A Taste of Home and a Looming Shadow

After watching her mother busy in the kitchen for a while, Huang Xiu finally saw her take a break and sit down at the dining table.

“Mom, I need your help with something…” Huang Xiu dragged out the words.

Her cheerful voice had a playful lilt at the end.

*This kid… when she was a boy, I never found her this cute.*

*Is this what they call looks bias?*

Zhuang Wenli chuckled inwardly. She clapped her hands, stood up, and turned around. “What is it? Spit it out.”

“It’s just that…” Huang Xiu sat up. “My phone and other stuff are still at school.”

Before she could finish, Zhuang Wenli understood.

“Alright,” she nodded. “I’ll go get them for you this afternoon.”

“Thanks, Mom!” Huang Xiu beamed with joy.

Her mother’s initiative was always Schrödinger, sometimes she couldn’t wait to finish everything at once, other times she’d put off the simplest tasks.

Huang Xiu flopped back onto the sofa, grinning foolishly.

She was finally getting her phone back!

Without her phone these days, she slept earlier than the chickens and woke up later than the dogs.

It was so boring!

Although her hometown was near Ying City, the transportation wasn’t convenient, and the trip took a while.

By noon, her father still hadn’t made it back.

But the meal was no less lavish. Six dishes were laid out on the table for just the two of them.

Steamed pork ribs with rice flour, stir-fried peppers with meat, radish and pork rib soup, steamed egg with dried scallops and shrimp, blanched greens, and spicy stir-fried cucumber.

All of them were Huang Xiu’s favorites.

She hadn’t had home-cooked food in a month. She didn’t say it out loud, but she was craving it like crazy.

Bowl after bowl, her chopsticks never stopped. The food disappeared at a visible rate.

The bones on the table piled up into a small mountain.

Zhuang Wenli sat across from her, watching her child eat without any table manners, rice grains stuck to the corner of her mouth. Her eyelids twitched.

*My own child really has zero sense of being a girl. And this appetite… ordinary people probably couldn’t afford to feed her.*

“Slow down… slow down…” she murmured to herself.

Contrary to what Huang Xiu had expected, her mother’s acceptance was even stronger than her own.

She was already thinking about her future.

Maybe that was the wonder of parents in Daxia, they had a strange ability to accept things in the most unexpected places.

After eating their fill, Mom went to wash the dishes, actually, that was usually Dad’s job, while Huang Xiu retreated to her room.

The division of labor in their family had always been clear.

On odd-numbered days, Dad opened the shop alone in the morning while Mom cleaned the house; on even-numbered days, they switched. Usually, whoever cooked, the other washed the dishes.

Thanks to this clear arrangement, since Huang Xiu had joined the family, she rarely saw her parents argue.

Creak… Huang Xiu gently closed her bedroom door.

Their house didn’t have a study. It was a three-bedroom, two-living-room layout, and she slept in the smaller guest room.

The room wasn’t big, about ten square meters, with a window that let in plenty of light.

The bed was placed against the wall on the left as you entered. On the door side was a wardrobe, and on the other side was a desk and bookshelf.

On the desk was a yellowed multiplication table sticker.

On top were piles of old tutoring books, along with some desk lamps and other odds and ends she had bought before.

The drawers were filled with a mess of school supplies and trash.

Sometimes when Huang Xiu was too lazy to throw away trash, or when she secretly ate spicy strips and didn’t want to toss them directly into the bin, she would use the drawer as a trash can.

Her mother would grab her by the ear and nag her about it.

Thinking of that, Huang Xiu let out a laugh.

She really missed those times. Ever since she entered high school, she rarely had the chance to study at home anymore.

Her mother wasn’t as strict as before either.

The bookshelf was against the wall next to the desk, with four shelves. Comic books and novels were neatly arranged on them.

Toys like spinning tops, yo-yos, explosive robots, Rubik’s cubes, and magic rulers were stacked on top of the books because there was no other place to put them.

That was it, a small room that held the memories of seventeen of the best years of her life.

But as she grew older, the room seemed to be getting smaller.

Huang Xiu had always wanted a bigger room to store all the toys she had bought.

“I must win that scholarship!”

Miss Xiuxiu clenched her fist, flames of poverty burning in her eyes.

If she won all the scholarships for four years, she would have a full 800,000 yuan.

The room’s color scheme was very plain. The walls were covered with moisture-proof blue wallpaper, but there were no patterns.

Huang Xiu lay on the bed, burying her head in the quilt, wriggling like a maggot.

“Ah, the smell of home.” She squinted.

Even though she hadn’t been home for a month, the room was spotless.

The lavender scent on the bedsheets was still so strong, as if they had just been washed.

“Senior Yun Ning uses this same scent, too.”

Huang Xiu had a strong associative ability. The fragrance led her straight to thoughts of Yun Ning.

“I wonder how they’re doing now…”

****

“How is it?”

On the outskirts of Ying City, in a farmhouse, the steward Zhu Zhiyuan, wearing a gray trench coat, was striding forward. The staff of the Management Bureau had already sealed off the area.

They activated the “Ordinary Person Shield” one by one and placed them around the farmhouse.

As for the residents inside, they had been cleared out long ago.

The sky was clear everywhere around, but above the farmhouse, dark clouds hung heavy.

It was very conspicuous.

But if it weren’t for this, the Management Bureau wouldn’t have discovered the anomaly so early.

Professor Yuan squinted as he surveyed the farmhouse. Su Ming walked over and answered, “The situation is manageable. There are no ordinary people inside, but something’s off. It seems like there’s a trace of the Black Tower.”

“Let me go in and take a look.” The middle-aged man loosened his tie, took off his suit jacket, and tossed it back. Yun Ning caught it smoothly.

Yue Zhengyang and Li Qinyue exchanged helpless smiles. “Here he goes again.”

“Seriously.”

Yuan Fei complained as he strode inside. “Can’t you give an old man like me some free time?”

********

Huang Xiu took a nap.

She couldn’t help it, the bed at home was so soft, so perfectly shaped to her body, and she had just eaten, so she was really sleepy.

In a daze, she had a strange dream.

She dreamed that someone was calling out a surname, but it was too fuzzy, and the syllables were weird.

She couldn’t understand at all and was utterly confused.

“Can you speak human?” Huang Xiu couldn’t help shouting in the deep dream.

“What human language?” A slightly calloused but still smooth hand gently pushed Huang Xiu.

She woke up groggily, and the first thing she saw was her mother’s face.

“Here.” Zhuang Wenli handed her something. “Look, you were sleeping so deeply! And you were talking in your sleep!”