Chapter 13: Inviting a Wolf into the House??!!
“What time are you leaving today?”
Jiang Qing sat on the sofa watching TV while eating a molten chocolate cake he had just ordered Jiang Linmu to go out and buy for him.
As for why he didn’t ask the other servants in the house to fetch it?
Oh, that was because Jiang Qing was afraid they would work too hard, whereas Jiang Linmu—this little creature who had absolutely nothing to do—was the perfect candidate.
“Guess why I dragged my suitcase all the way here?” Song Lingchen looked at him and smiled.
Jiang Qing’s hand holding the spoon paused slightly. His gaze shifted from the TV screen to Song Lingchen’s face, and then slowly landed on the black suitcase placed by the entryway. He had noticed it earlier but hadn’t thought much of it.
“What do you mean?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
Song Lingchen’s smile deepened.
“It means, I plan to stay here tonight.” He stretched lazily. “I just got back, my place isn’t completely cleaned up yet, and hotels are so cold and lonely. So…” He drew out his tone, his gaze landing on Jiang Qing’s face, “Take me in for a few days?”
Before Jiang Qing could speak, Jiang Linmu, who had just come in from throwing away the trash, happened to hear the last few sentences and immediately bristled:
“What?! Song Lingchen, you want to stay here?! No way! Absolutely not!” He dashed over in one stride, blocking Jiang Qing like a protective mother hen.
“Don’t you have your own house? Why are you mooching here!”
Song Lingchen innocently spread his hands: “I just got back, the house is still ventilating to get rid of the smell. You can’t just make me sleep on the streets, right? Besides.” He looked at Jiang Qing pitifully, “Aren’t we the best of brothers?”
Jiang Qing ignored the tense, swords-drawn atmosphere between the two. He looked down and scooped a spoonful of cake into his mouth, the rich chocolate melting on his tongue. He swallowed it slowly:
“The guest room isn’t cleaned up.”
This was an agreement.
Song Lingchen’s eyes instantly lit up, and he pushed his luck: “It’s fine, I can sleep on the floor of your room, just like before.”
“In your dreams!” Jiang Linmu stomped in anger. “Brother! You can’t let him stay! He definitely has ulterior motives!”
Jiang Qing set down the cake spoon and pulled a tissue to wipe the corners of his mouth:
“He pays rent.”
Song Lingchen: “…”
Jiang Linmu froze for a moment, then, as if catching a hold of some leverage, immediately turned to Song Lingchen, speaking arrogantly: “Right! Rent! It’s very expensive! Can you afford it!”
Watching Jiang Qing’s calm “clearly priced, no deception” look, Song Lingchen couldn’t help but laugh out loud. He complied easily, pulling out his wallet and withdrawing a card, handing it to Jiang Qing:
“Prepaying for a lifetime, is that enough, Mr. Landlord?”
Jiang Qing glanced at the card but didn’t take it. Instead, he picked up his cake spoon again and faintly dropped a sentence:
“Depends on your performance.”
This ambiguous phrase made the corners of Song Lingchen’s mouth curve up even wider, while Jiang Linmu wore a breakdown expression that screamed “has my brother been cursed with black magic”.
Song Lingchen was in a great mood. Not minding that Jiang Qing didn’t take the card, he smoothly sat down on the sofa beside Jiang Qing and leaned over to look at the cake in his hands: “Something this sweet, aren’t you afraid of getting sick of it?”
Jiang Qing didn’t avoid his approach. He merely scooped up another spoonful and backhandedly stuffed it right into Song Lingchen’s approaching mouth.
“Taste it.”
Song Lingchen was stunned by this sudden feeding, the sweet, silky texture spreading in his mouth. He looked at Jiang Qing’s side profile inches away, yet the other person was already casually watching TV again as if nothing had happened.
Song Lingchen slowly swallowed the bite of cake, the sweetness seemingly seeping all the way into his heart. He chuckled low, speaking in a voice only the two of them could hear:
“Mmm, very sweet.”
Jiang Linmu watched the inexplicably harmonious atmosphere between the two of them that he couldn’t insert himself into anymore. Hugging the throw pillow his brother frequently used, he sat down on the single sofa nearby, puffing his cheeks in anger while the alarm bells in his heart rang loudly—
It’s over, inviting a wolf into the house! This guy surnamed Song definitely has bad intentions!!!!!!
————————————————
“Since we’ve gathered enough people, let’s play Reborn: I Am Still the Pig Farming King!!!” Jiang Qing eagerly pulled out three game controllers.
