Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle

Chapter 1346: Luo Jun Extra (Final)

Luo Jun’s growth tugged at everyone’s heartstrings just the same.

As a proper spirit who had actually been a mom, Chen Huihong’s biggest regret was that she’d never managed to keep a growth diary for Huihui. You couldn’t really blame her for that—Huihui had been adopted from the orphanage, and by the time she brought the child home, she was already in kindergarten.

Chen Huihong made up for this regret on Luo Jun.

"Come on, Junjun, look at the camera and give me a smile. Not smiling is fine too—this expression is especially good." Holding the expensive camera she’d "borrowed" from her younger brother’s place, Chen Huihong clicked the shutter and captured Luo Jun’s expressionless baby photo beside a bench by the greenery belt in the complex.

The nanny smiled cheerfully on the side, her eyes full of affection for the child. With a slightly proud and somewhat show-offy tone, she said, "Junjun talked yesterday."

Qin Huai, who had been standing nearby secretly taking video the whole time, quickly asked, "Did he call someone? Did he say Dad or Mom?"

"Mom," the nanny said. "His mom was so happy she laughed all night. His dad got a bit jealous and spent the whole night telling Junjun to say Dad, and ended up getting two punches to the nose from him."

Speaking of this, the nanny got a bit worried again: "Junjun’s strength is getting bigger and bigger. This bad habit of loving to hit people still hasn’t changed. I don’t know if he’ll grow out of it when he gets a little older."

"He’ll change, he’ll change," An Youyou said quickly, not daring to say the next line.

Once he succeeds in Crossing Tribulation, he won’t need to hit people anymore; he can just breathe fire and scorch us to death.

Fearless in the face of death, Chen Huihong picked up Luo Jun from the stroller, smiling as she said, "Junjun can already talk at just over five months old, that’s amazing. At this rate, he’ll be able to say complete sentences before he turns one."

This was Chen Huihong patching things up for Luo Jun, to keep the family from getting too suspicious about him talking so early.

Luo Jun didn’t appreciate it at all. He stared at her with eyes that actually couldn’t open very wide yet, and instead of swinging his fists, he concentrated very hard and, with clear enunciation and standard pronunciation, uttered two short words—not loudly, but very distinctly—

"Ma de."

The group of spirits with excellent hearing: ...

Wonderful. Luo Jun not only knew how to talk, he already knew how to swear.

Other kids, once they learn to say "Mom," the next thing they say is "Dad." Not Luo Jun. After he learned to say "Mom," what came next was "Ma de."

From the fact that Luo Jun started forcing his not-yet-fully-developed vocal cords to talk before he was even six months old, it wasn’t hard to see that the usual spirit philosophy of hiding one’s edge and sticking to the middle way did not apply to him at all. This Bi fang was alive for one reason only: to be a child prodigy.

Sure enough, after he managed "Mom" and "Ma de," Luo Jun rapidly mastered such high-difficulty vocabulary as "Dad," "Grandma," "no sleep," "eat," and so on. Unlike most babies, who just open their mouths in unconscious imitation when they first start talking, he was clearly doing it with full awareness.

By the time he was one, Luo Jun could already speak some simple sentences and accurately inform the nanny of what he wanted.

Like pointing at the TV and saying, "Watch TV."

Unfortunately, he was just a little kid, so no one paid him any mind. The nanny still put him in the stroller every day, took him out for walks and sightseeing, let him get close to nature, and refused to let the child watch television dramas.

When Luo Jun turned two, he could recite a full classical poem in front of his parents, and toss out a few idioms he might’ve heard somewhere before, putting on the act of a gifted child.

In front of Qin Huai, he asked how much inheritance he had left and whether Qin Huai had blown through it all in just three years.

In front of Chen Huihong, he asked if she was tired of living.

In front of Chen Huixi, he didn’t say anything at all. When she said, "Junjun, you used to swing punches at me when you were little, how come you don’t punch anymore now?" he met it with silence.

By the way, Qin Huai and the others had once made a private bet on what Luo Jun’s first complete sentence would be after he learned to speak. Would it be "Chen Huihong, are you sick in the head?" or "Dang Kang, are you tired of living?" In the end, they all lost; what Luo Jun actually said was, "Chen Huihong, are you tired of living? Dang Kang, are you sick in the head?"

On Luo Jun’s kill list, Chen Huihong successfully defeated Shi Dadan and ascended to the top spot.

