The miserable cries of mice echoed in the living room.
The light orange fur ball turned its back to the outside world and concentrated on eating with great relish.
I don't know what posture it used to eat, but when it turned back, its claws and mouth were cleaned, the ground was as smooth as new, without a drop of blood.
The mouse could only barely fill the gap between its teeth, but the weasel was still not satisfied. It opened its small round black eyes and looked at Wu Weiwei, then at Chen Ling. Its upper body stood up, with its short furry paws tucked in front of its chest.
Chen Ling understood what it meant and sneered, "Aren't you afraid that I will steal your food?"
The weasel shrank back, raised its head stubbornly, and the whiskers on both sides of its nose twitched a few times.
"There's no point asking. There's only one answer: no." Chen Ling has seen so many macaws begging for food in an adorable way that he has become immune to the cuteness of these small animals and is not moved for the time being.
Wu Weiwei softened his heart, squatted down, and whispered: "Mice are not easy to catch. I found the one I just gave you by sneaking into the green belt downstairs. I was almost discovered by the security guard because of it."
The weasel's two semicircular ears moved, and its exploded whiskers drooped down like an eggplant hit by frost.
Wu Weiwei felt so weak in his heart that he stood up and looked at his brother Chen, hesitant to say something.
Chen Ling folded his arms and stared at the little guy on the ground for a few seconds, then suddenly reached out and picked it up.
The weasel's fur exploded, making its small body look bigger. It curled up its two hind legs.
"You dare." Chen Ling warned with a dark face, "If you dare to fart, I will throw you back into the fishing net."
A cool breeze blew from behind, and then I felt a weight on my shoulder. It was the parrot that had crawled out from my ancestor's trouser leg and landed on my shoulder.
"Why are you here?" Chen Ling straightened the parrot and continued to look at the weasel.
The macaw was not afraid of trouble and repeated what the young man had said before: "Throw it back, throw it back."
The weasel's whiskers drooped even more, and it trembled, its body almost curled up into a ball.
Chen Ling raised it a little higher, until it was at eye level with him, "Don't act pitiful. Do you know where you went wrong?"
The weasel looked at him timidly and shook his head.
Chen Ling: "You are wrong. You shouldn't order others to do things for you. If you want to eat, you should get it yourself. Only by doing it yourself can you have enough food and clothing."
The weasel nodded hurriedly.
Seeing how well behaved it was, Chen Ling almost couldn't continue to teach it a lesson. He pursed his lips and continued, "But you are not allowed to use the upper body method."
This time the weasel did not nod immediately. His neck remained stiff for a while before he turned his head away and nodded at the air to the right, his eyes full of reluctance.
Chen Ling: “…”
He is not big, but he has a bad temper.
Weasels are naturally smart, especially when they are spirits.
It kicked its hind legs and swayed its body in the air. Its tail, which was tucked into its belly, drooped in the air. Its mouth opened wide, revealing its pink tongue.
Mrs. Sun cried out, holding her chest and said, "It, it, it, is it laughing?!"
Although Wong Tai Sin is scary, he does not look very lethal, especially in this situation where he is showing weakness.
Chen Ling wasn't really cold-hearted. When the little weasel tilted its head, he couldn't hold it anymore and quickly bent down to put it back on the floor.
Then he walked up to Sun Peifeng and said, "Mr. Sun, a weasel that is grateful will not hurt people at will. Besides, there is no blood on its body, which means it has never hurt anyone before it met us.
"You can continue to worship it, but you will have to burn incense three times a day and change the fruit offerings more often. If possible, it would be best to find a few more believers for it. With the offerings and faith, it will naturally no longer feel 'hungry'."
“This…” Sun Peifeng was a little embarrassed. Offering three times a day was no problem, but the difficulty was that he didn’t know where to find believers.
Chen Ling also knew that this was difficult and sighed.
Sun Peifeng thought about it carefully and said, "How about, Mr. Chen, you send the immortal to the temple, and I will fund the construction of a small side hall. There will be many people who go to the temple to burn incense, and there will always be people willing to worship Wong Tai Sin."
Chen Ling: "Have you seen any temples or monasteries in our North City where you can worship spirits?"
This question completely stumped Sun Peifeng, "It seems I have never seen it."
Just because the weasel cub in front of us doesn't do evil doesn't mean that all spirits are kind. If spirits only rely on the essence of the sun and the moon to cultivate, their cultivation will be very slow. Therefore, most of them believe in replenishing the body with the same kind of food, and like to eat living people, relying on blood and human flesh to nourish themselves and cultivate into human form as soon as possible.
