Of the five people, three were girls, and two were boys. One of the boys patted the arm of a man with a flattop, who was playing a computer game. “Brother, everyone is here. Shall we go?”
“Well, Luo, let’s go. Have a break from the games. Take my little brother and his friends out to have some fun,” the man with a flattop said to a long-haired man beside him.
Both of them were ordinary-looking. There was nothing special about them. At this request, they did not say anything and directly logged out from the game.
“Look, two pretty girls are here. How old are you?”
The man with a flattop had one single-edged eyelid and one double-edged eyelid. His eyes were not the kind of oriental slanting eyes, but the shady type. When he saw Mengmeng, a strange look fleeted across his eyes.
“A girl this pretty is very scarce.”
“I’m 12 years old,” Mengmeng replied.
“Me too.” Li Muen also nodded.
“Nice to meet you. My name is Li Yuan. This is my older brother, Li Hu, and this is Brother Luo.”
The tallest boy in a red jacket beside Wang Yihan made the introductions.
“Nice to meet you, too.”
“Mengmeng, Li Yuan is my classmate. The one who is shorter than him is his friend living in the same community as him. And these two are also my classmates,” Wang Yihan said to Mengmeng and Li Muen. “Everyone, this is Zhang Yumeng, a good friend of mine since I was little. Her father’s cuisine is super delicious. I dare say it’s the best in the world. And this girl is Li Muen. She is also my good friend. We used to attend the same kindergarten. We are quite close.”
“Zhang Yumeng, you are very beautiful.”
“…”
After exchanging pleasantries, they went downstairs and left the cyber café.
“The building behind us is the Elvis Shopping Mall. There is a very nice ice cream shop inside. Let’s go have some ice cream first, then go to the shopping mall to buy some food. I will show you my cooking ability by cooking lunch for you. And tonight, I’ll treat you to a fancy dinner in a western restaurant,” Li Hu said with a smile.
“Huh, you’ll fix us lunch and dinner? Don’t we need to spend money?” Mengmeng was stunned.
“I’m the oldest one here. How can I let you kids pay?” Li Hu shook his head.
“That doesn’t sound right. The meals are on me. I already brought money here,” Mengmeng volunteered.
Due to Zhang Han’s education, Mengmeng had barely accepted other people’s food or taken advantage of others.
“Don’t be. It’s my treat. My father is rich,” Li Muen echoed.
“This is no competition. If I let you pay for today’s activities, wouldn’t it be a slap to my face?” Li Hu scratched his head and said, “Let’s go to the mall first. Later, we will go to my rented apartment. You can sing songs and play there while I and Luo cook delicious food for you.”
“Mengmeng, Muen, don’t stand on ceremony. Just enjoy. I haven’t seen you for so long. I miss you so much…”
After the boys and girls got together, at first, only Wang Yihan, Mengmeng, and Li Muen were chatting lively. But during the five minutes’ walk to the mall, the other two girls, Li Yuan, and his friend from his community also joined in the chat. They got to know one another very rapidly.
“This tastes really good, doesn’t it?”
They all tried the ice cream. Mengmeng found it very delicious. It seemed to have a distinctive flavor of its own.
After they did some shopping in the mall, they went to the supermarket to buy some snacks. Luo was mainly responsible for grocery shopping. He didn’t buy too many ingredients. But what he purchased was already enough to make seven or eight dishes. After that, they went out and entered a middle-class community.
The apartment was jointly rented by Li Hu and Luo. It was quite clean inside. Mengmeng and the others were playing in the living room. Wang Yihan asked Mengmeng to sing a song. She turned on the TV and handed Mengmeng a microphone. Without hesitation, Mengmeng sang a song, which amazed everyone.
“How can you be so good at singing?”
“Your voice is a gift to everyone!”
The strange brilliance in Li Hu’s eyes became more pronounced. He began to look at Mengmeng with leering eyes.
