During the meal, Lan Zheng, carrying a sense of guilt and wanting to make it up to his son, kept piling food into the little boy’s bowl.
The child’s bowl was soon heaped full with the dishes his father had given him. Finally he looked up at his dad and protested, “Daddy, I can pick my own food. I’m really good with chopsticks now. I can do it myself.”
He was very independent for his age.
His aunt often praised him, saying he was even more capable than big brother Yeyao.
Lan Zheng smiled. “Don’t you like the food Daddy’s giving you?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that you keep giving me more before I’ve finished what’s already there. My bowl is overflowing. If Daddy wants to give me food, you should wait until I’ve eaten what’s in my bowl first.”
“Daddy has to give some to Mummy too. We agreed we’d both look after and cherish Mummy.”
So Daddy couldn’t only give food to him and not to Mummy.
Xu Susu fondly ruffled her son’s hair. “Our little Xu’er is so good.”
Lan Zheng laughed. “All right, it was Daddy’s mistake. I kept giving you more without waiting for you to finish. Take your time and eat.”
He said to Zhan Wei and Lan Ruoruo, “The boy is only a few years old, but he already has a mind of his own.”
If he’s unhappy about something, he speaks up straight away. He won’t just swallow it.
Lan Zheng wanted to raise his son to be an open and upright man.
Lan Ruoruo smiled. “Little Xu is adorable.”
Zhan Wei also showered him with praise.
Lan Xu felt a bit shy from all the adult compliments. He said, “Seventh Uncle, Aunt Ruoruo, please don’t praise me. I’m really not that great. Compared to my older cousins, I’m still far behind.”
“Big brother Long Ting is the really amazing one. I like big brother Long Ting and big sister Yanyan the most.”
As for big cousin Yeyao, he still cried sometimes.
Lan Xu quietly looked down on Yeyao a little in his heart.
Big sister Junyan was always calm, as if the sky could fall and she’d just use it as a blanket. Long Ting was accomplished in both scholarly and martial arts, incredibly impressive. Lan Xu had already started learning martial arts, partly to build a strong body, partly for self-protection.
His father had hired a martial arts teacher to coach him one-on-one, and his mother gave him pointers when she had time.
The little boy understood clearly that both his parents were highly skilled, but they were busy and couldn’t teach him personally.
Mummy had said she would teach him herself once he had built a solid foundation.
He didn’t expect to become as amazing as his parents. Being as good as big brother Long Ting would be enough.
It seemed that in the eyes of all the children, Long Ting was an idol. Everyone admired him and treated him as the big brother.
“Mummy, when Auntie comes to our house later, she’ll bring big brother Long Ting, won’t she?”
Lan Xu suddenly asked with concern.
“Of course. Every time Auntie comes back, she brings Long Ting.”
The Lan family in Wangcheng was Long Ting’s lucky place. He had been picked up by Mu Qing in Wangcheng and had lived at the Lan family estate for a while. As a young child he had been very close to Mu Qing and her daughter.
Later he went with Mu Qing and her husband to live at Fengchen Villa. Not long after, Cheng Lingling took a liking to him, and he was taken away by the old divine doctor to be raised among several elderly masters, undergoing all kinds of devilish training.
Although those venerable elders doted on Long Ting, they were utterly strict when teaching him. If Long Ting didn’t learn well, he would be punished.
The old divine doctor would make him copy medical texts many times over. The old master thief would order him to use his wall-scaling skills to retrieve a certain number of birds’ eggs.
Sometimes the punishment was horse stance or a set number of push-ups.
Those punishments sounded mild, but actually doing them was extremely hard and exhausting.
