Chapter 22
Lin An’an’s mind went completely blank.
Holy shit!!!
How had he suddenly turned human?!!
No one could answer his question. Only the knock on the door that sounded again pulled the boy’s chaotic thoughts back to reality.
“baby An?” The knocking was a little harder than before. “Are you okay?”
Lin An’an panicked and tried to get to his feet, wanting to hurriedly change back into his little cub form. Failing that, locking the door—or even barricading it—would do too—
He could not be sure what kind of reaction Feng Wu would have if he saw him like this, nor could he be sure whether now was truly the best time for the two of them to meet openly.
But after getting used to the body of a little cub, Lin An’an found himself rather unaccustomed to a human body instead.
Before he could even stand up, the arm supporting him suddenly gave way, and his chin slammed onto the floor with a dull, resounding thud.
Lin An’an’s eyes reddened instantly.
…It hurt so much!
Hearing the noise, Feng Wu no longer hesitated. He immediately pushed open the door, his dark golden eyes locking onto the person in the room in an instant.
The boy’s black hair was a little messy, his eye rims red, his eyes brimming with physiological tears brought on by pain. He was sprawled on the floor, and his clothes were tattered, faint traces of corrosion visible here and there.
The moment he saw Feng Wu come in, the boy’s eyes widened instinctively.
Those eyes were a rare, pure black. Through the mist of tears, they vaguely reflected Feng Wu’s figure.
The instant he saw the boy clearly, Feng Wu’s pupils contracted sharply. He instinctively blocked He Yinghong’s line of sight, stepped forward, and swiftly locked the door.
He Yinghong, who had been several steps behind Feng Wu because he walked more slowly and therefore had seen absolutely nothing: “???”
Thank goodness he had been walking slowly.
Otherwise, he would have smacked straight into the door.
Feng Wu strode forward two steps and released a mental power barrier, enclosing both himself and the boy on the floor within it, ensuring that no one outside would hear their voices.
Lin An’an’s hands and feet were weak. Perhaps because he had not used a human body in so long, all four limbs felt a little out of control. He struggled on the ground for quite a while without managing to get up.
He kept his head lowered, not quite daring to look at Feng Wu.
Part of it was because everything had happened too suddenly—they had met in human form so unexpectedly. The other part was that he felt a little embarrassed.
In all the time they had known each other, he had never made such a fool of himself in front of Brother Wolf.
Lin An’an’s thoughts were in complete disarray, but then a large hand suddenly appeared before him. It was very familiar—he used to love lying in that hand every single day.
Lin An’an steeled himself.
So be it if they met—what was there to be shy about? It was not like some ugly bride meeting her in-laws!
Thinking that, he reached out and took the hand Feng Wu had offered him.
Only after becoming human did Lin An’an realize that the hand he had always treated like a bed was actually broad and strong, with a thin layer of calluses in the palm.
…Back when he had still been a little cub, he had loved secretly rubbing against those calluses to scratch his itches.
With Feng Wu’s help, Lin An’an finally managed to stand up and was supported over to sit on a stool.
The two faced each other in silence, both seeming unsure how to begin.
In the end, it was Feng Wu who broke the silence first. “baby An?”
The boy cautiously lifted his eyes to look at him and nodded. The childishness had already faded from his face, yet it still retained a trace of youthful greenness, now slightly tense with nervousness.
That expression, at least, was almost exactly the same as the little cub’s.
Perhaps because he had grown so used to petting the cub, the moment Feng Wu saw that look on the boy’s face, his fingers unconsciously curled, and he almost instinctively lifted a hand to rub the fluffy head of the youth.
He steadied himself. “…Third Prince?”
Lin An’an sucked in a sharp breath. “!!!”
Brother Wolf knew him!
Had his entire cover just fallen apart like this, qaq?!
pupil earthquake jpg
Feng Wu did not get an answer, but seeing the boy’s round, shocked eyes, he already knew he had not mistaken him.
Feng Wu rubbed at his brow. “You…”
Lin An’an spoke almost at the same time. “I…”
Feng Wu said, “You go first.”
Lin An’an said, “You first.”
The two fell silent again. After a moment, Lin An’an took a deep breath and said, “The amnesia is real. I didn’t lie to you. When I first met you, I truly didn’t remember anything and didn’t even know who I was. It was only later that my memories slowly started coming back.”
He finished the whole sentence in one breath, speaking so fast it was like firing off a photon cannon.
