Chapter 71 — Extra: Super Sweet Little Treasure Is Online
Lu Xiao felt like his IQ had been cut in half. How was it that everyone else looked like top-tier childcare pros, tossing around parenting skills with ease, while he trembled with nerves holding the little one, afraid he’d cry? Bai He, on the other hand, held the baby with complete composure, a glow of fatherly love appearing on his face.
After thinking it over, Lu Xiao suddenly realized, “Turns out I’m still better suited to taking care of my wife.”
Lu Xiao took a full month of paternity leave, using it entirely to look after his wife. There were already too many people eager to care for the baby, and Meng Xueyuan’s parents came over as well, staying for a month to help out.
Lu Xiao washed Meng Xueyuan’s hair and helped him bathe, massaged him, held his hand on walks, and wracked his brain to prepare nutritious meals.
The bee-clan baby wasn’t shy with strangers. At night, there were two pairs of grandparents and two pairs of uncles taking turns putting him to sleep. Meng Xueyuan only got a turn once a week.
Even though Dad didn’t get many chances, the baby knew perfectly well who his father was. He’d fall asleep easily in other people’s arms, but when Meng Xueyuan held him, he refused to sleep, staring wide-eyed at his beautiful celebrity dad, bright and alert, loving every bit of interaction with him.
Only after Meng Xueyuan had fully recovered did they bring the baby over at night, placing him beside Meng Xueyuan and Lu Xiao’s bed.
The baby’s one-month celebration was held in Nan Cheng, and all the clan members who had time came— including the old Queen Bee and the drone bees.
Xiang Jin gifted a pair of small gold bracelets, and Lian Qiao gave a gold longevity lock, drawing many sideways glances from the clan. It always took a moment for people to remember that the drone bees now had low-paying jobs of their own; they hardly spent money, so it was normal they’d saved up.
After the celebration ended, Xiang Jin and Lian Qiao followed the old Queen Bee and fled by plane overnight.
Working was just too exhausting—better to go back to Baihua Village and lie flat.
Fu Jin and Gu Yunlang were completely baffled. They’d thought they were just seeing them off at the airport?!
No matter how angelic a baby was, it was impossible for him to never cry at night.
Even a single uncomfortable whimper would instantly alert all three levels of the Lu household.
The worker-bee uncle would throw off his blanket, slip into slippers, and run upstairs. Sure enough, the lights on the fourth floor were dim, and Lu Xiao was holding the baby and soothing him.
“I’ll hold him for a bit.”
“I’ll hold him too.”
Taking turns holding him for ten minutes each, the baby was successfully calmed.
There were plenty of guest rooms on the fourth floor. Even after the baby fell asleep, the worker-bee uncle was still worried, so he simply rested in the neighboring room, leaving the door open to listen for any sounds.
The next morning, the CEO downstairs woke up and saw the other side of the bed empty, and for the eighteenth time pondered: was the soundproofing in this house really that bad?
Why hadn’t they heard anything? Did the bee clan have its own soundwave frequency?
But hadn’t Uncle Ning said the kid was a mixed-blood baby with three spiritual roots? So why couldn’t they, as uncles, receive the frequency of either the little flower god or the little vine spirit?
When the baby was seven months old and learning to crawl, he finally showed a bit of the vine baby’s spiritual talent. Other babies crawled forward, backward, left, and right—but he loved crawling up and down.
The moment he got near the stairs, it was over—he absolutely had to climb.
He also liked clinging to adults’ calves, a hobby discovered when the drone-bee uncles came to visit.
Once, when they came over and sat on the sofa, the baby—raised in the arms of many uncles and well-versed in the art of “spreading the love evenly”—kept crawling back and forth among the six adults while they drank tea and ate fruit, never stopping for a moment.
When he reached his dad, Meng Xueyuan bent down and patted his head.
Satisfied, the baby crawled to Shen Ning. Shen Ning squatted halfway and wiped the drool from his chin.
Next.
He crawled over to the beautiful, lazy uncles. These uncles were lazy—no need to bend or squat to interact. The baby tried to climb up on his own.
Xiang Jin and Lian Qiao were always synonymous with fashion, laziness, and raggedness. They always wore ripped jeans.
The baby hooked his chubby little hand into one of the rips.
Xiang Jin was just about to stand up and hold him. The baby seized the opportunity and latched onto his calf, then—like discovering a new toy—grabbed the fraying hole in the jeans and climbed upward, clinging to his leg like a koala.