“What’s that?” Song Lingchen took the controller and asked strangely.
“You really don’t know anything, do you, you 2G network.” Jiang Linmu immediately seized the opportunity to counterattack, his earlier depression swept away.
“This is a super popular simulation management game recently!”
Jiang Qing had already neatly connected the equipment. A brightly colored game interface appeared on the TV screen—a cartoon-style farm with a few chubby little pigs wandering around.
“The player is reborn back to the countryside, starting from scratch to build a pig farm and eventually becoming a pig farming tycoon.” Jiang Qing introduced the game’s background with a straight face, his eyes shining brightly.
Song Lingchen looked at the adorably silly little pigs on the screen, then at Jiang Qing beside him, who was displaying such rare high enthusiasm, and couldn’t help but chuckle.
“How about it, scared?” Jiang Linmu raised his chin. “It’s not too late to admit defeat now!”
Song Lingchen raised an eyebrow and expertly gripped the controller: “Scared? When I was playing simulation management games, you were still playing with mud.”
“Heh, anyone can brag.” Jiang Linmu sneered.
“Let’s start.” Jiang Qing directly interrupted their meaningless bickering and took the lead to enter the game, clicking on the multiplayer mode.
At the beginning of the game, the three of them each possessed a small initial plot of land and a small amount of startup funds. They needed to complete a series of operations: pulling weeds, clearing rocks, building pigpens, buying piglets, and preparing feed.
Although Song Lingchen talked a big game, he hadn’t touched a game in over two years after all, so he was a bit rusty at first, his operations somewhat slow. Jiang Linmu seized the opportunity to mock him crazily:
“Hahaha, look at your plot, the grass is growing taller than the pigs! Hey, how does that saying go? Grass grows, pigs fly!”
“Oh my god, you installed the pigpen door backwards! The pigs can’t even get in!”
Song Lingchen couldn’t be bothered to deal with him and silently familiarized himself with the controls. Meanwhile, Jiang Qing on the other side had completely entered the zone.
His fingers operated the controller at lightning speed, his eyes focused. His weed-clearing movements were clean and decisive, his pigpen layout planning was reasonable and highly efficient, and even when buying piglets, he would carefully compare the growth cycles and market price fluctuations of different breeds.
Before long, Jiang Qing’s farm was already taking shape. Inside the neat pigpens, a few piglets were happily eating feed. Beside him, Song Lingchen’s and Jiang Linmu’s farms—one was still looking a bit messy, while the other almost triggered a “Swine Fever” warning because of Jiang Linmu’s haphazard operations.
“Brother! Go easy on us!” Jiang Linmu wailed.
Jiang Qing pretended not to hear. “Get lost, on the battlefield nobody cares about this or that.”
“Hey! Song Lingchen! Your pigs ran into my field!” Jiang Linmu suddenly yelled.
Song Lingchen snapped back to attention and realized he hadn’t kept an eye on his pigpen. A few pixelated little pigs were leisurely rooting around in Jiang Linmu’s vegetable patch.
“Sorry, didn’t keep an eye on them.” Song Lingchen smiled and operated his character to herd the pigs.
“You definitely did that on purpose!” Jiang Linmu was exasperated.
————Author’s Note————
[I’ve arranged quite a lot of people, and I want to write out everyone’s romantic timeline, trying my best not to just gloss over them.
Because when I read some NP (multi-pairing) novels before, even though I clearly loved the character designs, the author wrote too many characters, leading to very little interaction between them.
I can understand your feelings of perhaps favoring a specific couple, so I will try my best not to gloss over them. I’ll give every pairing a sweet spot to ship, rather than just making a certain top become a passerby with the title “likes Jiang Qing”, where in the end you have zero impression of him and only know he likes Jiang Qing.
Currently, this applies to the older brother, younger brother, Shen Zhize, Song Lingchen, and Su Lin.]
Translator’s Note:
- Inviting a wolf into the house (引狼入室): A Chinese idiom meaning to bring disaster upon oneself by letting an enemy into one’s home.
- 2G network (2G網): Chinese internet slang for someone who is completely out of the loop or living under a rock, since their “connection speed” is so slow they miss all the latest trends.
- Grass grows, pigs fly (草長豬飛): A comedic twist on the idiom “Grass grows and orioles fly” (草長鶯飛), which describes beautiful spring scenery. Jiang Linmu replaces the birds with flying pigs!
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