Chapter 1210 - 1207: Visiting Maternal Relatives

"Having my toes separated like that is terrifying, my toes still feel kind of cramped....."

"There, there..... you don't need to cosplay Louis XVI."

Ah Qing yanked off the split-toe socks, shrank back onto the bed, cupping and rubbing her feet with both hands, still shaken as she looked at the black sheer split-toe socks lying on the floor.

"Damn you, Xiaolan!"

Cheeks puffed up in anger, Ah Qing lifted her hand and gave Huhu's butt a slap, protesting his refusal to save her.

"What was I supposed to do? It's not like I have hands...." Ansheng comfortably arched his butt a little, stretched out his front legs in a long lazy stretch, and said with an innocent face:

"You can't seriously expect me to hold it in my mouth, right? Come on, this is real life, can we at least talk hygiene!"

"Online it's all 'goddess feet, goddess feet', then offline everyone's pinching their nose going, 'Ugh, reeks'."

The Little Fox looked righteously indignant, quoting "sources" as he refuted Ah Qing.

"Stop watching weird stuff, and also, I don't stink!" Ah Qing rolled her eyes at the Little Fox.

She never wears those suffocating foot-prison things, how could she possibly have athlete's foot? Clearly the Little Fox's germaphobia was acting up!

"Hurry up and get out of bed too! After breakfast we're going to Grandpa's place to give New Year's greetings."

Ah Qing picked a pair of cotton socks from the wardrobe, sat on the edge of the bed to change them, and at the same time @-ed Momo in the dorm group chat to complain about her split-toe sock experience.

Just thinking about that "toes running away from home" feeling still made Ah Qing break out in a cold sweat.

Momo: [......]

Momo: [Girl you're wild! You didn't feel the fun of your toes rubbing against each other?]

"What fun, it almost scared me to death..." Ah Qing muttered under her breath while typing.

But once she remembered it was Momo talking, the whole situation started to feel very on-brand.

That girl is so full of herself.

"Waaah～"

Ansheng hopped off the bed, washed up, then strolled lazily out the door to fertilize the little tea tree.

Once everything was ready, time quietly slipped to nine-thirty in the morning. Yu Zhenghong and Chen Peipei carried the gifts and put them on the back seat of the Raptor, getting ready to head out.

Ah Qing was the last to leave, in charge of locking the door. She scooped up the Little Fox and sat in the back seat.

But just as she was getting in, Ah Qing paused, looking at the road with a surprised expression:

"Bro, what are you....."

Chen Nian looked exhausted, shuffling along the road in pajamas and slippers. Running into him in the early morning wasn't what shocked Ah Qing.

The truly ridiculous part was the little girl sitting on the back of his neck, plus the two girls with similar faces perched on his shoulders, held steady by his outstretched arms.

On top of that, there were two more girls hanging onto the hem of his clothes, walking beside and behind him.

Early in the morning, Chen Nian was dragging five kids along, yawning as he trudged down the country road toward the end of the village.

"Morning, Boss Lady....."

Chen Nian greeted them listlessly, glanced down at the girls clinging all over him, and let out a deep sigh:

"These? My older cousin had quintuplet daughters a few years back. The family's raising hell at home, so I'm taking them to the store to buy some stationery and tutor them a bit...."

"You're tutoring them? Is that reliable?" Ansheng looked at Chen Nian in amazement and let out a "waaah" as he said:

"You're not gonna teach them how to maintain firearms or how to run gang street turf wars, right?"

"That's too much, Master Fuli! Before I took a break from school I was still a solid top-100 student at Jiule City's key high school..."

Chen Nian looked disgruntled as he explained, but then he just waved his hand in defeat and said, "Anyway, that's all youthful nonsense from back then. Now I've gotta take them to buy crayons so they can do some arts-and-crafts homework...."

"This is suffering! I have to buy five sets of everything."

"Uncle, don't worry about going broke. We asked Dad for money before we left. Promise, you won't need to work in the store to pay off any debts," the little girl on his shoulder patted her chest and assured him confidently.

