novelraw Chapter 277
Chapter 277
Chapter 277: Subdue
Before obtaining the veterinary qualification certificate, Xia Li still had a lot to do.
First, research and site selection for the pet hospital.
Then, the serialization of “Record of Experiences from Azure Continent” in hand should also be resumed.
Every morning, he would drive out with Lucia for a stroll. They looked at shops for rent and sale, and also went to several intermediary agencies. The two of them almost visited the entire Qingcheng City.
At night, they would cuddle for a while, then he would take a shower and start typing on the keyboard to write.
A week after the serialization of the “Record of Experiences” resumed, there were still people chasing after the chapters to scold him.
However, when Xia Li showed his sincerity in explosive updates, and the plot content became more realistic, even realistic enough to attach photos, the scolding turned into a wave of praise.
Time flies to the weekend.
Xia Li invited all his friends out. This time, Xia Li’s brothers and friends also made a lot of contributions to solving Lucia’s ID card issue.
Needless to say, Qin Chuan is the biggest contributor. Without him, Xia Li wouldn’t even be able to return to Azure Continent.
Zhou Anqi helped Xia Li take in Lucia.
In Lucia’s later words, the reason why she suddenly wanted Xia Li to flip a coin was also because she was influenced by Zhou Anqi.
Xia Li was afraid that Zhou Anqi would lead Lucia astray. He couldn’t control what the girls talked about.
As a result, Zhou Anqi is a good citizen.
Finally, there are Chen Tao, Hou Zijie, and Fu Yuan. With a phone call from Xia Li, they gathered 100,000 yuan and transferred it to Xia Li’s card within five minutes.
If it weren’t for their help, Xia Li would have ended up in a mess with Lucia at the immigration office.
These brothers are also Xia Li’s strong backing.
As for Wuqi, the cow cat who hasn’t been named yet……
He is responsible for showing his belly and acting cute.
“Boss Xia, tell us more. You’ve been out playing for so long this time. Tell us more stories to broaden our horizons.”
Chen Tao couldn’t hold his liquor. His face turned red after a few drinks, and his mouth never stopped.
Xia Li was overwhelmed by his questions and kept stuffing skewers into his mouth, asking him to shut up.
This guy couldn’t understand Xia Li’s micro-expressions. After eating the skewers, he immediately started chattering again.
Monkey was sending sweet messages to his blind date. Watermelon Head Yuanzi and Zhou Anqi were sitting close together. Only Chen Tao was idle and had nothing to do, so he could only chat with Xia Li.
Zhou Anqi and her boyfriend were very young and innocent. They didn’t know what happened, so they just sat upright, occasionally feeding each other some meat skewers, then lowered their heads to drink water without talking.
“Did they have a fight?” Chen Tao wondered.
“How would I know?” Xia Li shrugged.
He heard some rumors from Lucia, but he wasn’t sure.
Zhou Anqi, who was holding a milk tea straw in a daze, noticed Xia Li’s gaze and looked up.
She happened to meet the gaze of Lucia beside Xia Li, and Zhou Anqi winked at Lucia.
Lucia nodded with a blushing face.
Xia Li silently looked at Lucia beside him, whose face was flushed again.
He thought to himself, what did Zhou Anqi tell his dragon girl again, making this dragon’s face blush all day long.
“Brother Xia,”
Calmly taking a sip of cold beer, Zhou Anqi put down the milk tea cup in her hand and asked Xia Li.
“When are you planning to have a baby?”
“Pfft—”
Xia Li, who was drinking, almost spat out a mouthful of beer.
“I’m not even married yet, how did it get to this point?”
Xia Li put down his glass, and Lucia pulled out two tissues to wipe his face.
Forget about not being married yet, Xia Li hasn’t even gone out to play with Lucia properly, how did they get to talking about children?
The order should be like this: first listen to Lucia call him ‘Dad’, and then he can really become a Dad.
However, in order to make Lucia feel more secure, Xia Li added.
“Let nature take its course.”
“That’s good too.”