When Luo Jun was three, he was granted a certain amount of autonomy in making friends and could go play with other kids on his own. Sometimes when the nanny needed a day off, Zhang Shumei would ask Chen Huihong to help watch him, or simply drop Luo Jun off at Yunzhong Restaurant.

That was Luo Jun’s window of time for communication with Qin Huai and the others.

Although Zhang Shumei didn’t understand why Qin Huai and the others liked her grandson so much, it was clearly a good thing. After all, winning Master Qin’s favor meant winning unlimited-snacks privileges at Yunzhong Restaurant, plus a bonus to his approval rating with all the grannies and grandpas.

If Luo Jun were an adult who went around with a permanent scowl, giving people the cold shoulder and talking in a snarky, passive-aggressive way, no one would like him. But right now, he was still a little brat not even old enough for kindergarten. At an age when he should be carefree, spending his days eating and sleeping, playing with toys or going out with his friends, he didn’t make a fuss, just liked to put on a sullen face. When he was younger, he liked to bang-bang give people two punches; once he got a bit more sensible, he stopped hitting. His only bad habit was loving to watch TV, and whenever he wasn’t allowed to, he’d sit there in a pensive pose as if contemplating the meaning of life.

A kid like that just made people feel he was pretending to be an adult, which was oddly adorable; how could anyone dislike him?

In his last life, Luo Jun had become the universally acknowledged "hardest old bachelor to mess with" in Yunzhong District. In this life, he became the universally acknowledged most beloved child in Yunzhong District.

There were even people secretly calling him "little philosopher" behind his back.

In response, Luo Jun’s reaction was:

Luo Jun had no reaction whatsoever.

He simply used every scrap of his break time to listen through the entire process of his own funeral, learn the ins and outs of Qin Huai’s Crossing Tribulation, find out Shi Dadan’s secrets, and, by the way, roast Qin Huai’s really pathetic tracking skills.

His final comment: Dang Kang is pretty smart.

All one could say was that being reborn really makes a difference—when even a Bi fang starts complimenting Dang Kang.

In Luo Jun’s fourth year, no matter how reluctant he was, he was sent into kindergarten by his biological parents.

The kindergarten was just 800 meters away from Yunzhong District, a private kindergarten mostly attended by kids from the nearby complexes.

The grounds weren’t large, but the facilities were complete, the teachers were conscientious and responsible, and the kids could take all kinds of interest classes.

Abacus, painting, Rubik’s cube, public speaking, skating, dancing, taekwondo, martial arts...

Unsurprisingly, Luo Jun chose taekwondo and martial arts, beat everyone in the kindergarten until there were no opponents left, and soon crowned himself king of the kindergarten, gathering a bunch of little followers.

The people around Qin Huai couldn’t help sighing that so it’s true: the male lead in a rebirth novel really does have to be a boss from childhood, even in kindergarten he has to collect little underlings.

As for Luo Jun... on the surface he kept saying he had no interest in being the boss at all, it was just that those little brats were too annoying, and he really didn’t want to be at his age and still argue with kids. If they wanted to be underlings, let them, as long as they didn’t bother him. But everyone felt that Luo Jun was quite enjoying his role as boss.

At six, Luo Jun enrolled in Experimental Primary School, the same one Chen Huixi had attended. Judging from financial conditions alone, Luo Jun’s family wasn’t poor. Both his parents had normal, stable jobs. The pay wasn’t exactly high, but it wasn’t low either.

As a star nanny, Zhang Shumei’s salary was extremely high. She’d tried to quit several times over the years, but her employer refused to let her go, and housing prices in Yunzhong District had been soaring these past few years. Compared with most spirits’ second lives, Luo Jun had definitely landed in a well-off family.

But Experimental Primary School had even more well-off families.

Thrown into Experimental Primary School, Luo Jun’s family background was at best average, not rich, not poor.

With his ordinary family background, Luo Jun kept right on being a boss in Experimental Primary School. Relying on his miles-ahead grades, his 1-vs-5 Combat Power, and maxed-out taunt Skills, he became a famous primary schooler. That line he used to mock the school bully—"You can’t beat me at studying, fine, but how are you also losing at fighting?"—became a classic quote, passed down and recited, and it actually made the school bully mend his ways, study hard, and get into a key middle school.

It’s said that on the day the school bully got into the key middle school, his family came by loaded with gifts to thank Luo Jun for cultivating and encouraging their son all these years.

