The more Elder Li thought about it, the more she found Shen Ming objectionable—eyes not right, nose not right. No matter how she looked at him, he simply wasn’t good enough for the newly appointed head of the Eastern Continent Operations Department, was he?
A moment later, though, she started to feel sorry for Shen Ming. Having lived for so many years, he didn’t have a single friend besides Ye Yang to turn to for advice—he had to come to her instead. But then she reconsidered: “Wait a minute—why should I feel sorry for an immortal old deity like him? He deserves it! Let him hit a few walls and figure it out himself!”
·
After Ye Yang returned to work, Director Long finally came back, bringing news of a promotion.
Ye Yang had been promoted to team leader—the position Xing Tian originally held.
They had actually wanted to make him head of the Operations Department. The current department head had proposed it himself, and everyone had strongly supported the idea. After all, Ye Yang’s contributions during the evil god’s resurrection and Fu Ye’s deicide attempt had been enormous. You could even say that without him, everything would have been lost.
Assigning Ye Yang to handle the aftermath of the evil god incident earlier had also been a way to pave the road for his promotion. A position like the head of the Eastern Continent Operations Department was a meteoric rise for someone who had only been working for a few years.
But after the group of old-timers had worked so hard preparing the news of his upcoming transfer, presenting it to him as a surprise—the person in question flatly refused. In doing so, he also conveniently evaded the “scheme” of the current elderly department head, who had been eager to retire early.
Director Long: “Why? Isn’t being department head good enough?”
“Not good enough. The salary is too low,” Ye Yang said candidly.
Director Long: “…Then what do you want to do?”
Ye Yang’s eyes lit up. “Anything?”
Director Long was about to tell him not to get carried away, but Ye Yang continued, “Then I want to be team leader!”
YCG was different from human corporate entities. Although the position of operations head was higher, since it didn’t require field work, the salary and bonuses were actually lower than those of frontline field teams who took on frequent missions.
Clearly, Ye Yang preferred the high pay of a team leader over the authority of a higher rank.
Director Long stared at Ye Yang for a long while, as if seeing such an odd creature for the first time. Finally, he said, “You didn’t plan this out in advance, did you?” Otherwise, how could he have calculated the salary and bonuses of different positions so clearly? Even Sister Wu, who doubled as their company’s accountant, couldn’t have done it so precisely.
Ye Yang gave a sheepish grin. “Well, I’ve been carrying debt all this time.”
Director Long looked at him with newfound respect. “I never knew you had such a shrewd side.”
At Ye Yang’s insistence, his promotion order was canceled. For a promotion to team leader, Director Long’s approval was sufficient.
Xing Tian remained captain as before. He had been captain for thousands of years—if he had wanted a promotion, he could have gotten one long ago. He stayed in this position because he valued its flexibility.
Ye Yang became a team of one, but he didn’t mind. Fewer people meant a bigger cut of the reward, hehe~ Though he was no longer short of money, his mindset about finances was hard to change.
When quitting time came, Ye Yang kept his eyes on the clock and bolted the moment it hit. He had to go home and check on the little black egg!
This had become the most important part of Ye Yang’s daily routine.
Like coming into his own home, Ye Yang got off the elevator and opened the door across the hall, heading straight for the second bedroom.
After Ye Yang moved out, the place had been empty. Now it had been converted into an egg-hatching room. Shen Ming had found a cardboard box, added some cotton, and set up a barrier.
The barrier maintained a constant temperature and humidity in the room, automatically turned the egg, and would notify Shen Ming immediately if anything abnormal occurred. Under normal circumstances, it required almost no attention.
But today, when Ye Yang opened the door, he saw Shen Ming crouched by the cardboard box, with Little Crow perched on his shoulder. The two seemed to be arguing about something.
“Caw caw—caw!” Little Crow hopped up and down, stomping hard on Shen Ming’s shoulder, clearly agitated.
Shen Ming frowned, hesitant. “…Isn’t that too risky?”
Ye Yang was extremely curious. “What are you two talking about?”
Shen Ming acted as if he’d just noticed him. He stood up and said, “You’re back.”
“I’ve been standing here for a while,” Ye Yang said in surprise. He didn’t know if it was his imagination, but Shen Ming seemed to be growing more secure lately. He was no longer on guard against everything at every moment. Back when Ye Yang had first moved in, Shen Ming would know the moment he entered the neighborhood.
Shen Ming had no idea what Ye Yang was thinking. He grabbed Ye Yang and pulled him down into a crouch. “Perfect timing. Come take a look—tell me what’s going on.”
The little black egg had been incubating for over twenty days, developing steadily. But today, the barrier had suddenly shown an anomaly. Shen Ming came to check and found that the egg might have gone bad.
No visible change was apparent from the outside, but when he shone a flashlight through, the inside looked terrible. When Shen Ming used a spell to probe, the egg’s vitality fluctuated wildly. Naturally, he was worried.
He couldn’t find any similar cases online, and there were no professionals around. Little Crow suggested directly infusing spiritual energy, but Shen Ming hadn’t agreed either.
After all, this was an egg he had—so to speak—laid. He wanted to play it safe.
“Hmm… I don’t know much about this either, but it doesn’t look that bad?”
Ye Yang thought Shen Ming was making a bit too much of it, but the sight of him as a worried new father was amusing. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Maybe we could ask around at a flower and bird market?”
