The Spirit World

Chapter 765 Crime
"Another...an abandoned species?"

Ning Xuefan licked his fingers with some disdain, flipped the comic book, and coughed slowly, "Uncle Li, have you finished sweeping the floor? If not, give the baby to Wang Po, put it in the Baby Pavilion, and go sweep the floor."

"This……"

Uncle Li was a little embarrassed, but he didn't know what to say. The baby in his arms was indeed different from others, but after the birds flew away, the baby was not much different from an ordinary abandoned baby.

Ning Xuefan placed his feet on the table and slowly tilted it. He glanced at the baby in the cradle, then looked at Uncle Li and asked, "Anything else?"

"This baby may be different from other children. He was born with a red plum mark on his forehead and hundreds of birds singing. I think he must be extraordinary..."

Uncle Li spoke anxiously. He did bring a lot of abandoned babies up the mountain. To be honest, none of them needed to be reported to Manager Tan Mingqiu. Most of them came to find Ning Xuefan. Ning Xuefan had been looking for him so many times that he naturally became annoyed.

The Baby House is a foster care institution specifically set up to take care of abandoned children.

"Oh? So what?" Ning Xuefan went back to reading comic books, waved his hands, and said with a crooked corner of his mouth in disdain: "Tsk, Uncle Li, I call you Uncle Ju because you are old. You brought the child up the mountain blindly, and it's good enough that you have the Baby Pavilion to take care of him. What do you really think Bailing Mountain is? Are you just helping the people down the mountain to raise bastards? I'm not saying anything bad about you, but just put the child in the Baby Pavilion and do whatever you want. Even if he is the son of a god, there's nothing special about him."

Uncle Li looked at the baby in his arms. The baby was sleeping soundly. Even though Ning Xuefan was making a lot of noise, there was no sound.

He touched the mark between the child's eyebrows. That red plum was definitely not the cinnabar that his parents had randomly applied to deceive Bai Lingshan. Instead, it was a very natural mark that looked like skin.

Ning Xuefan was quite angry when he saw Uncle Li standing there. "Uncle Li, to be honest, it's not easy to raise a child. There are so many abandoned babies in the world, you can't raise every one you see... If you really have such great virtue, you wouldn't have come to Bailing Mountain to sweep the floor for more than ten years. You should have become a Bodhisattva long ago. If you have the heart of a Bodhisattva, you might as well sweep the floor, collect the monthly salary, and go out to eat and drink. How carefree it is."

Ning Xuefan coughed twice again, then laid sideways on the bed, shook his head and sighed, "You still won't understand even if I tell you... You are just a piece of rotten wood."

Uncle Li was scolded but he didn't say anything and could only leave indifferently. Originally, if the butler Tan Mingqiu had taken a look at the child, the child's fate might have been better. If the butler Tan also thought that the child was intelligent, he might have raised him as a disciple of Bailing Mountain, instead of being raised as bastards like all the abandoned babies in Haiying Pavilion.

He didn't know whether the children in the Children's Pavilion were bastards, but those whose parents could not afford to raise them or abandoned them might be even worse than bastards.

Haiying Pavilion has a bad reputation.

Therefore, Uncle Li wanted to let Tan Mingqiu take a look at almost every one of his children. The chief steward's words could definitely change the fate of an abandoned baby.

The Children's Pavilion is full of abandoned babies, some from below the mountain, and some from disciples inside the mountain. Because the disciples fell in love, or died in a mission, leaving behind children, they would also be taken care of in the Children's Pavilion, but the abandoned babies from below the mountain were naturally treated differently from the children of these disciples. Since then, the Children's Pavilion has been divided into the Inner Pavilion and the Outer Pavilion.

The children in the inner cabinet are the children of disciples, and most of them can stay in Bailing Mountain to practice directly. The children in the outer cabinet are naturally the abandoned babies at the foot of the mountain. They must pass the test at a certain age together with all the learners before they can practice in Bailing Mountain.

Those who fail will be kicked out.

This age is also the age of Bailing Mountain's cultivation, ten years old. The children in the Children's Pavilion have never been ten years old.

The person who manages the Baby Pavilion is called Wang Po, whose real name is unknown. She is in charge of more than thirty babies, twelve of which are in the inner cabinet and eighteen in the outer cabinet, ranging in age from one to two years old.

Uncle Li came to Wang Po's room. Wang Po lived at the side door of the children's house. She was in charge of the group of children and prevented them from going out to make trouble or disturbing the disciples' practice.

Wang Po's room was very small. She was estimated to be about fifty years old, a little bloated, and looked like an old woman. She wore a gray cloth jacket all day long and had a very loud voice. She was a very difficult woman to get along with.

"Why did you bring another one back?"

Grandma Wang scolded her sharply: "You picked up 17 out of 18 people in your yard. Do you really think you are a Bodhisattva? You can't even support yourself, and you make a living by sweeping the floor here, and you still want to help others raise their children. I have never seen anyone as arrogant as you. You deserve to be poor all your life."

Wang Po would point at someone's nose when scolding them, but when she scolded Uncle Li, she just glared at him, as if she was disappointed in him.

Because Uncle Li is not married, let alone has children.

He was purely kind-hearted, so he would pick up lost children and have them raised at the Children's Home. He would also often lend money to the children to buy snacks.

"This child is different!" Uncle Li held the baby he had picked up and had no good words to say. He could only push the child forward in front of Wang Po. Some older children also came over to look, with some intention of watching the fun.

None of them are over nine years old. The oldest one is only about five years old and has been brought up since childhood.

"What's different? What's different? When have you said something other than this? Ah? These little bastards have fathers but no mothers. You are not their biological parents. You brought them here from thousands of miles away, but you don't raise them yourself. You want us to raise them at the Baby Pavilion in Bailing Mountain. Aren't you unlucky? What's different? I said you are different from others!"

Wang Po closed the door and stopped the children who were sticking their heads out to listen. Most of those children just knew that they might have another brother coming.

The children were ignorant, but Grandma Wang certainly understood, except that she really didn't want to raise another child.

The funding for the Children's Pavilion is not much, which is why Ning Xuefan was not so happy. He just didn't say it explicitly, but what Wang Po reflected was that all the children without parents did not eat as well as the disciples.

One more mouth to feed means one more branch to bear. Days like this would not be possible if there was one more mouth to feed, so Wang Po became even more irritable.

Not to mention that children need to grow, even if they eat, they need to eat enough, right?
Children are most afraid of being hungry. It is not necessarily that there is really anything they can starve to. If they starve in Bailing Mountain, it is better for them to follow their unfortunate parents. They will not starve here and end up with the reputation of an orphan.

It's all sin.

(End of this chapter)