“Shoot, he couldn’t be thinking about hitting on her, could he?”
Knowing Li Hu very well, Luo was startled by this strange gaze of his.
Soon, after the water was boiled, Luo saw that Li Hu, who was making drinks for them, opened a bag of something that looked like white flour and sprinkled it into a milky white cup.
“Hiss!”
Luo was in the middle of chopping a fish. Seeing this, he couldn’t help but gasp.
Looking at Li Hu’s smile, he started to find that smile fraught with evil.
“Good heavens!
“Has he been tempted by a certain wicked thought?”
“Is, is he really going to take action? Is he going to abandon his future for this?”
“Hahaha…”
Li Hu kept stirring the drink with a chopstick. Suddenly, he narrowed his eyes and laughed darkly.
“Gulp…”
Luo swallowed. He felt that his throat was extremely dry. Even his hands tacking the fish paused.
He glanced at Mengmeng, the most beautiful girl in the room, and then eyed Li Hu. He lowered his voice and said anxiously,
“Li, if you do this, your sentence will be at least three years. The worst will be the death penalty. Bro, don’t rush into anything!”
“Swoosh!”
The temperature of the entire kitchen seemed to have dropped a lot. But the two of them did not notice it at all.
Waves of murderous aura were spreading.
“Huh?”
Li Hu frowned and threw Luo a bewildered look.
“There are so many beautiful women in the world. Don’t stick with this one. If you insist, I’ll leave now.”
While speaking, Luo inserted the knife he was holding into the fish, as though saying that he just discovered Li Hu’s plot, but he had a knife, so Li Hu could not do anything to him.
Li Hu was dazed. He looked at the opened bag beside him, and then at the drink. Finally, he fixed his gaze on Luo, flames of anger rising in his eyes.
“D*mn it.
“Are you out of your mind?
“This is a bag of darn milk powder! What were you thinking? Although I change girlfriends rather frequently, I’m not a pervert, am I?”
Li Hu’s face was extremely dark. “I think you’re the one who is plotting something instead.”
“What? Pfft…”
Luo suddenly coughed violently. It took him quite a moment before he calmed down. “That girl is too pretty. And I saw that sly look on your face, so I suddenly got a little scared.”
“What sly look? I don’t know what to say to you.”
Li Hu thumped his forehead and said, “I just suddenly remembered who Zhang Yumeng was when she was singing. Bro, you are so funny.”
“Who is she? Someone you know?” Luo was amazed.
“Do you remember the video of a student of the First Middle School singing that went viral online not long ago? That singer was Zhang Yumeng.”
“Ah, it’s her?” Luo was suddenly enlightened.
While they were talking, the little bit of coldness lingering in the kitchen quietly dissipated.
“It’s not my fault for misunderstanding you. That expression of yours was too obscene.” Luo scratched his head.
“F*ck off.” Then, Li Hu brought the cold drinks and coffee to the living room.
The coffee was prepared for Li Yuan. At this time, the atmosphere in the living room was very hot. Li Yuan asked Li Hu to sing a song. The others also urged him.
“Then, here is my fumbling attempt to sing a song! It won’t be as good as Zhang Yumeng’s singing. Don’t laugh if I’m off the key.”
As it turned out, his performance had made the song East Breezes sound more like East Tornado. Everyone laughed. It was quite rare for someone to be so out of tune as he did.
As for the lunch, whether it was delicious or not was not very important. The dishes seemed neatly made. That was all that mattered. After all, the ingredients they used could not be compared with those on Mount New Moon.
The point of this hanging out was not the food but the fun of being together.
In the afternoon, Li Hu led them to a roller skating rink. After skating for more than an hour, they went off to the amusement center nearby.
“Wow, there are so many video game machines!”
Mengmeng had only seen the amusement center on TV. It was her first time to visit one. She found it quite interesting and bought a lot of game currency.
“Mengmeng, shall we go shoot basketballs?”