After speaking, Lin An’an sneaked a glance at Feng Wu from the corner of his eye. Once he confirmed that Feng Wu’s expression did not look bad, he continued, “Even now, there are still many things I can’t remember, and I have no memory of ever meeting you before.”
In that dream, he had only seen a younger Feng Wu from afar through iron bars. That could not really count as meeting.
As for the parts of his memory involving another world, Lin An’an had no intention of telling anyone else about that experience.
After listening, Feng Wu nodded and fell into thought.
He had once assumed that baby An’s Alpha symptom was the inability to change back into human form, but now it seemed that was not the case.
“Do you know why you came to Sin Star?” he asked.
Lin An’an shook his head, then nodded. “I was sent here in a box and dumped in the Poison Mist Forest on Sin Star, but I don’t know who ordered it.”
He recounted the related fragments of memory, including how he had only awakened his second form while in the Poison Mist Forest.
Lin An’an’s memories had returned only in bits and pieces, and many important matters were still completely unclear. But when speaking of this, he instinctively remembered the smile his second brother—the Second Prince—had shown him in that dream.
…Every time he thought of it, a strange feeling would flicker through his heart, but he truly could not explain what was strange about it.
Feng Wu’s gaze swept downward. The boy’s clothing had been badly corroded by the poisonous mist and no longer retained its original appearance. If not for the underlayer of clothes beneath it, he likely would already have been indecently exposed.
Feng Wu’s silence made Lin An’an nervous. He parted his lips, wanting to say something more, only to see the person before him suddenly take out a set of clothes from his terminal space and hand them over. “Put these on.”
Only then did Lin An’an notice that what he was wearing could no longer really be called clothes. “Rags” would probably be a more accurate description.
“They’re new clothes. I haven’t worn them before,” Feng Wu said.
Lin An’an accepted them on reflex, stammering, “C-change here?”
There wasn’t even a curtain to hide behind. That was… a little too embarrassing, wasn’t it…
Feng Wu paused, then realized the issue as well.
He had spent too long in the military, surrounded by rough men all day, and had never paid attention to such details.
So Feng Wu took the clothes back again and asked, “Can you change into your second form?”
Lin An’an shook his head. “I don’t know how.”
This should have been instinctive to a cub, but perhaps because Lin An’an had awakened his second form too late, he had absolutely no idea how to control the transformation.
The boy looked at Feng Wu with some embarrassment and apology.
Feng Wu stood up and walked behind him, a broad hand coming to rest on the youth’s narrow shoulder. “Relax.”
Lin An’an instinctively relaxed. He felt Feng Wu’s palm settle at the back of his neck. The thin calluses on his hand stirred up a faint itch, making him shrink his neck a little.
“Here.” Feng Wu’s voice was low, sounding right behind Lin An’an’s head. “Control your mental power and concentrate it here. Make this spot heat up. Changing back from your second form into human form works the same way.”
Lin An’an did as instructed. A moment later, in the blink of an eye, the boy turned back into the little black dumpling, landing softly on the stool and bouncing twice.
The little cub let out a long breath of relief in his heart and looked at Feng Wu with deeply grateful beady eyes. “Yingji!”
Many thanks, Brother Wolf!
He was still not suited to appearing before others in human form. If he could not turn back into his little cub shape, what came next would really be difficult to handle.
Feng Wu frowned. “Why are you still so small?”
Under normal circumstances, the appearance of one’s second form would change along with the age of the original body. But Lin An’an was clearly already an adult, and yet his second form was still that of a cub. It really was rather strange.
Lin An’an typed: [Maybe it’s a bug.]
After recovering his second form, his mood immediately improved a great deal, and he even had the mind to joke about it.
Maybe so, Feng Wu thought.
Even something as outrageous as Alpha Syndrome existed, so an abnormal second form was not all that hard to accept by comparison.
A knock suddenly sounded at the door. From outside, He Yinghong asked, “Is baby An okay?”
Feng Wu answered, “He’s fine. baby An accidentally knocked over the stool.”
Hearing that, He Yinghong did not press further, even though he knew perfectly well that knocking over a stool alone could not possibly have made Feng Wu react so strongly.
Feng Wu lowered his head to look at Lin An’an. “We’ll talk about the rest another time.”
He still had many questions, but now was not a good time to talk.
Feng Wu instinctively reached out a hand, wanting to lift the little cub from the stool into his palm just as he always had before. But then the image of that young man suddenly surfaced in his mind.