Chen Ling: "In the coastal and northeastern regions, some people have built temples for the Five Immortals and worship them devoutly, but people in our North City and surrounding areas are superstitious about the Fox, Yellow, White, Willow, and Gray Immortals and regard them as evil immortals."
Temples and Taoist temples are generous and advocate the unity of all things. Only those who act in a pure and kind way are like-minded. However, they will not build temples just to collect a weasel. The most important thing is that weasels eat living things. Throwing them into temples and Taoist temples is really a provocation and a deliberate attempt to ruin the place!
If you don't get the offering, you will be chased around the house and beaten.
It's so miserable.
The weasel seemed to know that it was a ball that no one wanted, and it sadly scratched the ground with its claws, making a slight noise.
Chen Ling felt sorry for it and touched the hyacinth macaw with his shoulder. "Do you want a friend?"
Parrot: “No.”
He really didn't want anything to share his affection, and he refused to do so even if I repeated it more than once, expressing his wishes coldly.
Chen Ling took it off his shoulder and held it in his arms. "Don't you hate mice? The plants on Yuhe Mountain have recently started to sprout. When they grow up, there will be more and more mice. They will dig holes and give birth to litters of babies in them."
The sentence was too long for the parrot to understand, but it caught the key words, "rat, nasty, rat, nasty."
Chen Ling was not exaggerating. By then, there would not only be rats, but also snakes.
Therefore, if the small courtyard at the foot of Yuhe Mountain is not renovated and repaired, there will be many safety hazards in the future. Imagine that when you are sleeping comfortably, a thin snake crawls into your open, snoring mouth...
Chen Ling's thoughts were stopped, he swallowed and continued, "Compared to chickens, weasels love small mammals the most. They definitely don't have much interest in birds like you that have more fur than meat and can talk."
The weasel with its head hanging on the ground nodded vigorously, indicating that it had no appetite for the parrot.
The macaw blinked and yawned with its beak open.
Chen Ling continued: "In their diet, mice are actually at the top of the list. With this, mice will never dare to steal your cashews again."
The parrot understood now, and repeated: "Nuts, nuts, they are all mine!"
Chen Ling asked: "It won't hurt you, and it can help you catch mice. Don't you really want to let it go back with me?"
The macaw was silent again. It scratched the young man's clothes on his chest with its claws twice, looking awkward.
Chen Ling grabbed its dishonest claws and said, "Do you understand? If you do, give me a response." If he really wanted to take the weasel back, he had to ensure that the two elves would not have a conflict or cause bloodshed.
If the coordination fails, he can only think of other ways to relocate Wong Tai Sin.
Sun Peifeng felt that it would be a good thing if the weasel could follow Chen Ling. At least someone could keep an eye on it to prevent it from going astray.
But he still had a question in his mind, "Mr. Chen, if you take Wong Tai Sin back home, where do you plan to keep it? Will Mr. Zhao agree?"
"Don't worry about my master." Chen Ling said, "When all things revive, thousands of spiritual energies flourish. If it lives in such an environment, it should be very helpful for its cultivation. There is no need to offer sacrifices every day."
Sun Peifeng: "Everything is coming back to life? But it's summer now."
"Spring has just begun in Yuhe Mountain." said Chen Ling.
Sun Peifeng knew about the lifeless Yuhe Mountain. When he was opening the wildlife park, he had led the project team to conduct research and survey there in person.
It has been many years since that incident, but whenever I think of that bare and barren mountain, my heart chills.
It was too desolate, as if it was tightly wrapped in dark clouds, which made people feel depressed and scared for no reason, and they wanted to escape urgently... For a mountain like that, he really couldn't imagine how spring could come.
Sun Peifeng said "oh" half-heartedly, thinking that masters are different. Their words are so profound. It seems clear that he can understand what they say, but at first glance he doesn't understand them at all.
At this moment, Chen Ling felt his arms around his front being torn apart.
The parrot flew out of his arms, landed on the ground, and moved closer to the weasel.
Although the weasel is a carnivore, this one is still a cub. Looking at the big bird with a tail that is nearly one meter long, it trembled and stretched out its front paws. Once the opponent launches an attack, it will pounce on it.
The parrot paused, jumped forward twice, then stretched out its wings and flapped the weasel's head from a distance.
This is like a small family recognition ceremony. Just a pat on the head, and we become a family.
Chen Ling picked up the parrot and kissed its hard beak. The parrot shuddered and tried to get into the young man's arms, as if it was shy.
The weasel stood on the ground blankly for a while, then suddenly jumped onto Chen Ling's shoe, grabbed his trouser leg and climbed all the way to his shoulder, rubbing his head against the human's jaw.