"Uncle, there's a dog over there—quick, let me ride on your shoulders, giddy-up giddy-up, I'm scared it might bite me..."

"Uncle, save me!"

"Sigh... Your great-uncle's here, it won't bite you. If it does, your great-uncle will bite it right back."

"Yay—— Great-uncle is the best, mua～"

Face full of "I'm so done with life," Chen Nian dragged his heavy, shuffling steps past the Raptor.

"......."

Ansheng, Ah Qing, and the two in the car, Yu Zhenghong and Chen Peipei, all stared after Chen Nian with expressions on the verge of breaking.

"In future, even if you can't have kids, don't go touching those ovulation shots or folk remedies....."

Chen Peipei's mouth twitched; she turned her head toward Ah Qing with dark lines all over her face and said:

"Just let your mom have a couple of quiet years. Your mom really can't handle that kind of big scene."

"If you have quintuplets, that C-section scar is probably gonna look like you got chopped in half at the waist."

"Mom! What are you even talking about, I don't even have a boyfriend yet!" Ah Qing blushed, mortified, lifting the Little Fox to shield her face as her eyes darted around, feeling utterly embarrassed.

Her mom's topic progression was way too fast; Ah Qing felt a little overwhelmed.

"When you look for a boyfriend, use your brain a bit. The moment something feels off, just slap him across the face." Chen Peipei clicked her tongue and griped.

One pregnancy turning into five kids is either a freak talent or some special medical intervention.

Judging from Chen Nian's expression, his cousin and her husband probably fell into the "freak talent" category, but still, some things you gotta be wary and cautious about.

The Raptor drove out of Changxi Town and headed north. After about half an hour on the road, they arrived at Ah Qing's maternal grandfather's house.

On the country road leading into the village, right at the entrance, you could see fashionable young men squatting there in twos and threes, smoking and teasing dogs, each one looking a bit mute and expressionless.

Ansheng stuck his head out to sneak a look at them.

"They're all sons-in-law of the village...." Hugging the Little Fox, Ah Qing saw him craning his neck and, barely holding back a laugh, explained to him:

"I heard Doggy in the village complain before. Said one year on the second day of the New Year he went out for a stroll and to take a dump, took one look at the village entrance and couldn't even go home, got nabbed for petting."

"Later on the big dogs stopped coming, but there's always new Doggies every year, who haven't experienced the dangers of society and come out on the second day of the New Year..."

Her grandpa's village didn't have as many permanent residents as Changxi Town, but they'd gone through a wave of common prosperity back in the day, which led to a baby boom.

Out-of-town sons-in-law come back with their wives to the wife's parents' house. After exchanging greetings with the relatives and elders, not knowing anyone, with nothing to do except wait for meals, they're pretty much at a loss.

To avoid being interrogated by the in-laws, even if they don't know the place, these sons-in-law from elsewhere will all, without prior agreement, choose to go out for a walk.

Walk long enough, and they end up squatting at the village entrance, smoking and forming a sons-in-law intel-sharing group.

"Oh..."

Ansheng nodded lightly at that, glanced once more at the out-of-town sons-in-law outside the window, then turned to Ah Qing and asked:

"So....."

"I don't need to reserve myself a spot over there, right?"

"What would you be doing squatting at the village entrance?" Ah Qing said with a wide grin: "With the situation at home, whether you can even step out the door today is already in question, and you're still thinking of going out to the village entrance to eavesdrop on gossip....."

"Someone like Huhu is super popular as soon as he gets to Grandpa's place."

"Grandpa and the others won't be asking you if your salary went up this year, how much of the mortgage you've paid off, or whether you have any jobs to recommend."

Ah Qing happily rubbed her cheek against the Little Fox, sharing the gossip she'd heard from Doggy.

But that whole speech, falling into Yu Zhenghong's ears, made him unconsciously puff out his chest, his face showing proud satisfaction.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Chen Peipei saw that and couldn't help rolling her eyes a little.