Chapter 32
The moment he heard they were having hotpot for lunch, Guanguan immediately started slacking off at breakfast. The moment anyone asked why, he would pat his little tummy and say, “Need to save space for meat-meat!”
Wei Cheng was happy to indulge him. They would just eat lunch a little earlier.
At ten o’clock, Wei Cheng was in the kitchen preparing side dishes, while Guanguan stood on a little round stool directing him. “Guanguan loves this one, and this one too!”
“Which one do you love?”
Wei Cheng had not seen clearly. He picked up a plate of marbled beef cubes and peeled off the plastic wrap. “This one?”
Guanguan nodded frantically. “That one! That one!”
Wei Cheng quickly steadied him by the shoulders. “Stand properly, don’t fall. Then we’ll put in more beef cubes.”
“Big brother, Guanguan also wants to make his own fragrant dipping sauce!”
Wei Cheng pointed at the neatly arranged seasonings beside him. “You’re still little. You can only eat the sesame sauce and seafood sauce at the front. Don’t go randomly adding anything else.”
“Let Guanguan take a look!”
Guanguan very successfully opened the already unsealed sesame paste and squeezed some out without much effort. The rich nutty fragrance hit his nose, and he immediately swallowed.
Smells good!
Sesame sauce… and what else was there?
He looked here and there. Then, after spotting something, his eyes suddenly lit up, and his evil chubby paw reached for a bright red bottle.
Wei Cheng had turned around and opened the fridge, searching for vegetables and all kinds of mushrooms. He wanted to make a vegetable-and-mushroom platter.
When he turned back again, he saw Guanguan gritting his teeth and trying to tear open the chili sauce lid. Because he did not have enough strength, his big chubby head was even leaning backward with effort.
“Guanguan, that’s chili sauce!”
Wei Cheng quickly snatched the chili bottle from his hands. “You’re too little. You still can’t handle this kind of spicy.”
Guanguan’s mouth had gone red in a ring from biting the lid. His desire to taste chili had reached the peak of his little life. Pressing his hands together and shaking them up and down, he pleaded, “Big brother, big brother, let Guanguan taste a little. You can even call Guanguan big brother, okay!”
“Call you…” Wei Cheng could not stop laughing. “Guanguan, do you actually want to eat chili, or do you want to be the big brother?”
Guanguan lifted his little face and planted his hands on his hips. “Guanguan wants to eat spicy!”
Wei Cheng knew this little brat was like a kitten with stubborn fur—if he did not let him understand the depths of chili sauce today, then tomorrow, when he was not paying attention, Guanguan would still get curious about what it tasted like.
Normally, it was one thing to cook with a tiny bit of green pepper for flavor. But a chili sauce like this could truly burn a baby child’s mouth.
After thinking for a moment, Wei Cheng peeled back the foil seal on the chili sauce and dabbed the tiniest bit with the tip of a chopstick. “Come on, open your mouth.”
Guanguan obediently opened wide. “Ah!”
The chopstick touched the child’s tongue with the smallest dot of chili sauce.
Guanguan immediately clamped his mouth shut, as if afraid big brother would take it away. But after a few moments, his snowy little face turned bright red.
His expression grew grave. He scratched his cheek, then scratched his head.
Sure enough, even toddlers pretended to be very busy when they felt awkward.
Wei Cheng quickly poured him a bowl of water from the constant-temperature kettle. “Look how spicy it is for you. Hurry and drink some water.”
Guanguan gulped down half a bowl in one go from his brother’s hand.
Afterward, he wiped his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and giggled. “So spicy, so spicy.”
Wei Cheng laughed. “Now you know what spicy means, right? From now on, no sneaking chili anymore.”
Guanguan immediately jumped off the little stool and huffed his way into the living room. “Not eating it anymore, not eating it anymore!”
Wei Cheng had thought he was about to do something dramatic, but instead he ran off to drink the leftover milk from breakfast.
Looks like he really had learned his lesson this time.
After finishing the milk, he thumped back and hugged Wei Cheng’s leg in a spoiled little way. “Big brother, you should stay the big brother.”