After rubbing for a while, it stopped, its round black eyes full of confusion.
Just as he was about to use his nose to smell Chen Ling's scent again, a big hand inserted from behind, blocking him and the young man.
Looking in the direction of the hand, the weasel's tail stood up and it stepped back on the human's shoulders.
Jiang Yu reached out and grabbed the skin on the back of its neck and threw it to Wu Weiwei.
Seeing Wu Weiwei catch the weasel with both hands and press it into his arms, Chen Ling hurriedly called out: "Don't touch its butt, be careful of secretions."
The stench released by the weasel is not an invisible gas, but a secretion from the scent gland. The secretion is extremely smelly and toxic. If you are hit on the head by it, you will feel dizzy at best, or fall to the ground.
It won't kill you, but it's a bit of a living torture.
Wu Weiwei was startled and immediately took the weasel to the bathroom and gave it a good rub on the butt.
Jiang Yu's eyes were still on Chen Ling's shoulder. He raised his hand and brushed it twice, saying calmly, "It's shedding hair, and your clothes are dirty. Go back to the hotel and change them."
Chen Ling looked at the man's open palm, and sure enough, there was a light white hair.
I thought he was eating some strange aged vinegar again, but it turned out that I was overthinking it. He didn't care and said, "It's okay." But after a busy night, it was time to go back to the guesthouse and rest.
As soon as the thought came to my mind, I couldn't help but yawn a little.
Sun Peifeng said hurriedly, "You must be tired after working all night." He turned to his wife and said, "Go and clean up the guest room."
"No need." Chen Ling had to go back to the guesthouse, in case the breeding base couldn't find him when they needed him.
"It's too late now..." Sun Peifeng was interrupted as soon as he started to persuade.
Chen Ling told Sun Peifeng the truth about the situation. "This is the first time for both parrots to mate. If I live nearby, it will be easier for me to deal with any emergencies."
Sun Peifeng knew a lot about the Hyacinth Macaw. He knew that it had a beautiful name, the Hyacinth Macaw, and was a vulnerable bird species, listed as a first-class protected animal under the Convention on the Covenant. When the wildlife park in Beicheng was first built, in order to attract tourists, he also thought about importing two artificially bred parrots from abroad, but in the end, due to the high price and the concern that the climate in Beicheng was not suitable for the growth of parrots, he had to give up.
He had been busy with his son's affairs before and had not had time to take a good look at Chen Ling's parrot. Now, when he heard him talk about it, he could not help but reach out to the parrot, wanting to touch its fur to satisfy his craving.
The parrot stayed still obediently, but when the human's hand was about to touch it, it lowered its head and pecked hard.
The hard, hooked beak almost pecked the skin off Sun Peifeng's hand.
He gasped, covered the back of his hand and stepped back repeatedly, feeling extremely lucky that he had not brought it back. If it had pecked the tourists, the two purple and blue turtles would not have been enough to compensate.
Chen Ling flicked the parrot's head as a warning and apologized to Sun Peifeng.
"It's okay, it's okay. I just reached out and touched it myself." Sun Peifeng took a car key from the coffee table and said, "Let me take you there. There's a business car in the basement garage that's just big enough for you."
Wu Weiwei tugged at Chen Ling's clothes from behind, wanting to remind them that they came by car. But the words were about to come to his lips when he felt a piercing chill on the back of his neck.
He subconsciously turned around and met Jiang Yu's dark eyes, as if he already knew what he was going to say.
"What do you want to say?" Chen Ling asked.
Wu Weiwei swallowed and changed his tone naturally, "Li Hongyu hasn't arrived yet, shouldn't we wait for him?"
Chen Ling just remembered and frowned and asked, "Did he contact you again later?"
Wu Weiwei shook his head and said no, "I sent text messages and called them, but they either didn't reply or didn't answer. I don't know if something happened along the way."
Chen Ling was also a little worried, "Try another one."
Wu Weiwei nodded, took out his phone and replayed the call to Li Hongyu. Fortunately, the call was connected this time.
The signal on Li Hongyu's end was bad and the voice was intermittent. The people on this side hadn't heard clearly what he said. After a vague "I have something urgent to do, see you tomorrow", the phone was hung up.
Wu Weiwei: "Will we run into any trouble?"
"It shouldn't be." Chen Ling said, "There were other people talking in the noise just now. They might be on a mission."
Wu Weiwei put away his phone and said, "Brother Chen, let's go."
It was the middle of the night, and Sun Peifeng couldn't ask the driver to work overtime, so he drove himself.
Wu Weiwei sat alone in the front passenger seat holding the weasel, leaving the back seat to his boss and the financial manager, as well as a napping parrot.
