A Chance Encounter with an Outrageous Grandfather and Grandson; the Wooden House Longed for Xie Yu

The wooden house was waiting.

On the former site of Kaiming Clinic, the three-story wooden house stood quietly. After realizing that Kaiming would not return, it began waiting for Xie Yu instead.

Its disappointed hopes for Kaiming fell doubly upon Xie Yu.

It had so many things it wanted to tell Xie Yu: the secrets of the Brown siblings, and it wanted to read with him.

The wooden house had never expected that the time it had spent reading with Xie Yu that brief afternoon would become such a precious, tender memory.

It missed Xie Yu so much.

Its attic window was open, and two more uninvited guests appeared in the front yard.

Once again, neither was Xie Yu.

In the lead was a slightly stooped old man with silver hair and gray eyes, who bore some resemblance to Wig Brown.

A boy in a magic hat followed behind him.

"Grandfather, aren't we going straight to find Third Uncle?" Bai Luo asked.

Miuan spoke:

"Child, you must understand that if a problem is resolved before it erupts, no one will remember it. Your Third Uncle should grow up too."

The old man approached the wooden house. Beneath his prominent nose and within his eye sockets, his gaze swept over the building.

At that moment, the wooden house trembled inwardly. It seemed to see the instant Wig Brown had first visited: the terrifying mage had knocked on the door, and everything that followed had spiraled out of control.

Standing before the wooden house, the old man slowly closed his eyes and said disdainfully:

"Besides, is everything Roman reports necessarily reliable? Are his findings and their beliefs necessarily the truth? If there's anything a man my age can still teach you, Bai Luo, it's to remain skeptical at all times."

"Third Uncle wouldn't lie to you, would he? He's very straightforward..." Bai Luo tried to speak up for Roman Brown.

"But he's stupid and full of himself," the old man said.

He showed his own child no consideration in front of his grandson, even though Roman was Bai Luo's elder.

[Third Uncle...]

The wooden house caught that key phrase and tried to use it to piece together the connections between the uninvited guests who kept arriving.

[More people from the Brown Family... No, I really have to tell Xie Yu. Xie Yu, what on earth are you doing? Don't you even have time to come see me? I don't want to blame you...]

The poor wooden house could do nothing. It could only stand there and record as much as possible, silently repeating every word they said to itself, hoping that when Xie Yu came, it could repeat it all to him without missing a word.

"All right, Third Uncle can be a little willful, but Aunt Cynthia is very careful." Bai Luo caught up with the old man, trying to ease the strange family atmosphere.

Miuan seemed to sense something and looked up at the attic.

"She is careful, but being careful isn't necessarily useful. For example, regarding Sealed Artifact 3-0771... Bai Luo, would you have reached the same conclusion she did?"

The boy called Bai Luo was immediately stumped. He didn't quite dare answer, unwilling either to speak ill of Roman and Cynthia or to upset his grandfather.

"Most of the signs she reported were accurate, but the more accurate they are, the further off the conclusion may be." Miuan stroked the wooden house's wall.

If it had been able to jump, the wooden house probably would have leaped. It didn't want those aged, damp, sticky fingertips touching it. The feeling this old man gave it was far too much like Wig Brown's, and it hated Wig Brown!

"Did Third Uncle and the others go in the wrong direction?" Bai Luo looked up, studying the wooden house curiously.

Miuan sighed and spoke slowly:

"That fellow Wig Brown had already established a fairly stable relationship of supply and demand with 3-0771 and gained its recognition. Roman knows very little about sealed artifacts, which is why he believed that nonsense about the sealed artifact turning on its master. That's where his stupidity lies."

He wanted to teach his grandson, hoping Bai Luo would gain a deeper understanding of the specific affairs of North Province and get some practice. So he spoke as though withholding the answer, waiting for the moment when it would "suddenly dawn" on Bai Luo.

He had already given Bai Luo more than enough information about Black Pine City.

And Bai Luo did not disappoint the old man. Sure enough, it suddenly dawned on him:

"You mean Mr. Wig Brown didn't die... I understand. Wig Brown faked his death a second time. He took 3-0771 and ran, diverting the trouble to the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce."

The wooden house was listening. It should have refrained from commenting on anything, but even the normally composed house could hardly sit still now.

[What's wrong with these two? What are they thinking?]

Wig Brown had clearly died in the attic. What did they mean, he wasn't dead?

"Your Third Uncle may never have met Wig Brown at all. This physician..." The old man narrowed his eyes at the nameplate and found the inconspicuous name Kaiming on it.

"This physician Kaiming wasn't Wig Brown, but Wig Brown's puppet!"

