Chapter 14
The little hamster, oh he…
“I didn’t buy any food today!”
It was true. The little hamster had bought an abundance of daily necessities, emergency hardware, and outdoor expedition equipment, but he hadn’t purchased a single bite of food.
After parking the car in the underground garage, the more Yu Xiaoyuan thought about it, the more annoyed and aggrieved he felt. Refusing to step out of the vehicle, he slumped in the driver’s seat and placed five separate delivery orders—yes, five whole orders!
One-hour express supermarket delivery!
His uncle’s villa was located in the prime city center, with five or six massive supermarkets within delivery range, including high-end imported grocers and standard wholesale clubs.
Transforming back into a hamster, the little hamster scurried into the villa with his smartphone clenched firmly in his tiny jaws.
His uncle was downstairs reading the evening newspaper. The moment he caught sight of the little furball trotting inside, he set the paper down and scooped him up. “Little Yuan, tell Uncle—what did you buy today?”
“Squeak, squeak, squeak!” Caught! The little hamster has been captured!
Cradled in his uncle’s broad palm, the hamster kicked his hind legs in protest, glaring up at the older man and squeaking indignantly.
Yu Yuanzhou clicked his tongue, silently thinking that his reflexes weren’t what they used to be. Back in his prime, he could have scooped up a pair of running mice with one hand without breaking a sweat.
He gently prodded the hamster’s soft, pink belly with a fingertip. “Come on, let Uncle see the spoils of your grand shopping spree today.”
The little hamster sprawled in his palm, puffing out his cheeks and crossing his front paws over his chest in silent defiance.
Seeing the pout, Yu Yuanzhou reached for a roasted pistachio from the dish on the coffee table. He cracked the shell open, placed the pale green nut into the creature’s waiting paws, and gently stroked his milk-tea-colored head. “Feeling better now?”
“Squeak, squeak, squeak!” The little hamster hugged the pistachio tightly, but immediately launched into a passionate stream of squeaky complaints.
“If Yu Xiaoyuan doesn’t start speaking human this instant, I’m ordering mouse traps right now!” Yu Tianwei shouted from the foyer without even turning around. She kicked off her high heels, her voice carrying clear and sharp across the room.
Yu Yuanzhou watched the feisty hamster in his hand instantly shrink into a ball, tucking his neck in like a guilty child. It seemed the ancient law of sibling dominance truly existed; this little terror feared neither heaven nor earth, but he was terrified of his sister.
“I… I bought winter camping gear,” the boy’s voice murmured sheepishly. “And windbreakers, along with alpine and cross-country skis.”
As he spoke, he rubbed his chubby cheeks and pulled a neatly folded sheet of A4 paper from his mouth. It was the itemized manifest the store manager had printed for him. “Here. The manager also mentioned that if we want to camp overseas, buying certain gear domestically might be restricted, but those destination countries permit it. They can place the order on our behalf, and we just pick it up on arrival.”
“Oh?” Yu Yuanzhou’s eyebrows lifted in mild surprise. “That’s quite clever.” As an experienced businessman with a sharp eye for talent, he would have loved to recruit that manager into his own firm if the apocalypse weren’t looming over their heads.
Tianwei strolled over to inspect the sheet, but the little hamster promptly handed her another receipt—this one for maritime watercraft.
With the Seventh Catastrophe bringing torrential downpours and catastrophic floods, such equipment would be an absolute lifesaver.
“You managed to secure all of this in a single afternoon? Not bad at all,” Tianwei praised, genuinely impressed by her brother’s efficiency.
“I also got in touch with a senior from my university,” the little hamster added earnestly. “His family owns an enormous agricultural estate in the countryside. In two or three days, he’ll have ten piglets, sheep, and calves ready for me, along with chickens, ducks, geese, fruit saplings, and heirloom vegetable seeds. I’m very capable, you know!”
Though his words were modest, his dark, glossy eyes were practically brimming with smug pride.
His rounded velvety ears twitched with delight, and his front paws rested politely against his chest as he gazed up at his sister with sweet, adoring eyes. Tianwei noticed that as her brother basked in their praise, the tiny stub of a tail behind him wagged back and forth so rapidly that it blurred into afterimages.
“I see it,” Tianwei chuckled, affectionately rubbing the top of his head. “Our little hamster is truly exceptional!”