…That was the Empire’s Third Prince, not just anyone else.
His hand stopped abruptly in midair, as if he were hesitating. Now that he knew the little cub’s true identity, perhaps continuing to treat him exactly as before was not entirely appropriate.
But Lin An’an was not thinking nearly that much. Seeing Feng Wu extend a hand toward him, he leapt quite proactively from the stool and landed with perfect accuracy in that familiar palm. Then he comfortably spread himself into a little cub pancake and stretched out in one enormous lazy stretch.
Being a cub really was happier, the little cub sighed inwardly.
Feng Wu tidied up the room a bit, then packed away the entire set of pharmaceutical equipment into his terminal space. After that, the man and cub left the little room together.
Sitting on the sofa, He Yinghong looked them over from top to bottom for a moment, as if checking whether they were both still perfectly intact.
“Was the medicine-making successful?” he asked, his tone carrying a hint of expectation.
Lin An’an nodded. A little tentacle fished out a bottle of blue medicine from his terminal space and handed it to He Yinghong.
He Yinghong took the medicine bottle with great care, almost mesmerized by the translucent blue liquid swaying inside the clear bottle. “So beautiful…”
After a long while, he asked, “Can you sell me a bottle of this medicine?”
Lin An’an typed: [Please keep it. Consider it my thank-you gift for that medicine-making equipment.]
When making the medicine, he had deliberately split it into two portions. One had been made using healing-type ability, while the other had been made without using any ability at all—because he had already anticipated this situation.
Lin An’an had noticed He Yinghong’s fondness for medicine, just as he had once noticed Shi Xiaoxing’s love for seeds.
He Yinghong smiled and did not refuse the little cub’s kindness. He carefully put the medicine away.
Lin An’an asked: [Where did you get the seeds for those medicinal herbs?]
“In the outskirts of Sin Star. I occasionally like going out to look around, and sometimes, if I’m lucky, I find some herbs,” He Yinghong said. “As for those herbs that had already passed their best efficacy period, I turned them into seeds.”
Unfortunately, he did not have plant-type abilities. In his hands, those seeds would forever remain just seeds, unable to become medicinal herbs.
Lin An’an caught a familiar piece of information in his words.
The calming grass he had won at the auction last time had also been picked in the outskirts of Sin Star. Perhaps there were even more wild medicinal herbs surviving out there.
Quietly committing this information to memory, Lin An’an asked: [You know how to extract seeds?]
“A little,” He Yinghong replied. “I learned from someone when I was young. But I’m old now. The moment I get emotional, my hands shake so badly that it’s hard for me to calm down and do such delicate work.”
Lin An’an glanced at him and found it a little strange.
He Yinghong was indeed somewhat older, but definitely not old enough for hand tremors to be normal. There had to be another reason his hands shook.
[I opened a farm in the outer city.] Lin An’an extended an invitation. [Would you like to come to our farm?]
“An outer-city farm?” He Yinghong was slightly startled, but when he remembered the little cub’s identity as a plant-type ability user, it suddenly did not seem so strange after all.
He did not answer too firmly: “I’ll think about it.”
The little cub felt a bit disappointed, but since He Yinghong had not rejected him outright, there should still be hope.
Feng Wu left He Yinghong a contact method and told him to get in touch once he had decided.
Before they left, He Yinghong called them back and carried over several flowerpots from the corner of the shop, all full of medicinal herbs. “Take these with you.”
He smiled at the little cub. “These herbs will be more useful in your hands.”
Lin An’an did not refuse. After thanking He Yinghong, he left.
Once Feng Wu and Lin An’an were gone, He Yinghong slowly walked over to the sofa and sat down. With trembling fingers, he opened his terminal and found a folder called “Those Years.”
Ever since arriving on Sin Star, no new content had ever been added to that folder.
He Yinghong murmured, “Who would’ve thought that I’d run into such an interesting little fellow on Sin Star of all places?”
Thinking of it that way, perhaps this trip to Sin Star had been the right one after all. It was only a pity that the little cub was also on Sin Star. With Alpha, he was destined never to reach the broader world outside, and it would also be difficult for him to pass on the ancient pharmaceutical techniques.
He Yinghong sighed inwardly and, his eyes full of nostalgia, flipped through the floating light screen. The contents of the folder were arranged in reverse chronological order.
The first record was a farewell video he had filmed of his pharmaceutical room before coming to Sin Star.