This time Bai Luo truly understood. Deeply impressed by his grandfather's wisdom, he marveled that his grandfather was indeed a seasoned Five-Star Magister, the pillar of the Brown Family in North Province.

"I understand. No wonder Third Uncle and the others didn't find 3-0771 at first! It was in the real Wig Brown's hands all along. Now everything makes sense."

Beneath his magic hat, the boy felt somewhat shaken by the scheme.

Old Mr. Wig, whom he had never met, had impure blood and meager strength, yet he had been bold enough to devise such a plot.

"He killed himself and vanished from the public eye. Then he killed 'himself' a second time, hoping to vanish from the Brown Family's sight as well. Because I didn't come in person, Roman's foolish face showed him an opportunity to fool the Brown Family."

"And so he took Sealed Artifact 3-0771 and fled."

Miuan sounded neither surprised nor angry, as though he were discussing someone else's family.

The wooden house was stunned.

For all the books it had read, it could barely understand what these two were saying.

What on earth are you talking about?

What do you mean, Wig Brown isn't dead? What do you mean, Wig Brown took Sealed Artifact 3-0771 and ran? Are you saying Xie Yu is Wig Brown in disguise?

You've got to be kidding.

If it hadn't witnessed everything with its own eyes, the wooden house felt those two, old and young, might have talked it into believing them. What kind of nonsensical analysis was that? Were they really smarter than Roman Brown? The wooden house certainly couldn't see it.

Bai Luo's eyes lit up as he followed Miuan's reasoning.

"Mr. Wig gained the sealed artifact's recognition, and the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce isn't capable of making it turn on its master. That sealed artifact is quite dangerous, so he couldn't let his puppet Kaiming keep it. Finally, it was Wig Brown's pure white that killed the puppet Kaiming. Mr. Wig took Sealed Artifact 3-0771 and sat back to watch Third Uncle and the others clash with the Pine Nut Chamber of Commerce."

"Am I right, Grandfather?"

What a brilliant contest. He hadn't expected such a perilous drama to unfold in an obscure place like Black Pine City. Bai Luo felt things were becoming interesting.

No matter how Wig Brown had arranged things, his grandfather and he could see through it at a glance.

Weakness was weakness in the end. The gulf in strength was impossible to cross.

"Right."

Miuan nodded, giving that single word in reply. He looked at Bai Luo with gratification, feeling that his grandson was growing.

"So Third Uncle and the others are bound to come back empty-handed..."

"Ah, poor Third Uncle. Mr. Wig has him in the palm of his hand."

That was Bai Luo's conclusion.

At the thought, he felt both admiration and regret for Wig's boldness and planning.

For a peripheral member of the family to achieve this much, determination, courage, and intelligence were all indispensable. If Mr. Wig Brown had shown such ambition in his younger years, he might have had a place in the family.

The wooden house was dumbfounded.

The absurdity of it was on a par with Xie Yu insisting on becoming Kaiming's assistant. It vaguely remembered when it had first met Xie Yu: the more it urged him to stay away from Kaiming, the more Xie Yu had spoken in Kaiming's favor.

The world had gone mad. These two, old and young, had completely lost their minds.

"Then, Grandfather, what should we do? Should we find Wig Brown first?"

Bai Luo had immersed himself in the situation in Black Pine City and began to consider it seriously, finding it all rather interesting.

"If it were you, how would you handle it?"

Miuan looked at Bai Luo, in no hurry over anything happening in Black Pine City.

If Bai Luo could grow a little, letting Roman take a hard fall might not be such a bad trade.

Wig Brown had rejected the identity of Kaiming, but Miuan was in no hurry. There was still enough time to find a replacement as mental health supervisor for Black Pine City's two academies.

He had originally thought Wig Brown was trustworthy and fortunate enough to have a sealed artifact to make up for his modest strength, so he could be used as a Magister-level piece in Black Pine City. Now that Wig Brown had betrayed them, a hidden danger had been eliminated in advance, so it wasn't necessarily entirely bad.

Bai Luo analyzed the situation:

"Sealed Artifact 3-0771 is important. Its function is very unique, not even what one would expect from a low-level sealed artifact. It helped Wig Brown carry out a rebellion like this, so it's important."

"I'll write to Father and find a way to request a Sage-level divination in the capital. It would cost about a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand gold coins. We could divine the whereabouts of the sealed artifact and Wig Brown. What do you think? Would it be worth it?"

As Miuan listened to the first part, he nodded repeatedly, an approving smile on his face.

When he heard the second part, his expression stiffened, and his smile froze.

This was how his grandson thought things through?

How very resourceful...

But the boy really was capable of doing it, and his father really didn't lack that amount of gold.

