Chapter 464: Wen Jing
Using his psychic power to scan the villa, Lu Weiyi noticed that Xu Sa was asleep in the afternoon. Considering his recent emotional state, Lu Weiyi didn’t think too much of it.
“Did he mention this friend’s name?”
“A man named Wen Jing.”
Lu Weiyi tried to recall but couldn’t remember anyone named Wen Jing from the Mengbei Base—though the name did sound somewhat familiar. He just couldn’t place where he’d heard it.
“He’s the deputy captain of the Mengbei Base’s Fierce Team. Apparently, he had been elsewhere before and only arrived this morning,” the guard explained.
It seemed like someone Zhuang Mingxu may have known in the past. Lu Weiyi said no more and went back to the room to nap with the two kids.
Taotao slept heavily and even missed dinner. Zhuang Aiyi checked on him several times. The little one’s face was rosy and he looked half-asleep, like he was just exhausted, so no one thought too much of it.
Later that night, Zhuang Mingxu returned drunk, supported by the two who had gone with him. He looked extremely happy and kept talking Lu Weiyi’s ear off.
After a few words, his hands started to wander. There were still two kids in the room. Lu Weiyi tried to stop him a few times, but that only made Zhuang Mingxu angrier and rougher.
As a psychic, Lu Weiyi could easily suppress him if he wanted, but ever since he learned about Zhuang Mingxu’s weak, ordinary physique, he never used force. He kept telling himself it was nothing—especially remembering how Zhuang Mingxu had died all alone outside the base in the last life, his body never recovered. That memory lowered Lu Weiyi’s tolerance again and again.
Seeing that things were getting out of control, he had no choice but to use his green vine ability to quietly send the two children into the dimension for safety.
The chaos lasted all night. The next morning, Lu Weiyi was woken up by Zhuang Aiyi’s voice inside the space. Even though only the two kids were in there, Lu Weiyi had left a sliver of his spiritual sense behind to keep an eye on things—just in case something happened.
So the moment Zhuang Aiyi called out, Lu Weiyi noticed.
“I heard you,” Lu Weiyi’s voice was hoarse. Only a few syllables came out, and he forgot that the kids in the space couldn’t actually hear him speak from outside.
Zhuang Mingxu, still half-asleep and hungover, reflexively pulled Lu Weiyi tighter into his arms when he heard his voice, eyes still closed.
Lu Weiyi, sore and exhausted, kicked him in frustration—only to aggravate his own aches. He hissed and immediately felt worse.
“What’s wrong?” Zhuang Mingxu blinked and slowly came to his senses.
“Water,” Lu Weiyi grumbled, clearly unhappy and with a bit of an attitude.
Zhuang Mingxu looked around the messy room and immediately remembered what happened the night before. He scratched his nose awkwardly and got out of bed.
Inside the space, Zhuang Aiyi’s calls for “Little Papa” grew more frequent. Lu Weiyi glanced around the disaster zone that was the room—clothes and wrappers everywhere—and decided it wasn’t appropriate to bring the kids out just yet. He tossed a bathrobe at Zhuang Mingxu and sent him into the space to soothe his son.
Fortunately, Zhuang Mingxu had entered the space many times over the years, often to organize supplies, so he was very familiar with it. The sudden change of environment didn’t faze him. He even managed to get dressed quickly.
He turned around and saw Zhuang Aiyi running over.
“What’s wrong?” he asked gently.
“Big Papa, come quickly…” Zhuang Aiyi tugged on his arm and led him to the well near the peach tree. The lush tree now had a small treehouse made from branches and vines. Whenever the children were placed in the space, they often slept there.
“What happened?” Zhuang Mingxu sensed his urgency but didn’t see anything unusual in the quiet space—there shouldn’t be any danger here.
“It’s Taotao… Taotao…” Zhuang Aiyi’s little brows were furrowed as he bit his lip in thought before saying seriously, “Taotao shrank.”
“Huh?” Zhuang Mingxu was confused, but the moment he entered the treehouse, he understood what Zhuang Aiyi meant.
Taotao had shrunk!
Normally, Taotao appeared about two years old outside, and looked more like four or five years old inside the space. But now, he looked barely older than his outside appearance—if one didn’t look carefully, they might think he hadn’t changed at all.
“When did you notice something was wrong with your little brother?” Zhuang Mingxu, barefoot, rushed over and tried to wake Taotao by patting him gently.
“Just now,” Zhuang Aiyi said anxiously, then paused and added with uncertainty, “Actually… I think he was already like this during the night.”
He had briefly woken up when Lu Weiyi transferred them into the space and vaguely noticed that Taotao hadn’t changed. But the familiar presence made him feel safe, so he fell asleep again. Thinking back now, he wasn’t sure anymore.
“I’m sorry, Papa. I can’t remember clearly,” Zhuang Aiyi said tearfully, choking up.
“It’s okay. It’s Papa’s fault for not noticing,” Zhuang Mingxu comforted him calmly. He picked up Taotao and kept gently shaking and patting him until the boy finally woke up.
“Taotao? Does anything feel wrong?”
“Papa… Taotao’s so sleepy… wanna sleep…” Taotao mumbled, his voice drowsy as he tried to close his eyes again. Zhuang Mingxu kept shaking him to stop him from falling asleep.
