Chapter 57 - Trouble

Interstellar Power Couple

Translator: Leslie

Quality Check: Mukyuu

First Published on Chaleuria

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Chapter 57: Trouble

As long as the twins in the larger child fruit were born safely, Xiao Lingyu would become the first ability user on Casweir to have twins.

The first, and maybe also the only one, for many years into the future.

To Xiao Lingyu, this piece of news was even more earth-shattering than when he found out he had an S-plus rank ability. That shock was soon replaced by overwhelming joy.

Twins! And they weren’t born from two child fruits, but from the same child fruit. That meant they were likely identical twins!

Would they look like each other? Would they be of different genders, or perhaps the same gender? Would they be a pair of boys or a pair of girls?

Xiao Lingyu was so excited that his face was flushed red. Hee fiercely hugged Lei Jue, the corners of his lips lifting unconsciously. “That’s it babe, I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep tonight.”

“Are you serious?” Lei Jue wrapped an arm around Xiao Lingyu’s waist. He didn’t know that having twins were so special to ability users, so although he was also happy, he wasn’t delighted to the point of nearly passing out like Xiao Lingyu. “How about you go run a few laps around the training grounds to calm yourself down?”

“Only a few laps? Even a hundred laps can’t diminish my current excitement! Twins! There has never been an elemental user who’s had twins before. Do you have any idea how special, how lucky this is?”

“No elemental user has had twins before?” It was Lei Jue’s first time hearing this. He knew that plant type users and animal type users could have twins, so he assumed that elemental users could as well and he just hadn’t heard about it before.

“In all of history, never. I might very well be the first one.” Xiao Lingyu quickly snapped a picture of the twins before putting away the fluoroscope. “Let’s keep this under wraps for now. Neither of us should mention this to others, okay?”

“Why? Wouldn’t it be good to let grandma and our parents know?”

“Of course it’d be good, but I want to savor this joy by myself for now. Just think of it as me being a bit selfish,” said Xiao Lingyu. “I am their father, and I am also the first one to know of their existence. It feels like I’ve been bestowed with some kind of unique power by the gods, and I’m the only one who has it. I just feel so happy thinking of them calling me, and only me, ‘daddy’ in the future.”

“Happy?” Lei Jue laughed and slowly released his hold around Xiao Lingyu’s waist. “You’re right, it is something to be happy about.” He nodded, and then abruptly lifted a leg, knocking Xiao Lingyu down with a kick.

Xiao Lingyu hadn’t thought that Lei Jue would suddenly kick him with such ungodly strength, adding his elemental power to it on top of that. Without anticipation, he fell to the ground with a ‘smack’, like the sound of pizza dough being slapped.

“You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself there, thinking that you’re the only one who’s going to be a father.” Lei Jue leaped from the tree and landed on the ground. Whatever injuries he may have incurred in his descent were healed by the time he stood up again, so quickly it was like they were never there in the first place. He stepped on Xiao Lingyu’s belly. “If they call me ‘mama’ in the future, I’ll beat you up for each time they do.”

Xiao Lingyu rubbed his stomach, laughing at him. “Babe, you don’t really think that I can’t defeat you, right?”

Lei Jue had just reached the door when he heard those words. He turned his head around and said, “You would dare fight back when I hit you?”

Xiao Lingyu thought for a bit. Damn, I really wouldn’t.

But so what? All exemplary husbands feared their spouses.

Seeing Xiao Lingyu lying on the ground grinning slyly at him like an idiot, Lei Jue paused to think before walking back and taking off a slipper. He placed his bare foot onto Xiao Lingyu’s revealed belly, sensually sliding his foot around as he began healing him. After he was done, right before leaving, his foot cheekily lifted up the waistband of Xiao Lingyu’s pants and rubbed against the black bush there.

The flames within Xiao Lingyu began to flare up again. It was a good thing, then, that Lei Jue quickly took his foot back before heading inside. Xiao Lingyu did not chase after him either. He continued lying there for a while before getting up, a smile still on his face, as if nothing in the world could spoil his good mood.

