Chapter 945: Chapter 945: Reappearance
Miss never tells lies—I know Master Xuanzang often said this back in the day, but this doesn’t mean that the Miss of my family can’t use it. At least since knowing Lin Xue, when it comes to predicting everyone’s future, Miss Xue has never spoken a single lie.
So this time she successfully scared me again, and of course, made everyone feel completely bewildered.
She said she saw a great trouble approaching, a trouble that would turn the whole family’s life upside down, and at the core of this trouble is herself. Oh, she also said the person most heavily involved is me. But currently, despite using various methods, Miss Lin cannot accurately see what exactly this trouble is. It might be an event, or it might be an object, or, of course, it might be a person. However, this third possibility is really hard to explain. Anyway, everyone in the family unanimously agreed that throughout the entire Void, besides Father God, there is absolutely no person who could plunge the whole First Family into chaos. And our other consensus is that Father God wouldn’t be so bored to play an “April Fool’s” joke with us…
This vague foreknowledge made our Miss Prophet extremely anxious and worried. This is simply too incredible, that such a powerful Miss Lin would have such a tangled time. We all know that this girl’s nerves are extremely tough, tough enough to use some glue to fix a spaceship already, and she’s pulling her hair out like that. I really can’t imagine what kind of huge wave we’ll face in our life journey—maybe something at level E+.
You see, I got sidetracked again.
But it’s okay, maybe we should relax because there is a very important detail in Lin Xue’s prediction this time: she did not find anything in the future that poses a threat to the Empire. Even the trouble that is approaching will not cause any substantial harm to any member of the First Family.
“It’s harmless, it hasn’t affected anyone’s personal safety among us, except for causing some destructive impact on my daily life. You could say it’s harmless to people and animals,” Miss said, looking like Zhenzi, after pulling down a handful of hair.
Then half of the people at home went back to their rooms to sleep, carefree.
Early the next morning, the air was fresh, and a cool breeze was blowing. Half a day plus a night of rain had thoroughly soaked every inch of this concrete jungle, washing K city, this complex block built by humans, clean. I took Little Baobao to the park near home for some fresh air. The little girl hadn’t been outside for several days… well, she hadn’t gone out with me for several days. She had gone out by herself quite a number of times. The farthest she went during these four days was Hawaii. Just after having a meal, Big Sister asked her to go to the fridge for a drink, and the little one returned with a pure Hawaiian shark.
In view of this, Big Sister deduced that Little Baobao probably wanted someone to take her out to play. Of course, this is an irrefutable mission that must fall on the fatherly me.
By the way, I also brought Ji Shanshan, who almost served as Little Baobao’s mandatory attachable gear and a gold-standard babysitter. I don’t particularly like going out with such a noisy girl. She has a bad temper and a dirty mouth, gets irritated over trivial things, and behaves haughtily in front of the male head of the house. From all aspects, this person has failed to recognize her proper position as a babysitter, but I had to bring her because I indeed needed the variety of small toys from her King’s Treasury and her magical ability to calm Little Baobao within five seconds…
Of course, a more important reason is that Little Baobao insists that Ji Shanshan is her most important friend (or toy). She hopes the latter can receive the same care from Dad, like getting the same amount of lollipops when going out to play.
What a good kid.
“But I don’t like mint,” Sister Jier pouted, nibbling on a lollipop only available to companion beings of Little Baobao, “and by the way, you need to correct your attitude. I’m here to take care of the Little Princess, so don’t get any improper thoughts, okay?”
Sitting on a stone bench in the park’s gazebo with Little Baobao, I glanced at Ji Shanshan after hearing that. I genuinely couldn’t fathom who would have improper thoughts about such a flat-chested girl. Besides the blue and white striped clothes and her current child outfit, does she have any cuteness factor?
And that blue and white strip was forced upon her by me; otherwise, even that cuteness factor would be gone.
Holding Little Baobao and leading Ji Shanshan here caused me some not-so-small pressure because, with a very cute Loli+young girl combo of one big, one small, we three attracted a lot of attention from passersby. Every time we passed someone, there were comments; some would point at Little Baobao and say this little girl is really cute, some would point at Ji Shanshan and say that foreign little girl is also quite pretty. The rest would point at me, saying look at that little child’s dad, looks so young…
Though technically, they weren’t wrong, but hearing it like that made me feel all kinds of discomfort. Moreover, Ji Shanshan, this misbehaving junior even laughed all the way for it. I’m considering if I should dye my hair yellow in two days, then drag this girl out on the street so that the neighbors would think Jil’s dad has returned from Europe to see her…
Unlike some of the family who can’t go out, Ji Shanshan can go out because she looks like a normal person, and she has to often show herself in the public for taking care of the children, like buying snacks, toys, glass marbles, or bringing Little Baobao home. This certainly requires an identity, and her current identity is the daughter of one of the Eldest Sister Chen’s business partners who lives abroad, fourteen years old… This identity has made Ji Shanshan grit her teeth for quite a long time; she’s almost bleeding from the gums.
