Chapter 677
Chapter 677
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 677
>Chapter Title: Big Sister
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“Pain.” That was the only sensation Little Yang Kid could feel. As those sharp bone needles kept piercing his skin, the agony drilled straight into his marrow, and yet he couldn’t even pass out if he wanted to.
In this torment that made every moment feel like a year, Little Yang Kid’s mind started to grow hazy.
In his haze, Little Yang Kid seemed to see the Dragon King on the painting slowly stirring to life.
And as the mural on the wall began to shift, Little Yang Kid suddenly realized that this black serpent wasn’t the Dragon King at all. The black snake on the wall was merely the Dragon King’s shadow—the true Dragon King lurked on the other side!
As the shadow writhed faster and faster, dense clusters of dragon whiskers spread out from its edges, like the legs of a centipede.
Little Yang Kid took them for dragon whiskers, simply because he believed this was the Dragon King, and so the root-like appendages on its body had to be whiskers. In truth, though, they resembled some kind of thickly grown, dark, slender tentacles—or perhaps some kind of immature filaments.
With a faint sway of the dragon whiskers, the incense smoke drifting in the air began to dance along with them.
As the whiskers swayed, Little Yang Kid’s eyes widened more and more. He felt a powerful sense of suffocation pressing down on his chest—no matter how he gasped for air, it did no good.
Amid the gently swaying whiskers, Little Yang Kid caught a glimpse of one corner of the Dragon King in his suffocating haze: a corner covered in brilliant dragon scales.
The scales slid gently backward as if in water, revealing the murky eyes on their inner side—eyes that seemed capable of shrouding everything.
When Little Yang Kid glimpsed his own reflection in those dragon eyes, his mind melted away in an instant, swallowed into an unfathomably vast abyss of darkness.
He didn’t know how much time passed before a frail, elderly voice jolted him back to awareness. “Bow your head~~”
Shivering all over, Little Yang Kid jerked his gaze toward the painting ahead. The black Dragon King on the wall was just as it had been before. He wasn’t suffocating, and nothing had changed at all.
As he scanned his surroundings in lingering shock, he saw his parents gesturing frantically beside him, urging him to kowtow.
Seeing the bloodied dragon-scale tattoo on his own body, Little Yang Kid snapped awake from the dream. What had just happened was merely part of the entering-the-dragon-household ritual—not some plot by these relatives and elders to harm him.
Once he understood, Little Yang Kid hurriedly followed their instructions and kowtowed once more toward the mural of Ao Wu Bu Zhi.
After a flurry of activity with these fish-garbed elders, two incense sticks later, Little Yang Kid finally emerged from the Dragon King temple thick with the scent of incense.
“Mom, why didn’t you tell me entering the dragon household involved all that? It hurt so damn much.”
Little Yang Kid hissed through his teeth, reaching out to touch his still-bleeding tattoo.
He wanted to recount the experience to his parents, but for the moment, he didn’t know how to put it into words.
“You’re such a wimp. You’re a grown boy now—what’s a little pain?”
Chi Baihui shot Little Yang Kid a disdainful look and walked off with her hands clasped behind her back.
Seeing his own father’s reaction, Little Yang Kid felt an inexplicable pang of grievance.
It wasn’t the pain he feared—it was that they hadn’t even warned him about it.
Sure, this was his own dad, but along the way, he’d seen how Lv Zhuangyuan treated his son. He would never pull something like this.
Just then, Little Yang Kid felt a cool sensation on his arm. He looked down to see his mother carefully blowing a pouch of incense ash onto his wounds.
“Fifth Lad, don’t cry. Rub some incense ash on it, and the bleeding’ll stop. I’ll boil you up a couple of eggs when we get back to make up for it.”
Hearing her words, Little Yang Kid felt warmth spread through his entire body. His dad might be rotten, but his mom was just as he’d always imagined her from childhood.
“Mom, it doesn’t hurt.”
Little Yang Kid gently shook his head and helped her walk outward.
The process had been a bit rough, but now that he’d officially joined the family, it didn’t seem so bad.
When they returned to the Chi family boat, Little Yang Kid saw his dad stripped to the waist in the water. Before he could react, Chi Baihui grabbed his ankle and yanked him under.
Little Yang Kid flailed to climb back up, but Chi Baihui held him down forcefully.
He struggled in the water for quite a while, and even after he grew exhausted, he never felt short of breath.
Little Yang Kid seemed to understand something. He gave his hands a slight wiggle in the water, glanced once more at his father beneath the surface, and then began swimming swiftly underwater.
In that moment, Little Yang Kid finally grasped what the tutor in Oxheart Village had meant by “like a fish in water.”
He felt as if he’d truly become a fish, gliding freely through the water without the slightest awkwardness.
After frolicking underwater for a good while, when he finally started to feel winded, he burst through the surface and gulped in air.
Treading water with his feet, Little Yang Kid stared in awe and delight at the tattoo on his body. His ability to swim so fast underwater definitely had to do with the fresh ink.
“Hmph! Look at you. You think I, your dad, would ever harm my own son?”
Chi Baihui smirked smugly, pressed his hands against the boat’s edge, and hauled himself up.
“Dad, so now that we’ve entered the dragon household, we can swim fast in the water?”
Little Yang Kid swam to the boat’s side and copied him.
“You bet. This is a blessing from Dragon King Grandpa himself—can’t tell outsiders about it. It’s just for family.”
Little Yang Kid ran his hand over the still-swollen tattoo on his body, at a loss for words. Still, he figured his dad should’ve at least warned him first.
“Dad! Dad!”
A shout drew Little Yang Kid and Chi Baihui’s attention. Little Yang Kid saw it was his little sister, her face alight with excitement and joy.
“Dad! Guess who’s back!”
Just as she was bursting to spill it early, a small-footed woman shoved her aside from behind.
“Dad, I’m back. Still hale and hearty?”
This forthright small-footed woman bore a resemblance to Little Yang Kid’s mother. Judging by her age, she had to be his big sister.
But at that moment, Little Yang Kid felt no joy at meeting his big sister for the first time. Instead, he stared in horror at the black cloth strip hanging from her sleeve!
The Fa Cult! Little Yang Kid remembered—these were the Fa Cultists who had once besieged Oxheart Mountain! These people were worse than bandits or brigands, and now his own big sister had joined them!
As Little Yang Kid reeled in shock, he saw his own father walk over and inspect the black cloth on his big sister’s shoulder.
His face didn’t darken—instead, it lit up with delight.
“Oh?! So the letter wasn’t pulling my leg? You’re really working for the court now? They’re even taking small-footed women?”
“Dad, I greased a few palms. Small-footed woman or not—even toothless old codgers or kids too young to sprout hair—if they wanna eat the king’s grain, they can get in on it!”
The father and daughter chatted and laughed as they headed toward the boat’s canopy.
(End of chapter)