BW Extra 13

About Raising Cubs (2)

=====

The several cubs had different personalities and different experiences. The ones that gave Ning Buwei and Chu Jun the biggest headaches were Little Black and Ning Xiu.

In those first few years, Little Black cried and clamored every day for them to transform back into big dragons to carry him flying.

Although Ning Buwei and Chu Jun explained countless times that they were humans, not dragons, had no claws or horns and wouldn’t grow scales, and couldn’t hide him in their bellies to sleep, Little Black somehow got his dragon wires crossed and stubbornly refused to believe it.

“Father, I’m losing scales! Wuwuwu wah! I’m going to die!” The little chubby one who hadn’t yet grown tall hugged Ning Buwei’s thigh and cried heartbreakingly.

Ning Xiu followed behind him, picking up the shiny black scales, saying in his baby voice, “Fifth brother~ is going to die~ I’ll bury fifth brother at the bottom of the sea~”

Little Black immediately cried even louder.

“I checked the ancient texts, this is normal scale-shedding during the young dragon period.” Ning Buwei tried to pry him off, but dragons—even young dragons—had ridiculously great strength and wouldn’t budge an inch.

“When will fifth brother be able to transform into a big dragon?” Ning Xiu blinked his eyes, obediently putting the dragon scales into his small silver locket.

“About two hundred years.” Ning Buwei recalled.

“Fifth brother will shed scales for two hundred more years~ So many~” Ning Xiu happily clapped his hands, then stared at the scale on Little Black’s cheek that was about to fall but hadn’t fallen yet. When he wasn’t paying attention, he quickly yanked the scale off.

“Owwww—” Little Black howled in pain and pounced to fight with Ning Xiu.

Ning Xiu, being a five-year-old Golden Core cultivator who had just learned to draw qi into his body, was at the age of being fascinated with spiritual power. He enthusiastically rolled into a ball with Little Black.

The two little ones were evenly matched in strength. In the time it took Ning Buwei to drink some water, all the surrounding furniture had already suffered.

Ning Xiu seemed very interested in his fifth brother’s dragon horns. Taking the small sword that Chu Jun had just made for him from ten-thousand-year black iron, he tried to cut off Little Black’s dragon horns.

Little Black frantically transformed back to his original form, opening his big mouth intending to swallow this troublesome little brother into his belly.

“Stop it, both of you!” Ning Buwei shouted loudly, reaching out to separate them and giving each one a spanking.

Ning Xiu and Little Black cried loud enough to lift the roof.

Ning Buwei collapsed and covered his ears. “Chu Jun!”

Venerable Jinghe, who was teaching Cui Yuanbai to refine his Purple Mansion, heard the sound and rushed over. In less than a quarter-hour, the two little cubs stopped their wailing with sniffles and sobs.

“When is Wanxuan Academy going to start classes…” Ning Buwei looked numb. “I can’t take it anymore. I want to go into closed-door cultivation. I want to wait until they grow up before coming out.”

To him, Ning Xiu and Little Black were cutest when they couldn’t even speak clearly, spent most of the day sleeping, understood nothing and only babbled asking for food—

Young cubs who couldn’t talk or walk were the best young cubs.

When he pulled the ash-covered, pitch-black Ning Xiu out of the cauldron burning with true fire, he became even more determined in this thought.

“Father~ Mother~ Fifth brother and I made a bet, I wanted to turn back into little bones~” Ning Xiu looked at the ash all over himself happily and said to his two heart-attack-inducing old fathers.

Yang Lingzhu, who was so frightened she collapsed on the ground, covered her face and started crying.

“I think you want to turn into bone dust!” Ning Buwei’s hands were still shaking as he held him. He tucked the little cub under his arm and was about to give him a beating.

“Little Black!” Chu Jun caught sight of the black long shape nearby from the corner of his eye and immediately shouted coldly, but it was too late—the dragon cub had already opened his mouth and swallowed the small cauldron into his belly.

“Little Black—” Yang Lingzhu couldn’t even bother crying now and quickly patted his belly to make him spit it out.

