Translator: Mukyuu
Editor: Mokyuu
QC: Mukyuu
Though being the natural ability user representative didn’t mean becoming one of the parliament’s three leaders, Lei Jue was still surprised that everyone had acknowledged him to be the representative for natural ability users. His abilities were special — or if he wasn’t being humble about it, they were outstanding — and now that he was part of the Xiao family, he had a strong family background. But none of that changed the fact that he was still too young.
Lei Jue touched his nose and found himself a bit caught off guard by the results of the vote.
Xiao Lingyu was pretty happy about it. He whispered quietly into Lei Jue’s ear, “Babe, I just took a look. This round of voting was for the new representative for the natural ability users. The representative just has to get an office at the elemental user council and attend some of the important meetings. There are no special requirements, and so many people voted for you because they like you. Don’t feel pressured. Besides, if you run into any problems, I’m here to help.”
Mostly it was because he and Lei Jue had been paying attention to the kids; neither of them realized this round of voting was for the successor to the old representative.
No wonder people had left before the results. Turns out they had been the one to be confused.
Lei Jue rubbed at his temples in a fit of speechlessness. Under the watchful gaze of the audience, he couldn’t bring himself to say, “I really think flying back and forth between the two places is too much trouble.”
Though the speed of flight crafts was decent, it would still take quite a while to go between Bulacca City and Lin City. What if there were so many meetings they turned into a time sink?
Alright, for the kids and for a more stable future, he’d be the representative if he had to be.
Lei Jue handed Kangkang over to Xiao Lingyu and stood up to head towards the platform. But the round of clapping that rang out like thunder startled Kangkang, who had just fallen asleep, awake. Kangkang burst out an anguished howl and scrunched up his face, opened his arms, and cried for his “mommy” while asking for a hug. The tears kept dripping down his face, and instantly the only sound that echoed throughout the great hall was the sound of him crying. Thanks to his crying, Pipi also woke up and started howling.
Kids were like this. Sometimes they didn’t even know why they were crying; when another child near them cried, they’d cry along because they didn’t know what to be afraid of.
Xiao Lingyu struggled to soothe the children, but Kangkang insisted on going back to Lei Jue’s arms because he felt the most comfortable in his mommy’s arms.
Out of the three siblings, only Kangkang didn’t have wood natural abilities, so he preferred to be closer to Lei Jue. Since Lei Jue had very strong wood natural abilities, every time Kangkang was in Lei Jue’s arms, he’d be enveloped by a thin layer of healing energy, which was super comfortable.
Kangkang, unlike his siblings, didn’t have the ability to heal himself, so Lei Jue would give him a bit of healing energy every day to make sure he doesn’t ruin his stomach eating junk like his older brother did.
Lei Jue took their younger son from Xiao Lingyu’s arms — if he didn’t, the child’s voice was about to go hoarse from all the crying. He was still small after all, and it’d be a lie to say that Lei Jue’s heart didn’t ache at the sight of him crying.
The elder former natural ability user representative watched the scene in front of the display board and said kindly, “No rush, young man. Come up when you’re ready.”
Lei Jue heard the kind laughter coming from around him and didn’t feel awkward at all. He picked up Kangkang and walked up to the platform — he hadn’t thought that he’d become the representative of the natural ability users, but he did know that representatives had to give a speech.
Mr. Zhang was an earth elemental ability user from the Eastern Hua district and had served as the former natural ability user representative for nearly forty years. He saw how lively and skillful the new representative was — and he even had a newborn — and was naturally pleased. Though Lei Jue wasn’t an earth elemental ability user, he was still a natural elemental ability user.
“The child is fast asleep,” Representative Zhang said as he looked at Kangkang. By the time Lei Jue walked up the stage, the howling Kangkang was now calm and, despite the tear tracks on his face, his eyes were closed again, and it looked like he was about to fall back asleep. The cameraman even made sure to give him the sleeping child on Lei Jue’s shoulders a close-up and successfully made everyone in the audience coo at how cute he was.