There were many flowers and plants around the gazebo, still bearing the water droplets left by a night’s wind and rain. Little Baobao was squatting outside the pavilion, talking to those sparkling little water beads. At this moment, a dejected man with sunglasses suddenly appeared in the distance.
I couldn’t help but chuckle, feeling today had a good start. How could you not be cheerful when you see Sicaro moving languidly like that first thing in the morning? Suddenly I felt like my whole life brightened up.
“Heh, out so early to conduct your old business?”
I purposely did not make a sound and concealed the presence of myself and my two little followers. I only called out loudly after this dark-sunglasses guy approached. Sicaro was stunned immediately, his sunglasses sliding halfway down, looking at us in surprise, “Uh… Chief? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to release the kids… uh no, bring Little Baobao out for some sunshine.”
I greeted Sicaro with a sunny smile. Despite the trouble he often caused me, I always appeared approachable, couldn’t give off an impression of being too aloof, right? Of course, the main reason was that I noticed Sicaro’s precious black shoulder bag wasn’t with him today.
“What made you so dejected?” I curiously asked.
After all, Sicaro is an Imperial Officer, so he immediately reported the situation: “Well, Chief, I went to the moat this morning… to do business, and encountered someone attempting suicide. According to your instructions on ‘not ignoring people in distress’ and the rule not to ‘disrupt the order of ordinary civilizations,’ I went into the water to save the person, using the method of Earthlings—swimming over. But after reaching the shore, I found that my stall got closed…”
I decided on the spot to give the city management team a commendation flag upon returning.
“So what was up with the suicide attempt?” I asked casually out of curiosity.
“I did have a chat with him,” Sicaro replied, “heard it was his second attempt. Yesterday evening during the heavy rain, he was planning to jump off the moat but hadn’t jumped when he saw a ghostly figure in white with a blue halo at its head floating along the river without touching the ground. It was a ghost festival for Earthlings, and he got scared and gave up the thought of suicide. But this morning, he recalled that while seeing the ghost, he accidentally threw the Buddha beads, a relic left by his mother, to ward it off. Unable to get over it, he decided to jump again…”
Me: “…”
Could you guess it? Anyway, I thought of Qianqian! It turns out, this story has parts just like a TV drama!
I felt around myself, found the string of Buddha beads given to me by Qianqian yesterday, and handed it to Sicaro with a sigh of emotion: “Go and find that person, it shouldn’t be hard for you. Return this to him—and don’t say you found it by doing astrology or fortune-telling, it’s Qianqian who got it.”
“Don’t worry. I always conduct my business honestly. I’ll just say it was scooped up from the riverbed,” Sicaro assured.
Sicaro grabbed the Buddha beads and left, while I stood there thinking for a long time, suddenly realizing that if the guy who jumped into the river heard that his ghost-warding beads had sunk to the bottom, he might faint once more…
Just then, a sudden alert echoed through the spiritual connection.
Next came the urgent voice of Big Sister: “Ah Jun, come back quickly, Lan is injured.”
I hurriedly told Ji Shanshan to bring Little Baobao home, then teleported to Shadow City because Big Sister mentioned Lan had been moved to the medical center.
In the spacious ward specially prepared for carbon-based life forms, the fox girl, whose wound had already been treated, lay quietly in the medical cabin. The cabin was open, indicating the first phase of recovery treatment had yet to start. Besides her, there were Big Sister and Yukari Yakumo watching, and an orange cat was rolling around on the floor.
“How’s it going?”
I hurried in front of the medical cabin, noticing the fox girl inside was playing with her phone, her tails spread out like bedding throughout the cabin. At first glance, I thought Lan had brought her own bedding with her, “Oh, it doesn’t look so bad.”
Just as I finished speaking, the demon fox girl pitifully turned sideways, pulling out a tail from underneath her. The fur on this tail was badly scorched, and I resisted the urge to sprinkle some cumin powder on it. Lan quickly demonstrated her tail and withdrew it, teary-eyed, “It’s actually pretty serious…”
This fox cherished her tail the most; in cold weather, it could be used as a quilt, in hot weather, it could turn into a fan, used as a nest for the orange cat or to dust and clean the walls. When financially strained, she could pluck some fur and knit scarves for sale. Basically, her tails ensured she was carefree in every aspect, which explained her pitiful expression — how did this happen?
“Fox, were you secretly barbecuing indoors?”
I pinched Lan’s fuzzy ear and asked.
“I’m a demon fox, not a regular fox…” Lan mumbled in protest, “I encountered the Ghost Ship.”
“Ghost Ship?” I immediately looked up at Sister Zi, “Is it the kind of Ghost Ship you encountered?”