Chu Jun lifted up the dragon cub and quickly used spiritual power to guide and induce vomiting.

After a chaotic scramble, two cubs of about the same age covered their bottoms with teary eyes and faced the wall to reflect on their mistakes.

“This is absolutely outrageous!” Chu Jun, who rarely lost his temper, coldly scolded behind them.

The exhausted Ning Buwei, covered in ash and dragon drool, slumped in his chair, having lost count of how many times he muttered: “When is Wanxuan Academy going to start classes…”

At that time, Chu Jun and Ning Buwei’s greatest daily wish was hoping these two troublesome little ancestors would hurry up and grow up.

Later, Ning Xiu and Little Black finally grew into elegant young gentlemen, and Ning Buwei naively thought he could finally breathe easy—

He looked expressionlessly at the ruins before him and ground his teeth hard.

Before today, this had been a treasury where he collected weapons.

But obviously, it wasn’t anymore.

“Ning Xiu! Long Jin!” Ning Buwei called them by their full names and saw two streams of light simultaneously dash toward two different places in the distance.

Ning Buwei cracked his long whip and rolled the two back, saying through gritted teeth. “Who did this? Speak!”

Ning Xiu said seriously, “It was Fifth Brother who insisted on sparring with me!”

“It was Sixth Brother who forced me!” Little Black was furious.

The two glared at each other angrily, then each got bonked on the head.

“Before dinner, if this place hasn’t been restored to its original state, you two can roll back to Wanxuan Academy early!”

Ning Xiu and Little Black nodded dejectedly.

The two young men cleaned up the ruins all over the ground while Cui Yuanbai sat in a tree gloating and supervising. “Hurry up, hurry up, there are still two hours left. Father said not even the slightest bit can be different.”

Ning Xiu and Little Black competitively swept the floor in defiance, stirring up dust everywhere that covered Cui Yuanbai’s face.

Could the hot-tempered Purple Flame Knife endure such grievance and provocation?

After dinner, Ning Buwei and Chu Jun came to check their restoration results and both fell silent.

What had originally been just ruins had now become a bottomless pit. A sword, a dragon, and a skeleton were tangled together fighting, with familiar shouting coming from the bottom of the hole:

“Ning Xiao Shan! Don’t you dare pluck my dragon scales!”

“Fourth Brother! How dare you pull my hair!”

“Hei Xiao Wu! Let go! You’re strangling me to death!”

“Ahhhh I’m going to eat you both!”

“I’m going to refine you into ash!”

“I’m going to bury you underground!”

Ning Buwei rubbed his forehead with a headache while Chu Jun shook his head helplessly. “Let’s go, let them be.”

The next day, the three brothers were arm in arm again, full of energy, laughing and playing as if yesterday’s life-and-death battle had been between other people entirely.

“I heard a true dragon appeared in the south!”

“Really? Really?”

“Fourth Brother, Fifth Brother, let’s go take a look together!”

“Let’s go, let’s go! I’ve never seen another dragon!”

“Nonsense, our whole family is dragons. I already said I don’t discriminate against tabby dragons…”

“Shut up, let’s go quickly while Father and Dad aren’t paying attention!”

Just a wall away, Ning Buwei, who was drinking tea and trying to calm his mind, crushed the teacup in his hand.

Chu Jun took his hand to wipe it for him.

Ning Buwei’s forehead veins throbbed as he said viciously, “Don’t stop me. If I don’t beat those three into submission today, I’ll acknowledge them as my fathers!”

Chu Jun paused, then took out a bundle of Beast-Binding Chains from his sleeve and said seriously, “I’ll help you.”

Half an hour later, the three brothers hanging upside down from Beast-Binding Chains at the Ning Mansion gate looked at each other, making bitter faces as they faced away from the cultivators and common people from the city who came to watch the excitement, quietly sending voice transmissions to Ning Buwei and Chu Jun:

“Father, Dad, we know we were wrong. Please let us down…”

“Father! Good father! Please!”

“We’re losing all face hanging here, Father, Dad!”

Today at the Ning Mansion in Chen City was also a day of fatherly kindness and filial piety.