Zhou Anqi nodded in agreement, then nudged the silly Fu Yuan beside her with her elbow.
“What about you?”
Fu Yuan’s face flushed red. He pushed his glasses and looked at Xia Li for help.
“Sigh.”
Seeing this scene, Chen Tao, who was drinking, felt inexplicably melancholy and poured himself a large gulp of beer.
“I can’t join your topic anymore!”
Youth is gone forever.
He felt that everyone was still just college students who had graduated for a year, and his colleagues were all praising him for being young. How come when he turned around, these childhood friends were all talking about love, and even started talking about scary topics like getting married and having children.
Chen Tao always felt that these things were still far away from him……
Now, looking back, he realized that he had fallen behind.
“My youthful years… are over before they even began.”
With a sigh, Chen Tao pulled Fu Yuan over to drink with him.
Fu Yuan scratched the back of his head, chuckled twice, and could only accept Chen Tao’s beer glass.
After all, he took away the only girl in the team, so he should bear the wrath of his brother.
As the host, Xia Li took care of the three brothers and then turned his attention to Qin Chuan in the corner.
Qin Chuan is more introverted.
Of course, this is also related to the fact that he is not familiar with the people around him.
Qin Chuan has only met Peach and the others three times. This is the third time. It’s normal for everyone to not be able to let loose.
After drinking a few more times and going crazy, they will become familiar.
For a boy who doesn’t like to play games and has no hobbies, drinking is the only way to socialize.
Xia Li simply got up and walked over to Qin Chuan with his wine bottle.
Qin Chuan was drinking alone, looking at the two couples around him from time to time, with an envious look in his eyes.
“What do you think about what I told you last time?”
Xia Li sat down, and Qin Chuan came back to his senses.
After a pause, he immediately shook his head.
“Forget it.”
Xia Li didn’t even say what it was, and he could answer immediately, proving that he actually cared about it and took it very seriously.
“Why? Don’t you want to see the person you miss so much?”
When Xia Li said ‘miss so much’, the image of the girl standing in the sunshine, smiling gently at him, automatically appeared in Qin Chuan’s mind.
“No, I’m still suitable to stay in the goblin lair and die alone… Besides, I’m struggling to support myself now, so I don’t have any other thoughts.”
Qin Chuan’s words were very true.
Although Xia Li is also unemployed, he is doing well in society.
First of all, he has his family to support him, and then he has a side job to earn money……
And Qin Chuan, besides being a cook in a restaurant, has nothing.
His relatives passed away, his major was abandoned, and he lived in a crowded dormitory, looking at the cobweb-covered ceiling, feeling that this was his life.
Actually, compared to his previous experience of sleeping under the bridge, Qin Chuan is already very satisfied with the status quo.
More pursuits… he didn’t dare to think about it.
Xia Li looked at him and remained silent for a while.
To cheer Qin Chuan up at this time would be a bit like saying something without feeling the pain.
Their situations are indeed very different.
Qin Chuan said before that they are the epitome of ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’.
As the lucky one, it was difficult for Xia Li to comfort him at this time.
But, one thing, he believes that he and Qin Chuan feel the same way.
“I wonder if she is married.”
“What?”
Qin Chuan looked over in surprise and understood what Xia Li meant.
“After all this time, if she got married after you left, wouldn’t her child be two years old by now?”
Xia Li pondered for a moment, observing the changes in Qin Chuan’s expression, and continued.
“The child can call you uncle now.”
Qin Chuan: “…”
If Qin Chuan was a bad-tempered person, he would at least grab the other person’s collar and get angry at this time.
But he happens to have a lot of patience.
Xia Li said so, he felt his heart being squeezed, his chest seemed to be blocked by a big stone, speechless.
Under his black short sleeves, the Heart of Stone emitted a strong light.
“Damn, brother…”
Xia Li was startled.
He did want to stimulate Qin Chuan, but he didn’t want Qin Chuan to reveal his identity.
“Let me have a drink with you, no, a bottle.”
He will bear the consequences of his own words. Xia Li drank a bottle of beer and felt his stomach was full of water.