“Squeak, squeak!” Naturally!
Having finally received the validation he craved, the little hamster tilted his head back proudly, his eyes curving into triumphant crescents.
He was so utterly adorable that one couldn’t help wanting to shower him with kisses.
Unable to resist any longer, Tianwei swooped in, buried her face straight into his soft fur, and took a deep, luxurious sniff!
“Hey, that’s enough!” Yu Yuanzhou protested helplessly as his daughter scooped the hamster into her arms and bolted up the stairs, sniffing the little furball the entire way. “That is your younger brother! Your brother! Not a stuffed toy! Give him back to me!”
Shouting in mock outrage, the older man hurried after her.
“No way! Not a chance!” Tianwei had planned her escape route well in advance, darting up the steps with remarkable agility.
Clutched securely in his sister’s hands, the hamster rested his tiny paws over her knuckles, staring blankly back at his pursuing uncle.
“Squeak, squeak?” Are Uncle and Sister playing some kind of tag?
Later that evening, Tianwei sat cross-legged on the floor of the second-story lounge. Downstairs, Yu Yuanzhou was cataloging the bulk supplies that had arrived throughout the day, including a shipment of heavy-duty crowbars and blunt training swords.
The little hamster sat comfortably on the plush rug, watching his sister assemble an elaborate wooden hamster playground.
“Today, I ran into that tall man who carried me upstairs yesterday—the one who secretly petted me on the way up,” the hamster remarked, cracking open a sunflower seed with a sharp crunch.
He placed the tender seed kernel on one side of his paws and tossed the empty shell into a neat pile on the other.
Tianwei tested the tension of a running wheel with her fingertip, her head snapping around in surprise. “Mu Feiyi?”
“I think his surname was Mu. The store manager beside him kept addressing him as Chairman.” The hamster dusted off his paws, then picked up a pumpkin seed. This one was slightly harder for tiny teeth to crack; he had to nibble along the seam before prying the shell apart with his claws to extract the prize.
“You met him at a supermarket?” Tianwei pondered for a moment. “Did you go to that massive wholesale warehouse on Tieling Road?”
“Mm-hmm. I saw online that their wholesale quality is top-tier, and the prices are even cheaper than digital wholesale.” The little hamster nodded repeatedly.
“The quality there is indeed solid, but the conservative board members of the Mu family have been pushing to shut it down to build luxury real estate,” Tianwei said, tightening the bolt on the running wheel. “Residential plots in that area go for over seventy thousand yuan per square meter. To break even after redevelopment, they’d have to sell the new units at over a hundred thousand per square meter.
“The risk is far too high.” She didn’t mention that the whole venture relied heavily on whether the municipal government preserved the local school-district zoning. If that policy were abolished, the speculative bubble would burst instantly. The Mu family would bleed capital, and holding the property for a few more years was by far the wiser move.
“From rezoning and site approval to demolition and construction permits, the bureaucratic process takes at least a year. If everything goes smoothly, ground-breaking takes eighteen months; if delays crop up, it could easily drag on for two or three years. With current credit restrictions on corporate land-banking, the deal is a terrible investment that would tie up enormous liquid capital.” Tianwei shook her head. “Unless they had avoided that disastrous foreign exchange futures venture the second branch pushed earlier this year, it might have been barely feasible.”
“Oh?” Scenting juicy corporate gossip, the little hamster looked up instantly, his velvety ears perking up with twin twitches. “What happened? Tell me!”
“Old Master Mu selected Second Young Master Mu from the main lineage as his designated successor, and he is undeniably the sharpest, most ruthless leader in the clan. But the Mu family is massive, full of greedy branch factions who refuse to fall in line. If the Old Master weren’t still around, Mu Feiyi would have crushed those relatives long ago. Unfortunately, as the old man has aged, he’s grown increasingly sentimental and muddled.
“Take that futures trade at the start of the year: the second branch insisted they had insider channels. Rather than risking their own money, they tried to fund the project using corporate reserves. When Mu Feiyi flatly vetoed the proposal, the second branch rallied the third branch and several legacy shareholders to cry before the Old Master, whining that Mu Feiyi had no respect for his elders. They claimed that if he was this callous while the patriarch was alive, he would drive them all into the streets the moment the old man passed away.”
