Dugu Bo: You Kid Started Human Trafficking?

"Yanyan?" Ye Lingling noticed her strange behavior and reached out to pull her, but the moment her fingers touched the back of Dugu Yan's hand, she was grabbed firmly in return.

Dugu Yan's palms were covered in cold sweat, chillingly and frighteningly damp.

Dugu Yan did not answer. She let go of Ye Lingling's hand, bent down, and grabbed Jiang Lan by the back collar of his penguin onesie while scooping up doro with her other hand, hoisting the person and the soul beast into the air like a pair of little chicks.

"Little Guga!" Caught off guard, Jiang Lan was hoisted mid-air, his two short legs kicking wildly in confusion as the orange flippers of his penguin suit slapped loudly. "Auntie, what are you doing! I still have a match to play!"

Ignoring him completely, Dugu Yan spun around and bolted straight toward the exit of the Soul Arena.

"Big Sister Yan? Where are you going?" Ye Lingling was startled by Dugu Yan's sudden action, and by the time she reacted, Dugu Yan had already sprinted several meters away.

"I have an emergency!" Dugu Yan shouted without looking back, increasing the speed beneath her feet even further.

Trapped under her arm, Jiang Lan kicked his short legs wildly in the air, the hood of his penguin onesie flipped completely over his face due to momentum as he let out a stream of muffled protests. "Little Guga! My match hasn't started yet! Put me down! We haven't bought the cake yet!"

"We'll talk about the cake later!" Dugu Yan roared in a lowered voice, her figure already flashing out the doors of the Soul Arena.

Her mind held only a single thought: return to the academy, find Grandpa, and repeat everything this white ball of fluff had just said, word for word.

If what this white ball said was fake, then so be it, but if it was real, the secret her grandfather had hidden from her for over a dozen years had to be cleared up today.

The receptionist was looking down, organizing registration forms, when her peripheral vision caught a blur darting out of the lobby in a flash.

She raised her head just in time to see Dugu Yan's back disappear out the doorway, a certain something seemingly still clutched beneath her arm.

What about the kid in the penguin suit?

What about that white ball of fluff?

She blankly swept her gaze over the empty reception desk, then looked down at the unfiled registration form on the table, where a round, little red thumbprint was still fresh.

"...Are we still registering this or not?" the receptionist muttered to herself.

No one answered her.

Hesitating for a moment, she picked up the registration form and stared back and forth at the column confirming participation.

The participant himself had run off, and what was worse, he had been snatched away by people from the Heaven Dou Royal Academy.

Dugu Yan was a familiar face at the Soul Arena, and she recognized her.

Since the person was gone, should this registration be considered an automatic forfeit?

The receptionist shook her head, picked up a pen, and drew a slash across the registration form before shoving it into a folder of voided documents.

Dugu Yan rushed out the doors of the Heaven Dou Great Soul Arena, clutching a fleshy dumpling in a penguin suit and a white ball of fluff to her chest as she sprinted down the street.

Passersby along the way cast sidelong glances, and a middle-aged man selling roasted flatbreads almost knocked over his stall, just about to curse before he realized that the wind-like blur had already run far away.

Her mind was as chaotic as a pot of boiling porridge right now, driven by a single thought.

Find Grandpa, let him examine her poison, and see if what doro said was true.

As for why she had brought Jiang Lan and doro along as well, she didn't have the bandwidth to care.

This brat was doro's master, and doro was the one whose mouth had spotted her poisoning. In case her grandfather asked, these two were living evidence—not a single one could be missing.

Dugu Bo's residence was located in the North District of Heaven Dou City, and it was a long way from the Soul Arena to the Dugu Manor.

Considering the carriage too slow, Dugu Yan took a shortcut directly.

Several winding alleys known only to locals linked together—few people, short distance. The only drawback was that the flagstone paths were poorly maintained and full of potholes.

Clamped beneath her arm, Jiang Lan felt like a pudding being shaken frantically across a bumpy road.

The hood of his penguin onesie covered his face so he couldn't see a thing, only feeling the whistling wind by his ears mixed with Dugu Yan's hurried panting.

"Auntie! Put me down! I can walk by myself! My match hasn't started yet!" Finally managing to pry open a gap in his hood to expose one eye, Jiang Lan kicked hard against Dugu Yan's arm.

"Your match can wait for another day! Right now there's something a hundred times more important than a match!" Dugu Yan panted in reply, her feet never stopping.

"What could possibly be more important than you calling me auntie?" Jiang Lan asked, struggling.

Dugu Yan almost tripped over her own feet.

Why did this little brat's logic always manage to hit the sore spot at the most inappropriate times?

"Auntie, run slower! doro is going to fall!" Jiang Lan shouted again.

Dugu Yan looked down and saw doro sliding out of the crook of her arm, her two short legs kicking desperately in the air while her large purple eyes were filled with absolute terror.

She hurriedly shifted her posture, pulling the white ball of fluff closer to her chest.

doro immediately grabbed onto her collar for dear life with both of her tiny hands.

"Do you even know the way or not?!" Jiang Lan started to question her as he looked at the increasingly dilapidated walls on both sides of the alley.

"I grew up in Heaven Dou City since I was a child. Do you think I know the way or not?!" Dugu Yan gritted her teeth, executing a sharp turn into an even narrower alley.

"Then why did you just turn the same corner twice?" Jiang Lan mercilessly exposed her predicament.

Dugu Yan didn't answer because her mind had been entirely focused on the poison just now, causing her to indeed take a wrong turn.

Yet she would never admit in front of a six-year-old child that she had gone the wrong way—absolutely never.

Dugu Yan came to a screeching halt in front of the gates of the Dugu Manor, where the two characters of the Dugu plaque gleamed coldly and rigidly in the sunlight.

The guards at the gate saw the young miss holding a child dressed in a penguin suit and a white furball in her arms, their expressions completing a complex transition from the young miss is back to has the young miss been swapped out with an imposter in a single instant.

"What are you looking at! Open the door!" Dugu Yan roared. The guards were so frightened they nearly snapped the door bolt, and two heavy doors were pushed open with a thunderous crash.

Dugu Yan barreled through the front courtyard, the atrium, and the corridors, knocking over three maids carrying tea trays, two servants sweeping the floor, and an unlucky gardener along the way who was swept right into a flowerbed by the gale she kicked up.

The entire Dugu Manor was in an uproar, the servants watching the eldest miss sweep past them like a whirlwind, still clamping a kicking penguin-suited child beneath her arm.

Everyone's reaction was uncomfortably uniform: freeze for three seconds, then pretend they hadn't seen anything and lower their heads to continue working.

"Grandpa! Grandpa!" Dugu Yan kicked open the door to the back courtyard study, the door panel slamming against the wall before rebounding, only to be shoved back open by her shoulder.

Dugu Bo was sitting at his desk studying a freshly harvested poisonous herb. Startled by the loud crash, his hand shook, and the herb dropped directly into his teacup, turning the tea into an eerie dark green that bubbled audibly.

"Yanyan? Are you tearing down the house?" Dugu Bo raised his head, looking at his granddaughter with a helpless expression.

Then his gaze landed on the two objects clamped beneath Dugu Yan's arm.

A human toddler dressed in bizarre clothes, and a white ball of fluff of an unknown species.

The human toddler's webbed feet were still flailing wildly in the air, and the white ball of fluff's bead-like eyes were practically screaming for help.

Dugu Bo fell silent for a moment before slowly speaking, "Yanyan, did you change careers and start human trafficking?"