Chapter 500: Chapter 500 – Trouble Finally Arrives
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Wei Xiao Bei had no choice but to increase the quota to twenty kids before he managed to calm the kids down.
Hula, the needle pointed at the dragon!
The first kid was truly pretty lucky.
“Dragon, is it? Alright, uncle will make one for you right now.”
There was still plenty of sugar left in the big ladle. Wei Xiao Bei scooped some of the sugar with the smaller ladle and started to make a sugar painting based on the steps he had memorized.
It wasn’t possible to be able to make a pretty and delicate sugar painting just from observing someone’s work.
He tilted the small ladle and syrup flowed down onto the marble slab to form a circle. Wei Xiao Bei pressed with the spatula and applied a bit too much force. Mm, the shape that was meant to be a long oval ended up as a round flat pancake.
He couldn’t fix it either. The syrup had started to harden already. As such, Wei Xiao Bei added the claws, the dragon head and the whiskers with the syrup around the shape anyway, and put a toothpick on the thing.
“And done. Here you go.”
Wei Xiao Bei passed the completed sugar dragon to the kid.
The kid took a look and opened his mouth as if he was about to cry.
Well, the dragon did look a bit strange. With its round and circular body, it looked like a sun with a bunch of squiggly lines around it.
“Did you know? This is a type of dragon. It’s called Shu Tu! It’s the ninth son of the Dragon. Also, this is free! It’s free!”
Wei Xiao Bei quickly consoled the kid. In the end, the word ‘free’ had the most effect and the child happily took the ‘Shu Tu’ sugar dragon and started licking it.
Then, the kids all rolled the wheel and got all sorts of animals- rabbits, phoenix, horses, pigs.
However, all of Wei Xiao Bei’s sugar paintings were closer to abstract art.
Of course, as he made more and more sugar paintings, he started to grasp some of the techniques.
By the time the sugar painting master came running back as if a dog was chasing behind him,
Wei Xiao Bei’s sugar painting looked fairly decent. They couldn’t compare to the work of the master, who had been working at this for over twenty years, but they weren’t bad.
After all, Wei Xiao Bei’s Learning sub-attribute had 42.1 points. He was pretty good at picking up new things.
Wei Xiao Bei had no choice but to get up now that the master was back. He had no intention of taking back the five hundred dollars.
However, the sugar painter was an honest man. He refused to accept the money at all. Wei Xiao Bei just turned and left in the end.
After all, five hundred dollars was nothing to him. The only shame was that he had not activated any new skills despite making over twenty sugar paintings.
Well, he had his doubts about sugar painting. From a certain perspective, sugar painting should be considered a branch of [Cooking]. However, the status panel did not recognize such a branch. Otherwise, Wei Xiao Bei would have easily made masterpieces of sugar paintings with his [Cooking] skill.
Wei Xiao Bei then started roaming about the plaza, always looking at the different handicrafts stalls, before offering some money to have the stall owners let him try it out himself.
There were the grass weavers, the sugar blowing master, and the kite maker. There was even someone who was carving puppets.
As Wei Xiao Bei was generous with his money, the masters didn’t mind letting him try. Of course, he couldn’t pry any tips and tricks out of their mouths.
After all, this was their livelihood. They wouldn’t be giving away the secrets so freely.
Even so, Wei Xiao Bei still managed to create pieces of mediocre quality through observation, all thanks to his tremendous Learning attribute. Of course, there was still some distance from the work of these craftsmen, who had been plying their trade for decades.
When noon came and Wei Xiao Bei returned to the flag poles, everyone was already gathered here, with all sorts of bags in hands. They all seemed to be happy and excited.
This temple festival trip was a refreshing experience for everyone.
“Wei Xiao Bei! Look at the clay man I bought. It’s so cute.”
Andre happily took out a box and showed Wei Xiao Bei the ‘treasure’ he found.
The corner of Wei Xiao Bei’s mouth twitched when he saw the opened box. He had to admit, Andre’s sense of beauty was completely different from the average human.
A face like a watermelon with three holes as eyes and mouth and he called it cute?
After lunch, the party continued walking about the festival. When dinnertime came, Wei Xiao Bei instructed the others to return first. He walked around the area and purchased plenty of tools.
For the next few days, Wei Xiao Bei turned into a crafts addict before everyone’s eyes.
He practiced a new craft every day, with no repetitions at all.
Xin Yi, Huang Kun, Zhao Guang, Andre’s children, and the teenagers would receive presents from Wei Xiao Bei daily.
Things like sugar paintings, clay sculptures, grass-weaved toys and many more.
However, Wei Xiao Bei was rarely ever idle.
The sun was warm and bright today, a rare occurrence during the winter. Xin Yi, Huang Kun, and the others were training outdoors. Wei Xiao Bei grabbed a reclining chair and leaned into it, still wearing sunglasses to hide his eyes. He held a block of wood on his left hand and a small knife on his right, occasionally shaving off a small piece of wood from the block.
