"So you've been waiting for someone," the young man said thoughtfully. "Little fox, what's your name?"
"Rong Lan," Rong Lan paused for a moment. "And you, what's your name?"
The young man stroked the head of the fox doll. His face still showed no smile, but he seemed less cold than before. "Si Mo."
Rong Lan originally wanted to figure out his species based on his name, but she couldn't get any useful information from it, so she simply gave up. "Can you tell me what your true form is?"
Si Mo shook his head. "No. Since you can't tell, just forget it."
Rong Lan: "..."
She sighed, propping her chin on the fox headgear, pretending to be deep in thought about her fox life.
Not hearing the little fox's response, Si Mo couldn't help but speak up. "Are you currently inhabiting a human body? Have you learned how to cultivate with a human body?"
He wasn't a chatterbox, but he had been in this world for four days. The world was full of humans, and he hadn't found anyone to talk to. Now that he'd finally met a fox, he wanted to pour out all his words at once.
Hearing the young man's question, Rong Lan sighed softly. "No, I haven't."
If she had learned how to cultivate with a human body, she could have regained her magic. Then what was the point of exhausting herself at the gym every day?
"I know how to cultivate with a human body. I can teach you," Si Mo said slowly.
Rong Lan looked up at the sky. Could it be that God, seeing how pitiful a fox she was, had dragged a savior over from another world for her? Otherwise, how could he have appeared so timely? Just when she was struggling with how to cultivate with a human body, he had shown up in front of her.
If this wasn't a gift from God, what could it be?
"What do you want?" Rong Lan sat up straight.
Si Mo raised his eyebrows. He actually didn't need anything. Having finally met a non - human, it didn't matter to him if he taught her. After all, he couldn't find a way back to his own world and was just bored. But since she had asked, if he didn't ask for anything, she might suspect his motives. "When you talk to me wearing a fox headgear, I feel you're not being sincere."
Rong Lan hesitated between taking off the headgear and keeping it on. Finally, she asked, "What time is it?"
Si Mo, who didn't have any electronic devices from this world, looked up at the sky to check the time. "It's almost six o'clock."
Even if they, as non - humans, had electronic devices that could accurately tell the time, they would never forget the ability to tell the time by looking at the sky.
"How about we talk about this after I meet the person I want to see? By then, I can take off the headgear," Rong Lan asked very cautiously, afraid that Si Mo would think it was a waste of his time and refuse.
However, Si Mo was extremely bored at the moment. In his opinion, it didn't matter to accompany the little fox and wait for the person she wanted to see. "Okay, I'll wait with you."
Rong Lan was flattered. "It may take a long time because I don't know when he'll show up."
"It doesn't matter. Who are you waiting for?" Si Mo stroked the fox headgear again.
Rong Lan let him do it. After all, it wasn't her real fox head. If this guy dared to touch her real fox head, even without knowing his real strength, she would punch him. "It's the biological father of this human body."
"Hmm?" Si Mo was puzzled. "Why do you have to be so secretive when meeting your father?"
"Because I've never met him before," Rong Lan chattered on, explaining to Si Mo what had happened to this human body.
By the end of her explanation, Rong Lan even felt that she had spoken too fast and was a bit out of breath. She took three deep breaths.
From the little fox's long - winded explanation, Si Mo only came to one conclusion. "You just said that because the two human babies were born in the same delivery room, the nurse accidentally swapped them, and the elders of the two families took the wrong babies home. Are you sure it was really an accident?"
"I'm not sure," Rong Lan said truthfully. "I promised the real owner of this human body that I would expose the truth about the baby - swapping back then, so I'll investigate!"
But she was almost out of money and couldn't afford a detective to look into this matter, so she had to put it off for a while.
Si Mo sneered lightly, the coldness in his eyes surging. "The probability that such an 'oops' event is really just an accident is extremely low. I once witnessed a very absurd incident. Two pregnant women gave birth in the same delivery room, and both had baby boys. The doctor who delivered the babies was the younger sister of one of the pregnant women, and then the two babies were deliberately swapped."
"Hmm? Why would they swap the babies?" Rong Lan tilted her head.
She wasn't unfamiliar with such absurd things in the world she came from, but most of the cases she knew were because the eldest daughter was not as precious as the eldest son, so someone would go to great lengths to swap a baby girl for a baby boy. She knew that there was also a preference for sons over daughters in this world, but when both were baby boys, what was the point of swapping? Wouldn't one's own child be closer than someone else's?
Si Mo glanced at a human child passing by with a small schoolbag on his back. "Because one of the pregnant women came from a well - off family, while the other had a poor family background. The latter had a crooked thought and wanted her own child to live a wealthy life. Moreover, the baby born to the poor pregnant woman had a congenital disease, while the other baby was healthy."
Rong Lan was silent for a moment. "I've really never seen such a thing..."
She felt she was ill - informed.
However, they foxes never had such troubles. They could tell whether a cub was their own just by smelling it. There was absolutely no chance of taking the wrong cub.
"Little fox, don't you think what I said is very similar to your current situation?" Si Mo thought she had noticed it, but seeing her confused look through the headgear, he knew she hadn't connected the two things, so he had to give her a clearer hint.
Rong Lan was stunned. It seemed... indeed very similar.
But... "It's too early to guess the reason for the baby - swapping when we haven't even found out who did it."
"You're right. But we can basically be sure that your adoptive parents wouldn't do such a thing. As you said, you and your sister are both healthy. They have no reason to abandon their own child and raise someone else's."
"I think so too..." There was no reason for the Bai family to raise someone else's child. Moreover, the Bai family had raised her very well. If Father Bai and Mother Bai were in the know, they wouldn't have raised her as their own daughter. The current problem was that judging from Bai Rongran's situation, it seemed that her biological relatives were also raising Bai Rongran as their own daughter.
Could it be that they were raising Bai Rongran well just out of guilt? But that didn't seem right either. How could people who could do such a thing feel guilty?