Chapter 661: Catching a Dragon?
"Gongzi, go back and change your clothes," the Lu sisters said in a low voice as they stood by Hao Ren.
"Erm?" Hao Ren looked down and saw that the black robe was puffing in the cool breeze, revealing his muscles.
"Erh-hem!" Hao Ren cleared his throat and tightened the belt on the robe before flying toward his home.
Since Duan Yao was standing on the beach while stunned, Hao Ren pulled her up into the air on his way back home as if she were a little chick.
Due to the surging waves, many of the plants in the garden were ruined while the living room on the first floor was flooded by water.
"Grandma! Grandma!" Hao Ren returned to the room and yelled.
His only concern was that his grandma who was too old might be frightened by this.
Xie Yujia and Zhao Yanzi were relieved to see that Hao Ren was intact and followed him into the house.
"Ren! Ren..." Grandma walked down the stairs while clutching the rails.
After the sea suddenly calmed down, Grandma had hurried into Hao Ren's room to check up on him. When she saw the damaged window and the empty room, she was anxious.
She had been excited about seeing dragons, but where was her grandson?
"Grandma, I'm here!" Hao Ren ran to the stairs after traveling through the water in the room.
The house was flooded in water.
Due to the power outage, they couldn't turn on the lights, and the house was in total darkness.
Under the moonlight, Grandma touched Hao Ren's face in relief and then asked, "How about Little Zi and Little Yujia?"
"Here! We're here!" Xie Yujia and Zhao Yanzi answered as one while standing behind Hao Ren
"Where's Congming?" Grandma asked.
Xie Yujia froze for a moment and then trudged through the water into Zhen Congming's room, finding that the latter was sound asleep in bed!
"Congming is ok!" Xie Yujia closed the door and answered.
She didn't know that the full Moon night was the perfect time for demon beasts to elevate and break through their realm. It was also their weakest time and the time for seclusion cultivation.
Even Qiu Niu, one of the ancestors of dragons, couldn't bypass this rule. For every 1,000 years or so, Qiu Niu's realm would be greatly decreased, and the exact date according to Lady Zhen was on August 25th in the Lunar Calendar.
"That's good..." Grandma patted her chest and said, "How about Yao? Is she with you? And Linlin and Lili?"
In fact, everyone was in the house, but Grandma had to ask one by one due to the darkness.
"Here! Here!" Lu Linlin and Lu Lili waved and answered.
Duan Yao who was standing behind the Lu sisters gritted her teeth and answered reluctantly, "Here!"
"Well... everyone is ok..." Grandma clutched Hao Ren's arm and said, "Ren, do you know what Grandma just saw?"
"What did you see?" Hao Ren asked.
"Dragons!" Grandma said in excitement, "This is my second time seeing dragons! One small white dragon and three evil dragons, and they fought so fiercely!"
Hao Ren looked at Grandma helplessly.
Instead of being frightened, she was as excited as a kid. Comparatively, she didn't care a bit about the flooded house and ruined appliances.
"Ren, did you see dragons?" Hao Zhonghua came down from the stairs and asked Hao Ren.
"I..." Hao Ren hesitated for half a second and replied, "I thought it was an earthquake. Then, when the flood came in, I went to check on Yujia and the others. I didn't see dragons."
Standing behind Hao Ren, Duan Yao curled her lips. She knew Hao Ren's identity, but it was not necessary to expose him.
"You didn't see them either..." Hao Zhonghua sounded disappointed, "Your mom said that she didn't see them. It seems that only your grandma and I saw them."
He was a bit frustrated. He had clearly seen a group of dragons battling in the sky, but Yue Yang claimed that she didn't see anything but the heavy clouds above the ocean and the huge ocean waves. It was lucky that the shaking didn't cause a tsunami in her opinion.
"Ignore her! Only lucky people can see dragons!" Grandma said angrily.