Lu Muen pointed to the basketball machines on the side.
“No, that’s boring. Let’s go to play that. I wanna hit zombies.”
Mengmeng blinked her big bright eyes. She saw a video game machine with two guns and a large screen in the front. The two people using that machine happened to get up and leave. Thus, the two girls walked over.
“Come on! Mengmeng, I’m failing.”
“I have too many zombies here. I can’t beat them all.”
“…”
They had quite a good time playing the game. Since Mengmeng was extraordinarily good-looking, she soon attracted a lot of attention. In the played city, there would always be a group of ruffians wandering about. This afternoon, several guys who were about 18 or 19 years old were there, standing on the side with their arms folded before their chests.
“That girl is really attractive. She will definitely be drop-dead gorgeous when she grows up.”
“Not necessarily. Girls change a lot during adolescence. The good-looking ones are likely to become less attractive when they grow up,” said a yellow-haired man beside him. “But this little girl is really something. I’ve never seen such a beautiful girl before.”
“She is a super cutie, haha.”
Those guys merely watched on the side. They didn’t even think about going over to flirt with Mengmeng. Because she was still quite young. After all, scums only made up a very small number of people in society.
They had also realized that Mengmeng’s family was loaded, for her bag and clothes were all products of luxurious brands.
After playing for more than 10 minutes, Mengmeng and Wang Yihan switched to a racing game. They sat in the simulating seats and held the steering wheel, displaying the unique charm of female drivers.
“Oh, why is driving so difficult?”
Mengmeng was a little discouraged after her car crashed into the wall four or five times in a row.
“Of course, this game requires experience.” Li Hu laughed. He was sitting in a seat on Mengmeng’s left, holding the steering wheel with one hand. As the game proceeded, he continuously made his car drift when taking a turn.
“Well, you’re amazing. Do you usually drift when you drive?” Mengmeng asked curiously.
“In daily life?” Li Hu shook his head and said with a smile, “I have a driver’s license, but no car. Therefore, I don’t drive, let alone drifting. If I bought a car, I wouldn’t dare to do such dangerous moves with it anyway.”
“Oh, is driving fun? Should everyone take an exam in a driving school in order to get a license?” Mengmeng continued to pose questions.
“Of course they should. The exam is quite hard. They would test your theoretical knowledge, your operation, and ask you to do a road test. One can get a driver’s license after one passes all the tests. It kind of depends on one’s talent. I passed every test on the first try.” Speaking of this, Li Hu looked a little smug. “I was the fastest one to pass the exam among those who entered the driving school at the same period as I did. Of those who shared a coach with me, there are two girls who keep taking the exam for a year but haven’t passed it yet.”
“Is it so difficult?” Mengmeng began to wonder how she would feel when driving a car. She planned to try it after she returned to Mount New Moon.
“Mengmeng, let’s try that machine.”
Wang Yihan took Mengmeng to the side and started another round of games.
Playing games was the favorite of children. Li Yuan and his friends almost forgot the presence of Wang Yihan and her friends. The two were too absorbed in their own games.
Two hours and a half passed in a flash. After roaming in the area for some time, they went to a western restaurant for dinner. At 7:30 p.m., Mengmeng and Li Muen took a taxi home.
“Muen, the taxi will send you home first. After the driver drops you off, I’ll ride the taxi home.”
“Okay.”
They would pass by the community where Li Muen lived on the way back to Mount New Moon. Before they were about to get there, Li Muen already called Li Kai. When they arrived at the gate of the community, Li Kai was standing aside and waiting.
“I’ll have to do the homework when I get back.”
After Li Muen got off, Mengmeng sat in the back seat by herself and looked out the window at the street in the darkness. No one knew what she was thinking.
