Chapter 8

When Sebastian, who was holding a camera, was discovered, the girl clearly looked a bit confused and shy, which made Sebastian couldn't help but take another candid shot. Then he shrugged his shoulders in an American way, apologized, and spread his hands with a smile.

The boy seemed to want to run over and argue with the "peeping" Sebastian, but fortunately, the girl held him back, shook her head, and the boy sat down again. However, perhaps because the girl had noticed someone taking pictures, she became a bit nervous and unnatural.

"That old foreigner... doesn't he know what portrait rights are?" Li Pu said loudly. Actually, he was just talking off the top of his head, not really sure if there was such a thing as portrait rights in our socialist China.

"Forget it, I'm not a celebrity. That old man must just like photography."

Chen Xian's cheeks turned slightly red, and she softly tried to dissuade Li Pu. But compared to this small incident of being photographed, she was more concerned about something else: "You said something important happened and you wanted to tell me? What is it?"

What Li Pu wanted to tell her was naturally the strange events that happened after he found the emblem this afternoon. However, with so many people around, and even a "peeping" old man nearby, he looked around like a spy and said, "Let's talk about it when we get back. It's not convenient here."

The girl nodded, pondered for a moment, and then said hesitantly, "Actually, I have something to tell you too."

"Hmm?" Li Pu tilted his head to look at the girl.

"Um, what do you think of my mom?" Chen Xian asked out of the blue.

"Your mom? She's great! Aunt Xin is well-educated and very open-minded. It's really enviable that you have a mom who can watch anime and read manga with you. Oh, and Aunt Xin is so beautiful. Every time we have a parent-teacher meeting, she stands out among the other moms like a crested ibis among sparrows..."

Li Pu rambled on about all the good things, then paused and asked curiously, "By the way, why are you asking this?"

"Then you must like my mom, right?" Chen Xian seemed to have made up her mind, took a deep breath, and looked at Li Pu seriously, "If my mom wants to adopt you, would you be willing?"

"What? Adopt me?" Li Pu swallowed, a bit taken aback.

"Um, because Uncle Li used to be very kind to me. Now Uncle Li is gone, and if you're alone in the future, it will be very troublesome." Chen Xian's small hands nervously fiddled with the hem of her skirt, "Mom said she can adopt a child, and she likes you."

Li Pu's eyes suddenly widened. Yes, he came from a single-parent family, his father was gone, and he didn't have much money. In the future, he had only two choices: either go to live with distant relatives in another place or become an orphan supported by the state.

No matter which choice he made, he would be separated from Chen Xian.

Unlike Qin Banzhang, Li Pu had never thought about being separated from Xiao Xian. But... if he thought about it seriously, his and Xiao Xian's connection was just because they lived in the same neighborhood and became close after a chance encounter.

This precious friendship was so fragile in the face of harsh reality. Although the girl was younger, she thought further ahead than he did.

Li Pu scratched his head. As a child from a single-parent family, he had secretly regarded Aunt Chen Xin, who often brought him overseas edition comic books, as a very important elder. Calling her "mom" wouldn't be a big psychological hurdle. But... if that were the case, Xiao Xian would be my sister in the future?

He looked at the girl sitting next to him, hugging her knees, tilting her head, and looking at him with expectation. Suddenly, he laughed: there was no need to think about it.

Whether as childhood sweethearts or as an adopted brother, his bond with Xiao Xian would not waver in the slightest.

With a conclusion in mind, Li Pu felt a weight lifted off his shoulders.

He smiled, raised his hand, and affectionately patted the girl's head, intentionally messing up her smooth, silky hair. The usually mischievous boy said seriously, "Thank you, for worrying about me."

"It's nothing." Chen Xian, who had been "petted," shrank her neck like a cat, and two sweet dimples appeared on her cheeks, making her look incredibly adorable. "If it were Mom who was gone, I think Uncle Li would have adopted me."

Li Pu thought this was true. His bastard father had always treated Chen Xian, who came to visit, better than his own son. But Li Pu, being a stubborn teenager, laughed and said without thinking, "You wish. If it were my bastard father, he would probably have raised you as a child bride."

If it were Qin Banzhang, this sentence would have made him lose his composure. Unfortunately, Chen Xian had been playing with Li Pu since she was seven, and they were extremely familiar with each other. She propped her face with her hands, tilted her head, and asked, "Would you want that?"

As soon as these words came out, even the young Chen Xian, who was just beginning to feel the stirrings of adolescence, felt that something was a bit off. The atmosphere between the boy and the girl became slightly awkward.

Li Pu held it in for a while, then suddenly stood up, raised his hands high, and shouted shamelessly, "My little sister is super, super, super cute! I won't give her to anyone! I won't trade her for anything!"

The boy's absurd shout made most of the people on the first floor of the hospital turn to look. Many of them knew Chen Xian, and some knew that Li Pu was a little hero who had saved Chen Xian during the disaster. They pointed and nodded at him with good intentions.

Li Pu, with his thick skin, didn't care at all. But Chen Xian's face turned bright red like a ripe apple.

"Hey~~~~~~~~ You're crazy! How can you... Ugh, you're such an idiot!"

This time, Li Pu had clearly gone too far. Chen Xian pouted and didn't speak to him until Aunt Chen Xian finished her emergency surgery and brought them back to the temporary refugee tent area.

Back at the tent area, Aunt Chen Xian indeed talked to Li Pu about the adoption, and Li Pu naturally agreed. Fortunately, Aunt Chen Xian, who had returned from abroad, treated her daughter like a friend and had a very open-minded approach to life, so she didn't ask Li Pu to change his surname.

After all this, Li Pu forgot to tell Chen Xian about the strange events of the day. His thoughts were in a mess as he hugged the blanket, and with the sound of crickets chirping, he gradually fell asleep.

---

【The Wasteland of Flesh and Blood.

Li Pu looked to the side but couldn't understand anything around him.

It was an indescribable substance flowing, contracting and expanding, like the walls of an intestine.

Why am I here? Li Pu didn't understand. The indescribable intestinal walls were making indescribable sounds, chattering incessantly, coming from above, below, left, right, front, back, and even in ways Li Pu could and couldn't imagine, penetrating his thoughts, resonating with the weak electromagnetic fields produced by every neuron in his brain.】

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