Reborn As Super Heiress

Chapter 414: Chapter 410 The Giant Cricket

Huang Xiaoyi was the youngest of his uncle Huang Jialin’s progeny, just fourteen years old, right at the age when playfulness reigns supreme.

Just the day before yesterday, the lad had returned from his maternal Xiao family, but who would have expected that upon arriving home, he would get into a fight over cricket fighting with the neighboring children.

It turned out that in the Imperial Capital, there was a place called Douyuan, where competitions were held annually, including cockfighting, dogfighting, fish fighting, bird fighting, and cricket fighting.

Despite his young age, Huang Xiaoyi had always been keen on playing with crickets. Last year, he had collected a cricket on his own to enter into the competition and suffered a crushing defeat, so this year he had his grandfather procure a formidable cricket for him.

A few days ago, he went to the Xiao family specifically to bring his cricket back, but the boy was too impatient to show off his good find and, as usual, ended up challenging the other neighborhood children to a contest.

Indeed, his cricket won its bouts, but in the process, it crippled a cricket belonging to one of the other children.

Furious, that child lashed out in anger, stomping Xiaoyi’s hard-won prize cricket into an unrecognizable pulp.

This lit the fuse. Huang Xiaoyi, who was not about to be shown up, immediately tussled with that child, and the rest who tried to intervene were also swept up in the fray, and in no time, a melee erupted.

By the time the adults arrived and separated the children, each kid was bruised and battered, causing an uproar that was both amusing and distressing to the onlookers.

This was Huo Sining’s first encounter with her third uncle’s youngest, and as was her usual practice, she felt it wouldn’t be proper to show partiality, so she brought over a box of jade articles for Huang Xiaoyi to choose from.

The jade items were mostly things like jade pendants and wrist beads, the sort of thing a boy might take a liking to. Sining thought that even if Xiaoyi didn’t particularly like them, he would casually pick something.

But the youngster didn’t give her any face at all, and after rifling through the contents of the box a bit, he turned up his nose and cast it aside, his eyes brimming with tears, still preoccupied with the loss of his deceased cricket.

”Don’t you know any manners, you little brat? Si Ning, your cousin, offered you a gift and you can’t even say thank you?”

Seeing her brother’s sulky demeanor, Huang Ran Ping couldn’t hide her irritation and knocked him on the head with a sharp thump.

Huang Xiaoyi pursed his lips, glanced at the box’s contents unhappily, and said, ”If it’s a gift, it should be something I like. I don’t like any of these trinkets, so why should I say thank you?”

Huang Ran Ping was on the verge of losing her patience with her little brother, but it was Huo Sining who found the whole situation quite amusing. She sized up Huang Xiaoyi from top to bottom and inquired curiously, ”The kind of gift that would suit your taste, then—what is it you would like?”

Huang Xiaoyi glanced at Huo Sining and replied, ”Of course, ’Great General’!”

”’Great General’?” Huo Sining looked puzzled and turned to Huang Ran Ping for an explanation, somewhat baffled. What on earth is that?

Huang Ran Ping explained with a mix of embarrassment and resignation, ”It’s a cricket.”

”The ’Great General’ is not just any cricket. It’s the king of crickets, with a lot of teeth. It eats meat and is extremely aggressive, far more formidable than ordinary crickets!” said Huang Xiaoyi, bristling at his elder sister’s trivialization of the Great General, his cheeks flushing red with indignation.

Seeing her brother’s reaction, Huang Ran Ping quickly raised her hands in a surrendering gesture, ”’Fine, I misspoke. It is the king of crickets, exceptionally powerful. Happy now?”

A twitch tugged at Huo Sining’s lips, ”So you don’t want these—you want a cricket as a gift?”

”It’s not a cricket, it’s a Great General!” Huang Xiaoyi looked at Huo Sining with disdain, and the youth full of adolescent pride said scornfully, ”As I said, you wouldn’t understand. All you women know about are cosmetics and jewelry. This cricket culture is not from your world.”

The remark made Huo Sining laugh. It was just a cricket fight, yet the boy had elevated it to a matter of cultural sophistication. He really was quite amusing.

”It’s just a cricket, isn’t it? I’ll get you the strongest one!”

Huo Sining didn’t see any problem with that. If it had been something else, maybe she might not have been able to, but finding a cricket was definitely not beyond her.

Ever since she had said those words, Huang Xiaoyi had been pestering Huo Sining about the cricket, even during ancestor worship; he kept staring at Huo Sining as if afraid she would try to weasel out of it, which made her both laugh and cry.

Huo Sining led Huang Xiaoyi to her room and soon brought out a cricket jar.

”Here you go, I said I’d find one for you and I did. You think I’d lie to you?”

Huo Sining wasn’t just making empty promises. After agreeing to get Huang Xiaoyi the strongest cricket, she had really set her mind to it and had gone to the Flower, Bird, Insect, and Fish Market yesterday specifically to pick out a rather large cricket.

How much could a cricket cost?

There were some for a few bucks, hundreds, and even some that cost tens of thousands.

Huo Sining didn’t know much about crickets, but that wasn’t important; her target was a big one.

After much deliberation, she chose a large, variegated cricket. The shop owner shook his head at Huo Sining’s selection method and kept urging her:

”Miss, that’s not how you choose a cricket. A fierce cricket doesn’t necessarily have a large body, but it should have a loud chirp and pure color. This one you picked has a large body, but it’s all bluster and no substance and wouldn’t even beat an ordinary cricket.”

Huo Sining, however, didn’t mind and smiled, saying, ”It’s fine, shopkeeper, I’m just buying it to keep as a pet; any random pick will do.”

The shop owner was helpless, but the customer is always right. Since Huo Sining didn’t heed his advice, he didn’t say any more, and, after symbolically charging her twenty bucks, she bought the big guy.

After bringing the cricket home, Huo Sining began her cricket transformation project that night.

Having conducted numerous clinical trials on angelfish, shad, and Heitan, Huo Sining had mastered the art of altering a species’ lineage, so transforming a cricket barely two inches long was no trouble at all for her.

Spiritual Energy streamed into it thread by thread, and while the cricket initially struggled, it soon lay there obediently, motionless.

The effects of the Spirit of Azure Pearl were evident. In just a few minutes, the varied colors on the cricket’s body had changed, its skin became a pure black, with a very dark head and white teeth.

Huo Sining didn’t understand crickets, so even after completing these changes, she couldn’t be completely sure that such a transformed cricket was a ’good’ one, but that was all she could do.

However, when she handed the cricket jar to Huang Xiaoyi, the young fellow was utterly dumbfounded the instant he saw the cricket inside.

”A Ning, are you playing a joke on me? With such a large size, this cricket will definitely lose to others!”