“The child is a bit dense like me,” Lei Jue slowly patted Kangkang’s back and made a joke about himself, “First, I’d like to thank everyone for supporting me to become the natural ability user representative. Honestly, this was a very big surprise, so I don’t have any speeches prepared. If I had known I’d be chosen, I would have skipped eating on the way here and tried to find some videos… please don’t laugh; I’m serious… because I don’t know much about what a representative is actually supposed to do, so I’m a bit flustered right now. But since everyone is so supportive, I will give this my all and try to get everyone more benefits… like getting the elemental user council to give us fish or something during the holidays.”
“Fish?” Just as the audience thought Lei Jue had a great sense of humor, something funnier happened. Like a cat, Kangkang instantly woke up at the mention of “fish” and glanced around with his wide eyes, “Mommy, fish?”
Where’s the fish? Is it the fish-flavored nutrient liquid that grand-aunt gave him before?!
The audience laughed so hard their stomachs hurt. Even asleep, this child had an extra space set aside in his brain for food. What a foodie.
“Could you be a bit more demure? Now that you’ve said it on the stage, I can’t even cover up the truth for you,” Lei Jue sighed and said, “Go find Daddy. He has fish-flavored nutrient liquid.”
Lei Jue put Kangkang on the ground, and Kangkang rubbed his eyes before toddling his way over to the stairs leading down the stage. Xiao Lingyu held Pipi and walked over to pick him up. Those strong arms held the child tightly and then brought him back to the VIP guest seats.
The scene warmed many people as they remembered how their fathers held them when they were little. Though they must have been older than Kangkang, they had also been happy to be held by their fathers.
Lei Jue waited until Xiao Lingyu was back in his own seat before starting his speech again.
He didn’t talk for a long time but addressed the main points — he will work hard to protect natural elemental users’ rights and fight to gain ground for natural elemental users.
As a representative for natural ability users, the most important thing was for him to protect their rights and not be afraid of bringing problems to the higher-ups. Lei Jue had the background and the ability and, from the videos that the public had seen of him, he was someone with a righteous sense of justice, amazing skills, and a young man that was afraid to put his money where his mouth is. He was more than suited to be this representative.
Xiao Lingyu had wanted to take Lei Jue and the children back as soon as the voting was done, now it looked like they’d have to wait for news from the Parliament.
The couple held the children and sat in their pew. After a while, Xiao Lingyu’s communicator lit up with a message. It was a notification from Carerra: Sir, the target has arrived into the third flight layer.
Xiao Lingyu made no response.
After ten minutes, the vice-captain of the S47 starship discovered, to his surprise, that their starship had deviated from the flight path they set! What the hell!
“What’s going on?” Party Leader Li watched the red and green line on the main monitor and was furious. Under normal conditions, their starship should be following the green path the entire time, but now that unignorable red line kept reminding him that they were falling farther and farther away from the original flight path!
“Someone put a virus on our motherboard. As soon as we change the path, the virus will change the path back, and it’s almost instantaneous,” The vice-captain tried a couple of times with the same result. The cold sweat soaked through the back of his shirt.
If they couldn’t change it back, they’d be flying to heaven knows where! Then that meant their starship only had one possible outcome: becoming one of the “metal coffins” in the vast space!
Inside the coffin would be him and…
The vice-captain couldn’t finish that thought. Their starship had enough food and drink for a year, so they didn’t have to worry about eating or drinking. But the giant thing needed energy to fly. Though the starship did have light-absorbing mechanisms to help with the energy, if they only relied on light energy, the efficiency of the propeller would be greatly reduced, and the starship’s speed of flight would also slow to a death-crawl. At that rate, how long would it take for them to reach a supply station? And when would they get to their destination?
If they couldn’t get to an energy supply station, what use is all the food? They’d end up dying anyways!
Could they guarantee that the problem would be solved in a year?
They had clearly cut off all internet before they left, and because the S47 starship had been activated in the depth of a very deep mountain, it was very well hidden and well protected against detection. How did their opponents accomplish this?
As soon as he thought this might be the work of Mr. Single, the vice-captain felt like his head was about to explode. No wonder the Left Hurricane didn’t want to leave with them. Could he have guessed this would happen?
Feng Gu couldn’t reach his father and anxiously left the elemental user council prematurely, basically giving up his vote. But no matter how anxious he was, Party Leader Li’s escape was a secret, and Feng Gu had no way to ask for help in an obvious manner. He could only run around like a headless chicken.