The car was driving smoothly, with a slight shaking feeling, like hypnosis.
Chen Ling found a comfortable position, tilted his head back, closed his eyes and rested.
Jiang Yu tilted his head to look at the young man's profile. The moonlight penetrated the shadows of the trees, leaving a silver glow on his fair skin. Under his thick eyelashes, a narrow shadow was cast.
Chen Ling was sleeping soundly. Perhaps because his mouth was dry, he opened his lips and licked the shallow lines of his lip beads.
The water stains on the tip of the tongue wet the dry upper lip, leaving a wet sheen.
Jiang Yu shifted his gaze and looked straight ahead again. After a moment, he couldn't help but return his gaze to the young man's lips.
Wu Weiwei happened to be looking at the rearview mirror, and after noticing the man's gaze, he moved his body curiously and finally knew what the other person was looking at.
It was not the grass and trees passing by outside the car window, nor the quietly towering buildings, but he was looking at Brother Chen.
It's weird. People all sleep. It's such a common thing. What's there to explore? How can people not take an instant to watch it
Wu Weiwei became curious, sat up straight, looked at the rearview mirror again, and his whole body was steady.
He smiled awkwardly at the eyes in the rearview mirror, "Brother Jiang, I, I want to ask you if you want some water."
Jiang Yu: “No.”
The man's voice was a little cold. Wu Weiwei didn't dare to say any more nonsense. He held the weasel and faced the window, pretending to appreciate the night view.
Noticing that the already cold atmosphere had dropped a few degrees, Sun Peifeng tightened his grip on the steering wheel, calmed himself, and sped up the car a little.
There was someone on duty in the guesthouse. He heard a car drive into the yard and a staff member walked out.
Just as she was about to say hello, a young man holding a bulging backpack opened the car door and gestured to her to keep quiet, "Shh."
The staff was confused, but suddenly they saw the back door of the car being opened. A mature man in a white shirt got out of the car, holding a young man horizontally in his arms. A big parrot was standing on his empty shoulder.
The man is tall and has long legs. When he stands up with his feet on the ground, he gives people a strong sense of oppression.
Sun Peifeng whispered to Jiang Yu, "Mr. Chen has fallen asleep, so I won't say hello to him. Thank you for all your hard work today. I will definitely host a banquet for you some other day."
"I'll tell him when he wakes up." Jiang Yu left the message and carried him up the stone steps of the guesthouse.
The staff then realized that the young man with his eyes closed was the one who was brought in personally by the deputy director of the base's breeding department in the afternoon.
Thinking of the man's low voice when he spoke just now, she couldn't help but secretly look at his face and her face immediately blushed.
Afraid of waking up the sleeping person, she said softly, "Excuse me, are you and another gentleman staying overnight together? If so, please register at the front desk first."
Jiang Yu: "Wu Weiwei, go get another room."
"What about you?" Wu Weiwei asked stupidly.
Jiang Yu remained calm: "I'll spend the night with your brother Chen."
The purple-blue parrot turned its head to look at him, its head tilted, its eyes moving back and forth between Chen Ling's sleeping face and Jiang Yu's cold face.
"That's fine. Anyway, his bed is big enough for the two of you." Wu Weiwei took out his ID card and pushed it to another staff member at the front desk.
After completing the registration, he turned back to look at Jiang Yu: "Brother Jiang, give me your ID card so I can register."
Jiang Yu retracted his arm around Chen Ling's upper body, letting his limp body lean against his chest, with his chin naturally resting on his neck. He then spread the young man's legs apart and placed them on both sides of his waist, while the hand that had previously crossed the bend of his legs was now firmly supported underneath.
He used his free hand to pull a wallet from his trouser pocket and threw it over.
Wu Weiwei reached out to take it, but didn't dare to look at it. He found his ID card, took it out and handed it to the staff.
After the registration was completed, he put his ID card back and returned his wallet. Then he took the new room card and walked into the elevator with Jiang Yu.
Chen Ling's breathing was very light, spraying on the man's skin one after another, occasionally rubbing his forehead a few times. He slept soundly, but not very peacefully.
"Brother Jiang, is Brother Chen okay?" Wu Weiwei was a little worried. He was sleeping too soundly.
"Too tired." Jiang Yu pressed the back of the young man's head with his hand.
"Brother Chen has not had a rest since he received the order from the Sun family." Wu Weiwei said in a low voice, with complex emotions in his eyes.
His feelings towards Chen Ling were multifaceted. He regarded him from the bottom of his heart as an object of study and pursuit, as well as an employer who could provide him with adequate food and salary.
In addition to these, Wu Weiwei also has a secret thought, which is to be friends with an outstanding person like Chen Ling.