The driver was a man in his 40s. He drove out of New Moon Bay and started the 10-minute ride to Mount New Moon. The road was deserted at this time. The driver looked at the rearview mirror and asked with a smile, “Little girl, why did you come home so late? Did you forget the time when hanging out with your friends? Look at this road, there are few people. We’re driving in a remote place. You are so pretty. You’re not safe in this area. Why aren’t your parents with you?”
“I won’t be in any danger. I can perform kung fu,” Mengmeng answered.
“Hahaha…”
The driver immediately laughed.
Obviously, he didn’t believe Mengmeng’s words. Seeing that Mengmeng was quite slender and looked delicate, he reckoned she couldn’t protect herself even if she knew martial arts.
“From what I’ve heard, Mount New Moon is a large area of villas. There is also a castle. That is the place where the top big shots of Xiangjiang live. Are you sure that’s your destination? Are you going home?” the driver asked in a low voice.
“Yes.”
After getting the positive answer, the driver shook his head and said nothing.
He also muttered in his head, “Some people are really born with a silver spoon.”
At the foot of Mount New Moon, the driver stopped the car when they were 50 meters away from the gate. After glancing at the meter, he said to Mengmeng, “Here we are. The fee is 123 yuan. I’ll only charge you 120.”
“Huh?”
To his surprise, Mengmeng was instantly stupefied.
“How much is it?
“One hundred and… twenty yuan?
“Oh no!”
“Sir, i-it’s 120 yuan? The ride was quite long. But it only costs 120 yuan?” Mengmeng asked with a slightly suspicious look.
“Yeah, 120 yuan. It’s not a small sum. We were pretty fast. I took the highway, and I didn’t make unnecessary detours. You… you can’t have forgotten to take your purse when you got out, can you?” The driver was taken aback.
“I have money. Here is 120 yuan. Bye-bye.”
Mengmeng quickly took out her purse and handed over the money. After getting out of the car, her face quickly darkened.
The driver who took her out in the morning asked for more than 270 yuan. On the return journey, the same ride merely cost her 120 yuan.
She had been tricked!
“Humph!
“Shoot!
“That bad guy!
“Next time I meet you, I’ll teach you a lesson!”
“…”
Standing in the place where she got off the car, Mengmeng grumbled for moments. She seemed to be full of complaints.
She didn’t care about the little money she lost. It was just that she got deceived the first time she went out by herself. That was really a “pleasant” experience.
“You’re back?”
Zi Yan walked toward her from the side of the gate.
“Mom, why did you come down to pick me up? I’m no longer a baby girl. I can go back home by myself.” Mengmeng quickly ran over and held Zi Yan’s arm.
“How was your day? Did you have a good time?” Zi Yan asked beamingly.
“Yes, it was great.”
Mengmeng giggled and said, “Wang Yihan also brought a few friends over. One of them was called Li Yuan. His older brother entertained us. He also cooked eight dishes for lunch. The taste was… well… just ordinary, but his older brother was an interesting person. He didn’t let us pay for anything. And he also bought us ice cream, cold drinks, and dinner in a western restaurant. Mummy, we spent the afternoon in an amusement center.”
“Did you have a good time in the amusement center?” Zi Yan asked with a smile.
Now that Mengmeng was in junior high school and had her own friends, Zi Yan would let her hang out with her friends from time to time. She wanted Mengmeng to enjoy friendship as well, for the company of friends was quite different from the company of family. Sometimes, it was her friends who made her smile. Zi Yan used to be a girl, too. Hence, she knew how Mengemng felt at this age.
“It was okay. Personally, the most fascinating place is the relics. The games in the amusement center are only interesting when I am with many friends. If you asked me to go there alone, I wouldn’t go at all,” Mengmeng muttered.
“Well, when you go out to play, you can play to your heart’s content. But when it’s time for study, you ought to really focus on study. If you can meet this requirement, I can let you occasionally go out to have fun on your own,” Zi Yan said.
“Really?” Mengmeng’s eyes lit up.
“When have I ever lied to you?”
