At night, a freshly bathed Shen Yi sat obediently on the bed in her pajamas.
The woman beside her had a dab of baby cream on her fingertips, patiently rubbing it in circular motions over the little girl's frostbitten cheeks.
"Does Xiao Yi want to sleep with Mommy tonight?"
"Xiao Xun used to be afraid of ghosts too, and would cling to Mommy at bedtime. So there is no need to be shy." Worried that the child might not be used to the unfamiliar environment, she spoke softly, "Mommy will always be here with you."
Hearing this, Shen Yi was actually quite surprised.
Someone with Shen Xun's indifferent, robot-like personality was actually afraid of ghosts?
"No thank you, Mommy, I can sleep by myself. I am not afraid of ghosts." The girl shook her head vigorously, her eagerness to avoid it making Wen Ya smile.
Afraid of making her feel awkward, she did not push the matter.
"Alright then, goodnight, Xiao Yi."
The woman gently kissed her cheek, patted her head, and helped turn off the light.
Shen Yi waved her hand and said in a soft voice, "Goodnight, Mommy."
After the door was completely closed and the room plunged into darkness, Shen Yi opened her eyes wide, staring blankly at the faint sliver of light coming through the crack of the door.
Shen Yi could sense that this family was quite strange.
She had possessed excellent observational skills since she was young. Her sense of smell, taste, hearing, and even her learning speed were unparalleled, easily making her the smartest person among those around her.
Shen Yi gently rubbed against the soft blanket.
But she really liked Wen Ya.
Besides, she was not actually a real child anyway.
So it did not matter if this family was a little weird.
She would try her best to pretend not to notice and ignore everything that did not make sense.
...
Meanwhile, after closing the door, Wen Ya immediately returned to the living room to convene a family meeting.
Looking at Shen Sixing sitting in the chair and her youngest son who was engrossed in building blocks, she clapped her hands loudly to get their attention.
Once they looked over, the woman sat on the sofa with her legs crossed. "Do you have any thoughts about our life going forward?"
Thoughts?
Shen Sixing's skin looked increasingly pale under the light. He chuckled, "Darling, you don't really think the arrival of a child could affect our current life, do you?"
He liked things to stay the same. Bringing this child back was not meant to change anything about their lives.
"Why couldn't it?" Wen Ya said seriously. "Don't you think that we don't have a single normal child in our family?"
Shen Sixing did not think much of it.
His wife's desperation for a daughter had reached a pathological level.
Back when the fourth child was born, the very first thing she did was pull open the baby's swaddle to check the gender.
He still remembered how Wen Ya, after seeing it, muttered blankly, "Hubby, why does my daughter have a little willy?"
...
"Then what do you want to do, Mommy?" Shen Xun put down the toy in his hand.
He knew full well that once his mother made a decision, it would not change. Arguing was completely pointless.
The boy's tone was calm. "I don't dislike her. I will cooperate with you, Mommy."
"Xiao Xun," Wen Ya's voice instantly became so tender it could melt hearts, "you really are Mommy's good baby."
She bent down and rubbed her son's cheek. "First of all, we can't let Xiao Yi know what our family does."
Wen Ya had never raised a normal child. From the moment her sons were born, they spent their lives surrounded by various assassination attempts from enemies.
Back when she gave birth to the second child, on their very first day out of the hospital, she had held the baby in one arm while shooting an attacker dead from a hundred meters away. Her combat record was fully verifiable.
Her sons had basically all faced various enemy assassinations and shootings by the time they were just a few years old. Having moved around all over the world, their adaptability was incredibly strong. They would not even bat an eye when seeing their parents kill someone; they could even calmly step up to finish off the target.
In other words, only the strong were fit to be their children.
But Shen Yi was a genuinely ordinary little girl from an orphanage, so they had to interact with her in a completely different way.