The second record was the last medicine he made before being diagnosed with Alpha Syndrome. It was a creamy yellow color, very beautiful.
…
Most of the records were related to making medicine. His healing-type ability was not very strong, but medicine-making was something he had devoted his entire life to without ever growing tired of it.
His eyes were full of remembrance—but when his gaze swept across one particular compiled album, that wistful look was immediately swallowed by a cloud of gloom.
The animated cover of the album showed his younger self standing before a pharmaceutical table, holding a successfully brewed medicine, while beside him stood a child—innocent and lively, his eyes full of awe and curiosity.
He had named the collection “Yuanwang.”
He Yinghong had devoted his entire life to medicine-making and had never married nor had children. The child on the cover was an orphan he had adopted, whom he named He Yuanwang.
Yuanwang, Yuanwang—within that name he had poured so many hopes and expectations for the child. It was just a pity…
A pity that who could have guessed, in the end, he had personally raised an ungrateful wretch.
He Yinghong sighed. He no longer had the mood to keep reading through the contents of the folder. The heaviness in his heart made him unconsciously clench his fist, and from his right palm came the warm, firm, rounded touch of something smooth.
He lowered his head and saw the medicine bottle still in his hand. The flowing, extraordinarily beautiful blue liquid inside lifted his spirits considerably.
The corners of He Yinghong’s eyes curved slightly. With trembling hands, he activated the terminal’s built-in virtual camera and recorded the blue medicine.
Just after finishing this, his terminal suddenly rang twice.
It was not the usual message notification sound—it was the special alert tone he had set up himself, and there was only one person on that priority list.
He Yuanwang.
[The company is getting ready to develop a new healing pod.]
[A powerful backer has already invested a great deal of money. If all goes smoothly, this healing pod will definitely shake the entire interstellar world.]
[It’s been so long. You should forgive me by now, shouldn’t you? At a time like this, stop being stubborn.]
[I’ll prove to you that the path I chose was not wrong.]
He Yinghong: “……”
After reading the messages, he did not reply at all.
Forgive him? How was he supposed to forgive him? He had never thought that He Yuanwang’s chosen path was wrong. High-tech healing pods and ancient pharmaceutical techniques had never been two conflicting roads to begin with.
He Yuanwang had not wanted to walk his road, and He Yinghong had never once—nor would he ever—stop him from taking a different one.
But what He Yuanwang never should have done, no matter what, was this: after taking over the He Group, the very first thing he did was disband every ancient pharmaceutical research team, destroying the labor of He Yinghong’s entire life in one blow.
Remembering the past, He Yinghong felt only a deep oppression in his chest. He did not want to look at it any longer.
Then he saw that bottle of blue medicine again.
The heavy gloom in his heart was soothed once more, and He Yinghong’s pupils suddenly trembled.
A moment later, it was as if he had suddenly figured something out. He let out a long breath, and the dimness in his eyes brightened.
He Yinghong pushed open the shop door again and saw an old regular customer squatting at the entrance waiting.
“I thought you weren’t opening today, Boss!” the regular customer said with a smile.
He Yinghong smiled too. “I’m not opening today.” His tone was unusually light. “And maybe I won’t be opening ever again.”
The regular customer looked surprised. “Not opening at all? Closing the shop for good? Then what are you planning to do?”
He Yinghong blinked, his tone mysterious. “From now on… I want to go chase a dream.”
After saying that, he ignored the customer’s shocked and puzzled stare, laughed loudly twice, and hung up a sign at the entrance announcing that the shop was up for sale.
He was already so old. If he did not indulge himself once now, he would probably never get another chance in this lifetime!
After receiving He Yinghong’s message, Feng Wu and Lin An’an, who had originally been preparing to leave the inner city, decided to change their plans.
He Yinghong said he needed one day to pack up his belongings and sell off his current shop and house.
Lin An’an thought that, in any case, they still had more than a full day left on their inner-city access permit. If they did not use it, it would just go to waste. So they simply stayed in the inner city and planned to leave together after He Yinghong had finished packing.
There was still more than half a day left until nightfall, so the man and cub returned to the underground market, intending to help He Yinghong pack up the shop.
But when the two of them arrived, the general store called “A Bit of Everything” was already deserted.
The little cub: “…Yingji.”
We came too late.
Having missed it by one step, the two had no choice but to give up their original plan. They wandered around the underground market instead to see whether there was anything they needed.
Yet before they ran into anything useful, they happened to overhear a piece of news—
Tonight, the underground auction house in the inner city was holding a large-scale auction.