Wei Cheng laughed. “You little thing, I didn’t even know you’d thought about being the big brother.”
Guanguan tilted up his face to look at him, utterly serious. “Being the big brother is tiring. Guanguan felt bad for big brother, so Guanguan wanted to be the big brother!”
That made Wei Cheng’s heart ache. He gently pinched Guanguan’s soft little cheek. “I’m willing to be your big brother. In this life, I’m willing. In the previous life and the next life, I’d definitely still be willing.”
The hotpot sat on the tea table in the living room. Beside it were a vegetable platter, a mushroom platter, marbled beef cubes, bright red lamb slices, plus a seafood platter with shrimp and oysters.
These past two days, Wei Cheng had been flipping through many toddler recipe books and had only then learned that children could actually eat some oysters in moderation. One oyster equaled five cups of milk, the books said, and had extremely high nutritional value.
When he was little, Wei Cheng had often eaten seafood. So even in the apocalypse, when nutrition was desperately lacking, he had still grown much taller than children his own age.
And lately, because he had been eating so much and so well, he had noticed that the height value on his personal system panel had increased by a few centimeters.
The rich tomato broth gradually came to a boil. Wei Cheng quickly picked out some cooked lettuce and lamb slices into Guanguan’s little pig plate. “Eat slowly. It’s a bit hot.”
Vegetables cooked in the sour, fragrant broth had their own special flavor.
Guanguan blew on the meat and greens coated in sesame sauce, then took one big bite.
Whenever he got happy, he wobbled all over like an adorable little roly-poly. “Hotpot really is the best!”
“Try this oyster too.” Wei Cheng had specially bought the freshest oysters from the live-water tanks in the mall’s fresh section.
Even cooked, the oysters were still large and plump.
Since it was his first time eating them, Guanguan was a little cautious. He took a small bite first, and only after deciding he could accept it did he start wolfing it down. “Very good good too!”
He could not say “oyster,” only “good good.”
Wei Cheng fished one out for himself too and swallowed it whole, nodding repeatedly at how fragrant it was. “It really is fresh.”
The curtains of the cozy little home were pulled open. Outside, who knew whether it was snowing or simply windy, but large snowflakes were sifting down.
The steaming hotpot brought a bit of warmth into this quiet, freezing snow day.
—
Wei Cheng was no longer deliberately avoiding going back to the old house to light the stove. After all, every ten days or so, they still had to spend one day in the old house.
But just in case, he had started deliberately moving things from the old house back into the safe house bit by bit.
Things like Guanguan’s toys, their clothes, and some pots and bowls.
The snow stopped and started again. It was nowhere near as bad as that seven-day blizzard had been, but it was enough to be annoying.
After all, Wei Cheng had only managed to clear half the snow in the yard, and by the next morning there was already another layer up to his ankles.
Even Guanguan was worried now. Propping up his chin with both hands as he looked out the window, he said, “Big brother, is it still going to snow? Duck Mama has had so many little snow duck babies. She must be so tired.”
“Then later, should we go talk Duck Mama into not having any more little ducks, okay?”
Guanguan turned around, his eyes shining. “Will Duck Mama listen to Guanguan?”
What Wei Cheng was actually thinking about was the fridge shelf that was already crammed full. At this rate, they might need to buy a brand-new fridge just for the little snow ducks. “Of course. Guanguan took in Duck Mama’s whole family. She’ll definitely listen to you.”
“Okay!” Guanguan clenched his fists, utterly serious. “When we go back, Guanguan will tell her she has to protect her body and stop having little ducks!”
Then he ran over again. “Big brother, what are you doing!”
Wei Cheng set the tools aside and smiled. “Big brother is digging for treasure.”
“Digging for treasure?”
Guanguan tucked his hands like a proper little farmer. “What kind of treasure? Something yummy?”
“Not something yummy, but something we can use to trade for lots and lots of yummy things.”
Wei Cheng tested him. “Master Guanguan, which brick do you think the treasure is under?”
If Guanguan could actually point to the right place, then they would not have to smash up every floor tile on the first floor.
