Chapter 19 What tastes good is the food, what tastes bad is the medicine
"Don't cry, don't cry." His crying made Qi Huan flustered, and he quickly walked to the little girl and squatted down to comfort her. The edge of the plate blocked his view just now, but now that he changed his angle, he could see that under the edge of the other side of the plate, there was a golden star coin quietly placed.
This is what the little guy meant when he said he had paid, right?
After coaxing him for a long time, he finally stopped crying.
"When did I say I wanted to sell you?" Qi Huan gently wiped Tuan Tuan's tears, extremely puzzled.
"The day before yesterday." The little fellow 'accused' with red eyes and sparkling tears hanging on his eyelashes.
"The day before yesterday?" Qi Huan frowned and tried hard to recall. He had no recollection of saying such words.
"Otherwise, it's just that, the day before yesterday, anyway, you said it, you also said that when you are under someone's roof, you have to bow your head or something like that." The little guy sobbed and spoke intermittently.
"Master Qingtang, that was just a joke, nonsense." Qi Huan looked up at the sky helplessly and sighed. At that time, he thought the little guy was a cat, and he just said something to scare it and make it obey. After all, when he was a child, Qi Qing said he would take him to sell him whenever he did something stupid.
"real?"
"Really? Even if I wanted to sell it, I wouldn't know where to sell it!"
The little girl opened her eyes wide in surprise, tears threatening to burst out on her porcelain-white face.
"That was also a joke." Qi Huan slapped his own mouth as a remedy. He was used to talking when playing games and sometimes his mouth was faster than his brain.
Qi Huan swore to the sky and coaxed him for a long time, explaining that he was just afraid that he had eaten something poisoned. Only then did the little boy stop crying again.
"Then let's go to the medical area now?" Qi Huan discussed with him when he saw that he had calmed down.
"No." The little guy shook his head vigorously with a look of resistance on his face.
"The meat of stone beasts is poisonous to the beastmen. It is very dangerous."
"I'm fine, no need to go." The little guy refused firmly.
"Are you really not feeling uncomfortable anywhere, like having a headache?" He said as he checked the little guy's neck and arms. They were white, tender and clean, with indeed no signs of rash.
They have been doing this for almost half an hour, and the little guy should have eaten earlier, so the rash should have appeared long ago.
"Really not." Tuantuan shook his head.
Could it really be an allergy, that some people react and some don't? Qi Huan frowned in confusion. Worried that he might have fallen asleep when Tuan Tuan felt uncomfortable, he took the little guy back to the attic and sat him on his bed side by side.
"Did you really think I was a bad guy before?" Qi Huan bumped Tuantuan's short legs with his own legs, trying to stay awake and chat with the little guy. He had to stay awake to ensure that if anything went wrong, he could call the base's medical team immediately.
Tuan Tuan hung his head and picked at the corner of the quilt. "Not really, you are better than a bad person."
"Which one?"
"She's good-looking, but very fierce, but has a good heart, a bad mouth, but cooks delicious food." The little guy counted on his fingers, and the word "but" came and went many times. Qi Huan could almost imagine the process of his own image jumping back and forth in the little guy's mind with these twists and turns.
"So that's why you didn't leave?" The attic windows had never been locked, so it would have been easy for Little Dumpling to leave the Human World Restaurant, just like how he broke in.
The little guy mumbled something in a low voice, but Qi Huan didn't hear it clearly, "What?"
"Nothing." Little Dumpling shook his head.
"By the way, tell me immediately if you feel uncomfortable."
The little guy nodded, and looked at Qi Huan in confusion, "If you are afraid that the stone beast meat is poisonous, why do you still make it delicious?"
"Seeing is eating. We humans have a saying, 'Delicious food is food, unpalatable food is medicine, and inedible food is building material.' The main point is that we can't waste anything." Qi Huan half-supported his chin and said half-jokingly and half-seriously.
"Isn't it because of greed?"
"Hey! Only if you can see through it and not point it out can we be friends." Qi Huan poked the little dumpling's shoulder in a serious manner and changed the topic to him, "Tell me, where do you live?"
"Nine-layer star field."
"real?"
"real."
"What's the address?"
The little guy looked up at Qi Huan, then lowered his head again, meaning, "I can't say."