Xiang Jin didn’t dare move a muscle.
Shen Ning looked a little surprised. That wall-clinging, climbing ability really did resemble Lu Fengge as a child.
“Let’s see how long he can hold on,” Shen Ning said with a smile, lightly supporting the little vine baby. “So amazing, baby. Tonight, Grandpa Lu will reward you with a climbing room.”
The baby held on stubbornly until Meng Xueyuan came over with a bottle. He finally let go, landing in Shen Ning’s hands, took the bottle, and gulped down his milk.
This climbing experience was firmly etched into the baby’s memory. That very night, when Lu Xiao got home from work, he immediately tried to replicate it.
Lu Xiao was in the kitchen making formula. The baby grabbed onto his suit trousers, struggling to reach the back of his knee.
But a CEO’s suit trousers were always impeccably crisp and straight—no wrinkles even at the end of the world—nothing like Uncle’s ripped jeans.
The baby used all his strength to hang on. Very quickly, his hand slipped, and he plopped down on his butt, pouting as tears like pearls rolled out of his eyes.
Red-eyed, the baby clung to Lu Xiao’s shoulder.
In this household—Dad, Grandpa, uncles—everyone had a wardrobe full of suit trousers. It was utterly despairing for a baby.
Lu Xiao had thought the baby was just pulling himself up and hadn’t noticed his feet leaving the ground. By the time he realized, the baby was already crying on the floor.
He hurriedly picked him up. “Don’t cry, don’t cry. Baby, you did great.”
Shen Ning, who lived on the first floor, came out after hearing the noise. “What happened?”
Lu Xiao admitted his mistake honestly. “Didn’t hold onto my leg and fell.”
Seeing the baby’s little hands tightly clutching Lu Xiao’s shoulder, Shen Ning laughed. “That’s what you get for wearing suit trousers at home. Go cut a couple of holes in them.”
Lu Xiao: ?
Back when he’d been in the entertainment industry three years ago, he’d had plenty of ripped jeans. Perfect—time to put them to use.
The next day, employees at the Lu Group were horrified to discover that Third Young Master Lu—who had practically welded suits onto his body after leaving showbiz—had suddenly relived his youth and was wearing blue jeans with three rips in one leg.
As long as the wearer was handsome, ripped jeans and a white shirt could look this good!
Was Third Young Master Lu planning to reenter the entertainment industry?! No—if he did, they wouldn’t be able to admire President Lu’s peerless looks up close at the office anymore! Once he reentered the industry, even a single glance would cost money.
Lu Group employees secretly discussed it online, alerting the Night Watchers.
What? My brother is wearing jeans again?
Heaven knew that after Lu Xiao left the industry, every photo of him circulating publicly showed him in suits—suits of all colors and combinations! Sure, they were handsome, but they covered too much. Only fingers, neck, and face were visible.
Even the abstinent style got old after a while. The Night Watchers could only pull out old posters from when Lu Xiao used to show half his abs and reminisce.
Sister-in-law really keeps him on a tight leash. My brother’s “male virtue” score is maxed out.
Lu Xiao hadn’t expected that just wearing jeans would land him on trending topics again. Right next to his trending topic was Meng Xueyuan attending an awards ceremony, his beauty going viral.
Lu Xiao took a screenshot and saved it. It’d been a long time since he and his wife had trended side by side. Back when he’d been in an idol group, they’d pop up together holding hands every few days.
He saved the screenshot in an album labeled “Intimate Trends,” like a bottom-tier celebrity riding trends—quietly screenshotting and notarizing every association he had with his idol.
In those two years when he didn’t dare pursue love, just having his trend next to his wife’s had made him happy.
After that, whenever Lu Xiao attended unimportant events, he couldn’t be bothered to change back into suit trousers.
Every morning when he left for work, Dad would get up from the table. The baby would cling reluctantly to his leg, only letting go when they reached the entryway. The baby was getting heavier, and the rips in the jeans were under more and more strain, tearing wider and wider.
Uninformed Night Watchers: Sister-in-law is really getting more generous. I’ll buy whatever you endorse.
Meng Xueyuan received the endorsement fees and bought milk powder for their son. The baby drank more milk and got heavier—so the Night Watcher aunties’ money wasn’t wasted at all.
The climbing game lasted until the baby learned to walk independently.
