Interstellar Power Couple
Translator: Lala
Quality Check: Mukyuu
Editor: Lala
First Published on Chaleuria
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Chapter 56: Actual Twins
It was about four in the afternoon over at the Holy Eagles Mecha Corps, while over at Lin City it was already something A.M. What was Yu Fenglai doing, calling people instead of sleeping at this time of night?
Lei Jue stared at the contact details that Carrera had checked before she displayed them on his communicator. The ringtone had finished playing once already, yet he made no move to pick it up.
“What’s wrong?” Seeing this, Xiao Lingyu asked, “Aren’t you going to answer?”
“It’s Yu Fenglai.”
“Her?” Xiao Lingyu snorted. “If she’s looking for you at this hour, it’s probably about Lei Jianying. She went to see the old man from the Feng family not too long ago, but the people over there straight up told her that the old man was out, so she’s probably grasping at straws in desperation right now. I don’t get how she can be so shameless though.”
“People like her put on such airs normally, but the moment they’re actually in trouble they’ll stoop lower than anybody. What would she know about shamelessness?” Lei Jue told Carrera to check Yu Fenglai’s location. He discovered that Yu Fenglai wasn’t actually home, so he told Carrera to project a map from his communicator. He stared at it for a while, lost in thought.
“What’s wrong?” Xiao Lingyu saw that Lei Jue’s expression wasn’t right. “Is there something wrong with the map?”
“She’s at the house where my parents used to live, when they were still alive. But as far as I know, the house should have already been sold. What’s she doing there?” Lei Jue looked at the buildings around the house, and after making sure that he wasn’t just seeing things, he took a screenshot. Right at this moment, his communicator once again began ringing.
It was Yu Fenglai again.
Lei Jue only waited a little bit this time before accepting the call.
“Who’s this?” Lei Jue ran his hands through Loquat’s fur absentmindedly.
“Lei Jue, I’m Yu Fenglai.” Yu Fenglai’s voice sounded dry, like the rustling of withered leaves. It almost hurt, listening to her. She said, “I want to make an exchange with you. There’s a villa on Peacepine Road. As you know, this was the house your parents lived in when they were still with us, and it’s basically the only thing they left to you. Now, I want to swap it with you for a few things.”
“For what?”
“Help me heal someone.” Yu Fenglai said. “As long as you heal him, I’ll give the house to you.”
“Give it to me? Haha…” Lei Jue began chuckling lowly, as if he’d heard some kind of joke. “Yu Fenglai, seems to me that you haven’t been sleeping very well these days. The Lei family is about to fall. If the house is under your name, then it will belong to me either way when the time comes. If it is not under your name, I can just buy it back myself later. Why would I need to agree to your deal? Has your brain rusted?”
“My brain hasn’t rusted, but, if you don’t agree, you definitely won’t get your hands on the house.” Yu Fenglai stamped down on her emotions before continuing, “There are still things left here that belonged to your parents. Do you have no desire to see them at all?”
“…Who do you want me to heal?”
“Just a businessman. He’s promised that as long as you can heal him, he will give me a huge sum of money. I’m doing this because I want to leave myself and Haige a way out of this. If you agree, I won’t touch a single thing in the house.”
“Is that so? I’ll think about it then, and give you a reply at this time tomorrow.” Lei Jue heard a sharp intake of air on the other end, as if the speaker were about to explode in anger. In the end however, all Yu Fenglai did was respond with ‘okay’.
Lei Jue hung up, got Carrera to measure how big his child had grown today, and then told Xiao Lingyu what Yu Fenglai had said, word for word.
“What a pitiful woman. Yu Fenglai must have thought that you would actually consider it.” Xiao Lingyu shook his head. “If she knew that you were purposely stalling her out of boredom only, the rage might drive her insane.”
“Come on, don’t say it like that.” Lei Jue looped his arms around Xiao Lingyu’s neck, “It’s boring if we understand each other too well. Even among couples, a certain degree of mystery must be preserved.”
“Okay then, I’ll try that again.” Xiao Lingyu grabbed Lei Jue’s hand and said, “Baby, are you really going to carefully consider it?”
“No, I’m just playing with her. But, this way, she’ll most likely contact that ‘businessman’, so I’ll leave the rest to you.” Lei Jue sat up as he spoke, walking in the direction of the room.
