a few seconds, the man rasped out in a hoarse voice: “There are no fish here. Your family doesn’t need to come over.”
“Mm, I’ll go tell my family right now so they won’t come over.”
As he spoke, Qin Xun held Feng Yuan’s small hand, scolding as they walked back: “I told you not to run so fast just now, but you wouldn’t listen. See? You fell.”
While scolding the little one, Qin Xun’s steps grew quicker and quicker.
After walking a short distance, he crouched down and carried Feng Yuan on his back.
The words he used to bluff the man just now, he had a gut feeling that they wouldn’t hold for long.
Once the man realized it, he would definitely come up to catch them!
Feng Yuan always liked to go find fishing folks, and now even he was practically turning into a little fishing folk himself. The spot Feng Yuan had chosen—
Secluded, deserted, with water.
This wasn’t just a fishing folks’ favorite fishing spot; this was also a murderer’s favorite place to dump corpses!
Qin Xun ran fast.
Feng Yuan lay on his back, sucking in his chubby belly with all his might.
He thought that if he sucked in his fat belly, he could lighten a bit of his weight.
Qin Xun hadn’t run far when the man behind had already realized there was no other pond nearby. He strode after the two little ones who had just left.
The sound of footsteps, one in front and one behind, grew closer and closer.
Feng Yuan refused to let Qin Xun carry him any longer.
He got down himself. Hand in hand with Qin Xun, the two of them ran forward.
The two little ones were very self-aware. They knew that if they got caught, it would absolutely end badly for them.
So, they ran at their very fastest.
No, more precisely, they ran while tripping and stumbling.
The little path Feng Yuan had found was a dirt trail, and not a very even one at that.
Running on such a road, Feng Yuan’s little face became smeared with dust from his falls. His tender white knees were scraped raw, oozing blood.
After taking another tumble, little teardrops welled up in Feng Yuan’s eyes.
But he got up, not rushing to run this time. Instead, he suddenly gathered all his strength, puffed up his small face, and spat out a trembling little flame.
The tiny flame landed on the man chasing behind. The man instantly cried out in pain, dropping to his knees on the ground.
A few seconds later.
Feng Yuan’s little flame went out, and the man, eyes bloodshot, came chasing again.
“You little brat, I won’t spare you!”
The man hadn’t been frightened by Feng Yuan’s little flames. He strode after them, looking every bit like he wouldn’t stop until Feng Yuan was dead.
Feng Yuan kept spitting out tiny flames, broken and weak.
Just when he could no longer spit out a single spark, he suddenly caught a familiar scent.
“Big Daddy!!!”
Right after he shouted, Feng Yuan realized something was wrong, and quickly corrected himself: “Little Uncle!!!”
That aura, so similar to Big Daddy’s, belonged to Li Ting.
Feng Yuan recognized it.
With tears shimmering in his eyes, he dashed madly in Li Ting’s direction. As he ran, he didn’t forget to cry out for help: “Yuan Yuan is here!!!”
The man chasing them already had several burns on his body from the little flames.
If not for those flames slowing him down, he would have long since caught both Feng Yuan and Qin Xun.
Just as the man, now unrestrained, was about to pounce on Feng Yuan, the Li Ting whom Feng Yuan had been crying out for in his childish voice finally appeared.
After days apart, Li Ting stood leaning against a tree, wearing a loose black printed T-shirt and long pants, alone.
On his young and handsome face, his brows and eyes carried an unrestrained, wild air.
He had long since seen Feng Yuan.
He also recognized Feng Yuan. Though he had never seen the child’s photo, he had heard the descriptions.
In the descriptions, Feng Yuan was a child so beautiful that one couldn’t look away.
“As expected.”
Leaning against the tree, Li Ting’s lips curved into a smile.
The descriptions weren’t wrong. Although this little one’s face was smudged with dirt, looking at his features, he was indeed beautiful enough.
Thinking that this was Li Sheng’s child, the smile at the corner of Li Ting’s lips could not be suppressed.
His excitement was such that even his blood seemed to boil!
Watching Feng Yuan get closer and closer, Li Ting made up his mind. He had to take Feng Yuan away before the old master discovered him.
The Li family was no place for ordinary people to stay.
Children of the Li family had to undergo devilish training from a young age.
The enmity between Li Ting and Li Sheng was inseparable from that very training.
Just as Li Ting, with laughter in his eyes, was calculating how to make this little one cry a hundred times, the child running toward him had already wrapped himself around his leg, climbing up.
“Uncle, Uncle, hug!”
Feng Yuan’s two chubby little hands gripped tightly onto Li Ting’s pants.
Li Ting frowned. Before his pants could be yanked straight down, he scooped him up first.
He scooped up Feng Yuan. At the same time, he lifted his own image.
“Uncle, the bad guy wants to catch Yuan Yuan!”
Feng Yuan had no idea about the malice in Li Ting’s heart. His eyes were filled with tears, his little childish voice hitching as he tattled: “Uncle, save Yuan Yuan!”
Last time during the car race, at the moment of the crash, Li Ting had shielded Feng Yuan in his arms to protect him. That action earned Feng Yuan’s trust and reliance.
Right now, he was hugging Li Ting’s neck, looking very dependent.
Li Ting cast a sidelong glance at the man chasing after them.
He casually kicked the man over. With that kick, there was a crack from the man’s body, as if a bone had snapped.
Feng Yuan stared at this scene, his little face stunned.
He clearly hadn’t expected Li Ting to be this formidable.
That kick Li Ting delivered wasn’t for protection.
He simply didn’t want anyone to fight him over Feng Yuan.
He still hadn’t had his fill of bullying this little guy. No one else was going to get a chance to touch him.
After knocking the man down, Li Ting’s pair of eyes, somewhat similar to Li Sheng’s, turned toward Feng Yuan.
He smiled, asking with great interest: “Since you know who I am, then do you know that falling into my hands, you—”
It was over.
The last two words, Li Ting hadn’t even finished saying.
The very next second.
Feng Yuan kissed him.
Obrigada pelos capítulos 💞🥰
Thank you for reading~ 💞