He was a little tipsy, he squinted his eyes and said with a bit of drunkenness.
“If it were me, I would not hesitate to fight for it before all this happened.”
Xia Li raised a finger and continued:
“Sometimes people should be selfish. You must fight for what you want with your own actions. The result after fighting may not be satisfactory, and it will make you feel bad for a while, but if you are not even willing to take action, then you will regret it for the rest of your life.”
“Between long-term pain and short-term pain, choose a sharp pain to let yourself know the answer.”
“The vegetarian male deer on Earth will fight each other when competing for females… Not to mention that we are still humans.”
After Xia Li finished speaking, Qin Chuan grabbed the skewer in his hand and thought for a moment.
“But, with my current ability, I can’t…”
“Economic ability is only temporary,” Xia Li interrupted Qin Chuan and continued.
“Think about it, when is our purest love as ordinary people? It’s when we have no economic ability and even the future is uncertain in high school. Often when we have nothing, that’s when love is the purest. On the contrary, with more material conditions, the taste changes.”
“And you never needed material things to test it. In another world, you failed tens of thousands of times and were down and out tens of thousands of times, but she fell in love with you every time, didn’t she?”
“So, what if you have nothing? Does she care about this kind of thing?”
Xia Li tried his best to persuade him.
His words were not unreasonable. Qin Chuan admitted that he was a little shaken by what he said.
It’s not that he couldn’t think of these reasons, but sometimes he thought of them and rejected them himself.
Now that someone said it for him, he felt the breath that was stuck in his chest went down.
“Actually, I’m not sure about my feelings… I haven’t been in a relationship, and I haven’t liked anyone.” Qin Chuan said.
As a straight man who has never been in a relationship, pursuing the girl he likes is a hurdle, and realizing his own feelings is another hurdle.
“It’s simple,” Xia Li said, “when I said just now that she might be married and have children, a trace of disappointment and sadness flashed in your heart, that’s proof of your feelings.”
After speaking, Xia Li waved to the dragon girl who was chatting with Zhou Anqi.
“Lucia, come here.”
“Coming!”
Lucia bounced over without stopping.
She just drank milk tea, and her face was as sweet as milk tea.
On her pink lips, there was a mark left by a skewer, as if a bamboo skewer was being held sideways in her mouth, and then a horizontal line of cumin and chili was wiped out.
“Come on, kiss me.”
Xia Li patted his cheek and said.
“…”
Lucia was stunned for a moment, but still blushed and kissed the brave man’s thick cheek.
◈◈◈
“Mwah~”
She ran away after the kiss.
She returned to Zhou Anqi’s side and continued chatting as if nothing had happened.
And Qin Chuan, the Heart of Stone beneath his chest, flickered once again from the stimulation.
『Meow. 』
Wuqi, who was sitting behind Qin Chuan eating small yellow croaker, couldn’t help himself.
After shouting “Xia Li, you were born for this!”, Wuqi continued to bury his head in the fish.
“I think you’re right…”
Although Xia Li’s method of comfort was somewhat unethical, it had to be said that it was very effective.
Qin Chuan finally relented.
He also felt that he needed to personally strive for the things he wanted.
If he did nothing, he would only be left with regret.
Between suffering for a while and regretting for a lifetime, the former was more carefree.
The most important point was.
He also wanted to show off his love in front of his brother with the person he liked, and he wanted to see his brother frustrated but unable to do anything about it.
Qin Chuan finished off the lamb skewer in his hand in one bite and turned to ask Xia Li:
“When are you free?”
“Anytime. ”
“My magic power is full, you can use mine. ”
“No need, there’s a bug with your summoning magic. The crystals I brought back this time are enough for a few uses, we’ll use mine.” Xia Li waved his hand and said.
Compared to summoning an old friend from the “past,” it was obviously more appropriate to summon her from the “present.”
This way, the two people who had been separated for a long time could at least resonate with each other emotionally.
◈◈◈
The late-night snack lasted until the early hours of the morning.
Chen Tao was the first to fall.