Shen Ming pondered for a moment, then dropped a bombshell: “Perhaps we can find a solution in the demon realm. I’ll go ask the old tree spirit.”
·
In the end, they decided to split up. Shen Ming would go to Kunlun to see Elder Li, while Ye Yang would head to the South City Flower and Bird Market in Eastern Continent.
Ye Yang walked down the street carrying the cardboard box enclosed in a small barrier, secretly amused. If he didn’t know how genuinely worried Shen Ming was about the little black egg, he would have thought the deity was just making up an excuse to go see Elder Li.
If you really want to go, just go—why come up with such a ridiculous reason? Every time he thought about it, Ye Yang couldn’t help but laugh. You’d be better off asking Yu Bei than Elder Li. At least Yu Bei counts as an animal—Elder Li is a plant! What does she know about hatching eggs?
He happened to overhear passersby mentioning that Bai Jun had lost a lot of weight recently and had been photographed sitting pale-faced in a car, worrying his fans greatly. Ye Yang then noticed that the shopping mall ads had been replaced—Bai Jun’s giant face lined both sides of the street.
He looked up for a moment. That nine-tailed fox had lost three tails, severely damaging his vitality. It seemed it wouldn’t be easy to recover. Even with makeup and post-production, the weakness in his eyes couldn’t be hidden. He was recovering even more slowly than Shen Ming.
Thinking of Shen Ming, Ye Yang’s mood lightened again. What should he bring back for Teacher Shen on the way home?
…
At the flower and bird market, there were many shops selling exotic pets, but only two owners had experience hatching snake eggs. Neither had ever seen a case like the little black egg’s.
Ye Yang didn’t dare ask too many questions. Neither of them had seen a breed like the little black egg before, and just one question from them left him stumped. A few more exchanges, and he would have broken out in a cold sweat. He quickly excused himself and hurried away.
Only at the market’s entrance did Ye Yang breathe a sigh of relief. He lifted the lid to peek at the little black egg and muttered to himself, “Maybe we should try infusing spiritual energy first. I know you’re not that fragile—you’re the Spirit Snake, after all.”
Suddenly, someone rushed out from the side and tried to snatch the cardboard box, shouting, “What are you doing? You’re ruining the insulation!”
Ye Yang dodged instinctively, and the young man who had rushed out couldn’t stop in time, nearly stumbling. Ye Yang quickly steadied him.
The man wore a wrinkled plaid shirt, glasses thick as bottle bottoms, and was as thin as a rail. His hair was dry, yellow, and curly, though there was plenty of it.
After being steadied, the young man’s first move was to close the cardboard box lid—so quickly and without any hostile intent that Ye Yang didn’t even have time to stop him.
Once the lid was on, the young man visibly relaxed. “How could you open the lid? The temperature changed—you’ll kill the egg’s viability!”
Ye Yang: “…There’s temperature control inside.” Actually, there wasn’t, but the barrier was even more stable than any thermostat.
“Huh?” Finally, the young man began to look embarrassed. “Sorry, sorry—my apologies!”
So he was just worried about the little black egg, not some random crazy person… Ye Yang nodded and turned to leave. He had only taken a few steps when he was called back.
“Uh, excuse me… could I take a look at your egg?”
Ye Yang sensed no ill intent from him, and he wasn’t in a hurry, so he let him look. But the young man had so many questions—
“Why is there only one egg?”
“It looks like a snake egg, but I’ve never seen this breed. Is there a breed on the market I don’t know about?”
“The temperature and humidity are really well maintained, but where’s the temperature control system? I can’t see it. It’s so high-end—where did you buy it?”
“This definitely didn’t come from a flower and bird market. Did you bring it here to sell it, or what?”
Ye Yang picked the only question he could answer out of the barrage: “It’s my friend’s egg. It seems to be having some issues, so I came to ask around.” He also showed the curly-haired young man the flashlight photos he had taken earlier.
The young man with dry, curly yellow hair gently rotated the little black egg, studied it intently, and finally pushed up his glasses and said, “I haven’t seen this breed before, but your egg looks quite healthy. Maybe it’s just developing exceptionally well. Sometimes, eggs that develop particularly well can show this kind of pattern.”
For some reason, though this yellow-haired curly looked completely ordinary, his words were especially convincing.
Ye Yang looked at him. “Can I ask what you do?” Was he a professional snake breeder?
“Oh, me? I originally studied physics,” the curly-haired man said, suddenly looking a bit embarrassed, his earlier confidence and momentum gone. “But I never really had any interest in physics. I love reptiles. I graduated and couldn’t find a job…”
“…Right. I was just asking. Thank you.”
In the end, Ye Yang added the curly-haired man as a friend, picked out a bouquet of flowers, and headed home.
It wasn’t anything special—just a bunch of ranunculus in pale yellow, pale green, primrose, porcelain, and alpine snow colors, arranged together in a fresh and lovely way.
Once, when they had passed a flower shop together, Shen Ming had casually remarked that they were cute. Ye Yang had remembered the moment he saw the ranunculus at the market entrance.
Clutching the bouquet and carrying the cardboard box, Ye Yang stepped into the elevator—and came face to face with another bouquet.
It was Shen Ming. Shen Ming had had the exact same idea!
Looking more closely, it wasn’t just any flower. It was duheng fragrant herb that had grown for a thousand years in an uninhabited part of the Wumeng Mountains.
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