The moment he heard the title “master,” Guanguan’s little brows went up. He really put on the air of a tiny expert, taking two steps left and two steps right. Because he was bundled up so thickly, he looked like a rather plump little penguin.
Pinching his chin with his chubby little hand, he said, “The treasure is under…”
He pointed randomly. “Under big brother’s feet!”
Wei Cheng looked down. That had actually been the very first place he ruled out, because it was right by the door. And Grandma had been an old-fashioned, superstitious sort—would she really bury gold under the entry mat?
Still, trust Guanguan and get rich!
He raised the sledgehammer. “Okay, then we smash here!”
Once the tile cracked, the mud brick underneath was easy enough to break.
And right then, Wei Cheng realized this section of floor really did seem a little different.
He dug for quite a while, until finally the pick struck something hard.
Wei Cheng kept going in one determined push. After some more digging, there came a crack—the sound of what seemed like a wine jar shattering.
“We found it!”
Wearing gloves, he and Guanguan scooped away the old dirt mixed with sand. The moment the edge of the jar appeared, Wei Cheng immediately said, “Guanguan, let big brother do it. Don’t cut your hands.”
He took out the small hammer and smashed the upper half of the jar to pieces, then reached inside and felt around until he pulled out a heavy bag.
“Big brother, Guanguan recognizes this!”
When they opened the sealed bag, there were several pieces of soft cloth inside. One by one, as they unwrapped them, a good number of gold ornaments appeared.
Two gold necklaces of moderate thickness, four large gold bracelets of normal size, and many tiny gold peanuts.
In his previous life, after he ran into that cheap uncle-in-law, the man had lied and said he had found only a few gold peanuts!
He really had not been beaten hard enough!
Wei Cheng had some memory of the gold peanuts. Every year on his birthday, his mother would give him one little peanut. Grandma had said that many of them had originally been saved up for Mother by her own mother, so once she had a baby of her own, she started saving one little peanut each year for her child too.
His parents’ work had been busy and dangerous, and Wei Cheng rarely saw them. There were not even any photos of them at home. Later, when Grandma Wei fell ill, she sold the house in Huan City just so she could care for her young grandson. But plans could not outmatch fate. She still passed away in the end.
The gold was the last security she had left behind for Wei Cheng.
There had to be at least five hundred grams of it. Grandma had probably meant for him to keep this money until he grew up and could buy a home and live off it.
Wei Cheng put the newly found gold jewelry together with the gold watch and gold necklace they had found earlier.
Like a proper little miser, Guanguan touched first the tiny gold peanuts, then the big gold watch, and grinned so hard his little baby teeth all showed. “Big brother, are we rich again!”
“That’s right. We’re rich again.”
Wei Cheng looked at Guanguan. He had thought Guanguan’s lucky-buff powers only applied to system prize draws. He had never expected him to be this powerful in real life too!
He looked at the gold watch inside the bag, then glanced over at the black coal by the heater stove.
Could it be that even finding resources like these was because of Guanguan too?
The more Wei Cheng thought about it, the more alarmed he felt. He raised a big thumbs-up. “Guanguan, you really are a living God of Wealth!”
Guanguan did not understand what “living God of Wealth” meant, but he knew his brother was praising him, and his little head practically lifted into the sky. “Yes, exactly, just publicize Guanguan like that!”
Now that the gold had been dug up, almost everything from the old house—except half a sack of broken coal and the generator—had been moved back into the safe house.
That way, Wei Cheng and Guanguan could leave at any time, without fear that some sudden change would expose their wealth and bring trouble.
Today was October 27, the seventh day since the survivors had entered the village.
These past several days, Wei Cheng had kept a gun on him at all times, but fortunately, that group of people had not come back to harass them.
Presumably, the villagers’ rice and flour were enough to keep them going for a while longer.
Unexpectedly, on the very night after digging up the gold, they heard movement outside again.
This time, it was not a tentative knock, but a woman outside sobbing loudly while holding a child. “Grandma Song! Grandma Song! Do you have any fever medicine? Please, save us! Save my child! I’m not a bad person—I’m Li Shumei’s granddaughter!”
The shrill crying of the child was especially piercing in the night.