The claim that he had no father or mother was true, and that he was picked up by a blind man was also true.
The blind man had no money and had difficulty taking care of himself. Life became even more difficult after we adopted him.
After growing up gradually, Wu Weiwei began to learn how to read people's eyes, how to speak differently to different people, in order to get some alms.
He grew up eating at many different houses and learning different languages. In order to survive, he memorized his adoptive father's fortune-telling books, whose true and false origins he did not know, and started to tell fortunes for his adoptive father, whose health was deteriorating.
At the beginning, there was indeed business coming.
Many people were surprised that he could tell fortunes despite his young age, and they specifically sought him out for fortune-telling.
In fact, he knew that the other person didn't really want to tell fortunes, but just regarded him as a clown. Wu Weiwei didn't care, as long as he paid for the fortune-telling.
Later, his adoptive father contracted tuberculosis, a disease that used to be feared, but is now easily treatable. But Wu Weiwei couldn't afford to pay much, and after his meager savings were used up, his adoptive father refused to treat him no matter what.
The father and son, who depended on each other for survival, had several big fights over this.
Wu Weiwei remembered that it rained heavily that day. His adoptive father was leaning on the hospital bed. His sallow face was shining. His face, which was wrinkled like dead tree bark, was full of energy. His lifeless and empty eyes became warm.
He turned over, lifted his pillow with difficulty, unzipped the pillowcase, and reached into the pillow core stuffed with buckwheat husks.
"I knew you were a prodigal son. If I hadn't hidden the money well, you would have sent you to the hospital long ago." The adoptive father was very happy. He covered his mouth and coughed a few times, then nonchalantly fumbled for toilet paper and wiped his sticky palms.
Wu Weiwei remembered that he was almost crazy at the time. He paced back and forth in front of the bed angrily, wishing he could pry open his adoptive father's head to see what was inside.
"Why do you keep some money? If you're dead, who will you leave it to?"
The adoptive father said, "Leave it to my son. My son is only sixteen years old. He will live a long life and have plenty of time to spend." Thinking of something, he sighed and said, "It's a pity that it's still too little. I can't guarantee that he will have enough food and clothing for the rest of his life."
Wu Weiwei's eyes turned red and he clenched his fists and refused to cry out.
The adoptive father followed the subtle sound, turned towards Wu Weiwei's position, and stretched out his hand towards him.
The rough and dry hands scraped across the boy's face and began to grope from his skull downwards, "Weiwei, Daddy is dying, the mom you haven't met is waving at me..."
Wu Weiwei bit his lips tightly, and his tears spread out on the bed sheets.
Adoptive father: "You've had a hard time these years. You didn't go to school. At such a young age, you followed me around the streets and became a charlatan who was pointed at by others. What Dad regrets most now is that he didn't study hard when he was young. If he had studied hard, he wouldn't have been blinded by the ghost. If his eyes were not blind, he could have seen how handsome my son is."
Wu Weiwei had already realized what was going to happen, and choked up and said, "Can you please stop talking?"
"No." The adoptive father said, "Dad knows you are a good child, but I still want to warn you. We can be a little bit miserable and poor, but we can't cheat or deceive, and we can't do anything that harms the world."
Fearing that his son would go astray, he added: "If you can't do this, your father won't rest in peace in the grave."
Wu Weiwei burst into tears, grabbed his adoptive father's hand and said, "I know, I will do it."
The adoptive father patted his head and said, "Don't cry. Come on, take me out to get some sun."
The sunlight outside was gentle and warm, not dazzling, and did not burn the skin. Wu Weiwei moved the old man to a lounge chair on the narrow balcony and stood by quietly.
The sound of my adoptive father's breathing became fainter and fainter under the golden sunlight...
In the elevator, Wu Weiwei's eyes were red. He almost took a wrong step.
If Mr. Gao hadn't met Chen Ling, he would have been responsible for a bloody death. Even if he died and went to hell, he would have been slapped by his father, and he might even have been so angry that he would not recognize him.
During this period, Chen Ling had a great influence on him.
His calmness and decisiveness became Wu Weiwei's inner stabilization, and he was not afraid even when faced with danger. His attitude towards money was also admirable, he only took money for moral reasons and refused to take even a penny more.
This often made Wu Weiwei feel disgusted with himself for cheating and deceiving people to make money after his adoptive father died.
The elevator arrived and Wu Weiwei followed Jiang Yu out.
When he arrived at the door of his room, he hesitated and called Jiang Yu in a hoarse voice: "Brother Jiang, do you think that people standing in a muddy pit are qualified to be friends with innocent and clean people?"