As a firm believer in science, Yue Yang would never accept other's reports unless she had seen it with her own eyes and touched it with her own hands, which was why she insisted that Grandma and Hao Zhonghua had blurry eyes or had seen certain effects caused by the reflection of the bright moonlight on the ocean.
Grandma was angry and accused Yue Yang of bigotry, and Yue Yang was silenced by Grandma's attitude...
While they were arguing in the room, Hao Ren had come back into the house. Grandma tried to prove that she had told the truth, Hao Zhonghua wanted to confirm the incident, and Yue Yang was incensed at Hao Zhonghua for not using scientific methods to prove what he had seen.
Hearing Grandma's words, Hao Ren felt confused, wondering why his dad and grandma could see the dragons while his mom couldn't. "Is it true that only the lucky ones can see dragons as Grandma had claimed?" he thought.
Feeling upset, Hao Zhonghua was silent.
If Grandma were right, and only the lucky ones could see dragons, then his science project would look like a scam...
"We seemed to have seen dragons, but not very clearly," the Lu sisters said when they saw Hao Zhonghua's disappointed face.
Nodding, Hao Zhonghua turned from excited to lost. It seemed that only after catching a dragon or getting a sample of a real dragon would people believe him. Even photos and videos would be regarded as fake.
However, it would be extremely difficult to catch a dragon! It was lucky to even see one, let alone to catch one!
Besides, what kind of force could catch a dragon?
At this thought, Hao Zhonghua looked dejected and said, "Maybe it is just a fantasy. Forget it; you all take some rest."
"Zhonghua, it's your fortune to see real dragons! Cheer up!" Grandma patted Hao Zhonghua on the back.
Grandma would never think of catching a dragon; it was criminal in her mind to do that!
"Yao, go to my room and sleep. Linlin, Lili, Zi, Yujia, come and help me get the water out," Hao Ren said.
With water reaching their ankles in the living room, it would damage the sofa and the furniture if they didn't get the water out in time.
Taking Xie Yujia and the others as his family, he had asked for their help. Otherwise, he wouldn't ask for their assistance at all.
Looking at Hao Ren, Duan Yao remembered that she had just recovered her Core Formation Realm and needed to solidify it, so she walked up the stairs and went into Hao Ren's room.
"I'll join you!" Rolling up his pajama pants, Hao Zhonghua stepped into the water in the living room.
Yue Yang heard their conversation and walked down, picking up a big basin.
When Hao Zhonghua told her that he had seen hundreds of dragons, she had regarded it as an illusion and thus argued with him. However, as a mother, she wouldn't stand back and watch while others were busy draining the water from the house.
Seeing Yue Yang coming down to help and her angry face, Hao Zhonghua felt guilty for arguing with her so intensely. He walked over with a smile and draped a jacket around her shoulders.
"Humph!" Yue Yang still looked incensed, and she slapped Hao Zhonghua on the chest before bending down to pick up the small objects floating in the water.
She would have believed Hao Zhonghua if he said that he had seen only one dragon. However, Hao Zhonghua told her that he had seen one white dragon, three golden dragons and hundreds of black dragons, making it sound like a tall tale. How could she believe him?
With a laugh, Hao Zhonghua walked closer to Yue Yang and began to pick up things from the water into the basin. When they were poor, their old home was constantly flooded in storms, and they had to get the water out basin by basin.
Thinking of the past hardships that he had experienced with Yue Yang, Hao Zhonghua felt guilty and decided to put aside their argument.
Seeing Hao Zhonghua turning soft in his stance, Yue Yang relaxed her expression as well. After many years together, she knew that Hao Zhonghua would do whatever he believed no matter what. If he wanted to continue searching for dragons, which was mocked by many people, she would support him to the end!
The moonlight shone on the water in the house with glimmering lights, and they seemed to be standing in a small river, feeling quite romantic.
Xie Yujia was envious at the love between Hao Zhonghua and Yue Yang when they looked at each other.
With love, one would give up the immortal life. It was great that Hao Ren grew stronger, but she would spend an ordinary life with him even if he were without any cultivation strength
"Ruff... ruff..." Taking the flooded living room for a swimming pool, Little White swam cheerfully around the sofa and the kitchen.