Noticing that Lin An’an kept glancing toward the two people discussing the auction, Feng Wu asked, “Do you want to go?”
The little cub’s eyes immediately lit up, but then quickly dimmed again: [I want to, but we don’t have tickets.]
Unlike ordinary auctions, the underground auction house never sold admission passes publicly. They only invited certain specific people.
To get a ticket, one could only rely on internal connections.
Feng Wu let out a quiet hum. “Leave it to me.”
What Lin An’an never could have imagined was that Feng Wu’s “leave it to me” meant robbing someone else of their ticket near the auction house.
Night fell. Everyone’s attention was on the auction that was about to begin. No one noticed that, in a dark alley not far from the venue, a low, muffled grunt sounded out.
The sound was soft and faint. Unless someone went deep into the alley, no one would hear it at all.
Feng Wu’s target was a man of roughly the same build as himself. Though their physiques were similar, their strength was worlds apart. In less than half a minute, the man was subdued by Feng Wu and knocked unconscious on the ground.
The little cub hiding in Feng Wu’s pocket stuck out his head. “Yingji!”
The method might have been a little wild, but…
Brother Wolf fighting was really so handsome!!!
The special fox mask the man had been wearing was removed by Feng Wu and put onto his own face. He also took the invitation letter and entry card that the man had carefully tucked inside his clothes.
Catching sight of the little cub’s shocked expression, Feng Wu’s movements paused slightly. “Everyone invited by the underground auction house has already gone through their internal screening.”
As for what that internal screening consisted of, Lin An’an could guess it with the tip of a tentacle.
The reason it was called an underground auction—and why it was held at night—was because most of the items up for auction could not bear the light of day.
Those who could pass such screening were, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no good people. So when it came to “robbing” them, Lin An’an and Feng Wu felt absolutely no psychological burden.
But precisely because everything there was shady, every attendee kept their identity tightly hidden. The underground auction house was quite cooperative in that regard as well. Instead of sending electronic invitations that might expose a guest’s true identity, they used old-fashioned yet highly ceremonial paper invitations and physical entry cards.
As for how those paper invitations were obtained, neither Feng Wu nor Lin An’an knew, but in any case, they definitely were not just mailed straight to one’s home.
That made it convenient for Feng Wu to impersonate the man. The two were similarly built; as long as he wore the man’s mask and clothes, even Lin An’an could not tell the difference between them.
The auction was about to begin. Lin An’an jumped into Feng Wu’s arms. To avoid being discovered, he even burrowed farther in, wriggling all the way to the innermost layer, separated from Feng Wu’s skin by nothing more than a thin undershirt.
In front of him were several layers of completely lightproof cloth.
Behind him were Brother Wolf’s sharply defined abs.
The little cub could not resist reaching out a tiny tentacle to pat them.
Brother Wolf’s tummy really did feel great to touch!
His other little tentacle secretly slid toward his own belly, and the little cub gave his own soft squishy tummy a few pats as well, thinking that his own stomach did not feel bad either.
The squirming little cub made Feng Wu feel rather ticklish, but he had already reached the entrance to the venue and it was inconvenient to stop him, so he could only let the cub continue causing trouble in his arms.
There were two checkpoints at the venue entrance. The first required guests to present their invitation letter. After entering, one would see that inside there were still three different passageways.
There was the ordinary guest entrance, where people stood in a long queue and were carefully searched one by one by staff; the somewhat shorter VIP passage; and the completely empty Supreme VIP passage, where not a single person was lined up.
Feng Wu glanced at the words Supreme VIP embossed in gold at the top left of the entry card and decisively headed for the innermost passage.
Just then, a voice came from behind. “Move aside, move aside!”
Feng Wu reacted quickly and shifted to the side, but the other party was clearly doing it on purpose and still rammed an elbow into Feng Wu’s body.
Lin An’an, who had nearly been elbowed, gave a start and burrowed deeper into Feng Wu’s arms.
“What the hell are you doing?! Didn’t you hear me tell you to move?!” The man struck first instead, pointing at Feng Wu’s nose and cursing loudly.
The man was rather short, but his build was extremely obese. He wore a hyena mask. At a glance, Feng Wu spotted the entry card sticking out of the man’s pocket, with a silver VIP emblem printed in the top left corner.
Feng Wu frowned tightly. He lifted a hand and seized the man’s wrist in a firm grip. With only a slight exertion of force, the man let out a miserable scream.
