2ndchances 1: Lanlan and Xiulan

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Chapter 1: Lanlan and Xiulan

Chen Yijun sat up softly, surveying his surroundings.

The room was dark, but warm light from the streetlights trickled in from behind the gauzy liner curtain at the window, allowing him to see the small room that only held the queen-sized bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a bench.

Looking down next to him on the bed was a four-year-old girl, sleeping peacefully.

This was Chen Bailan, the little niece called Lanlan he had just inherited.

His eyes softened as he reached out to brush the stray hair from her face.

Although Chen Yijun was gentle, it seems that she still felt the hair being brushed aside was a bit itchy and scrunched her face a little before rolling over, still fast asleep.

Chen Yijun let out a heavy sigh as he looked at Lanlan and his heart hurt.

In this era, spirit beast hunters weren’t stupid. They had to be extremely selective in their targets, otherwise the reward wouldn’t be worth the risk of becoming an interplanetary felon.

As a hawk, Chen Yijun was a spirit beast that not even desperate hunters would want to tangle with.

Other than his heart and beast core, everything else could be considered mediocre to low quality goods, and hawk spirit beasts were known to be very well-suited for violence, making hunters unwilling to bother since the risk of injury and death was substantially higher.

Hawk spirit beasts just weren’t worth it.

Serpents, though, were better targets.

Their scales, eyes, venom sacs, and gallbladders, on top of the heart and beast core, were extremely valuable, but given their propensity for charm and hypnosis, as well as being venomous, the risk that came with hunting one was still quite high.

Chen Yijun’s elder sister Xiulan, the mother of his little niece, was an extremely beautiful and venomous emerald serpent, but he didn’t have to worry about her.

Spirit beast hunting was illegal, and Xiulan was powerful and lived well within the public eye.

However, her daughter …

A white serpent was a top quality target that spirit beast hunters would kill each other for.

Alive, white serpents were known to be able to bring good fortune to those around them.

Their venom was a universal anti-venom, their blood was an ingredient for a panacea; from scales to organs, blood to bones, every single part of a white serpent was an extremely valuable ingredient.

Furthermore, they were very weak. Even when they came of age, white serpents were fragile and delicate.

They were perfect prey for illegal hunters.

Xiulan’s daughter had the misfortune to be hatched as such a white serpent.

With this kind of background Chen Yijun understood the former Chen Yijun’s over protectiveness of his little niece.

But that didn’t mean he approved of the former’s methods towards her protection.

Hesitating for a moment, Chen Yijun made up his mind and reached his hand over his little niece’s back and, with a wave, several ancient Chinese characters floated up from her back before dissipating into the air.

It was a secret technique of spirit beasts, a method to completely seal all functions of a spirit beast to avoid being detected, but such an effective seal wasn’t without side effects.

The most worrying one was that, while it could delay a spirit beast’s first molt, it also greatly increased the agony and dangers of the first molt once it occurred.

Perhaps it’s because the current Chen Yijun didn’t grow up with the fear of being a spirit beast, but he didn’t think this almost self-destructive method was a good idea.

In the first place, it was already difficult for people to tell who’s a spirit beast and who’s not, and spirit beasts were already good at hiding their beast cores from detection.

And even other spirit beasts wouldn’t know what kind of spirit beast you were unless you were obvious about it.

But despite all of these facts, the former Chen Yijun had been so scared of Lanlan being found out as a white serpent that he practically kept her sealed up and hidden away at all times.

She didn’t even get to go to school.

For most of her life, Chen Bailan was a little girl locked up alone in an apartment.

Chen Yijun didn’t agree with the former’s methods at all.

—

Chen Yijun stretched lightly, feeling a little out of sorts from the differences between his former body and his current one.

He had covered his little niece with a quilt and quietly left the bedroom in order to think about what he wanted to do now.

Currently, Chen Yijun and Lanlan were living off of Xiulan’s earnings.

Neither the current nor the former Chen Yijun were happy with this situation, and the current Chen Yijun had decided to send Lanlan to school, so money wasn’t something he could just ignore.