The block of wood was a half-finished sculpture now.
After trying out all sorts of crafts, Wei Xiao Bei decided to focus on wood sculpting.
Compared to the other arts, wood sculpting demanded a lot of skill in judgment, control, and other aspects. It was also more to his taste.
Wasn’t this often said in wuxia novels and web novels? Experts often used wood-sculpting as a means to train themselves, refining their mental states while improving their wrist control and strength.
Of course, Wei Xiao Bei did not need to train his wrist strength, but there was some truth to the whole thing about refining mental states.
Wei Xiao Bei was trying to sculpt a human’s image right now, the model being Zhu Xin Yi.
Of course, at the moment, the sculpture’s image was far from close to Zhu Xin Yi herself. Wei Xiao Bei required more time to correct and fix it.
“Papapa.”
Someone was knocking at the door!
Huang Kun, who was closer to the door, walked over in curiosity. He opened the door slightly and looked outside.
A man and a woman stood outside.
“Who are you looking for?”
Huang Kun couldn’t help but ask as he looked at the two people.
“Sorry, but is Mr. Wei Xiao Bei in?”
The man stepped forward.
“What are you looking for my master for?”
Huang Kun was being cautious, but he was still in the second year of middle school after all. He immediately revealed information about himself upon speaking. Of course, he didn’t answer whether his master was here.
The visitors were sharp as well. Upon seeing Huang Kun’s expression, they immediately knew that the person they were looking for was inside. As such, they passed a document to Huang Kun.
Huang Kun took the document and looked at it. The document’s cover was red, with the national emblem imprinted on the top.
(Author’s Note: This book is a parallel world to Earth. It might take many elements of our own Earth, but it in fact, not the same as our world.)
The emblem of China was completely different from the emblem of other countries. It was very Eastern in design, with two swords running down the middle, a coiling dragon at the bottom and wheat adorning the entire thing.
The swords represented the etiquette of the Chinese people and their virtue as people of noble character. Indeed, the sword was known as the gentlemen’s weapon in China.
The coiling dragon represented China being the descendant of dragons and the wheat signified the country’s roots and foundations of agriculture.
As the commercial field had grown significantly in the past twenty years, some parliament members have suggested for a scale to be added to the emblem to signify the importance of commerce.
This incident had caused a great wave of discussion for a while.
A small line of words had been imprinted at the bottom of the emblem.
Huang Kun couldn’t help but read the words out loud. “China Congress Special Investigation Committee!”
“Huang Kun, show the guests in, please.”
Wei Xiao Bei’s hearing was very sharp. He easily heard the conversation between the two parties, even from twenty meters away.
He knew trouble had come when he heard Huang Kun read the name of the organization.
The China Congress Special Investigations Committee was well-known throughout the country. The organization was one of several dozen committees of the China Congress.
It was important to note that China was a parliamentary democracy similar to a senate.
It was the highest governmental body of the country. Matters of national importance were all managed by the various committees, while the head-of-state was just a glorified stamping machine.
Military affairs were managed by the Congress Military Affairs Committee, finance was managed by the Congress Finance Committee, so on and so forth.
In particular, the Special Investigations Committee had a very wide jurisdiction. They were in charge of anything not managed by the other Committees.
However, Wei Xiao Bei knew that the SIC was the department for classified information in the Congress as well.
Nothing good came out of a visit from such an organization.
However, Wei Xiao Bei felt no immediate threat to himself. As such, he had Wei Xiao Bei lead the people inside. After all, they were here to visit him. He should show some courtesy as the host.
The man was in a casual gray suit, his shoes polished bright. He looked a bit tan and in some aspects resembled Louis Koo.
The woman was petite and wore a professional skirt, appearing like a very capable person. She could be described as pretty, but she wasn’t much compared to Zhu Xin Yi’s stunning beauty.
Huang Kun just wasn’t too reliable when he did things. He didn’t return the document to the people after he read it. Instead, he passed it to Wei Xiao Bei.
Since they did not object to it, Wei Xiao Bei also took a look at the contents of the identification.
It explained the duties of this man. He was the investigation’s leader of the SIC in Cui Hu City. His name was Xu Fei Yang.
Wei Xiao Bei’s mouth couldn’t help but twitch when he saw the name. It resembled that of a character from a web novel.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Xu. And this is?”
Wei Xiao Bei returned the document and asked Xu Fei Yang while he looked at the woman.
“This is my subordinate Zhou Yi Qi. We are here to ask you some questions. Could we talk in a more private place?”
Xu Fei Yang introduced his subordinate and looked at Wei Xiao Bei as he asked his questions. His eyes had been glued on Wei Xiao Bei ever since he entered the dojo. No emotion on Wei Xiao Bei’s face would escape his eyes.