While crying out “You are all traitors!”, he was forcibly stuffed into the back seat of a ride-hailing car by Hou Zijie.
The four of them were just enough to fit in one car.
As soon as the car left, only leftover soup and water remained at the outdoor table.
Xia Li came out after paying the bill, his steps swaying.
The worries that had been bottled up since last year were finally settled in the past few days.
Today, Xia Li almost blurted out that he was going to marry Lucia.
He was happy and had drunk a lot. He clinked glasses with everyone he saw, getting all his buddies drunk.
Lucia actually didn’t like Xia Li drinking, because every time Xia Li drank, he looked very uncomfortable, and Lucia didn’t want him to be uncomfortable.
But with so many friends present, she couldn’t say much. She could only sit beside Xia Li like a fish, blowing bubbles into her juice straw.
Today she had chatted quite a bit with Zhou Anqi. The two girls had many little secrets to share.
Xia Li was calling a car on his phone.
Seeing his dazed look, Lucia knew that the Brave Hero was definitely drunk today.
After Xia Li accidentally pressed the wrong place several times, Lucia couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Give it to me. ”
Lucia muttered, snatching Xia Li’s phone and tapping on it.
The Dragon Daughter was now proficient in all kinds of Earthling software. Xia Li handed over the matter to her, exhaled a breath of alcohol, and turned to look at Qin Chuan beside him.
Qin Chuan was also quite drunk in the second half. He drank alone with his head down, as if trying to use alcohol to give himself courage.
“I’ll come to you the day after tomorrow. ”
Qin Chuan, holding the cat in his arms, spoke before Xia Li.
Xia Li nodded: “Okay. ”
“Do I need to do anything to prepare?” Qin Chuan asked again.
The main reasons for going to Xia Li the day after tomorrow were to ask his boss for leave in advance and to prepare himself mentally.
As for preparing his appearance… Qin Chuan felt that he still needed to do something, but he didn’t know where to start.
“There’s a small alley to the right of our apartment complex. There’s a hair salon in the alley. Go in and get a wash, cut, and blow-dry. Then go to the nail salon and get your nails painted red. Finally, go to the cosmetics store and get some everyday makeup done.” Xia Li rattled off.
“Huh?” Qin Chuan was dumbfounded.
The first sentence was reasonable, how did it get weirder and weirder?
“You’re usually not unkempt, you’re a clean-cut young man, why do you need to prepare anything?” Xia Li said with a smile.
Qin Chuan’s willingness to dress up before meeting the Saint was enough to prove how much he cared.
It was like a girl washing her hair before going out to meet a boy.
It was the highest level of reception.
“Think about it, you’re all clean and handsome, and the girl isn’t prepared at all. Wouldn’t she be caught off guard when she sees you? Feeling inferior will make people subconsciously keep their distance.”
“…You have a point. ”
Qin Chuan listened and nodded repeatedly.
Xia Li was so thoughtful.
So attentive.
It was always good to consult him about everything.
“Just be yourself. Doesn’t she like you for who you usually are?”
Xia Li patted Qin Chuan’s shoulder.
At this time, the ride-hailing car also arrived. He grabbed Wuqi and stuffed him into Qin Chuan’s backpack.
Stray cats couldn’t be taken on the car.
But they could be secretly hidden in bags.
Xia Li’s home was not far from where they had their late-night snack. It took less than ten minutes to reach the three kilometers.
When they arrived, Lucia was the first to jump out and help Xia Li, the “disabled person,” get out of the car.
If he didn’t have his girlfriend to support him, Xia Li would still be very strong at this moment, and his steps on the way home would not be unsteady.
But with his girlfriend present, he was a weak drunkard, leaning on his fragrant and soft girlfriend.
“By the way, you said you majored in internet technology. ”
Qin Chuan lived in another apartment complex, fifty meters further ahead.
Just before parting, Xia Li suddenly remembered something he had been busy with lately.
Recruiting talent.
As a lone commander, and a college student who had just graduated for a year and had little experience.