"If you don't tell me, how can I find your family and send you back? I can't afford the starship ticket." Qi Huan teased him deliberately and opened his personal terminal, disabling the anti-peeping mode to show him his account balance.
"You are so poor." The little guy, with tears still on his eyelashes, stared in amazement at the long string of negative numbers.
"Hey, hey, hey, I want to be the number one interstellar tycoon in the Nine Star Region in the future." Qi Huan pinched his soft face and "coerced" him to withdraw his words, "It's a bit hurtful to speak too directly."
"I'm sorry, I'm just very poor at the moment." Tuantuan rubbed his cheek and obediently withdrew his 'edited' speech.
"Or do you remember the contact number of anyone at home? Just add them using my terminal?" Qi Huan looked at the address book and thought of another way. It was rare that there was a signal on the star network tonight.
"Even if there is a signal, it won't work. The network of the Waste Planet can only be interconnected within a local area. If you want to contact people in other star regions, you have to upgrade to a top-level personal terminal, or go to the communication hall and use the paid signal there. Otherwise, the other party has to be on the Waste Planet and have registered a local area number." The little guy's tone sounded a little helpless. He was obviously an adult, but he didn't even know this.
Could it be that the signal that was sometimes good and sometimes bad was just a local area network? Qi Huan said "tsk", fortunately he should still be able to afford the Internet fee, "Then shall we go to the command hall tomorrow?"
"No." Tuantuan shook his head vigorously again.
"It's not possible to go to the command hall. Why?"
The little guy hesitated for a while before speaking in a low voice, "The Jiufang family is an enemy of our family, and our relationship is particularly bad."
The Jiufang Family is the operator of the waste planet No. 7, the 'noble' Party A in Qi Huan's outrageous 250-year labor contract, and the evil slave owners left over from the interstellar era!
Qi Huan immediately felt a sense of solidarity. The slave owner was not a good person. At the same time, he also understood why Tuan Tuan didn't want to see anyone or go out. If the relationship was really bad, if he was discovered by the Jiufang family, he would probably be at the mercy of others and he would not be able to protect him at all.
"Then what do you want to do?" He held his chin in embarrassment. By the time he paid off the debt and saved enough money to buy the starship ticket, the little guy might have grown up.
"I want to wait for my uncle in your shop."
"What color is your uncle's hair?" Qi Huan's mind moved, and he remembered the silver-haired young man he had just met.
"Of course, the same color as mine."
As expected, there is no such coincidence. Qi Huan sighed silently in his heart, stretched out his thin and long fingers to rub the back of the little guy's head. The little ball's hair was soft and slightly wet. It was probably because he was sweating in a hurry just now. "Are you sure he will come?"
The little guy nodded, then shook his head, "I'm not really sure, but I smelled him."
"You mean, your uncle has been to the Renjian Restaurant before?" Qi Huan was about to support his chin with his hand as usual, when he suddenly found a faint gray color on all five of his fingertips, as if they were rubbed dirty somewhere.
"Even if it has come before, it may not come again, right?" Qi Huan rubbed his thumb between his index and middle fingers, but it wouldn't come off.
He looked around and finally fixed his gaze on the little boy's head. The roots of the hair behind the little guy's ears seemed to be a little white?
"What's wrong with your hair?" Qi Huan reached out to grab his hair for a closer look, but the little guy panicked and covered his head with his two short hands.
Qi Huan suddenly realized, opened his fingers, and shook his gray fingertips at him, "Dyed?"
The little girl froze, feeling a little overwhelmed after being exposed.
Silver-white hair! Qi Huan's mind instantly flashed with someone's beautiful long silver hair.
"Is your uncle very thin, very tall, wears a beast mask, has very nice long silver hair, and has a red-haired friend?"
Seeing that he was not angry, the little guy relaxed a little and nodded silently, "His hair is very long and beautiful, but I don't know much about the mask and his friends."
Qi Huan pounded his forehead in frustration, wishing he would have left his contact information earlier. Just now, he missed the opportunity.
Afraid of giving Xiaotuanzi a false hope, Qi Huan thought again and again and decided to wait until he found someone to confirm it during the day before telling him.
"Wait," Qi Huan thought of something else and looked up and down at the little girl in front of him, "How old are you this year?"
"Nineteen." The little dumpling squeezed out two words weakly.
"You're actually older than me?" Qi Huan looked at the little dumpling-like person in front of him in shock, and felt like something in his worldview was about to be shattered.