Right at that moment, the smaller child fruit shook again. Xiao Lingyu raised his head to look at his child, listening to the faint rustling of the leaves.

At the same time, in the manor on Peacepine Road, Yu Fenglai looked haggardly at the lone inspector standing in her study. “I’ve already done as you said, when exactly can I see my husband?”

The person standing before her was still very young. From his appearance, he looked to be about 26, 27. He had a very common, unmemorable face that would blend easily amongst a crowd. The only thing that commanded attention on him was his utterly dead eyes. He had been gently tapping the table with a crooked finger, and paused at the sound of those words. However, he did not answer Yu Fenglai’s question, simply continuing his tapping.

Yu Fenglai was already agitated from her talk with Lei Jue earlier. Her irritation grew from seeing the unperturbed expression on the person across her. However, this person was her only hope right now, so she had to bear with it.

It had already been five hours since she last called Lei Jue. She hadn’t slept all this time. She hadn’t even drunk a single drop of water. Earlier in the day, she had been worrying about how she might find news of her husband, but she had instead gotten unexpected visitors from the prosecutor general’s office.

At first, she had thought that these people wanted to hear her personally talk about her husband’s corruption, but to her surprise, after they asked their questions, the leader of the lot had called for her to talk alone with him. He made her call Lei Jue, and made her follow his instructions to strike a deal with Lei Jue. The man had said that he would let her see her husband if she contacted Lei Jue and made the bargain, but it had already been hours since she did that, and he still hadn’t fulfilled his promise.

“Do you think that… Lei Jue will agree to the deal you offered?” Just as Yu Fenglai was close to blowing her top, the man before her finally opened his mouth nonchalantly.

“I don’t know either.” Yu Fenglai thought that, if it had been the past Lei Jue, he probably would, but the current Lei Jue and the Lei Jue she knew were two completely different people. The current Lei Jue was brazen, sly, and would never let himself be trampled over by anyone. She had no idea whether threats would work on him.

The man didn’t seem very pleased with this answer, but he did not continue to question her.

Shortly after, the other two inspectors who had come with him knocked on the door. “The goods have been procured,” they said when they entered.

The man nodded. “Take her away.”

Yu Fenglai whipped her head around to look at him. “Where are you taking me?!”

The man smirked. “To see Lei Jianying, of course.”

Yu Fenglai had her doubts, but when she remembered that she had no way to tilt her current situation in her favor anyway, she gritted her teeth and followed those three onto their aircraft.

After the aircraft left, the manor returned to its usual daily peace and quietness. Shortly after, in the thicket behind the manor, a small tree unfurled its branches, as if it were a human stretching. If Lei Jue was around to see this, he would feel a sense of kinship with the tree, but Lei Jue wasn’t around.

Lei Jue had straight-up switched off his communicator. He had even pulled out its battery—Xiao Lingyu had asked him to do this. Since they were going to officially upgrade Carrera, and it would be too dangerous without her as a firewall, Xiao Lingyu temporarily had him stop using his communicator. This was to prevent others from secretly photographing their surroundings. Although the Holy Eagles Mecha Corps had their own firewall, it wasn’t quite the same as Carrera’s.

It was quite late, and Lei Jue had nothing to do, so he took his photon computer out to browse through baby supplies. Actually, he didn’t need to do this with grandma and Luo Yuling around, but right now he was trawling through the baby supplies section of various online malls so he would leave a trace for those watching him, and confuse them a little.

All the supplies he bought were for boys, as if he already knew his child’s sex. As he had predicted, netizens began guessing the sex of his child immediately after.

Netizen A: They can’t have already determined the kid’s sex yet, right?!

Netizen B: No way, even if they’re having a kid, it hasn’t been that long yet. How would they know?! They can’t have possibly checked at such a young age, right?

While the technology for it did exist, it was quite detrimental to the foetus’s development, so it wasn’t an option. Every other family determined the sex of their child after the four-month mark.

