Ji Nuo didn’t dare directly hold the child, choosing instead to lift him by the armpits and carry him into the Police Station. He was afraid the child had other hidden injuries that holding him normally would hurt.
Looking at the tiny little thing he held in his hands, Ji Nuo regretted not having hit the trafficker harder. People like that deserved to experience what full-body pulverization felt like!
But that was just a thought. He understood criminals should be handed over to the law for judgment.
However, he truly loathed such human garbage and scum. For a while, the heavy blow from his diagnostic report was completely forgotten. His entire mind and eyes were solely focused on helping this child put that animal trafficker behind bars first.
Ji Nuo hoisted the child along effortlessly by the armpits. The kid was extremely well-behaved. Except for initially kicking his legs twice, he cooperated very docilely afterward, letting himself be carried like a plastic bag straight into the interrogation room.
In reality, Lu Aotian was forced to be well-behaved. The fierce fight had nearly drained all the strength in this weak toddler body. If he couldn’t fight force with force, he had to rely on wits. He rapidly analyzed the optimal solution for the current situation in his head… Before he finished thinking, he was already placed onto a chair by Ji Nuo.
Lu Aotian looked up and saw the digital wall clock straight ahead.
It clearly displayed the current time as July 25, 2030. Lu Aotian froze for a moment. He was born in 2031. Why was he already a child form in 2030?
Lu Aotian cursed under his breath. What a broken System. Not only did it mistakenly send him into a child’s body, it also messed up the timeline. But why were there still marks left by the Niu couple on him?
Could it be that because the timeline was wrong, other aspects had also changed? For the first time, Lu Aotian felt like his head was stuffed with tangled hemp, unable to be sorted out immediately.
Actually, what it involved wasn’t complicated. It was simply a few possibilities brought about by the scrambled timeline.
In this life, the state of the Niu family, the traffickers who kidnapped him, was unknown. He either escaped from the Niu family again and needed to be wary of them looking for him, or he had been conjured out of thin air by the Quick Transmigration Bureau.
If it was the latter, was this little body, created out of nowhere, even still of the Lu family’s bloodline? Also, the Lu family didn’t know he existed right now, so he had no way to easily return to them.
But the brain nerves of a four-year-old toddler were not fully developed. His thinking capacity and intelligence, just like his body, were limited by this physical frame, albeit the weakening wasn’t as extreme as the physical aspect. He hadn’t realized this fact immediately.
While Lu Aotian struggled to think, Ji Nuo had already roughly recounted the situation to the female police officer across from him. Then, he pulled up Lu Aotian’s sleeve to show the officer the wounds on the child’s body.
Even Ji Nuo’s quick glance earlier had been shocking enough. Now, he pushed the child’s other loose sleeve all the way up to the shoulder, finding that, aside from the arm covered in black and purple lash marks, the skin on the outside of the child’s elbow was also badly scraped over a large area, continuously seeping blood.
The person assigned to their case was a kind-faced female police officer with a round face. Seeing this, she immediately called someone to bring the first-aid kit over.
Looking at the child who seemed not to feel any pain, Ji Nuo felt an indescribable mix of emotions: “Why didn’t you tell Uncle about the injury on your arm? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
The child remained cool as ever, calmly shaking his head without expression.
After cleaning the wound, Ji Nuo brought out a disinfectant and healing spray, cautioning: “This will sting a little when sprayed on.”
When addressing a small child, adults instinctively raise their pitch and soften their tone to coax. Ji Nuo’s voice was pleasant. Putting on a cartoonish, childish tone, he sounded as natural as a kindergarten teacher. But the child, who had been completely expressionless the whole time, felt his mouth twitch.
Ji Nuo assumed the medicine was causing a sharp sting upon touching the wound and immediately leaned down to blow on it gently. The child dodged backward, refusing in a voice both hard and babyish: “Doesn’t hurt!”
Ji Nuo’s mouth also twitched. Were kids these days this cool? Then his brows furrowed tightly again as he looked at the mottled scars on the child’s thin, tiny arm.
The policewoman who had been watching for quite a while clicked her tongue in amazement. Her own child was six, and she’d been around many children of similar age.
Other cubs would cry for their parents, screaming and wailing at the gentlest bump. This cub had a huge bloody gash scraped on him, yet didn’t even furrow his brow?
She placed her hands over her heart and sighed with sincere admiration: “You’re such a brave good baby!” She also automatically raised her voice pitch for the child.
Lu Aotian: “…”
What’s so painful about a tiny scratch like this? Let alone that he was the majestic Long Aotian, even when he was truly three or four years old, bumps and bruises like this were always dismissed without a second thought.
Lu Aotian emphasized in his milky voice with complete seriousness: “First, I’m not a baby. Second, a mere small scratch, what pain could there be?”
Saying a longer sentence made his uncontrollable accent slip again. Lu Aotian immediately lowered his head after speaking, as if suddenly shy in front of strangers. In reality, he was cringing internally once more at his own voice and blurred pronunciation.