"If Xiao Yi finds out what we do, it will terrify her." Wen Ya reasoned logically. Draping one arm around Shen Sixing's neck, she whispered, "Hubby, you wouldn't want your daughter to talk about her father at school and say he is the boss of a transnational assassin organization, right? You are still hanging on the bounty list, darling."
Meeting his wife's serious gaze, Shen Sixing raised an eyebrow. "So...?"
Wen Ya pressed on, "You also wouldn't want our daughter's future essay topic to be 'My International Wanted Criminal Father', would you?"
Facing his wife's gentle yet dangerous look, Shen Sixing finally let out a faint sigh and relented, "I will do my best to cooperate."
...
Wen Ya shopped frantically online all night. Despite not sleeping a wink, she appeared at the door of Shen Yi's room looking radiant and full of energy.
Shen Yi rubbed her eyes. With her eyelids half-drooping, she looked adorably groggy in her half-asleep state. "Mommy?"
Her articulation was clear, but the girl's voice was naturally soft and sweet.
Having given birth to four sons, Wen Ya was so enchanted by this single "Mommy" that she clutched her chest with both hands, completely losing touch with reality.
Just call her Mommy, and Wen Ya would even go and fetch the president's life for her!
Wen Ya used to hold absolute authority in the field of assassinations.
Originally, after assassinating a certain newly inaugurated VIP, she had elegantly concealed her gun and turned to leave, only to run into Shen Sixing, who had also come to execute an assassination mission via long-range sniping.
There on a rooftop, amidst the chaotic screams and fleeing crowd following the president's assassination, the two fell in love at first sight and eventually became husband and wife.
Wen Ya was not some homicidal maniac. Compared to wandering around, she much preferred to settle down early.
And after washing her hands of the criminal underworld, her only wish was to have a daughter.
After giving birth to four sons in a row, Wen Ya figured there might be something wrong with Shen Sixing's ancestral graves, so in a fit of rage, she went to dig up the graves in the dead of night.
When she returned, Shen Sixing lazily lifted a strand of her dirt-stained long hair and told her in a regretful tone, "I think I remembered wrong. My dad isn't dead yet. You dug up the wrong grave, honey."
In the end, this farce concluded with Wen Ya punching Shen Sixing's head straight into the wall.
"Xiao Yi, Mommy has prepared new clothes for you!" Early in the morning, the woman held up a fluffy bunny onesie, looking at Shen Yi with sparkling eyes.
She looked like she could not wait to dress her in it.
Shen Yi pursed her lips and obediently let Wen Ya dress her up.
Her long hair, yellowed and dry from long-term malnutrition, was forcefully combed smooth by Wen Ya, yet she did not feel the slightest bit of pain during the process.
Through sheer force and a bit of a miracle, Wen Ya untangled her knotted long hair, tied it into a bun, and pinned it with a hairclip. The bunny onesie worn on the short-limbed five-year-old child made her look exceptionally naive and cute.
After getting dressed, Shen Yi was led downstairs. The father and son duo downstairs were respectively occupying themselves: one was quietly looking down and playing with a Rubik's cube, and the other was resting with a book covering his face, drowsy.
Hearing the commotion, Shen Xun lifted his eyes and looked at his freshly styled sister in front of him.
The girl's hair was tied into a bun with a light yellow hair tie. She wore a fluffy onesie with white ears drooping behind her, and her amber eyes were crystal clear.
She actually looked... very pleasing to the eye.
But, he frowned, not understanding why he found her pleasing to the eye.
Six-year-old Shen Xun did not know that the word "cute" existed in the world; right now, he simply felt that this sister looked exceptionally pleasing to the eye today.
And so, charmed by her cuteness, Shen Xun stood up and decided to generously offer his toys to her.
"Here," the boy spat out dryly.
Shen Yi took it. She had never played with a 6x6 Rubik's Cube before, so she took her time, spending five minutes to solve it.
His sister really was stupid.
Shen Xun came to this conclusion after observing her, looking at her with the kind of pity reserved for the mentally challenged.