Tianwei’s voice lowered slightly, carrying a hint of genuine wariness. “And to be fair, Mu Feiyi’s methods truly are terrifying. He personally broke his own biological father’s leg before having him thrown out of the ancestral estate.”
“Whoa…” The little hamster covered his mouth with both paws, his eyes wide with shock. “That’s so domineering!”
Tianwei reached over and gave his pink nose a playful flick. “Domineering, my foot. And his older brother was a notorious playboy who once shoved his pregnant sister-in-law down a flight of stairs, causing a miscarriage. Mu Feiyi forced his own brother to kneel before the in-laws’ doorstep, kowtowing until his forehead bled in apology, before exiling him overseas for good. The family is full of scandals like that.
“The Old Master favored him early on precisely because he valued that cold, decisive ruthlessness. But in his twilight years, the patriarch has gone soft, terrified that Mu Feiyi’s blade will eventually turn on all his useless sons.”
“How exhausting,” the little hamster muttered, taking a vicious bite out of his pumpkin seed.
“Tell me about it.” Tianwei set a miniature stone bridge into place. “Want to give this running wheel a spin?”
“Sister, what’s this black cord attached to the side?” Setting his treat aside, the hamster clutched the wire hooked up to the wheel’s axle, staring up at her with innocent curiosity.
“You’ll understand once you start running,” she coaxed, gently ushering the little creature onto the plastic tread.
Stepping back, she switched off the overhead lights. “Run!”
The little hamster gave the tread a tentative pat. Soon, his natural hamster instincts took over, and his stubby legs began churning in a steady rhythm!
The room fell quiet, save for the rhythmic whir of the axle.
Moments later, a strip of LED lights wrapped around the room’s baseboard flickered to life, glowing with bright illumination.
Puffing and panting, the little hamster sprinted with all his might, eyeing the glowing strip with realization. Hmph! Deceitful humans! Always exploiting honest little mice for manual labor!
After barely a minute, the lights flickered twice and died out.
Tianwei flicked the main lights back on, only to find her chubby little hamster sprawled flat across the running wheel like a deflated pancake. His pink tongue dangled out as he panted for breath, too exhausted even to twitch his tail, looking entirely spent.
Remembering how her best friend had boasted that her pet hamster could run on a wheel all night long, Tianwei looked down at her thoroughly out-of-shape brother. “Sweetheart, you are seriously lacking in stamina. What happens if the power grid fails in the apocalypse, and your sister needs a little kinetic energy?”
She scooped the exhausted furball into her palm, gently scratching the flat top of his head.
The little hamster tried his best to maintain his dignity, but failed, feebly raising a tiny claw to flip her the middle finger.
“Oh, right!” He suddenly sat bolt upright as a memory sparked in his mind. “The supplies I bought at that wholesale supermarket today? He paid for everything.”
“Who did?” Tianwei’s heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be who I think it is, could it?
“Second Young Master Mu,” the hamster said, gently patting her palm to demand his leftover pumpkin seed.
Tianwei stared at him in utter shock. “He… paid for your entire cart?”
Mu Feiyi was notoriously cold and calculated; he never gave handouts. Besides, “Mu Feiyi doesn’t even know you, does he?”
“I guess not?” The little hamster shrugged, munching on his treat to restore the calories he had just burned on the wheel. “I just happened to bump into him while browsing the aisles, so I said hello and mentioned that my little hamster really likes him. Then I gave him a roasted peanut and walked away. When I went to check out, the assistant manager told me Chairman Mu had settled the entire bill.”
Tianwei slowly set the hamster back onto the rug, resting her chin in her hand as she fell into deep, horrified contemplation.
Based on everything she knew about the ruthless, predatory men in elite business circles…
Her eyes widened in sudden panic. Scrambling to her feet, she bolted toward the stairs, screaming at the top of her lungs:
“Dad! Daddy! Mu Feiyi is after little hamster!”
“He wants to sleep with my little brother!!”
Unsolicited generosity always hides dirty intentions!
I have to find a way to eliminate that man before he lays a hand on him!
“Squeak, squeak?” Wh-what?
Sitting on the carpet, the little hamster tilted his fluffy head, watching his sister vanish through the doorway in utter bewilderment.
What on earth was she screaming about?
Tiny little hamster, giant question mark.