The policewoman was tickled into hearty laughter by Lu Aotian, finding the child’s serious little face speaking grown-up words in such a soft, sweet baby voice absolutely adorable.
A moment later, she stifled her laughter to answer a phone call. It was from a colleague who had accompanied the trafficker to the hospital for treatment.
After hanging up, she annotated a few more strokes in her notes: “Did the trafficker really fall by himself?”
The X-ray showed a comminuted fracture. It was really rare to break something this badly just from tripping on flat ground. The trafficker was wailing in the hospital, saying Ji Nuo had kicked his leg broken and wanted to charge him with intentional injury.
But there was no surveillance on that small path. Additionally, the young man named Ji Nuo seemed gentle and soft, his complexion pale and looking extremely sickly. He didn’t look at all capable of such violence against a man.
Moreover, acting within certain bounds to save a child was considered justified resistance. The police were just asking as per procedure.
Lu Aotian, who had been silent the whole time due to embarrassment over his “accent,” suddenly spoke: “He fell. He a bad man, serves him right!”
He, Lu Aotian, had always drawn a clear line between gratitude and grievance. Regardless of anything else, Ji Nuo had saved him and done him a favor. At a time like this, he naturally wouldn’t pretend to be deaf and mute.
After Lu Aotian’s testimony, the policewoman coughed and choked for a long while before suppressing her laughter and busily nodding while recording: “Alright, alright. Auntie will write it down clearly.”
With his adorably cute little face, Lu Aotian gave a very mature, slight nod of his chin. Then he raised his eyes to give Ji Nuo a reassuring look.
From Ji Nuo’s perspective, a tiny, three or four-year-old bean was frowning and scrunching up his eyes, looking very uncomfortable.
He immediately lifted the child’s chin to check: “What’s wrong, Ao’ao? Did sand get in your eye? Uncle will blow on it for you.”
Lu Aotian: “…”
~
The policewoman went on to ask Lu Aotian about his background. Considering the uncertainty of his current situation, Lu Aotian didn’t speak definitively.
He used his age advantage, deliberately speaking in a confused, jumbled manner. He only said that he had been kidnapped from a young age and sneaked out. Then he began to pretend he had a headache and couldn’t remember things.
Unable to ask for more specific information, the police followed the procedure for lost children and took him to have a blood sample drawn.
If the parents’ blood sample data was already entered into the family search system, the police station submitting the child’s blood sample could help find his biological parents within days. Before his parents were found, Lu Aotian would be temporarily placed in an Orphanage.
Ji Nuo held the child’s bony, thin wrist and noticed the wound on his elbow was still oozing blood.
A superficial skin wound like this, sprayed with healing medication and left exposed to the air, should normally scab over very quickly. Ji Nuo’s brows furrowed slightly: “Ao’ao has poor blood coagulation?”
Lu Aotian did, in fact, have a mild coagulation disorder. But as a homeless child who couldn’t even remember his parents, he could only shake his head blankly: “Don’t know.”
After saying this, he quickly lowered his head again, his features twitching once more at his own milky, strange voice.
Ji Nuo wanted to report the child’s blood coagulation issue to the police, but a little black hand grabbed his sleeve. The tiny bean shook his sleeve and looked up with his large eyes that seemed especially huge due to his gauntness. In a milky voice, he said, “It’s fine. If wait more, gets better.” This time, Lu Aotian spoke especially slowly. Although the voice was very soft, his enunciation was surprisingly crisp and clear.
Earlier, Ji Nuo had first noticed the child’s eyes and dimples resembled his own. Now, from a different angle, he saw the shadow of another person on the child’s face.
Thinking of that person, Ji Nuo’s expression flickered with a trace of complexity. Then he bent down and touched the child’s head: “We still need to tell the police uncle. It can be passed on to the staff at the Orphanage so they can be prepared, just in case.”
Ji Nuo’s impression of human cubs was stuck on the child his stepmother brought over years ago—strong as a little bull calf, who would roll on the ground, throw tantrums, and act wildly whenever something didn’t go his way. His stepmother would then pick him up, calling him her sweetheart and precious baby, coaxing him with anything he wanted.
The child before him, however, was covered in wounds yet didn’t cry out in pain. When the wound wouldn’t stop bleeding, he didn’t want to trouble others. Aside from those with congenital insensitivity to pain, who wouldn’t feel pain? It was just that no one cared, which led to such a habit.
Seeing the child’s look of disagreement, Ji Nuo thought for a moment and continued coaxing softly: “In the future, if you get hurt, you must remember to tell the ladies at the Orphanage, understand?”
The child remained expressionless. He simply couldn’t be bothered to explain his own strength to this person.
After Ji Nuo reported the coagulation issue to the police, there was no further reason for him to stay. He crouched down to make his final farewell: “Uncle still has things to do and has to go. Ao’ao, don’t be afraid. Mom and Dad will definitely come to get you.”
Lu Aotian inwardly denied this, but after consideration, nodded his head with utter seriousness. The favor of rescue; letting the other person feel at ease was the least he could do.