“Great! Mummy is the best! I’m gonna shower you with my kisses.”
As soon as Mengmeng heard that she could go out to play, she was over the moon.
“Don’t get too excited now. You’ve promised that you would finish your homework by next week.”
“Uh-huh, I’m sure I can get it done on time. After finishing my homework, we’ll go on that trip.” Mengmeng jumped with excitement. She was indeed a vivacious girl. She looked around with her big eyes and asked, “Where’s Daddy? Is he cultivating?”
“Yeah, I think he’ll soon…”
Before Zi Yan could finish her words—
“I’m coming!”
Zhang Han rushed out of the castle like a flash of lightning.
“The moment I heard my daughter’s voice, my comprehension sped up by several times and it ended right away,” Zhang Han said in an exaggerated tone.
“Of course. I’m your best and brightest blessing,” Mengmeng said complacently.
“Look at how cocky you are.”
Zi Yan pursed her lips and smiled. “Do you wanna have more for dinner?”
“No, I’m going back to my room to do some homework. I’d want some fruit in a while,” Mengmeng replied.
“I want some, too,” Zi Yan said.
“I’ll go pick some.”
Zhang Han beamed. Then, he went to the back mountain to pick fresh fruits. He soon came back with two trays loaded with fruits.
When Zi Yan invited Mengmeng to watch a movie, the little girl did not stand on ceremony at all. The family of three went to the movie hall and watched a newly released animation movie. After that, Mengmeng bounced her way back to her room to deal with her homework.
“Honey, you haven’t cuddled me to sleep for several days,” Zi Yan looked at Zhang Han and complained. She was leaning against the bed, playfully swinging her legs.
“I’ll cuddle you now.” Zhang Han didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He immediately ditched the idea of continuing his cultivation and climbed onto the bed to hold Zi Yan in his arms.
“Honey, Yue Wuwei won’t come until the Spring Festival is over, right? Where will we go in order to travel to the Lost Continent? Will it be dangerous there?” Zi Yan inquired. She had found a comfortable position in Zhang Han’s arms. As she leaned against Zhang Han, her tender body made Zhang Han feel a little excited.
“I’m not completely sure about that. There will be dangers, but we can handle them. When I finish absorbing the five portions of third-tier Source Energy, I will almost reach the peak of the Elixir Realm regarding the strength realm alone. The trial on the Lost Continent should be no challenge for me. Besides, I still have you, Moon Empress, to back me up, don’t I?” Zhang Han teased.
The phrase “Moon Empress” had almost become a private joke to the couple. They often mentioned this private joke in bed.
“Then…”
Zi Yan seemed to have also sensed Zhang Han’s rising hormones. Her glittering eyes flashed at him, emitting a captivating aura.
“Will your Moon Empress also be so mighty there?” Zi Yan’s voice was very soft. Her eyes showed a hint of black humor.
“Eh?”
Zhang Han was taken aback.
“What do you want?” Zi Yan asked in a low voice. She leaned over and sent her fragrant breath into Zhang Han’s ear.
“What do you think?” Zhang Han held Zi Yan more tightly.
“Humph, get up.”
Zi Yan suddenly pushed Zhang Han away. “Today isn’t a good time. You’d better go to cultivate.”
“Huh?” Zhang Han was stunned.
“You should work hard as Mengmeng does. In the next week, she will work on her homework. You should also work hard to cultivate so that you can be with me as soon as possible. Since I have nothing to do these days, I went to the company with Feifei and agreed to do an endorsement advertisement yesterday.” Zi Yan smiled brightly as she told Zhang Han the next week’s plan of the family of three.
“Oh, okay.”
Zhang Han was not sure what he felt right now. He had just been in the mood for sex, yet Zi Yan drove him to cultivate anyway.
Zhang Han pulled away from Zi Yan and got out of bed. Then, he went to the training room, sat cross-legged, and began to refine the remaining 50% of the second portion of Source Energy.
