In the early morning, Wei Bai smacked his lips and awoke from a pleasant dream. He sat up from the head of the bed and stretched blissfully.
"Who is first to awaken from the great dream? I, in my life, am the one who knows."
"Ah, fine wine and pleasant dreams are truly hard to come by."
Last night, he dreamt of marrying that young lady from the Great Wilderness City. Just as they were about to get down to business, that unlucky child Ling had to go and ruin it.
*Hm, Ling?*
Wei Bai turned his head. "Not going out for a stroll today?"
Ling, sitting to the side, had a complicated expression. After hesitating for a long while, she stammered,
"Dad, you... ah, I, she... you know..."
*Sigh, what kind of situation is this? What kind of father are you, acting like this?*
"Hoo—" Letting out a long breath, Ling pursed her lips and summoned her courage. "Actually, I'm okay with it too."
After speaking, she bashfully turned her head away, looking a little shy.
When it came down to it, the Sui Beast was never human to begin with, so naturally, they didn't have worldly ethics or morals.
Wei Bai was completely bewildered. "What in the world are you talking about, you silly girl?"
Ling shot him a look of contempt.
"It's fine, Dad. When we're grown up, it's all the same. We can have our own arrangement. I'll call you Dad, and you can call me..."
"You brat, you're spouting nonsense again!"
Wei Bai feigned anger and reached out to flick her forehead. Ling knew this was bad, and with a flip, she jumped out the window, disappearing in a flash to who-knows-where.
"What's gotten into that girl?"
Unable to make heads or tails of it, Wei Bai decided not to think about it anymore.
Ling's nature took after his—she did things on a whim. To put it nicely, she was free-spirited. To put it bluntly, she was a loafer. Nian was also starting to take after her big sister.
*Where's Nian?*
Wei Bai looked out the window. The two little ones were playing a clapping game under the sun, having a grand time. Even little Xi was smiling, a rare sight. His daughters were so adorable.
[You have a new commission. Please check it in time.]
The game panel suddenly popped up.
"Can't you stop bothering me while I'm watching my daughters?" Wei Bai grumbled as he opened the commission tab.
[Special Commission: "Sui Series—Raise the Doll from a Young Age"]
[Do not let them grow up ignorant and unskilled.]
[Client: The Grand Yan Imperial Court]
[Reward: 100,000 Lungmen Dollars]
Wei Bai clicked to accept the commission.
His original plan had been to teach them a few things after they had settled down. The daughters would have to comprehend the authorities of Sui on their own, but Wei Bai could help them find things they liked to do.
"*Waaaaah.*"
A sudden cry interrupted Wei Bai's thoughts. Peeking outside, he saw little Xi crying with her hands over her face, while little Nian was roaring with laughter again.
"Nian'er, you're bullying your little sister again!"
"I... I didn't!"
Nian ducked her head like a thief caught in the act. Only then did she look back and realize her daddy was still there. If she had known, she wouldn't have bullied her youngest sister.
Wei Bai immediately walked over to them. Nian panicked and tried to explain, "I was just playing with Xi."
"I don't want to play with you!" Xi said through her tears. "I'm never playing with you again."
"Wuh..."
Little Nian's lips puckered, and tears glistened in her eyes.
Wei Bai didn't know whether to scold them or not. This family really needed a mother; a father couldn't handle this sort of thing. A father was just a foolish tool for spoiling his daughters.
"Hey, hey, alright, alright. Daddy will tell you a story."
Wei Bai quickly ran back to the room and brought back a brush, ink, and white paper. These things were precious in this era; he had stolen them all from that old coot the emperor.
He sat cross-legged on the ground with one child in each arm, and began to tell his story:
"Once upon a time, there was a mountain. On the mountain, there was a temple. In the temple, there was an old monk. The old monk was telling a story. What story was he telling? He was telling: Once upon a time, there was a mountain. On the mountain, there was a temple..."
He repeated this several times, drawing as he spoke. Wei Bai couldn't even draw with a pencil, let alone do ink wash painting. He just faked his way through with some abstract art from his previous life. For instance, for the monk, he just drew a stick figure with two wise-looking eyeballs.
"Haha, that's so funny!" Little Nian's face lit up with a smile.
A child's happiness was just that simple. Deep, long-winded educational stories were often boring; the more childish the story, the more interesting it was.
"Dad, how come the monk has no hair?"
"The temple looks so weird, not as nice as our house."
Neither the father nor the daughter was being serious. Wei Bai chuckled. "Right? From now on, whenever you see a monk, just call him a bald donkey."
"Bald donkey, haha, bald donkey."
Little Nian looked at the crooked drawing on the paper, raised her little hand, and with a flash of golden light, an abstract model of the temple was complete.
"This is for Xi!"
"I don't want it," Xi mumbled, turning her head away haughtily.
Wei Bai took the model and looked at it. As expected of his daughter, creating something out of thin air with just a flick of the wrist.
It seemed Nian's authority was that of "Form."
"Daddy, Daddy."
Xi reached out her chubby little hand for the ink brush, but her short stature kept her from reaching it.
Wei Bai rubbed his daughter's little head and handed her the brush.
Xi began to draw on the paper. But a small child didn't know how to draw either, so she copied Wei Bai's style, drawing a big monk with a few strands of hair on his head and the same wise, cross-eyed look.
"Xi's drawing is so pretty," Nian came over to flatter her. "Can you give it to me?"
"Okay."
Xi agreed without hesitation this time. Nian snatched the paper, just about to mock her little sister for how ugly the drawing was, when the monk on the paper suddenly jumped out. It pointed at her, spouting gibberish—"jiligulu, jiligulu"—then headbutted her on the nose, smearing ink all over her face.
"*Giggle.*"
Little Xi had scored a point back and was absolutely delighted.
Nian, enraged, grabbed her little sister's cheek. Xi, with reddening eyes, fought back, and the two sisters started roughhousing in his arms again.
Wei Bai watched them and laughed heartily, letting them tire themselves out.
The morning sun of summer wasn't too hot. A cool breeze from the mountains blew into the family's warm courtyard.
In the end, Xi gave in to her wicked older sister. She sulked and shrank into her daddy's embrace, ignoring Nian. She picked up the ink brush and started drawing something else. After she finished, she refused to let Nian see it, no matter how nicely she asked.
Hugging the drawing to her chest, Xi held it up to her father with eyes full of expectation.
Wei Bai glanced at it and smiled. "Is this something from the story I told the other night?"
Xi nodded. It was the knot their father had told them about.
"Then let's give it a name. Let's call it the Yan Knot." Wei Bai lifted little Xi high into the air. "Why did Xi'er want to draw this?"
Little Xi giggled, and only after she finished laughing did she say sillily:
"Daddy said so himself! If the family has a Yan Knot, we can all stay together forever and never be separated."
"Oh, did I?"
Wei Bai pretended to be surprised, but this only earned him Xi's dissatisfaction as she wriggled in the air.
This one sentence united the two sisters. Nian also put her hands on her hips. "Daddy said so himself! Daddy said so himself!"
"Alright, alright, alright..."
Saying "alright" three times, Wei Bai hugged his two daughters tightly with a smile.
Perhaps they couldn't yet understand death, perhaps the word "parting" was still a distant concept...
"Our family will always be together, safe and sound, and never be apart."
A father was willing to lie.