Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Xu Lan saw a group of people surrounding Bai Wu when he returned to the police station, like admirers crowding around someone deemed prestigious to them.
“Papa, you’re back!”
Bai Wu was the first to notice Xu Lan enter the police station since his eyes were fixated on the hallway. He got down clumsily from the chair and ran over to the man the second she potted Xu Lan.
“Mm, how’re things? Did you trouble anyone here?”
Xu Lan carried Bai Wuand touched the boy’s tender cheek.
“Sergeant Xu, I didn’t know you have such a big boy. He’s too cute! Even Lao Hu couldn’t resist playing with him.”
Xu Lan furrowed his brows at the thought of Hu Cheng’s bony and yellow hands.
“Are you not afraid anymore?”
“I am, but I know they’re all good people, and papa’s here too. So…”
Good people? It was because of Xu Lan’s ‘good’ nature that he adopted the child. If the police station was full of ‘good people’, did it not mean that he was merely one out of the many ‘papas’ and ‘mamas’ out there?
As he thought of that, his expression became increasingly sullen, scaring Bai Wu into silence. The boy looked down and buried his head in Xu Lan’s chest.
“Oh no Sergeant Xu, you’ll scare him like that,” Xiao Li said while scratching his head and massaging his nose.
If the young man felt uneasy seeing Xu Lan’s expression, surely a three and a half year old would feel even more terrified of it.
Xu Lan was blank for a moment, but when he realized everyone around him worrying about the child, he suddenly let out a laugh. Then he passed the boy over to Xiao Li and walked into Hu Cheng’s office.
Realizing his unexpected anger over the child’s popularity among the crowd, he laughed at himself. Was it not something to be happy about? He felt weird about himself, so he slipped away from the crowd by heading over to Hu Cheng to report his findings.
“Lao Hu, are you trying to achieve immortality through death? Your office is filled with smoke,” he said following some coughs.
Upon pushing the door open, smoke came billowing out. It almost choked him, and he could not help but complain.
“You want a puff?” Hu Cheng flashed his yellow teeth through a rather forced smile.
“Sure, I’ll smoke with you for a bit.”
Xu Lan found a nice corner amidst the messy office and sat down, then took the tobacco pipe that Hu Cheng rolled for him.
“So, have you checked the surveillance footage? Is there anything wrong with it?” Xu Lan asked in between coughs. He found the tobacco a bit harsh on his throat.
“The footage is spoiled. The girl’s a hostess from a bar, while the man’s someone she brought home of her own accord. We don’t have a single lead. It’s a thorny situation.” Hu Cheng’s expression was veiled by the haziness of the smoke.
“Why not expand the area? Maybe we’ll notice something.”
Xu Lan also felt that the situation this time was complex. It was exactly the same situation as of that in the real world, where Meng Chengjun snatched the case away from him without so much as leaving him a clue.
“It’s not urgent. We’ll make things worse if we hurry. I haven’t had lunch, so it’ll be two meals in one for me. How about you treat me and the kid to dinner?” asked Xu Lan. He then took a deep puff of the cigarette and threw it onto the floor, then crushed it with his foot.
“No problem! Let’s go.” He tapped on the tobacco pipe then stood up.
Once Bai Wu saw Xu Lan step out of the office, the pitiful boy ran to Xu Lan, hugged his thighs and stared at him with red eyes.
‘It’s foul play, simple as that!’ Xu Lan thought. He picked the boy up grudgingly.
It was not a very pleasant dinner. On one hand, it was because of that case lacking any leads, and on the other, the victim’s father was constantly breathing down their neck. The whole ruckus led to a reporter coming over, with the intention of conducting an interview to do the situation justice.
Xu Lan sneered. Was an interview going to bring the murderer to justice? Words can be manipulated to portray something right as wrong. It was no different than stabbing someone in the back, and he simply detested such people.
When he saw that Bai Wu had just about enough, he carried the boy and left for home, but before that, he asked Xiao Li for an old phone.
At the end of the day, this world was no different from the world where Xu Lan came from. It even reached a point where Xu Lan felt as though he was back home in China, instead of being transported to Huaxia.
“Papa, are you angry at me?” The little boy saw that Xu Lan was unwilling to speak to him, and so looked at the man with teary eyes.
“Eh, why would I be? Let’s go bathe and sleep. I’m a bit tired today.”
After bathing the boy, Xu Lan took a quick one himself and lied down on the bed, falling asleep almost instantly.
So many things happened in that one day. Aside from witnessing the homicide, he was transported to an unknown place. He was too tired and all he hoped for was that everything was a dream, and when he woke up from it, he would be lying in his own rented room with the boy he picked up sleeping soundly by his side.
A white flame flickered in the air. It wrapped around Xu Lan and started pulsating as if to confirm that he was truly asleep. Soon, a void appeared in the darkness, and like a demon from hell, it suddenly opened its mouth to swallow him whole.
Xu Lan however, was sleeping too soundly. He was oblivious to the dangerous aura that was slowly drawing near.
It was Bai Wu instead who sensed the oncoming danger. He opened his eyes, which were filled with bewilderment at this point, staring intently into the empty void ahead.
The void could sense Bai Wu’s hostility. It probed around a few times in a flickering manner. Finally, it settled down at the furthest part of the room and entered a deadlock with Bai Wu. Knowing full well it had reinforcements, it stayed there and looked at him.
“Sleep properly,” Xu Lan muttered after he felt a creeping coldness, thinking that Bai Wu took the sheets. He muttered some more words and reached for Bai Wu, bringing the boy back into his embrace.
Immediately after Bai Wu’s energy was covered up, the void ran wild and leaped over to swallow Xu Lan.
“Leave!”
Bai Wu’s vermillion pupils lit up like a raging fire, illuminating the whole room as if it was daytime. He gently pushed Xu Lan away and stood at the edge of the bed snarling at the void.
A terrifyingly evil laugh came from the empty void, startling him from head to toe and giving him goosebumps.
When the void noticed the boy standing angrily in front of it, its sinister laughter became even more confident, and it inched even closer to Xu Lan!
“Shoo!”
Bai Wu fiercely jumped down the bed, and the fiery-red color from his eyes rapidly enveloped his body like a stream of light, illuminating the whole room. Once the light subsided, his body was filled with a layer of grey scales, and by then, a tail had appeared.
“Go away!”
His hoarse, ire-filled cry was far from sounding anything like a child.
The energy within his body changed suddenly, turning into what appeared to be an innate domineering aggressiveness. The aggressiveness melded along with the simultaneously fire-like and ice-like energy on him – he was in his natural form. That energy spread out like a vine and suppressed the void, causing it to slowly shrink.
When he saw that the void was gradually disappearing, he breathed a sigh of relief. The stream of light reverted back, but not before illuminating the entire room once again. When the room finally went dark again, he was back to being the adorable little crybaby Bai Wu.
He tiptoed to the bed and lifted the covers, then crept into Xu Lan’s embrace. As soon as he found a comfortable position, he set his mind to rest and slept.
“Who the hell are you?”
All of a sudden, an icy-cold voice resounded from the pitch-black room and reached Bai Wu’s ears crystal clear. The boy froze immediately and dared not let out a single breath.