“Y-you—let go of me! Ahhh, it hurts! Someone, help! My wrist is going to break!!!”
The venue staff quickly rushed over. Feng Wu did not want to create more trouble, so he released him. Even so, the wrist beneath the hyena mask visibly reddened and swelled at once.
“What kind of service is this? Why did you take so long to get here?!” the hyena-masked man snapped through clenched teeth. “How can you allow this kind of person into the auction venue?”
He puffed out his chest as hard as he could. Although he did not say a single word about it, everyone could tell that he was trying to make the staff notice the three letters VIP on the card at his chest.
The staff obviously did notice. They turned to Feng Wu and asked, “Sir, please show your entry card.”
With a flick of his wrist, a gold-embossed card bearing the words Supreme VIP appeared in Feng Wu’s hand.
The hyena was still shouting, “A mere—”
Before he could finish, he caught sight of the glaringly bright card, and the words died halfway like someone had grabbed him by the throat.
The staff’s expression changed instantly. They respectfully took the card from Feng Wu’s hand and tapped it against a terminal. The floating light screen beside them displayed the card information:
[Codename: Mr. D
VIP Room: Deluxe Single Room No. 4…]
The information did not reveal a real name, but after seeing what was on the light screen, the staff grew even more obsequious.
“Welcome, Mr. D.” The staff member stepped aside and called over another young male staffer. “Please leave things here to me. The auction is about to begin. Kindly follow Yunduo to Room No. 4.”
There was no body search and no further checkpoints.
Hidden beneath the cover of his wide sleeves, the fingers Feng Wu had kept tense all this time—ready at any moment to wrap the little cub in a protective barrier of mental power—finally relaxed.
The little cub in his arms also let out a sigh of relief and softened again, sprawling comfortably over Feng Wu’s abs.
So this was the privilege of a Supreme VIP…
Before entering, Feng Wu even cast a glance in the direction of the hyena mask once more. The man was standing there rigidly. Though his expression could not be seen, Feng Wu guessed the face beneath the mask had certainly gone deathly pale.
—The gap between a Supreme VIP and an ordinary VIP at an underground auction was actually this vast.
People nearby whispered among themselves:
“I thought Supreme VIPs always arrived early…”
“Mr. D used to come very early. Maybe something delayed him this time…”
Feng Wu withdrew his gaze and followed the staffer called Yunduo into the venue.
As for the hyena mask behind him, he paid him no further attention, though he did feel a little regretful that he had not crushed the man’s wrist outright.
That elbow just now had come dangerously close to striking the little cub in his arms.
Feng Wu curled his fingers slightly.
A pity.
The underground auction venue was even larger than Lin An’an had imagined.
Feng Wu followed Yunduo for quite a while before finally arriving at the so-called Room No. 4.
The treatment for a Supreme VIP was clearly extraordinary. The room was as large as a top-tier hotel suite. An enormous light screen hung at the front, and the room contained everything: a luxurious bed, sofa, tea table, food and drinks, restroom, bathroom, and more.
Feng Wu even caught sight of a few very familiar little items on the bedside table—things minors absolutely were not supposed to see.
“Mr. D, I will be serving you personally throughout the entire auction.”
Yunduo skillfully poured a glass of wine. Feng Wu took it, then saw the delicately featured young man, whose looks carried a faintly feminine charm, lift his head. The corners of his slightly upturned eyes curved in a deeply seductive way.
Feng Wu’s brows tightened beneath the mask. Suddenly, he had a very bad feeling.
The young man called Yunduo walked over to a cabinet on one side and, with practiced ease, pulled open the doors, revealing a whole other world inside.
“How would you like to play today?” Yunduo asked with a smile, his voice soft and alluring like a lover whispering into one’s ear. “The same as last time? Number Thirty-Nine?”
Instinctively, Feng Wu searched for Number Thirty-Nine and discovered that it was a pink chain of unknown material, gaudy in appearance.
Suppressing the urge to turn his head away, Feng Wu said, “…No need. I’m not in the mood today.”
The little cub hidden in his arms was dying of curiosity. His two small tentacles twisted together like he was doing fancy hand movements.
Play what?
Not in the mood for what?
Was it what he was thinking?
This Mr. D actually played that wild?!
The fox mask came with a built-in voice modulator, making it impossible to tell the wearer’s original voice.
Yunduo froze for a moment upon hearing that. A trace of disappointment flickered through his eyes, but he still lowered his head respectfully and left.