Qin Huai himself didn’t involve himself too much in Luo Jun’s school life; he just quietly watched from the side. At critical moments—for example, when some little girl wrote Luo Jun a love letter—he’d send the former Beiping Thief King, Zhao Cheng’an, to steal the letter, let everyone read it once, then secretly put it back.

The most useful episode of the Beiping Thief King’s career.

Life went on peacefully like this for many years.

After graduating primary school as a famous little student, Luo Jun became a famous middle-schooler, a famous high-schooler, and then a prestigious university student. He still loved to pull a long face, but by then everyone had taken it for granted that this kid was just like that, his face simply didn’t show much expression—he wasn’t deliberately putting on a scowl.

At school, Luo Jun was a straight-A student with over-the-top Combat Power; at home, he was a TV-addicted model son/model grandson; in the neighborhood, he was the legendary "someone else’s kid"; and in the spirit group chat, he was a troll who had never forgotten his original calling.

You could say that aside from occasionally letting himself go in the WeChat group—cussing out Chen Huihong, roasting Cheng Gong, and throwing shade at Shi Dadan—Luo Jun was, at all other times, a normal and outstanding rebirth-novel male lead.

Luo Jun even made friends.

He was pretty well-liked at school, and after years of sticking with martial arts, he got along very well with several senior brothers at the martial arts school. They even went out to eat together on weekends.

Everyone sighed that Luo Jun was becoming more and more like a real person.

At first, Luo Jun was faking it. He pretended to be a dutiful grandson in front of his grandma, a dutiful son in front of his parents, a student in front of his teachers, and a kid in front of his classmates. But as he kept pretending, he eventually put himself into the role for real.

Finally, on Luo Jun’s 18th birthday, he successfully Crossing Tribulation, just as expected.

The first thing Luo Jun did after successfully Crossing Tribulation was to buy a small bouquet of yellow flowers and place it before Liu Tao’s grave.

Only after Luo Jun Crossing Tribulation successfully did Qin Huai and the others dare to tell him that on the day he died, a Butterfly had, for some unknown reason, flown in through the 17th-floor window into his home, landed on his shoulder, stayed for a while, then quietly flown out again, disappearing without a trace.

It all felt like the arrangement of fate.

But Luo Jun never believed in fate.

After hearing this, Luo Jun just quietly stared at Liu Tao’s grave.

From the surface, you couldn’t tell at all that beneath this lush greenery lay a grave.

"I’ve heard that as time changes, the feng shui of a place changes too," Luo Jun said. "How’s Zhou Hu’s business ability these days? Back then I hired his great-grandfather to read the feng shui and choose this burial site."

"After he woke up, his fortune-telling skills nosedived. Has he trained them back over these years? Has he been practicing properly? A perfectly good Nine-tailed Fox insisting on being a fortune teller—I thought if he insisted on being a fortune teller he must be really amazing, but it turns out it was just a family trade. After he woke up, of all people he had to imitate Mayfly. Zhao Cheng’an’s cooking hasn’t improved much in over ten years and is still just so-so. He’s not the same, is he?" Facing spirits, Luo Jun’s taunting instinct was still fully cranked up.

Looking at the teenager before him, face full of mockery, Qin Huai didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt that Luo Jun now was really asking for a beating, and he actually felt nostalgic for Luo Jun’s childhood.

Unfortunately, no matter how much Luo Jun deserved a beating, none of them could beat him. Even before he awakened, when Luo Jun was practicing martial arts hard every day, they couldn’t beat him. Now that Luo Jun had awakened...

Wait, could it be that all these years of Luo Jun drilling martial arts so hard were actually because...

Luo Jun took three sticks of incense out of his bag, gently blew on them, lit them, and stuck them before Liu Tao’s grave.

Luo Jun said calmly, "If Zhou Hu’s skills are back, have him do the reading. Find a feng shui treasure site, buy it, and move Liu Tao’s grave there. If Zhou Hu’s not up to it, then find a really capable fortune teller."

"People don’t have a next life. Even if they really did, bringing their memories into their new life would only add to their pain and waste their new beginning."

Looking at Luo Jun, Qin Huai suddenly felt that the nickname they’d secretly given him when he was little hadn’t been wrong.

The little philosopher had grown into a big philosopher.

It was genuinely heartwarming!

Luo Jun noticed Qin Huai’s look and shot him a murderous glare in return. "What’s with that look?"

Qin Huai hastily averted his eyes.

"Nothing, I just purely feel happy for your successful Crossing Tribulation."

"Really, I’m especially happy."