At the same time, another “chicken” was equally anxious though this “chicken” didn’t have his head chopped off. He did feel like that dying from the anxiety though. He couldn’t shift into his human form in front of so many people, but if he didn’t, he couldn’t talk his wife into forgiving him.
That’s right, this “chicken” was Di Lin. He was currently in Zuo Feng’s clothes and wished desperately for the voting to end right this second.
Zuo Feng had been ignoring him this entire time. He was frantic and wanted Zuo Feng to give him some kind of reaction, so he kept teasing Zuo Feng, which made Zuo Feng become more upset and ignore him no matter what he did.
He could have died from regret. He shouldn’t have turned into his tree-human shape; then he wouldn’t have laughed so hard the leaves fell off when he discovered that Zuo Feng bought height boosting shoes. If he had been in his human form, he definitely would have only smiled, and it would have been a doting smile at that!
But as a tree human, he was quite… quite brainless and perverted. He couldn’t help it, but now he couldn’t change back either.
Di Lin was so worried he couldn’t find the energy to move.
Finally, Zuo Feng wasn’t tickled by Di Lin crawling around anymore. He breathed a sigh of relief and thought about finding some time to tell Di Lin that he wasn’t allowed to crawl around like a bug while inside Zuo Feng’s clothes. But just as he finished that thought, he felt something warm trickle down his waist…
Dammit, Di Lin, don’t tell me you peed on me!?
Now Zuo Feng really couldn’t hold back his anger anymore. His face turned stormy as he stood up and said, “I’m going to step out for a bit. If I don’t come back in time, Yan, you can vote as the representative for the Zuo family.”
Zuo Yan nodded and waited until Zuo Feng left to ask Xiao Lingyu, “Were there a lot of people in the bathroom?”
Xiao Lingyu shook his head.
But Zuo Feng didn’t head to the bathroom. He went straight back to the flightcraft and grabbed Di Lin, who was hanging onto his waist, “You…”
He had intended to ask why Di Lin couldn’t sneak out and go to the bathroom if he needed to, but he found himself swallowing his words when he saw Di Lin.
“I’m not crying; why are you crying?” Zuo Feng fell silent. The tears and snot would convince anyone who didn’t know better that Zuo Feng had raped the little tree person!
“But, but you weren’t paying attention to me….” Di Lin lifted his head up slightly and howled like a tantrum-throwing toddler with his eyes closed. Kangkang’s tears had dripped down while Di Lin’s tears sprouted out like they didn’t cost any money.
Zuo Feng: “….”
If he had committed any sins in the past, it must have been a sin as big as the size of Casweir for him to meet Di Lin in this life!
“Don’t you dare cry!” Zuo Feng shouted. “I didn’t mind that much when you laughed at me. After all, you turn stupid whenever you get tiny! But you dared to try and stir me up in the side meeting hall? You should be thankful that you have natural abilities yourself, or I would have burned you to death!”
“But you weren’t paying me any attention, *hiccup* and I was worried. Before, *hiccup*, when I did that, you would respond quickly. But this time you, *hiccup*, you didn’t. And my Offspring Tree is about to flower, so I can’t control myself.” The flower on his Offspring Tree was still there, so he instinctively wanted to… do it. Dammit, stop hiccuping!
“*Hiccup*, I’m sorry darling…” Di Lin shamelessly scooted closer to swing Zuo Feng’s hand. “Don’t be mad? I promise to try and not turn small anymore.” When Zuo Feng didn’t appear moved, Di Lin continued, “Then tell me what it’ll take for you to stop being angry?”
Half an hour later, Zuo Feng re-appeared in the side meeting hall of the natural ability users. But this time, he had a strange tree-shaped doll in his hand, about the size of two eggs. The doll was extremely cute. It had a round face, curled hair made of leaves and was dressed like a little fairy. “She” not only wore a pink lace dress and had a bow in her hair, but she also wore a pair of pointy crystal high heels.
Zuo Yan: “…”
That was a cursed sight for his eyes.
Lei Jue and Xiao Lingyu covered their faces in pain and forced themselves not to laugh!