Netizen C: But if he doesn’t know the baby’s sex, why would he buy stuff for boys only?”

Lei Jue hurriedly logged into his smurf account to steer the conversation in the direction he wanted.

Pikachu: Hey, could Lieutenant Colonel Xiao and Lei Jue already have a child, except they just didn’t announce it?

Netizen B: But why would they do that? Any elemental user who’s just had a kid would be showered with blessings. It’s why basically everyone announces it ahead of time.

Pikachu: I figure they probably don’t want to feel too pressured. After all, no one can guarantee that the child will inherit an elemental ability.

Netizen D: When you put it that way, it makes sense.

Pikachu: I just have a feeling that Lieutenant Colonel Xiao and Lei Jue will give us a huge surprise one day!

Netizen F: What kind of surprise?

Pikachu: Maybe twins, or triplets. Quadruplets even.

Netizen E: Wake up bro, what are you smoking?

Netizen K: Are you a mental patient whose hallucinations haven’t cleared up yet? Did your doctor forget to give you your meds today???

Lei Jue’s shoulders were shaking from laughter. In the next instant, he bought two identical baby bottles, two identical caps, and two identical pairs of baby booties.

Without turning on the “anonymous” setting, his shopping would be displayed in full. The netizens who had said that he was ‘dreaming’, ‘smoking something’, and so on were stunned when Pikachu showed them screenshots of Lei Jue’s shopping history.

After Lei Jue had finished shopping, he put Luo Yuling down as the recipient. Then he looked up at the clock above the headboard of the bed. “Say Lingyu, do you think that Yu Fenglai will contact me again?”

Xiao Lingyu rubbed the corners of his closed eyes. He was quite tired after staring at large volumes of data for a whole day. However, he still replied. “If you want to speak with her, I can switch on the communicator for you.”

Seeing that Xiao Lingyu’s eyes seemed to be bothering him, Lei Jue went over and held Xiao Lingyu’s hands to heal his eyes. “What am I supposed to say to her anyway? Besides, it’s not like you’re unaware that I have no intention at all to agree to that transaction of hers. I’m just curious as to who it is that’s directing her to do this.”

With a swipe of Xiao Lingyu’s hand, large amounts of data condensed into a tiny blue cube. He gathered up that cube and shoved it into his communicator before opening it. “I had Carrera keep an eye on Yu Fenglai, and Carrera detected three other people around her. These three inspectors are from the prosecutor general’s office, but right now, I can’t determine which of them is the problematic one. Of course, there may be a chance that all three are crooked, but as long as we continue to investigate them, we’ll be able to find something. We have another problem right now.”

“What is it?”

“Someone’s trying to figure out the layout of our weapons storehouse,” said Xiao Lingyu. “I only just found out when updating the data earlier.”

“This… actually, that’s quite normal.” Lei Jue frowned. “After all, it’s just as you said. We’ve been guarding this weapons storehouse ever since we came here. This alone is already cause for suspicion. There’s also the fact that neither of us, especially me, have gone home even though the public knows that we have children on the way. Even though you’ve already hinted to the netizens that it’s so that I am better protected here, while the netizens might believe it, others might not.”

The newly-upgraded Carrera finished re-integrating herself with Xiao Lingyu’s communicator. Xiao Lingyu then opened Lei Jue’s communicator as well. Once it turned on, the first notification indicated two missed calls, both from Yu Fenglai.

Lei Jue thought about it, but did not call Yu Fenglai in the end, because he had never intended to agree to the deal from the start. Even a person with only half a brain would know that it was a trap.

Xiao Lingyu agreed with Lei Jue’s thoughts. The two of them never would have imagined, however, that while they could ignore trouble all they wanted, trouble would come looking for them.

At the beginning of each new year, the top leaders of Casweir would randomly inspect a few of the military branches. And this year, the Holy Eagles Mecha Corps was part of their visitation plans.