Once a baby could run, who needed to crawl anymore!
Meng Xueyuan did some research. The red moles on the Queen Bee’s nose bridge faded with each generation; in the future, they might not be reliable for identifying status. But his son was basically ruled out as a drone bee.
In nature, worker bees start labor 3–6 days after leaving the hive, handling warmth, incubation, and cleaning. From days 6–12, they act as nurse bees; from days 12–18, they clean the hive.
Humans couldn’t possibly work that early. At the very least, it’d be after seven or eight years old, once they had some understanding of the world, helping their parents with what they could.
This little one was on seven- or eight-times speed. At one year old, he already wanted to take part in household chores.
The bee baby’s spiritual energy exploded, and his ability to imitate was extremely strong. Seeing the nanny sweep, he wanted a broom. Seeing her wipe the antique shelves, he wanted a rag.
He loved cleaning the “hive”—that is, the places where Dad and uncles lived.
Lu Xiao doted on him and had a full set of mini household tools custom-made.
A twenty-centimeter broom, a one-liter bucket, a tiny dustpan, a little mop—learning housework from an early age.
There was even an enhanced vacuum-mop combo that could carry the baby while sweeping smoothly, with a unique built-in program: it couldn’t go under beds, only sweep open areas, to prevent the baby from bumping his forehead.
Every day, the baby loved riding the cleaner around the house on patrol. When he encountered spots the clumsy cleaner couldn’t reach, he’d pull out the bucket and rag and diligently lie on the floor wiping away.
The cleaner was his best brother!
At night, when he sat in Lu Xiao’s arms eating, he didn’t forget his good friend. “Daddy, charge.”
The cleaner needed dinner too.
So Lu Xiao would carry his son to plug in the cleaner. Since the baby cared deeply about the process, they hadn’t enabled auto-charging—every day, he personally “fed” it.
“Daddy has a big brother,” the baby said, awkwardly piecing together logic. “I have one too. Is Sweeper my big brother?”
Lu Xiao thought it over. “By factory date, yes—he’s the big brother.”
But big brothers weren’t very nice; little brothers were better. Lu Xiao added, “Daddy will help you turn him into a little brother.”
The baby: ?
The next day, while Shen Ning took the baby out to play, Lu Xiao brought the cleaner to work with him, to the smart home R&D department under the group, and added a new facial recognition feature.
After a re-release, the cleaner was now officially the little brother.
So when the baby rode the cleaner while cleaning the hive and ran into Lu Fengge, he softly called out, “Grandpa.”
The cleaner said, “Grandpa.”
The baby: !
This really was his true brother!
Lu Fengge asked Lu Xiao, “This is…?” A child companion feature?
Lu Xiao replied, “No. These are the Lu family’s eldest grandson and second grandson.”
His brother didn’t seem to have much of a sex life; the second grandson had to rely on cyber technology.
Once the baby grew a bit heavier and developed an awareness of caring for the cleaner, he stopped riding on it. Instead, the two brothers cleaned together.
The cleaner was still set to avoid nooks and crannies—those places were left to the diligent little bee baby.
To give the baby more space to move while riding the cleaner, the doors to most rooms across several floors were usually left open, including the bedrooms of his dad and uncles.
He liked cleaning these three bedrooms the most, because they were true “hives,” rich with bee-clan scent.
The baby was especially good at crawling under beds to wipe the floor—places the cleaner brother could never reach.
With a rag in hand, he worked hard and silently under the bed.
Suddenly, the door closed. Uncle Bai He exchanged a few words with the eldest uncle, then prepared to sleep.
The space under the bed was low. The baby could only lie flat, his chubby cheeks nearly pressed to the floor. He stopped wiping and turned his head to look at the sun outside the window. It was still daytime—was Uncle Bai He already going to sleep?
A suit jacket hadn’t been placed properly and slipped off the bed.
The baby crawled out quickly and hugged the jacket. This needed to go to the laundry.
The eldest young master—who claimed he had no time for sex—and Bai He, just back from a business trip, were now pressing together and kissing.
After half a month abroad, far from the Queen Bee, the secretary’s sexual coldness seemed to have eased somewhat. The opportunity was extremely rare.
The atmosphere in the room was heated.
The baby sat upright, unable to read the mood, and said, “Ah—Uncle Bai He, I’m wiping the floor.”
Bai He immediately separated from Lu Lou and wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