Xiao Lingyu smiled, and called for Carrera, telling her to ‘keep an eye’ on Yu Fenglai. He got up after that, unlocked his communicator, and projected Carrera’s backup of her source code onto the walls, all organised into different layers.
Lei Jue searched around his room for a bit, and afterwards took down the multi-functional retractable rod that they had used to hang their clothes up before from the closet. Then, the moment he stepped out the door, he caught sight of the groups of blue data and the source code everywhere. Xiao Lingyu’s left hand was holding his photon computer, while his right hand was agilely tapping on the screen of the computer.
“What are you doing?” Lei Jue asked.
“Upgrading Carrera. She has the ability to infiltrate all kinds of defense networks without being noticed, but now that everyone’s defense networks are being updated, I wanted to use this time to upgrade her a bit. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get into other people’s ‘houses’ in the future even if we threw ourselves against their ‘doors’. How would we go about ‘stealing’ things then?” Xiao Lingyu saw the retractable rod in Lei Jue’s hands after he spoke and paused, “What are you planning to do with that?”
“Checking on the kids.” Lei Jue pinched an unlit cigarette and raised it to his lips, walking a circle around Little Odd Flower. Then, under Xiao Lingyu’s amused yet helpless gaze, he rolled up his sleeves and began climbing.
Although he listened to Carrera tell him how much the fruits had grown each day, he had never really looked at them closely himself, afraid that he might accidentally break them or something. The fruits had reached the size of a grown man’s fist now, so he wanted to see what they looked like.
Lei Jue climbed near the fruit that was slightly bigger, and slowly reached the rod out to push aside the leaves. He stared intently at it for a while, and took a few photos of the fruit with his communicator.
Xiao Lingyu heard only the rustling sound of leaves. “How is it? Are our babies alright?”
“They’ve got a slightly paler colour than the primary fruit, but it looks like they’re doing pretty well.” A satisfied smile emerged on Lei Jue’s face as he spoke, and he went to check on the smaller fruit.
It was strange actually; even though they were only fruit, when he looked at them, he felt inexplicably really warm, and desired to be close to them. Indeed, blood was a mysterious thing.
Lei Jue pushed the leaves aside lightly, before abruptly raising an eyebrow. “Lingyu, the smaller fruit has a deeper colour, deeper than the primary fruit.”
Xiao Lingyu paused what he was doing, a little worried, “There isn’t a problem, is there?”
Lei Jue wasn’t sure either, so he remained where he was pushing the leaves aside and observed it for a little while more.
It was right then that the smaller fruit suddenly moved, ever so slightly!
Lei Jue thought that his eyes were playing tricks on him. He stared at it for quite some time. After about two minutes of staring, the fruit once again moved! That tiny quivering, so small it was barely even noticeable, shook Lei Jue so much his heart felt like it was going to leap out of his chest.
Seeing that Lei Jue wasn’t speaking, Xiao Lingyu leapt onto the tree too. His movements were quick and light, unlike Lei Jue, who had to climb up arduously. Xiao Lingyu jumped directly onto the branch beside Lei Jue.
“What’s wrong?” He followed Lei Jue’s gaze, asking quietly.
“It moved.” Lei Jue said. “It was very slight, but I’m sure that I saw it.”
As if to prove that Lei Jue was indeed telling the truth, the next moment, the little fruit swayed slightly again.
Just like Lei Jue, Xiao Lingyu was so surprised he almost forgot to breathe, terrified that the little guy would fall off the tree if it shook again.
“Xiao Lingyu, don’t grip so hard!” Lei Jue suddenly moved away, hissing in pain. Xiao Lingyu had subconsciously tightened his grip around his waist, and it had hurt, dammit.
“Sorry.” Xiao Lingyu rubbed Lei Jue’s waist, “Is this alright? Should we get a safety net under this?”
Lei Jue wasn’t sure either, but it was better to be safe than sorry, that way, if it really fell, there would at least be a buffer between it and the ground.
And so the couple got their hands on a large net, stretching it across the room in order to ensure that if the fruit fell, it would not hit the floor. After doing this, Xiao Lingyu continued his work upgrading Carrera, while Lei Jue read through an animal encyclopedia on the internet.
