Chapter 64 - Bear Children
The audience broke into applause and cheers after the end of the dance. The Kongyou walked to the center of the stage for a curtain call. There was indeed a hint of a peac.o.c.k’s arrogance in its lofty and indifferent att.i.tude.
Fu Li followed the entire venue of excited cultivators in smiling and applauding. Turning, he saw that Zhuang Qing was still eating nuts with a lowered head. He tapped Zhuang Qing on the arm.
Zhuang Qing glared at him.
“Clap!” Young dragons had to have manners.
Clap clap clap. Zhuang Qing lifted his hands and expressionlessly clapped thrice. At the side, a sparrow spirit nimbly snapped a photo and swiftly posted it on the cultivators’ forum.
If this post had been done half a day ago, the bored cultivators would be eating melon seeds in delight. But things were different tonight, particularly when they saw Fu Li at the corner of the photo, dressed in the same model of suit as Zhuang Qing.
Daoyou A: Who would be expressionless when admiring something?
Daoyou B: Even Senior Fu Li at the side is clapping with more sincerity than Dragon Lord Zhuang Qing.
Daoyou C: We have a perfectly good cultivators’ forum here, let’s not learn the ways of the human online forums. Hyping two unrelated things? Exaggerated marketing? In the current era, who hasn’t mixed around in the human forums? There’s no need for these few tricks.
Daoyou D: OP definitely hasn’t been around the human forums much, the humans have much better tricks than these. They definitely won’t give it such a stupid t.i.tle, nor would they brag so awkwardly. At best, they would pretend to be a pa.s.serby and take a few beautiful shots of the Kongyou. Then, they would get several people to disguise themselves as pa.s.sersby to ask which guests are present. The OP would then kindly release another photo to let the ‘warm-hearted netizens’ accidentally discover the image of Dragon Lord Zhuang Qing clapping before making a conjecture about their relationship. With a discussion topic and the curiosity of pa.s.sersby, won’t the Kongyou gradually become the most outstanding dancers in the cultivation world?
Daoyou A: The daoyou above seems to be very familiar with the human world?
Daoyou D: No choice. There was a time I lacked money and wanted to earn a bit as a water army in the human world. In the end, I ran into a swindler online who cheated me of the three hundred yuan registration fee. That swindler got me to make a variety of posts and had me leave comments under all sorts of posts. I was exhausted from not sleeping for many days, but didn’t manage to earn back the registration fee and even had to spend a lot on electricity.
Daoyou C: Humans are really cunning and shameless.
Daoyou B: Daoyou above, please do not generalize. This is a forum for the cultivation world, not a forum for yao cultivators. If you put it like that, then the yao cultivators who were swindled can only be blamed for not having brains. Humans wouldn’t even believe such a stupid scam, only you yao cultivators would be duped so foolishly.
Moderator: Warning. This forum prohibits racial discrimination. Daoyou 234 and 235 will be banned from logging into their accounts for a month on the suspicion of large-scale personal attacks.
Melon seed-eating netizens: These two banned accounts must be fools?
What age was it already? Yet there were still humans who looked down on yao and vice versa. There were now quite a few human-yao marriages, and even Dragon Lord Zhuang Qing was half-human and half-yao. There was no meaning in continuing to talk drivel about these.
“Why do the people in the cultivation world stir up so much drama too?” Zhang Ke had taken out his phone and was scrolling through the forum. To him, these cultivators were blindly joining in on the action because they were too idle. He stood on tiptoe and glanced at the boss, who was eating and drinking tea while seated at the viewing platform. They even said he was admiring the show? If they angered the boss, their legs might end up broken.
The subsequent performances invited very average reactions from everyone, possibly because was too exciting. Only when the night banquet ended and the Qing Xiao Sect gave out thank-you gifts did the atmosphere heat up once more.
The Qing Xiao Sect was extremely generous – in the thank-you gift given to every guest, there was a bottle of medicinal pills in addition to some special souvenirs. To the financially-strapped cultivators, this bottle of medicinal pills was good stuff that was hard to come by.
Everyone was in great spirits when the birthday banquet came to an end. Some left by riding the clouds while others rode their own magic weapons. n.o.body could surpa.s.s the Kongyou in tastefulness – he left riding a red-crowned crane. Rays of light flashed in the skies for a split second. If not for the barrier concealing it, it would have been taken for a meteor shower by the humans on the ground.
Fu Li shook his head mid-flight. “I seem to have forgotten something.”
“You forgot to take the gift box given by the Qing Xiao Sect?” That was the first thing Zhuang Qing thought of.
Fu Li shook his head.
The purple dragon seated motionlessly at the Qing Xiao Sect’s guest seat: …
“Zi Xiao, what’s going on with you?” The red dragon circled the purple dragon twice. “Does the Qing Xiao Sect have such nice scenery that you can’t bear to leave?”