"Bad dog!" Hao Ren patted it on the head when it got near.
Hao Zhonghua opened the front and the back doors to let out some water, and Zhao Yanzi and the Lu sisters were busy scooping up the water with small basins before passing them to Hao Ren who dumped the water out of the door.
Xie Yujia bent down and tried her best to dry the floor with a rag. It was heavy labor, but she just wiped her sweat with her sleeves without a word of complaint.
"So good..." Seeing the girls working together with Hao Ren in the living room, Hao Zhonghua was slightly touched.
Even though she was spoiled and fragile, Zhao Yanzi worked hard, and she would grow into a considerate wife.
Xie Yujia excelled in all the housework and dealt with this situation without any complaint.
Lu Linlin and Lu Lili had always stayed by Hao Ren's side and fought to do the chores.
When their old house was flooded, Hao Zhonghua, Yue Yang, and Hao Ren who was only a few years old had worked hard to lift stuff onto higher places while scooping out the water which kept pouring in.
However, it had taken them only about half an hour to drain and clean the flooded house at midnight.
The cold house was now lively.
Suddenly, Hao Zhonghua understood Grandma's sentiments.
"Zhonghua, what's this?" Yue Yang suddenly touched Hao Zhonghua; she was holding a palm-sized golden round disk in bafflement.
The flood had pushed open the cupboard, and many crafts had fallen into the water, but she didn't remember that they had this object at home. Therefore, she asked Hao Zhonghua where to put it.
"This..." Baffled, Hao Zhonghua took the disk from Yue Yang's hand and looked at it under the light from the window.
In the dim moonlight, the golden disk reflected a pale golden light. It looked like a shell, but it was very smooth.
Hum! A thought occurred to Hao Zhonghua suddenly. "Dragon scale! It might be a dragon scale!"
Seeing that Hao Ren and the others were still working hard to clean the kitchen, Hao Zhonghua put the golden disk into his pajama pocket and said, "Oh. It's a small thing I bought on my way driving Congming to school."
Yue Yang didn't pursue the topic at his casual words, and she continued to clean up other small objects.
Hao Zhonghua felt nervous since he wasn't sure if the object was related to dragons or not, but he was sure that it didn't belong to their home. It must have been brought in by the water.
As a biologist, he excelled in the study of marine life. That was why he instinctively felt like this golden disk was related to a certain kind of ocean creature.
Yue Yang didn't believe the existence of dragons, so she just supported his science program out of love. Although Hao Zhonghua didn't care about others' opinions, he wanted to prove himself to his wife.
"Yue Yang! Yue Yang! I'd like to see your expression when I prove to you that dragons do exist!" he thought.
"Ok. It's late; we'll clean the rest tomorrow," Hao Zhonghua said.
Although the water had been drained, the power was still out, and they would have to ask the maintenance staff to repair it. As to the stuff that had been soaked in water, they would be aired out tomorrow.
After putting all the china in the flooded cupboard onto the counter, Hao Ren and the others were exhausted. Due to the water, the big pile of food wrappings Duan Yao had left near the refrigerator had been thrown out with the garbage, so no one suspected that Duan Yao had a feast in the kitchen.
Grandma had returned to her room to sleep, and so did Hao Zhonghua and Yue Yang. Since Xie Yujia's room was damaged by the flood and not fitting for them to sleep in, they all went up to the second floor with Hao Ren.
In Hao Ren's room on the second floor, Duan Yao was asleep with the quilt tightly wrapped around her.
After the fright she experienced at the hands of the fierce metal-elemental dragon cultivators and the sudden recovery of her Core Formation Realm, she was so exhausted that she fell asleep after cultivating for a little while.
After swimming for half an hour, Little White shook the water off its fur and trotted into Hao Ren's room with them.
Hao Ren caught it by its neck and tossed it out. When he closed the door, he suddenly realized that he was the only man in the room.