Shen Yi asked, "Why are you looking at me like that?"
He was blunt. "You're stupid."
"I'm not stupid." It was the first time Shen Yi had been called stupid. She blinked and tried to give an example. "The aunts and uncles at the orphanage all praised me for being smart."
Even her scumbag father from her previous life would admit that she was the smartest person he had ever met.
"That's because the people around you are all stupid," Shen Xun said as his fingertips flew, solving the Rubik's Cube at a speed beyond what a human child should be capable of.
Finally, he killed the competition with a flat, emotionless tone.
"Boring."
58.39 seconds. Less than a minute.
Shen Yi was amazed.
"Okay, I'm an idiot," she decisively admitted her shortcoming.
Shen Sixing moved his book away. Having witnessed the interaction between the two children, the corners of his mouth curled up into a laugh.
Shen Yi looked over at her father, who was nestled in the sofa.
The man was thin and frail-looking, with delicate features. Holding a book in his hands and wearing glasses, he looked like a figure of authority, a true intellectual.
But when Shen Yi looked closely, she found the words glaringly written on the book's cover:
"Postpartum Care of Sows"???
Shen Yi's eyes widened in surprise.
She naturally had round eyes, which looked exceptionally cute when widened. Paired with the innocent bunny ears on her hoodie, it sparked a bit of interest in Shen Sixing. He crooked a finger and lazily beckoned, "Come here, Xiao Yi."
Shen Yi decisively abandoned the Rubik's Cube and quickly climbed onto the sofa.
Nestled in the sofa, Shen Sixing placed the book on top of her head and tugged at her bunny ears.
With the book on postpartum care of sows resting on her head, Shen Yi shook her head to toss it off. She reached out and took off his glasses. "Daddy."
Caught off guard by the removal of his glasses, the man squinted as if unaccustomed to the light. His dark eyes were devoid of emotion, giving her a fleeting illusion that the person in front of her was exceptionally dangerous.
Shen Yi forced down this ominous intuition, tried to relax her posture, and sat on the sofa.
He yawned, and that dark aura vanished. His tone was half-dead. "What is it?"
Shen Yi shook her head.
Pointing at the dropped book, she looked curious. "What are you doing?"
"Daddy is studying hard for his upcoming job, all for the sake of our future happy life," he told his daughter solemnly.
"Job?" Shen Yi pointed doubtfully at the picture of the sow on the cover. She pursed her lips and mumbled, "...So you have to learn how to nurse sows, Daddy?"
His expression remained unchanged, not caring about the trivial fact that she could read. He casually made something up. "Daddy's job is raising pigs."
"Our family has a very large pig farm. Learning how to care for sows after they give birth is a mandatory course in pig farming, Xiao Yi."
After Shen Sixing finished explaining, he looked at his daughter, who had fallen into deep thought, assuming she might be somewhat disappointed with this kind of job.
After all, children cared about saving face too.
Just as he was about to say something else, Shen Sixing's body stiffened slightly the next moment. He looked down and found that Shen Yi had thrown herself into his arms.
The girl crashed into his embrace with sheer joy. She was warm, smelled sweet, and her voice was crisp and melodious.
"That's wonderful, Daddy! I support your work! I will also study hard on how to care for sows in the future."
Hearing about such a grounded job gave Shen Yi an overwhelming sense of security. In a moment of excitement, she buried her entire head in his chest, waved her arms, and excitedly announced:
"I'm going to be a pig farm manager when I grow up!"
This was the ultimate job security, after all.
Shen Sixing: "?"
The moment Shen Yi's ambitious words fell, a fruit knife flew out from the kitchen and embedded itself firmly into the apple on the table in front of Shen Sixing.
With a crisp slice.
The apple was split cleanly in two right before his eyes.
Shen Sixing: "..."
Wen Ya poked her head out with a beaming smile, her tone soft and gentle. "Hubby, what are you guys talking about?"