The room door closed. Feng Wu immediately locked it and swept the room with his mental power. Once he confirmed there were no cameras or other hidden monitoring devices, he swiftly pulled open his robe and let the little cub crawl out from inside his clothes.
Lin An’an stuck out his little head and immediately looked toward the cabinet, only to have his eyes suddenly covered by a large hand.
The little cub protested, “Yingji!”
Put it down! Let me look!!!
But Feng Wu remained unmoved. He strode over, shut the cabinet doors, and only then lowered his hand and scooped the little cub into his palm.
“You’re still not allowed to see it,” Feng Wu said.
The little cub angrily jabbed at his terminal, making it crackle loudly:
[I’m an adult!]
[Even if you won’t let me look, I can guess what’s inside!]
[Isn’t it just—]
Before he could finish typing, the cub terminal was pressed down by Feng Wu’s finger, and the light screen went dark.
Lin An’an: “…Ah-puh-leh!”
The furiously round little cub turned over in Feng Wu’s hand, buried his face deep in Feng Wu’s palm, and decided to enter Cold War Mode for the next three minutes.
Feng Wu’s lips curved slightly. Beneath the mask, a trace of amusement crossed his dark-golden eyes.
The auction began, and Lin An’an was immediately drawn in, forgetting the small unpleasantness from just now.
The first lot was a beast locked inside a cage, ugly and grotesque in appearance. The giant floating screen clearly projected the creature’s image, and those two rows of exposed sharp fangs looked terrifying.
Feng Wu frowned.
Lin An’an also widened his eyes in disbelief.
…This was an aberrant beast?
The Empire had no rule forbidding the sale of aberrant beasts, but the ones that were more popular were generally small aberrant beasts with docile temperaments and no attacking power. If large aberrant beasts ever appeared on the market, they would certainly only do so in the form of corpses.
This aberrant beast, raging and roaring inside the iron cage, was clearly not one of the commonly traded kinds.
The display on the light screen was too vivid. It made the beast seem almost right in front of them. Lin An’an unconsciously tightened his little tentacles around Feng Wu’s thumb and received from the other man a soothing pat on the head.
In the end, the aberrant beast was sold for the sky-high price of five million star coins.
Once its image disappeared from the screen, the little cub finally let out a sigh of relief, patting his tiny chest with a tentacle. “Yingji.”
Whoever dared buy that beast was truly a warrior.
The lots that followed were even more bizarre—baby protected animals classified as Imperial Level Three, taxidermied specimens of Level Two protected animals, supposedly freshly unearthed ancient relics…
In short, every single one looked more criminal than the last, and it really broadened Lin An’an’s horizons.
This auction would continue for the entire night, yet not even two hours had passed before the always healthily scheduled Lin An’an began to get sleepy. The whole little dumpling swayed unsteadily in Feng Wu’s palm.
Feng Wu simply turned off the sound of the light screen and set the room to Do Not Disturb mode so the little cub could sleep peacefully for a while.
But things did not go as hoped. Before Lin An’an had fully fallen asleep, a burst of noise from outside the door woke him again.
The room’s soundproofing was actually excellent, but Feng Wu had secretly pried open a tiny corner with his mental power, creating a crude one-way listening channel so the sounds outside flowed into the room.
The little cub jolted and nearly pitched forward headfirst. “Yingji!”
Feng Wu caught him steadily and listened carefully for a moment.
“He still dares to come back—”
“Where’d he run off to? Why has he disappeared again?!”
“I refuse to believe we won’t catch him today!”
Lin An’an also heard the commotion outside. He was not sure whether it was just his imagination, but among the noise, he seemed to vaguely hear a few meows mixed in.
—A cat?
Lin An’an suddenly thought of the little white cat he had met yesterday. He snapped his head up, and when he sensed Feng Wu extending his mental power to probe outside the corridor, he knew Brother Wolf had come to the same conclusion.
A few seconds later, Feng Wu stood and yanked the door open in one motion. At the same instant, the metal-type ability condensed in his palm shot out and destroyed every surveillance device in the corridor.
At the same time, Lin An’an lowered his head and met the gaze of a white—well, perhaps once-white—cat, filthy all over and unrecognizable in its original appearance, sprinting desperately from the far end of the hallway.
With Brother Wolf there, the little cub was not especially worried about the cat’s safety. He even had the leisure to lift a tentacle and wave. “Yingji!”