Furthermore, it was still barely okay that Lanlan was sleeping in the same bed as him right now, but Chen Yijun would feel very uncomfortable if this situation was allowed to continue into the future.

Unfortunately, their tiny 1LDK apartment wasn’t big enough for Lanlan to have her own bedroom, so he had to think about moving out one of these days.

In his former world, Yijun had been an art vlogger. His channel was full of things like pour painting and found materials art, and he enjoyed finding odd and eccentric ways to apply paint to his creations.

It was all very niche, but thanks to his buddies’ filming and video editing abilities, Yijun’s videos were actually pretty popular – for a niche art vlogger.

He also taught children’s art classes at the local community center, and he lived fairly well like this.

Chen Yijun wasn’t against starting his vlog anew in this world, but this wasn’t the world he came from, it was an interstellar world; art was done almost entirely digitally here.

That didn’t mean nobody used real materials, but there was just so much more you could do digitally in a world where cars flew and virtual reality was something actually tangible.

Chen Yijun just found it difficult to believe that the interstellar people would be impressed at a painting created from popping balloons filled with paint from various angles.

Besides, he needed his buddies’ help with the technical video stuff in his former world; how much more difficult would it be in a scifi, tech-heavy interstellar world?

So Chen Yijun decided to cross ‘vlogger’ off the list temporarily.

The former Chen Yijun had become a photographer, and although he hadn’t done much photography in his former life, Chen Yijun was more or less confident in his aesthetic ability.

Sure, his eyes would cross whenever he tried to adjust the exposure settings before, and he was definitely an amateur at best, but he inherited the former Chen Yijun’s knowledge and muscle memories and retained his own artistic sense, so how bad could it be?

Looking over at the desk with a … computer? the desk with a future-styled computer near the couch and future-tv in the living room area, Chen Yijun spotted the ‘camera’.

Next to it was a wrist-watch like device called a light brain.

It was basically the interstellar smartphone, a light-weight device that could connect to the Star Network, aka future internet, make calls and emails, and act as a controller to various devices partnered to it.

Putting on the light brain, Chen Yijun flinched at the foreign feeling as it used gene confirmation to determine he was the true owner, then attached to his senses.

Operating the light brain, Chen Yijun opened the camera app … and the sleek, palm-sized camera turned on before rising into the air, flipping open its covers and hovering at eye-level.

So future cameras can fly…

Chen Yijun decided to just not think of it, not about how the cameras and cars can fly almost soundlessly, nor about how the hologram-like screens weren’t holograms but were interactive and the light brain synced your senses so you can taste and hear and smell data … Chen Yijun decided not to think too much about anything.

From his memories, Chen Yijun knew that cameras had very limited ranges to roam near private residences and stores, so he didn’t have to worry too much about his privacy from other photographers, especially paparazzi.

Even if they could hack the camera to fly further, the paparazzi would self-incriminate if they had a picture taken from an illegal range, so the paparazzi in the future still stuck to their reliable old tricks of rushing their targets and taking sneak shots from the shadows.

It was good to know some things never change.

Staring at the camera’s operation screen, Chen Yijun navigated through the settings.

… hm…

… huh…

… er…

Why are there even more settings than before!? (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

He thought the most he had to worry about was exposure settings, which he was clueless on, but now there were so many more!

No, no, it was too early to panic.

He was Chen Yijun now, so maybe he retained the former’s abilities and he would just ‘pick it up’ once he really got started.

Shutting down the camera, Chen Yijun watched the camera shut its covers and drift back to its dock before touching down and shutting off.

Future tech was going to be the death of him.

Setting the camera aside for the moment, Chen Yijun used his light brain to open the chat service and sent a message through an encrypted channel to avoid external interception.

This was a very common practice for people with something to hide – mostly people cheating on their lovers, or planning surprise parties – anyway, it was a secretive but not all that suspicious way of communication.

People who REALLY had things to hide wouldn’t use SMS for their business to begin with.

Chen Yijun was walking to the bathroom when he received a notification that he had gotten a reply.

Already? It was 3:00 am, though… but then he remembered that the lady he had messaged was a woman who had late nights.

