“Hel-lo, collecting one protection fee!”
Inside the hall with its pub-style decor, a milky, high-pitched toddler’s voice echoed.
Lu Shian, who was slouched over the bar counter playing a video game, sat up straight. Seeing no one, he leaned forward and peered down.
A toddler wearing sunglasses looked up at him with a filthy little face. The sunglasses were huge, covering almost half the child’s face and rendering her features completely unidentifiable.
“Hey kid, what did you just say you were collecting?”
Xu Lueduo placed her hands on her hips, raised her chubby chin, and yelled, “This street is gonna be covered by me, Copper-Gong-Gong Lue-zai, from now on! Every month you gotta give me…”
She held up two small, chubby fingers, but decided that was too much, so she pulled one back. “1 protection fee.”
“Ha! You little thing, you can’t even speak clearly and you’re already trying to collect protection money?”
Amused, Lu Shian walked out from behind the bar. Looking at her up close, the little creature seemed even shorter—her tilted little head didn’t even reach his waist.
She looked to be around two or three years old, wearing loose short-sleeved overalls. Her soft hair was tied into two crooked little pigtails, making her stubby frame oddly adorable.
He casually picked up a lollipop from the bar counter to tease her. “Can we swap the protection fee for a lollipop?”
“Okay.”
Xu Lueduo wasn’t picky. A protection fee was a fee, and a lollipop was a fee too. As long as it was given sincerely by someone else, it counted as an offering and could help her gain divine power. With lots and lots of offerings, she could help her mother restore her divine power!
“But I can’t take off the lollipop’s clothes. Help me take them off.”
It took Lu Shian a second to realize she meant tearing open the lollipop’s wrapper.
With a chuckle, he peeled off the wrapper in two or three quick moves, bent down, and handed the lollipop to the child. “Here you go. Now that you’ve got it, hurry home. We still have a business to run and no time to play house with you.”
The lollipop was quite large; Xu Lueduo had to hold it with both hands to keep it steady. The oversized sunglasses on the bridge of her nose slid down as she lowered her head.
She took off the sunglasses and hooked them onto her collar, stuck out her tongue to lick the lollipop, and looked up with her little head. “My mother told me to look for my dad. I can’t go back home.”
She was a mountain deity’s cub and was three years old before she learned she had a human dad.
Her mother said that civilization was advancing too fast, and humans no longer offered sacrifices or worshiped mountain gods, causing their divine power to gradually fade away. As a child born of a human and a mountain deity, she needed to find her human dad and complete this familial bond to become the next-generation mountain god.
Before fulfilling that bond with her dad, she couldn’t go back—her mother’s divine power wasn’t enough to open the hidden portal a second time.
“What do you mean you can’t go back? Were you… abandoned by your mother?”
Lu Shian didn’t finish his sentence in front of the child. He looked at her with pity once, then twice, and suddenly gasped in pleasant surprise, “Huh? Isn’t this literally a mini version of Brother Chi?”
“Eat pigeon? Where do we eat!”
Xu Lueduo’s eyes lit up, her belly letting out a cooperative rumble.
“Hahaha… We’re not eating pigeons!”
Lu Shian burst out laughing at the child’s reaction. Spotting someone at the entrance, he quickly held the child’s shoulders, turned her around, and shouted in excitement, “Brother Chi! Come look! This kid looks exactly like you, it’s hilarious!”
Brother Chi?
Xu Lueduo looked up.
Outside the door, a matte black Ducati had just come to a smooth stop. The man on the bike swung his long leg over to dismount, raised his hand to remove his safety helmet, and let it dangle at his side. The swooping black hair on his forehead cascaded down, revealing a high-bridged nose and a sharp jawline in the scattered light.
Such a handsome person!
Mother would definitely like him!
She wanted this man as her dad.
Xu Lueduo rushed forward and hugged the man’s leg, pressing her chubby face against his thigh and shouting, “Daddy!”
Lu Shian stood dumbfounded. Did Brother Chi really end up with a kid out in the wild?
Gu Yanchi, the man in question, looked even more bewildered. He shifted his leg slightly. “Wait, who are you?”
Xu Lueduo rubbed her face against the thigh she had managed to grab, shouting out in a crisp, clear voice, “Daddy, I’m your baby! Baby is hungry!”
“What’s wrong with you, kid? Who’s your dad? Stop spreading rumors!”
Gu Yanchi had disliked kids since he was young, especially a filthy one like this.
Feeling a bit disgusted, he held the child’s shoulders, gently pushed her back a little, and squatted down so his line of sight was level with hers. “Look carefully. I am not your dad.”
Once Xu Lueduo picked a target, she refused to let go. She pointed at Lu Shian and yelled at the top of her lungs, “He said the two of us look exactly the same! You are my dad, and I am your baby!”
Gu Yanchi looked up and glared at Lu Shian. “Your handy work—you handle it!”
Lu Shian rubbed his hair and looked at the two extremely similar faces, one big and one small, asking cautiously, “Brother Chi, are you sure you don’t need a paternity test? You two really look alike.”
Gu Yanchi stood up and slapped him across the forehead. “If you’re not using your eyes, donate them! Wouldn’t I know whether I have a child or not? Hurry up and take her to the police station. It’s our grand opening today, and we’ve got stuff to do later.”
“What stuff could we possibly have to do? Didn’t you turn your ancestral bookstore into a pig’s trotter rice shop just to piss off your dad? We’re just putting on a show—we didn’t even hire a waiter, and the prep work was only done for the two of us. Just lift the lid and scoop it out.”
Lu Shian muttered as he went to pick up the child, only to find her hands tightly clutching the hem of Gu Yanchi’s shirt. Seeing Gu Yanchi turn to leave, the child burst into loud wails, wiping her tears and snot all over his pant leg.
“I didn’t even touch her!”
Lu Shian raised his hands and took a step back.
Irritated by the crying, Gu Yanchi snapped, “Stop crying and speak properly. What do you actually want?”
He had never taken care of a child before, so his tone was much like how he talked to his fellow playboy friends—impatient, with a hint of cynicism, sounding quite harsh.
Xu Lueduo cried even harder, sobbing intermittently as her tears fell continuously like snapped strings of pearls.
Her mother had said that although she couldn’t remember what her dad looked like, he was bound to be the most handsome person in a crowd. During the days since coming down from the mountain, she had seen many people, and this one was the most handsome of them all. He was definitely her dad.
If her dad rejected her, she wouldn’t be able to become a mountain god!
“Brother Chi, don’t yell at her! Look how scared you’ve made her, crying so pitifully.”
Even Lu Shian felt a twinge of heartache listening to the child’s cries.
Gu Yanchi felt thoroughly annoyed. He looked down at the miserable, filthy kid. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
Lu Shian made a pushing motion forward with both hands. “You’re her dad, go hold her and comfort her!”
Gu Yanchi’s hands twitched with the urge to beat him up. The kid’s tears and snot were smeared all over her face, and the lollipop was stuck to his pants. He was disgusted beyond belief—how could he possibly hold her?
With great effort, he picked the kid up and placed her on a nearby stool, pulled the lollipop off his pants, threw it onto the table, and forced himself to ask patiently, “Speak up, what do you want?”
“Hungry…”
Xu Lueduo hiccuped mid-sob, stole a quick glance at him, and pushed her luck: “Not leaving.”