“Baby, don’t sleep yet. You’ve been sleeping too long. Little Papa is getting mad. Let’s go back and eat breakfast first, okay?” Zhuang Mingxu coaxed him gently, all while shouting Lu Weiyi’s name into the empty sky of the space.
“Xiaoyi, something’s wrong, wake up!”
Just as Lu Weiyi outside the space was drifting back to sleep, Zhuang Mingxu’s shout jolted him awake again. He briefly considered retracting the thread of mental energy he’d left inside the space—let them yell all they wanted in there, with no one to hear them.
The thought only lingered for a moment. His mental power swept through the space, bringing all three of them out. Before he could speak, Zhuang Mingxu had already noticed that the Taotao in his arms had changed again—
He’d gotten even smaller.
Zhuang Mingxu sobered up from his hangover in an instant.
“Xiao Yi, come take a look at Taotao—what’s happening to him?”
“Little Daddy, little brother shrank again!” Zhuang Aiyi had already started crying. After spending so much time together, he had always known Taotao was different from other kids—that he was sick—but he’d never heard of any illness that could make someone shrink.
Lu Weiyi looked up and instantly became alert. “What the hell is going on?”
The Taotao in Zhuang Mingxu’s arms now looked like a newborn. His little arms were soft and pale like lotus roots, and he seemed completely limp. When he turned toward Lu Weiyi, he weakly called out, “Father…”
“No idea,” Zhuang Mingxu quickly recounted how Aiyi had pulled him over inside the space. “Was there anything unusual before this?”
“Yesterday he suddenly said he was sleepy,” Lu Weiyi immediately thought of that moment—it had struck him as odd.
And…
Lu Weiyi remembered the sudden appearance of that Taoist priest and quickly told Zhuang Mingxu what had happened then.
“I meant to tell you when I got back, but last night…”
Zhuang Mingxu had returned late, and with everything that happened, it had slipped his mind.
Hearing all this, Zhuang Mingxu’s first reaction was to suspect something supernatural—especially since the man had been a Taoist. “Are you sure he didn’t do anything?”
“No,” Lu Weiyi replied firmly. When Tianning appeared, he had already been on guard. There was no way he would’ve let him get near Taotao. However…
“You think it’s possible there was some kind of technique or spell that I couldn’t detect?”
Zhuang Mingxu didn’t answer—he knew even less about these things. Looking at the now even smaller Taotao in his arms, he said, “Whether it was him or not, his appearance is enough to be suspicious. Let’s start by sending someone to track him down—”
Knock, knock, knock.
Before he could finish, there was a knock at the bedroom door.
Zhuang Aiyi, seeing that neither of his dads objected, wiped his face, cleared the tears from his eyes, and tried to act as if nothing had happened as he went to open the door.
At the door was Yu Mengchu. She pinched Aiyi’s cheek and smiled brightly, asking, “Aiyi baby, is your Daddy up yet? Someone’s come to visit—says he had an appointment with him.”
“It’s Wen Jing,” Zhuang Mingxu quickly explained to Lu Weiyi and called out loudly, “Let him in.”
Looking at the time, he realized it was already past 9 AM—well past their usual wake-up time. No wonder someone had come by.
After the door closed, Zhuang Mingxu continued, “Wen Jing is from the Mengbei Base. His family’s daughter married Ling Jiaoyang. When they heard what happened here the other day, he flew in by helicopter to plead for Ling Jiaoyang.”
“She’s their only daughter and she’s pregnant now. You know how important kids are nowadays. The Wen family insists Ling Jiaoyang must be kept alive—if nothing else, then at least as a breeding machine.”
Lu Weiyi didn’t even recall who that was, and he didn’t respond.
“When he arrived yesterday, he met with me first,” Zhuang Mingxu said, pulling out a jade stone from his space and handing it to Lu Weiyi. “This was his meeting gift—a jade space stone. I had it checked. It’s not that big, maybe ten square meters.”
Nowadays, the number of spatial stones in each base had pretty much stabilized. New ones were rare. Though there were still cases of people being killed for theirs, Lu Weiyi had officially banned that kind of thing. Those in his team without a space stone often had to sneak off-base and act in secret if they wanted one.
Since those things didn’t happen under his direct watch and left no traces, Lu Weiyi usually turned a blind eye.
He hadn’t expected Wen Jing to be so generous, giving one up right away.
“I told him we’d decide after you and I talked today. We set the meeting for this morning.” As he laid the now deeply asleep Taotao back on the bed, Zhuang Aiyi immediately leaned over.
“Aiyi, keep an eye on your brother. Dad and I are going to wash up. We’ll eat together when we come out,” Zhuang Mingxu instructed.
Zhuang Aiyi nodded seriously, eyes locked on Taotao without blinking.
“Let’s go together—save time,” Zhuang Mingxu said as he casually wrapped his arm around Lu Weiyi’s waist and led him toward the bathroom.
Lu Weiyi shot him a sidelong look. Zhuang Mingxu looked so serious that it made him seem like the one with bad intentions.
“I’ll send someone to find that Taoist. I’ll ask Uncle to see if we can track down other cultivators too—maybe they can help Taotao,” Zhuang Mingxu said, turning on the shower and smoothly taking off his robe. Lu Weiyi had initially been on guard, suspecting ulterior motives—but seeing the scratch marks all over Zhuang Mingxu’s back, he suddenly felt awkward instead.