It was not easy to find a group of reliable partners on the road to starting a business.
Qin Chuan nodded upon hearing this, taking Wuqi out of his bag to get some air.
“To be precise, I’m a software engineer, and I’m also involved in data analysis…” Qin Chuan said.
“Isn’t that a coincidence?”
Xia Li slapped his hand on the thigh of the Dragon Daughter beside him.
Lucia glanced at him and hummed twice.
“I was just wondering where to find talent… Honestly, it’s a waste for you to be washing dishes in a restaurant with your skills. You should come work for me.”
“I just happen to need a software engineer. Whether it’s developing an independent APP or a WeChat mini-program in the future, you can be the main force. Most pet owners nowadays are young people. I’ve done my research, they basically get information about pet hospitals from the internet, so online promotion is also an area I plan to focus on…”
Xia Li told Qin Chuan his future plans.
Before this, Qin Chuan had always known that they were going to open a pet hospital, but he had never thought that his major could actually be helpful.
“I’ve forgotten most of that stuff.” Qin Chuan scratched his head.
“It’s better than me starting from scratch,” Xia Li said.
“I’m just recruiting you in advance. It will take some time for things to settle down. I’ll give you the laptop I used in college. You can study it when you have time. Watching videos should be enough to refresh your memory.”
In a few words, Xia Li had made everything clear to Qin Chuan.
To be honest, Qin Chuan was happy to accept.
The internet industry had a brighter future than washing dishes. If there was really one more person in the future… It seemed like he could see a bit of hope.
Besides, it was good to follow Xia Li.
“We’ll talk about the details next time. ”
Xia Li was a little tipsy today, and his emotions were running high. In order not to make too many promises at once, he planned to discuss it with Qin Chuan slowly in the future.
However, he was indeed painting a rosy picture for Qin Chuan.
To give this guy some confidence in life first.
The days of washing dishes were predictable, and people in such a low-desire environment would develop a vicious cycle of psychological disgust.
No goals, no confidence, and no motivation.
It was better to pull Qin Chuan into his camp to start a business together, maximize his value, and Xia Li would also have more strength with one more person.
They had all experienced the days of struggling and licking blood from their knives in another world. Their mentality was definitely much more stable than ordinary people.
Moreover, Xia Li’s plan didn’t stop there.
Since Qin Chuan decided to summon the Saint, it meant that the Saint was very likely to join their ranks…
The Saint.
Just hearing the title made him feel like they could make a fortune in the medical industry.
Of course, this was only if everything went smoothly.
Xia Li didn’t count on that for now.
He couldn’t rush things, he could only take one step at a time.
“What about me?”
After saying goodbye to Qin Chuan, Lucia supported Xia Li with her small shoulders on the way home.
Xia Li was carried by her, his legs dragging on the ground. Occasionally, his ankle would hit a raised floor tile, making him grimace in pain.
“What about you?”
“What will I do?” Lucia asked.
She had wanted to join the conversation earlier, but she felt that she, a dragon, shouldn’t interrupt when Xia Li was talking about business.
“I’ll be the attending physician!” Lucia answered her own question.
When she was interning at the pet hospital, she was very envious of the attending physician profession.
With a wave of his hand, everyone in the office had to listen to him.
It was very impressive.
It was more suitable for her, a proud dragon.
“Attending physician?”
Xia Li smiled, the corners of his mouth curling up.
This dragon had never seen the world and didn’t know that being the boss was always the best.
“Why be an attending physician? You’ll be the boss’s wife. Your daily task is to inspect, and only when you encounter difficult patients will you need to step in.”
“I’m that awesome?”
Lucia blinked, looking forward to such a future.
If that was the case, wouldn’t she have become a great human!
“Of course you’re awesome,” Xia Li said.
“My wife, whom I brought back from abroad, has amazing medical skills. She can tame pets and even tame me.”
“Hehe…”
He didn’t know what Xia Li was praising her for, but Lucia’s personality couldn’t stand praise.
As soon as Xia Li praised her, she was happy, her little mouth pursed as if it was filled with honey.