"...A very good idea, but we need to consider whether it's worth it. A hundred thousand gold coins could cultivate a hundred qing of medicinal fields, buy a sizable estate on the outskirts of Mirror Lake City, or even buy a sealed artifact whose number begins with a two."

Miuan patiently guided him. He was always patient with his grandson.

"It's all right, Grandfather. I'd be spending my own money. I wouldn't ask you to... What's that word? The one Father likes to use... Oh, right, reimburse me. I wouldn't ask you to reimburse me. For you, the price would be less than one copper coin. We're family, after all." Bai Luo said:

"I know you're frugal. This is a little gesture from me. I'll write to Father right away."

"..." Miuan was at a loss for words.

"You're not satisfied? Then... I could spend more and ask a Sage to capture him too. But that would be very expensive and extravagant. I don't have quite enough spending money... I might have to sign a three-year loan agreement with Father."

Bai Luo smiled shyly, admitting that he was short of money.

[...] The wooden house was speechless.

The little wooden house once again felt that the world had gone mad.

What did he mean, when faced with trouble, he would simply spend a hundred thousand gold coins on a Sage-level divination from the capital? And what was this about asking a Sage in the capital to capture someone in Black Pine City from ten thousand miles away?

That's not what the books say... The wooden house had read so many books, and it was certain that not a single one said anything like this.

"..." Miuan fell silent.

For a moment, he clearly perceived his own foolishness. Bai Luo was no longer the baby-voiced child he had been; he stood higher than his grandfather.

Seeing his grandfather's silence, Bai Luo took it as consent. He reached up to touch the side of his pointed hat and spoke:

"Dearest Father, your eldest son, Bai Luo Brown Ilya, who is best able to ease your burdens, sends you his greetings."

"I have arrived safely in the Northern Plains Administrative Province and am handling family affairs alongside my dear grandfather. On this interesting journey, the Brown Family has shown me a side of itself it has never revealed before..."

As the boy's words formed sentences, writing materialized stroke by stroke, circling his hat and appearing before his eyes. From time to time, Bai Luo reached out to adjust some of the wording, striving for elegance and politeness.

Old Mr. Miuan watched quietly, one hand over his forehead, without saying a word.

"...That is the situation. I hope to use my own account to purchase a Sage-level divination, to divine the location of Sealed Artifact 3-0771 and the whereabouts of the Brown Family's defector, Wig Brown."

"Your most capable right hand and eldest son, Bai Luo Brown Ilya, sends you his greetings once again."

After making a few small corrections to the floating text, Bai Luo was clearly very satisfied with the "letter." He flicked his hand and sent it into the sky.

Like a shooting star, the writing pointed toward the kingdom's capital in the east and sped away in an instant.

[Xie Yu, where on earth are you? Why haven't you come to see me yet? I really have something to tell you...]

The wooden house longed for Xie Yu.

Watching the grandfather and grandson act crazier than the other, it began to worry about Xie Yu.

"All right, Grandfather, that's done. Does Black Pine City have any local specialties to eat, or any distinctive sights? It's my first time here. Could you take me out for some fun?"

The boy Bai Luo looked expectantly at Miuan, as if to say, "I've worked hard. I need a rest and a reward."

Third Uncle and Aunt had clearly already been forgotten.

At this moment, Miuan finally truly felt that this little brat of his was no easy child to deal with either.

The obedient innocence on his face and his flawless manners and respectful speech were probably all fake.

The old man noticed the weariness in Bai Luo's mood.

Deep down, Bai Luo found all of this troublesome, regarded matters like these as dust. The thought and curiosity were all a disguise. He might have had the tiniest bit of interest in the affairs of Black Pine City, but he did not care about them at all.

Miuan realized that his guidance of Bai Luo had failed completely, and that there was nothing he could do about him. Even if he was an elder and a powerful Magister, the direction of the family's fate was not up to him.

Just as he was about to say something, Bai Luo came closer, but not toward his grandfather. He went instead to the mailbox at the entrance to Kaiming Clinic.

Among the letters scattered on the ground from the mailbox Roman had smashed, today's newspaper was visible.

Bai Luo bent down, picked it up, and examined the headline on the front page.

"Black Pine City's perfect-score examinee. Is this the person?"

"You seem quite interested in this person. This is the third time you've mentioned him." Miuan still wore an affectionate smile.

"The Ilia bloodline, as you know... splitting requires the nourishment of a genius. If I could split off a small piece of a genius to play with, I might be able to spend several fewer years cultivating. There's too little to eat in the capital."

Holding the newspaper, Bai Luo rubbed his stomach with a hungry look.