“Probably,” Yukari Yakumo nodded, always seeming somewhat frivolous and unreliable, Sister Zi now appeared quite serious, “I now think this might be a fleet larger than we anticipated. The Ghost Ships that have appeared several times are just small portions of this fleet accidentally entering the material world. Lan’s encounter with the Ghost Ship was different from mine, that ship had weapons, she was inadvertently injured.”
“This situation is serious,” I frowned, “It can even initiate an attack…”
“Uh, it was a counterattack,” Sister Zi covered her mouth with a fan, her eyes showing embarrassment, “Lan here, she causes a mess when she gets nervous, she started first.”
“As soon as I entered the transmission channel, a ship bigger than Demon Mountain rushed sideways,” Yakumo Lan’s ears twitched quickly, “And then I got nervous.”
“I’m curious why you entered the transmission channel,” I glanced at the fox, “You don’t have any tasks today, right?”
To the side, Sister Zi suddenly looked heavenwards, then swished open a gap and vanished.
Sure enough, the unlucky fox was brought in to fill in for her unscrupulous master…
Today was supposed to be Yukari Yakumo’s shift at the Dimension Hub, but this working girl had skipped shifts for almost two months due to sleeping, so when she had no choice but to be on duty, it was poor Lan filling in for her, today was no exception. Around seven in the morning, an alert message came from the Dimension Hub, indicating an abnormal space channel message. After an urgent recalibration of the corresponding channel’s traffic, Lan and a group of engineers went to troubleshoot the fault, and shortly after entering the channel, they were confronted by a sudden intrusion of the Ghost Ship.
Later, the onsite personnel recalled that at the time, Lan’s fur stood all on end, looking like a hedgehog, because the largest Ghost Ship was less than a meter away from her…
Following that, Lan’s actions could essentially be listed as a negative example in the Military Academy; she jumped onto the Ghost Ship’s deck and scratched with her claws, and her tail was then BBQ’ed.
“It’s the first Ghost Ship we’ve seen with active reactions,” Big Sister stroked the fox’s ear, “It obviously was controlled by someone inside.”
“Did the Ghost Ship escape afterwards?”
“Yeah, it fled,” Yakumo Lan pouted, “After they injured my tail, they suddenly left the material layer, they seemed very, very panicked.”
Big Sister took over the discussion: “However, before they escaped, the Time-Space Administration Bureau had already deployed tracking probes in the corresponding space channel. These probes are still returning target signals, indicating we’ve captured the tail of the Ghost Fleet. Sandora is handling this matter in the Command Center; I believe it won’t be long before we can locate the Ghost Fleet’s main coordinates.”
After discussing the Ghost Ship matter with Big Sister, I learned that this was actually the seventh incident already. Since the previous encounters with Ghost Ships involving Sister Zi and Hades, several unidentified flying objects have sporadically invaded the Macro World Transmission Network, though previous invasions were very small. Even before genuinely approaching the channel, only the warning system detected the presence of a Ghost Ship, and they abruptly descended into the depths of the Void. The incident involving Yakumo Lan marks the first example of actual harm since the initial Ghost Ship incidents.
Now, the Ghost Ship incident has attracted serious attention from the Command Center and the Time-Space Administration Bureau. Sandora just included these drifting oddities under military warning range half an hour ago, meaning, when Ghost Ships enter the Macro World Transmission Network, they will be treated as intruding military targets for elimination. However, to quickly ascertain the root of the incident, merely eradicating the scattered Ghost Ship squads isn’t enough. Everyone now agrees that all Ghost Ships might stem from a particularly large fleet, which is presently hidden deep in the Void.
I suspect this enormous fleet may already be gradually approaching the Imperial Dominions, although its main body is still at an unobservable distance through Void scanning. Yet, its peripheral small ships have begun affecting the normal operation of the Macro World System.
Just as I was thinking about it, I suddenly heard a particularly troubled voice from below: “Um… I’m quite distressed this way.”
At the sound, I looked down, finding Lan looking embarrassed at Big Sister and me. She had wrapped herself into a big ball with her tails, leaving only her head outside, while Big Sister and I were subconsciously pinching her ears. I wondered why my hand felt furry all this time…
I was unsure what to say; Lan seemed always to play the victim role at home, not that anyone truly bullied her. Despite being designed as not belonging to the total victim team, she frequently endured grievances; her ears were often pinched by us, and even her prized tail suffered because this fox liked coiling up at the doorway to sleep. This animal instinct caused her to be used as a doormat eight out of ten times by family members, unwittingly brushing their feet on her tail upon entering. Now, Lan had developed a very astonishing skill, that is, she can accurately identify who just walked over by looking at the footprints.
Thinking of this, I couldn’t help but glance at her tail, miserably BBQ’ed. This made me itch to sprinkle cumin again…(To be continued. If you like this work, feel free to visit Qidian () to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my largest motivation.)