Yo!
We meet again!
On the tenth day after being captured by the underground auction house, Bai Yang had finally found a chance to escape.
If he could, of course he wanted to flee just like this—run far, far away. Even if it meant living as a drifter out in the wild outskirts of Sin Star, he would still rather do that than ever return to C City.
But he could not.
His younger sister, Bai Yue, was still in the auction house’s hands. He had to find a chance to rescue her too and escape with her.
The auction house had separated the siblings and locked them up in different places. Bai Yang’s condition was better than Bai Yue’s, and he had already been sold during the previous auction. He had only found a chance to escape during the transport.
But Bai Yue was still being kept in the auction house’s holding area for goods.
After escaping, Bai Yang had gone out of his way to smear himself until he was filthy, dark, and disheveled, so much so that his original appearance was completely unrecognizable. Only then had he returned to the vicinity of the underground auction house, hoping to find a chance to sneak back inside.
As the next round of the auction was about to begin, every staff member’s attention was on the guests and the items about to go on the block. No one noticed the pitch-black shadow hidden in the night.
Bai Yang waited for his chance and slipped in. He had originally wanted to go straight to the holding area to find his sister, but the club was simply too huge, and he ended up losing his way. He even accidentally triggered the alarm.
The staff quickly discovered him, and Bai Yang had no choice but to stop looking for his sister and start running for his life.
He did not know the layout of the venue, so he could only run wherever there were fewer people.
The venue staff were far more familiar with the structure than he was. Seeing that he was about to be caught, Bai Yang’s heart filled with despair.
—Were he and his sister really going to be treated like objects, sold off at a high price, and from then on become playthings in someone else’s hands?
The road ahead was blocked, and Bai Yang could only grit his teeth and turn down another corridor.
There was no one in this corridor yet, but Bai Yang did not dare relax. Up ahead, the door to one of the rooms suddenly opened.
Bai Yang was already gasping for breath from running, but there was a vicious light in his eyes. He thought that even if he died, he would drag someone down with him.
In the next second, a vast surge of mental power swept out from inside the room, wrapped around his entire body, and hauled him inside.
The person inside quickly shut and locked the door in one smooth motion.
Bai Yang was sent tumbling uncontrollably through the air several times before the now-softened mental power caught him and lowered him to the ground.
Dizzy and disoriented, he lifted his head—and found himself staring straight into a pair of bright little bead-like eyes.
…A monster cub?
Lin An’an waved his tiny tentacles in front of the white cat’s beautiful blue eyes. “Yingji?”
Are you okay?
Bai Yang did not respond. He lay on the ground, breathing hard, and in the way he looked at Lin An’an and Feng Wu, there was obvious shock and wariness, with no attempt to hide either.
Voices from outside came through the door:
“Where’d he run off to? Why’s he disappeared again?!”
“Could he be hiding in one of the rooms?”
“Let’s search them one by one.”
“Search the rooms? The people inside those rooms are all people we can’t afford to offend—”
“The gentleman who bought the white cat is someone we can afford to offend even less!”
The voices opposing the room search fell silent. The people outside wordlessly divided the work among themselves, and very soon, knocking sounded at the door.
Before he had even caught his breath, Bai Yang’s body stiffened. He scrambled to his feet and rapidly looked around, trying to find a place to hide.
Before he could do anything, the monster cub in front of him suddenly bounced up on the spot. With a little tentacle, he grabbed Bai Yang and hopped together with him toward the huge floor cabinet.
The tiny cub’s body suddenly erupted with tremendous strength. He quickly pulled open the cabinet door, stuffed both himself and the white cat inside, and shut the door behind them.
Lin An’an thought about it and felt that still was not safe enough. So in the darkness of the cabinet, he groped around for a moment, found a rather large metal box, and dragged the white cat inside with him.
The little cub let out a sigh of relief. Only then did he notice that one of his tentacles seemed to be pressing against something.
Cylindrical. Some long, some short, some thick, some thin.
Lin An’an: “……”
Thinking of that Mr. D, who clearly played very wild, the little cub’s heart skipped a beat.
Just as the little white cat also lowered his head, wanting to see what he had stepped on, Lin An’an quickly stretched out a tiny tentacle and very accurately covered the other’s eyes.
Children shouldn’t be looking at things like this!
Not allowed!
![After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar]](https://i1.wp.com/panda-translations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20220822190944_300_420.jpg?resize=151,215 "After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar]")