Moron, couldn’t he tell that he wasn’t able to even move an inch?
The black dragon and blue dragon glanced at the activity on their end, said their farewells, and then left without looking back, unwilling to say a single extra word. They were more clear-headed than the purple and azure dragon clans. The fact that it was Zhuang Qing out of the sixty dragons in the entire dragon race who eventually became the dragon of national fate was enough to prove certain things.
The purple dragon had provoked Zhuang Qing because he hadn’t forgotten the sense of superiority he felt when he was young, nothing more than that. At that time, they were little Dragon Lords coaxed and placed on a pedestal by hundreds of aquatic yao and thousands of yao, while Zhuang Qing was just a parentless, mixed-blood dragon without any support. Even if he was bullied by them, n.o.body would dare to say much.
Which was why humans were actually quite wise creatures. They understood certain concepts very early on, such as not bullying youngsters and to always leave a route out for everything. These three clans had gone too far those years and forced a young dragon no more than several tens of years old to live in the human world constantly on the run. Now that the other party was living well and hadn’t deliberately made things hard for them, the purple dragon instead delivered himself to the door. Leaving aside the fact that Zhuang Qing’s colleague couldn’t stand watching this any longer, even they couldn’t tolerate the purple dragon’s behavior.
If it wasn’t because he didn’t have a brain, what else could it be?
The disciple responsible for sweeping the main hall saw the purple Dragon Lord still seated motionlessly, and didn’t dare to step forward and disturb him. Only after the purple dragon quietly sat there in this manner for close to half an hour did the white and red dragon realize that the purple dragon wasn’t enjoying the scenery. He simply couldn’t move.
The two people panicked internally. What was going on?
“It’s Zhuang Qing,” The white dragon reacted the next instant. “This must have been done by him.”
The red dragon picked up the purple dragon. “Let’s ask him for an explanation.” Saying so, he floated out.
Along the way, the three dragons b.u.mped into the green-haired tortoise, who was taking his time to fly. The green-haired tortoise spotted them and wanted to fly faster, but still ended up being stopped by the white dragon due to the innate limitations of his race.
“Senior Minister Gui of the azure dragon clan,” The white dragon gripped the green-haired tortoise’s back. “Events like this have always been attended by Qing Yuan or Qing Yan, why have they not appeared recently?”
The green-haired tortoise struggled to no avail and had no choice but to say, “Dragon Lord Qing Yan isn’t feeling very well and Elder Qing Yuan is cultivating in seclusion, so neither of them could come.”
One didn’t have legs, and the other didn’t have a horn. How could they be willing to come?
“So that’s the case,” The white dragon released his grip, and the green-haired tortoise fell onto the clouds with a plop. Paying no heed to the green-haired tortoise’s sorry state, the three dragons flew off without even a glance back.
“Senior Minister, are you okay?” The accompanying junior official slowly helped the tortoise up and said softly, “Those Dragon Lords are still so overbearing.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” The three dragons didn’t seem to be flying towards the sea. The tortoise wondered doubtfully if they intended to go to the human world for some fun.
But the purple Dragon Lord couldn’t speak or move in his current state, so where could they be going to play?
“I remember now,” Fu Li suddenly came to a stop. “I used an immobilizing skill on that displeasing dragon and seem to have forgotten to undo it.”
This was why he kept feeling like he had forgotten something. “How about I go back and find them?”
“No need,” Zhuang Qing said. “Come with me to my place first. They’ll come knocking on their own later on.”
“That works too,” Fu Li nodded. “Let him suffer more.”
“I didn’t expect you to be fond of bickering with juniors,” Zhuang Qing had always thought that Fu Li was even more tolerant of most yao cultivators than the humans. He hadn’t expected Fu Li’s reaction to be so big tonight.
“Juniors who are not sensible should be taught a lesson,” Fu Li stated. “What’s more, they even bullied you. I’m helping you to vent while doing this.”
Zhuang Qing stared blankly. A long while later, he responded with some awkwardness, “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Fu Li replied as if it was only right. “As a yao, of course I have to protect my own yao. The way I see it, those bear children need a spanking. After a few rounds, they might still be salvageable. If they don’t learn well when young, won’t they just be harming others and themselves when they come out in the future?”
Zhuang Qing nodded. “You have a point.”
There was an indescribable feeling of awkwardness at being considered someone else’s yao and protected, but Zhuang Qing also had a bizarre feeling that this wasn’t bad.
He had probably spent too much time with Fu Li and was infected with the silliness in Fu Li’s brain.
“Zhuang Qing, stop right there!”
Fu Li turned around. Sure enough, the three bear children had arrived.