The laughter and chatter died in an instant as several pairs of beautiful eyes swept toward Yang Kai.
Xia Ningshang shot to her feet, excited: "Junior Brother!"
"Hmm?" Shan Qingluo gave a soft snort, grabbing Xia Ningshang's arm and pushing her back down. Xia Ningshang immediately looked at Yang Kai with an apologetic expression, sticking out her tongue, looking helpless to do anything about it.
Su Yan and Xue Yue also withdrew their gazes, leaning close together and murmuring something between themselves — one with an indifferent expression, the other with a hint of a smile.
Aside from Xia Ningshang, the other three women acted as though they hadn't even seen him.
Yang Kai's eyes went wide. What was going on?
Sitting beside Su Yan was Liu Yan. Yang Kai looked at her and silently moved his lips a few times. Liu Yan raised her small hand and drew it lightly across her own neck, then stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes upward, striking a dramatic pose of someone who had died with unfinished business.
Yang Kai laughed out loud, instantly understanding. These women were probably upset that he'd vanished again for years without a word — and they were ganging up to mess with him.
Yang Kai wasn't the least bit worried. Women? Just sweet-talk them, and it'd be fine. If that didn't work, then they'd sort it out in bed.
He was just about to speak again when a tiny figure wriggled out from under the stone table, scampered over, and planted itself in front of him, hands on hips, craning its head up to stare at him.
Yang Kai looked down in surprise. The tiny figure turned out to be a little girl who looked no more than four or five years old — a sturdy, adorable thing with a round face, her hair done up in two little braids. She wore a neat little outfit, a gold lock pendant around her neck, and several silver bracelets on her wrists that glimmered with a spiritual glow. Every single one was a notable Artifact.
Their eyes met, and Yang Kai stared in wonder. Whose child was this?
The little girl pointed a finger at him and said in a piping voice, "Who are you? How come I've never seen you before!"
Yang Kai couldn't help but grin. He squatted down: "What do you think I am?"
The little girl tilted her head and studied him with exaggerated seriousness, then shook her head back and forth: "Judging by the look of you, you're no good person. Take my fist first!"
Her plump little hand clenched into a fist and she actually threw a punch straight at Yang Kai's face — only to be stopped by a light flick of his finger. The little girl gasped in shock, straining with all her might, but couldn't budge him a hair's breadth. Her face turned red from the effort, and she grunted and squealed without stop.
Yang Kai released his finger, and the little girl stumbled forward, crashing right into his chest. He reached out with both hands, grabbed her cheeks, and pulled them apart to either side, distorting her little face. This obviously infuriated her even more, and she leaned back against him, flailing and kicking with all four limbs.
Yang Kai looked up: "Whose child is this? How did she get here?"
Shan Qingluo turned around, legs crossed, the skin along her inner thigh just barely visible in a way that set the imagination racing. She regarded Yang Kai with a smile: "Since she's here, whose child could she be? Naturally, she's ours."
Yang Kai exclaimed: "Ours?"
He quickly turned the little girl around in his arms, studied her carefully, and then widened his eyes: "Huh — she really does look a bit like me!" He hadn't noticed before in the initial surprise, but now, with Shan Qingluo's prompting, he could see a resemblance in her features.
"We have a child?" Yang Kai gripped the little girl's sides and hoisted her high above his head, laughing heartily.
But the laughter trailed off, his eye twitching, as he looked up at her: "How old are you this year?"
The little girl ignored him, merely shaking her fist: "Put your great-auntie down right now, or don't blame me for being rough with you!" The words came out in a childish lisp, yet her tone was hilariously grave and authoritative, and she thrashed with all four limbs — as if she could so much as graze a single hair on Yang Kai.
Yang Kai turned his head to look at the others again: "How old is she?" Could she be more than four or five? Perhaps closer to ten? If she was truly his child, there was no way she'd be that young.
Shan Qingluo said in a leisurely voice: "She just turned five, I think."
"Five… years old!" Yang Kai clenched his jaw, the vein on his forehead throbbing.
He'd been gone for ten years — where had a five-year-old come from? Yin and yang combine, the great Dao of heaven and earth — children didn't just pop out of rock crevices.
Then he caught the smug, amused-onlooker expression on Shan Qingluo's face. Even Xue Yue's slender shoulders were trembling as she suppressed her laughter. Su Yan had her back to him so her expression was unreadable, while Xia Ningshang looked distinctly pained, as though she couldn't bear to watch.
He immediately understood something and asked with a smile: "Who gave birth to her?"
Shan Qingluo shifted her crossed legs into a new position, thrusting her chest forward slightly, the corners of her lips curving: "What if I said I did? Would you believe me?"
Yang Kai shook his head: "I don't."
Asking them was clearly going nowhere. These women had obviously pre-arranged the whole thing to watch him squirm — they'd even dug up some random little girl from who-knows-where. Little Senior Sister wanted to tip him off, but clearly didn't dare defy the group's united front, caught between loyalties and unable to speak.
Without a doubt, this little scheme was Shan Qingluo's doing. She was the only one brazen enough to pull something like this.
"You think I can't find out if you won't tell me?" Yang Kai scoffed, pressing four fingers together and tapping his thumb a few times. "Allow this young master to divine by counting on his fingers… Got it! Ha — you're my little sister?"
He was the lord of the Dark Star, after all. Though he'd relinquished that title to refine the entire Star Domain, snooping on a bit of information was child's play.
In the span of a breath, tens of thousands of pieces of intelligence from Lingxiao Sect cycled through his mind, arriving at a startling conclusion: this little girl was actually his own little sister!
He had a little sister? It suddenly clicked — when he'd returned to see his parents all those years ago, his mother had casually mentioned something along these lines. He'd never expected that by the time he came back, the seed had already borne fruit.