Apart from being able to attract and control animals, his wisdom energy could also be used solely to attack, although the energy expenditure would be very high. Therefore, in the future, as long as the situation wasn’t too dire, he did not plan to use his wisdom energy in that manner anymore. He wanted to raise a few animals like Blackfur and the ice snake first. He could communicate with them without a problem anyways, so they wouldn’t attack people at random. This way, when the children were born, they would have an additional form of protection.
Lei Jue had it all planned out.
On Xiao Lingyu’s side, Carrera had kept an eye on Yu Fenglai’s communicator and the devices connected to it by the internet as soon as Xiao Lingyu had given the word. It was a pity that after Lei Jue, Yu Fenglai did not contact anyone else, so Carrera ended up waiting for two hours without anything happening.
“Looks like either the person that Yu Fenglai has contact with is very powerful, and so Yu Fenglai is too scared to disturb him at this hour, or it’s that Yu Fenglai plans to contact them only after we make our decision.” Lei Jue said. “I’m leaning more towards the first option. You?”
“The same. But there’s one more possibility, and that is that the person Yu Fenglai needs to report the results to is in the same place as her.” Xiao Lingyu said, “It’s impossible for her to have the time right now to go looking for someone she can strike a deal with, who not only has the financial power to help her, but also needs healing. So it’s obvious that the other party must have looked for her first. But right now, Yu Fenglai has many eyes on her watching her every move. So who could it be that would dare casually make contact with her?”
‘…Someone who can get close to her without raising suspicions.” The cogs in Lei Jue’s head turned. “You mean the person who’s in charge of investigating Lei Jianying?”
“It’s only a guess.” Xiao Lingyu told Carrera to continue her observations and to report the moment something happened. He then contacted Xiao Zhicheng, telling him the general gist of things.
Xiao Zhicheng gave a few orders to the people under him after hearing the news, and then asked Xiao Lingyu, “How are the kids?”
Xiao Lingyu showed Xiao Zhicheng the pictures Lei Jue had taken just then, “They’ve been growing every day. The little one even moved a little today.”
“It moved?” Xiao Zhicheng was quite surprised, “Does that mean it’s going to come out soon?”
“Probably not, but it might mean that it’s beginning to take form.” Xiao Lingyu responded hesitatingly after looking at Lei Jue. He then asked Xiao Zhicheng, “Dad, have you thought of a name yet?”
He and Lei Jue had decided to call the bigger one ‘Xiao Xiao’, but they hadn’t yet thought up a name for the little one, so they wanted his father to decide. [1]
“I’ve thought of one, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be a boy or a girl, so I don’t know whether you guys will like it or not. I’ll send it over in a moment, and you two can discuss it amongst yourselves.” Xiao Zhicheng cut off the call after speaking, and as promised, sent Xiao Lingyu a name — Xiao Yu. [2]
“If it were a girl, it would be nice to use this name.” After he spoke, Lei Jue poked at Xiao Lingyu with his toe, “How about we use a fluoroscope to see what it’s like inside?”
“It won’t cause any harm, will it?” Xiao Lingyu didn’t dare do anything risky to the kids—it had taken so much for them to get here.
“Zero-damage X-rayed imaging. Also, we’re just taking a look, it’s not that fragile.” After he spoke, Lei Jue and Xiao Lingyu went up the tree again. He opened the fluoroscope and took a picture of the small one. The smaller one had moved today, so he wondered whether the younger one was developing faster.
The fluoroscope was something that Lei Jue had found in the infirmary. When he had taken it, everyone had thought it was because he wanted to check on the child ‘in his stomach’. Lei Jue could only play dumb as he took it back to the weapons depot to take a look at two fruit.
Under the fluoroscope, they saw a flesh-coloured oval-shaped thing inside the smaller one. As for the larger one, after taking numerous looks at it, Lei Jue realised that there were two flesh-coloured oval-shaped objects.
For some reason, Lei Jue was reminded of the peanuts he used to eat when he was little. With smaller peanuts, there might be two or three of them within the shell. The larger ones might hold even more.
Looks like they really did have twins, just not in the way they imagined.
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[1]肖潇: Xiao Xiao: The two characters are different despite having the same pinyin. The second ‘Xiao’ character (not the surname) means ‘clear and deep’ when used to describe water, or ‘beating’ when used to describe wind or rain.
[2]肖钰: Xiao Yu: Yu here means ‘treasure’. The rightmost character making up the word ‘Yu’ means jade, just like the ‘Jue’ in Lei Jue’s name.