"That's different. Humans come of age at the age of 20, while we, the Qishou, come of age at the age of 36. So according to your concept, I should be around four years old."
This is more acceptable. Qi Huan let out a long breath, thought about it and felt that it was not right. "Thirty-six years old is an adult. If nineteen years old is converted into human age, shouldn't it be a little over ten years old?"
"The growth state of the strange beasts is different from that of humans. They are in a very young state for the first twenty years, and need to sleep for four fifths of the time. After entering the young state, their growth rate will be similar to that of humans."
Does calculating age have to be so complicated? Qi Huan rubbed his temples and felt that he was almost sleepy.
The little guy raised his eyes hesitantly, "One more thing."
"Well, go ahead."
"I ate the beast core in the cabinet."
"Huh?" Qi Huan was stunned.
"I was just a little curious about my uncle's aura, but when the level was right, I absorbed it as soon as I touched it..." The little guy blushed, "I was injured and needed energy to repair myself. It was also because I absorbed the beast core that I was able to turn into a human form again."
Qi Huan: ...
"But don't worry, I've compensated you and put it back in the tin box where the beast core was kept and put it back in the drawer." As if afraid that he would be angry, the little guy quickly added, pointing with his chin to the drawer where the buttons and beast core were originally kept.
Qi Huan followed his gaze, stood up and opened the drawer. Sure enough, the box was back. When he opened it again, it was filled with golden star coins.
"Where do you get so much money?" Qi Huan was puzzled.
The little guy lowered his head and said nothing again.
"Forget it, take the money back. The beast core was originally left here by your uncle. Since you ate it, you can just pay it back yourself." Qi Huan shrugged briskly. Since he said that the beast core had the scent of his uncle, it was most likely the silver-haired young man. They were indeed a family, and their lavish style was inherited from the same source.
Seeing that he was not angry, Xiaotuanzi breathed a sigh of relief, hugged Qi Huan's thigh and rubbed it, "Huanhuan, you are such a good person."
"Don't call me Huanhuan." Qi Huan protested by poking the little guy's shoulder, his tone sounding like he was calling a puppy.
"Since you live in the Nine-Layered Star Region, why did you come to the Waste Star?" Wouldn't you be discovered by the Jiufang Family when you came here?
The little guy lowered his head and pinched the corner of the quilt. "The starship I was on had an accident. Everyone else died. I was taken to the homeless area outside. I heard that those people wanted to ask my family for money."
Qi Huan touched his chin. The people who could do such a thing were probably the desperate criminals hiding in the vagrant district.
"I found an opportunity to escape. I was afraid of being found by them, so I used waste ore to dye myself black in the mine. Later, I took the opportunity to hide in the trailer of a hunting team and entered the base..."
"You're quite smart." Qi Huan shook his head. The child was vague in some places, probably because he was talking about something he didn't want to talk about. However, in order to avoid the pursuit of the kidnappers and the sight of the Jiufang family, he actually thought of dyeing his hair to eliminate his most obvious feature. He was really smart.
"If only I hadn't fallen asleep when my uncle came that night." The little guy leaned against Qi Huan's legs, sighed softly, and looked melancholy.
"Don't worry, maybe you will meet soon." Qi Huan comforted him, "Until then, just stay here and recuperate."
The little guy didn't say anything, but just rubbed his knees twice like a small animal.
Qi Huan looked at his black hair and smiled and shook his head. No wonder he chose black sheets and clothes. He insisted on doing it himself every time he took a bath. Maybe he would have to carefully touch up the color after each bath.
The two chatted for a long time about all sorts of things, and the little guy didn't show any signs of discomfort, so Qi Huan gradually put his mind at ease.
The light was dim by the window. Little Tuanzi felt sleepy and yawned loudly. Qi Huan was just about to let him go to bed when the little guy's stomach growled loudly again.
"Are you hungry?" Qi Huan looked at him with amusement as he awkwardly changed from covering his mouth to covering his stomach.
"Um."
Qi Huan rubbed Tuanzi's head, took his hand and walked downstairs, "I'll make you something to eat, and then go to sleep."
"Is it especially delicious?" Little Dumpling looked at him expectantly.
"It's very delicious." Qi Huan nodded. Is there anything in the world that could be more delicious than a midnight snack when you're hungry?
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