[Orchid Atop a High Mountain: What do you mean, school? You want to send Lanlan to school? What are you thinking?!]

Chen Yijun put a hand to his forehead and sighed.

They weren’t blood related, but the former Chen Yijun had definitely inherited his over-anxious, over-protective side from this woman, Xiulan.

[Chen Yijun: Sister Lan, calm down. Lanlan is going to turn 5 next year. Why shouldn’t she go to school? Most schools are held in virtual reality. Isn’t it good for Lanlan to interact with others with an avatar?]

What Chen Yijun didn’t say was something both of them understood.

It was impossible to detect a spirit beast from a virtual avatar.

Chen Yijun knew that although she understood that a virtual avatar couldn’t detect whether you were a spirit beast or not, Sister Lan was still worried that Chen Bailan would give herself away through her words and actions.

But for Lanlan, the only spirit beast traits that carried over into her human form was her beauty, flexibility, and lack of strength. How would anyone expect anything more than a sickly, delicate beauty?

As long as you taught her to keep her secrets, there was little chance of people suspecting the little girl.

Still, the worried mother wasn’t going to be easy to convince.

[Orchid Atop a High Mountain: Her guardian is her uncle. What if the school investigates? What if they think something’s strange about her? What if her friends want to meet her in real life?]

[Chen Yijun: So what if her guardian is her uncle? Do you think there are no broken families among humans? The only problem would be if I don’t have a job. And it’s not too difficult for a ‘sickly girl’ to find an excuse not to meet.]

He absolutely needed to get a job within a year, or the school really would investigate to make sure Lanlan wasn’t being mistreated or neglected.

There was no response for a while.

Chen Yijun sighed.

[Chen Yijun: Sister Lan, have you thought about what could happen in the future? Right now, the only person Lanlan can rely on is me. What if something happens? She won’t know how to interact with others, she won’t have any friends, or anyone who can help her.]

There was still no response.

[Chen Yijun: Do you really mean to keep Lanlan locked in a box, never knowing the world? For the rest of her life?]

Still no response.

But when Chen Yijun was about to say something else, Sister Lan finally sent him a message.

[Orchid Atop a High Mountain: Let me think about it.]

With that the conversation was over, and when Chen Yijun closed the chat, all traces of the conversation were deleted from his light brain.

“Ugh…”

Chen Yijun couldn’t help but groan, holding his forehead.

Maybe he didn’t feel enough fear to understand Xiulan and the former Chen Yijun, but to him, the kind of life Lanlan had during the former Chen Yijun’s life wasn’t something you could call ‘living’.

Sure, no one suspected she was a white serpent until the end, but he couldn’t help feeling that she had never been happy either.

As he stood in the hall, grumbling in his heart, a small kchack sounded and the door to the bedroom opened.

A sleepy head poked out, looking up at Chen Yijun.

“Little Uncle?”

Looking down at the obedient little girl rubbing her eyes sleepily, Chen Yijun’s heart softened.

Must protect her. Can’t let her meet such an end.

“Look at you. What are you doing up so late?” he asked as he picked her up.

Lanlan tilted her head and looked at him, her eyes slightly questioning.

“…” Okay, so he wasn’t really one to talk. She was probably looking for him to begin with.

“Aren’t you sleepy?” Chen Yijun asked in a soft voice.

Lanlan nodded, snuggling up against him for warmth as she dozed off again.

Chen Yijun reentered the bedroom and placed Lanlan back on the bed before lying down next to her.

She must have been uneasy when she woke and couldn’t find him.

Perhaps it was their instinct to rely on others to protect them, but white serpents were notoriously sticky to the people who care for them.

Chen Yijun pulled the covers back over and tucked Lanlan in before closing his eyes.

There was enough time tomorrow to finish sorting things out.

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<A/n: Oh dammit. I just realized I’m writing an MC with child in a romance novel, which is one of the tropes I quite dislike.
orz

I mean, logically, I understand that my plot points surrounding the family dynamic is fundamentally different, but the sheer principle that it’s similar makes me feel mildly distressed.

Children aren’t props for you to romance someone in cringey teenage drama wangst! AAAARRRRGH!>