~
On the other side, inside Movie Emperor Han Cheng’s Studio.
Agent Xu Li stood with her arms crossed. After listening to her Assistant’s nonsense, she asked with a cold face: “You’re telling me you happened to run into a child on the road who looks exactly like Han Cheng? And although you lost track of the kid, you firmly believe this kid would be ten thousand times better on the baby variety show than the Little Child Star?”
The Burly Assistant, who was tall and heavyset, nodded frantically: “Yes, yes, yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
The burly man was precisely Movie Emperor Han Cheng’s Life Assistant. After losing the child, he had been absolutely dejected.
Once he caught his breath, he circled the area back and forth several times. That alley connected to several side roads. He had searched them all and hadn’t seen even a trace of the child.
And that area was especially remote; he couldn’t find any shop owners or pedestrians to ask. He’d even considered checking surveillance cameras, but the result was that that area simply had no cameras. He was nearly vomiting blood in frustration.
The female agent took a deep breath: “Listen to yourself. What kind of nonsense is this?”
“I sent you to wear down the Little Child Star’s parents, and you tell me you chased after a random lookalike kid? Now the Little Child Star deal isn’t closed, and the kid’s been lost. And you stand here shamelessly saying ‘yes, yes, yes,’ expecting me to praise you?” If she didn’t know her assistant’s character so well, she’d think he was making up excuses to avoid work.
The assistant shrank his shoulders in grievance: “The kid’s parent ran too fast. The more I shouted from behind, the faster he ran…”
He looked like a big, burly guy, like a fitness enthusiast obsessed with lifting weights and running. In reality, he’d barely passed his four years of college physical fitness tests only by cozying up to the P.E. teacher. He genuinely couldn’t catch up.
But when he got closest, the child happened to turn back and he directly saw the kid’s face. With that solemn little expression, the child was practically a carbon copy of Best Actor Han in both appearance and spirit, at least seven or eight tenths similar.
And he’d seen Ji Nuo in person. Ji Nuo and Best Actor Han shared quite a striking couple’s resemblance. The child’s facial features even bore a slight similarity to Ji Nuo. It felt like taking photos of the two and using software to synthesize their future child’s face wouldn’t produce such a perfectly fitting face.
With a child like this, why would he bother fussing over that Little Child Star? The Burly Assistant could completely imagine the kind of sensation the “family of three” promotional photo would cause online. He assured his boss once more: “Really! That kid looked so, so much like Brother Cheng.”
Xu Li trusted this honest, thick-headed subordinate, but she didn’t believe there was a kid who looked exactly like Han Cheng.
She suspected the Little Child Star’s family had ground him down so much he was hallucinating. Xu Li pressed her temple: “Alright, go get to work first. After work today, I’ll go with you to the hospital to check things out.”
In sales, the picky ones are the real buyers. She thought the Little Child Star’s family could still be closed by sweetening the deal a bit, though she genuinely disliked these short-sighted parents and didn’t think the kid was worth that price. But they couldn’t afford to lose him; no one was a better fit.
Over a month ago, Xu Li’s contracted artist and Studio boss, Movie Emperor Han Cheng, had a drunken indiscretion with the notoriously criticized minor celebrity Ji Nuo. They were also stalked by paparazzi, who obtained the hotel hallway surveillance footage.
Compared to labels like “casual sex,” “sugar daddy transactions,” or “sleeping around,” a stable, healthy romantic relationship obviously better suited Best Actor Han’s long-maintained public image. It was also just the right time for his career transition.
Therefore, to turn a loss into a gain, she arranged a one-year contractual couple agreement for the two. They’d stir up the CP for a year, each getting what they needed, then part amicably.
However, Best Actor Han’s work schedule had long been packed solid. The only thing he could barely coordinate was showing his face a few times on the baby variety show “Where Are The Cubs Going?”.
Since his availability was poor, they had to leverage the power of a “child” to heat up the CP buzz.
So she had planned from the start: let Ji Nuo take the Little Child Star on the baby variety show to build hype for their CP. Best Actor Han would show his face when time allowed, acting as the finishing touch.
She never expected the child star’s parents to hike up their price, even going so far as to make the child feign illness and hospitalization. She sent her assistant to wear them down a bit, but ended up sending him to achieve nothing… just thinking about it gave Xu Li a headache.
She rubbed her temples and swiped open her phone to make a call, when a software notification popped up: Shocking! The truth behind the online rumor of Ji Nuo’s arrest turns out to be…
Ji Nuo arrested?
Xu Li nearly choked on her breath. Tapping in, she quickly scanned the text version.
Someone had filmed Ji Nuo being escorted into the police station by a police car. The tipster said Ji Nuo was emaciated, his face as white as paper, insinuating he was involved in something he shouldn’t be.
The video thumbnail was of two figures, one tall and thin, one short and small, with uniformed police officers standing on either side.
Although it was just a back view, she immediately recognized Ji Nuo’s memorable Knock-off Tracksuit. Xu Li instantly clicked on the video.
