Little Pink Starfish

In the Elven Spring, that tiny little person stretched out soft, tender arms, as if throwing a punch, and adorably stretched lazily. His white little cheeks were puffed, red little mouth particularly cute, and those eyes that couldn’t open for a moment — all of it struck the elves’ moe points hard…

But inside Gu Bai, there was only one feeling:
wu! lei! hong! ding!
Damn it, that whole string of descriptions was like a thunderclap, alright!
No no no — his dog eyes had already been struck blind by lightning…

Gu Bai felt goosebumps rising all over his body.
Seriously, it was just too numbing.

After a long while, Gu Bai came back to his senses amidst the surrounding elves’ exclamations and cheers. He barely managed to calm himself a little, mentally blocked out the rainbow halo surrounding the “little person” and looked — and was even more shocked to find that guy had a streak of verdant marking on his forehead. This meant — he was an elf royal born of the elf mother tree, protected by the mother tree…

So — was it a princess or a prince?

There was an elf prince in the original story, after all. Since even Gu Bai’s own shell could go from female to male, then getting an elf princess to mess around with the harem protagonist wasn’t impossible either.

So now, should he go and pull apart that “little person’s” lotus-root-like (hiss) little legs, to check if there was a little ding-ding… bleh.

Gu Bai’s face was expressionless, but the tips of his ears turned red, his eyes slightly odd.
This kind of feeling, like being a perv to a child… lian! tong! pi! — those three big words seemed to want to stamp themselves right on his forehead, making sweat pour down his back and soak his whole front in cold sweat.

— But still, thinking that inside that child’s body was actually that damn pervert, why did he suddenly feel just the tiniest bit of thrill, huh?

Because of that one hidden [BEEP] thought (not really), Gu Bai calmly walked over, calmly picked up the “little person” from the Spring of Life, then calmly poked at his…

Then, he felt two tiny arms wrap around his neck, and in his ear came a voice thick with teasing:
“Gege already can’t wait? Why not wait till we’re in the room later, I’ll let gege look all he wants, how about it?”

Only, that voice was just too childish — it turned all the flirtation into comedy in a second, didn’t it?

Gu Bai froze, then expressionlessly said: “Ha, ha, ha.”

“Little person”: ?

Gu Bai dead-fish-eyed: “Look at your underdeveloped and still pink, so-called cute beep-beep-beep.”

“Little person”: ……

The interlude flashed by in a moment. The watching elves, besides endless admiration and praise, simply watched wide-eyed as Gu Bai carried away the newborn elf prince. Then, from the depths of their hearts, they sighed: as expected of the elf royal closest to the mother tree, such deep motherly love, and so on.

As for Gu Bai, holding his freshly-born household pervert, his mood was one of indescribable complication.

Just now he had searched through the elf queen’s leftover memories and discovered one very serious matter.

That was — currently in the elf race, there was no prince.

But just now, the elf mother tree had given birth to one…

So — was this damn pervert the elf prince in the original story or what!

Having a pervert play the role of a pure elf — wasn’t the difficulty a bit much?

Although he did trust the pervert’s acting, the elf prince was supposed to appear only eight hundred years later, and that was when the plot was supposed to start. Now this pervert had to live in the elf forest for eight hundred years, so during those eight hundred years, this forest’s elves… damn it, would they still be pure and kind-hearted?

He really, truly couldn’t trust the pervert’s self-control, okay!

Being elf queen — was seriously hard [manual wave goodbye]

·

Gu Bai brought the house-trained pervert into the temple and began his miserable life of raising a child (husband).

If there was one thing worth being grateful for, it was probably that the pervert didn’t wet the bed, right~
That part was pretty nice.

But even so, Gu Bai still had to face all kinds of baby-care issues.

First up was the matter of opening the eyes.

Since elf cubs took five hundred years to mature, where human babies might open their eyes in a few days, elf cubs — were counted in years.

So on the first day, Qiguan Rui’s eyes were tightly shut…
Second day, Qiguan Rui’s eyes were still tightly shut…
Third day, Qiguan Rui’s eyes remained tightly shut…
Fourth day…

Gu Bai grabbed those fat little hands still pinching his face and pretending not to see, and unable to hold it in, flicked his finger against the elf cub’s forehead.

“I know,” he said in a particularly cold tone.

That exquisite and adorable elf cub smiled faintly: “What does gege know?”

Gu Bai: “You’re exceptionally gifted.”

Elf cub: “……”

Three seconds later, Gu Bai peeled back the eyelids.
In that instant, golden eyes appeared before him.

Qiguan Rui looked at the terribly dark expression in front of him and sighed: “I thought I could enjoy it a little longer… gege understands me too well, and that’s not a good thing.”

Gu Bai reached out his hand.

Qiguan Rui: “……”

A flicker of amusement flashed through Gu Bai’s eyes: “So, cuuute.”

Then he very decisively flung away the pervert baggage, blinked his eyes very cutely, and the chubby little hands hugged Gu Bai as he rubbed up close affectionately: “Gege likes me, I’m so happy~~~mua!”

Gu Bai wiped the drool from his face expressionlessly.

He really thought, wrestling over moral bottom lines with a dead pervert — he was the real idiot!

·

That the elf prince was actually able to open his eyes after just five days of being born — this was utterly unparalleled big news, and it instantly spread through the entire elf race.

Countless elves came rushing to see their prince’s elegance. They all firmly believed that the prince would definitely possess powerful magical power and become the strongest warrior of the elf race!

— If, in the future, no elf princess was born, then after the queen returned to the embrace of the mother tree, the prince becoming elf king really wouldn’t be a bad thing at all!

In an instant, Qiguan Rui’s popularity in the elf race exploded.
Even though Gu Bai never really let those elves come watch him every day…

↓

Of course, it wasn’t that Gu Bai thought it was troublesome or anything — it was just that this turned-into-a-baby state could definitely count as Qiguan Rui’s black history, and if someday the guy got up and decided he didn’t like it, what if he went all “the weather’s cold, time for an elven genocide,” then what?

This guy had done that kind of thing before, hadn’t he…

So, even if his morals were in ruins, Gu Bai, who still had just a tiny bit of conscience left, felt that as the elf queen (better swallow that third character), he should still look out for the elf race a bit.

Qiguan Rui fully understood the brain holes of his beloved Gu Bai, and at the moment, he was quite happy to spend their long… two-person world together in the temple.

If there was one thing he was dissatisfied with, it was probably that the will of this world was stronger than in the previous three worlds, almost on par with a xianxia|world, which led to him being stuffed into this elf baby body. For the time being, he couldn’t release his true body — unless he was willing to pay an enormous price.

So, Qiguan Rui could only continue to muddle along in this tiny little body.

Not being able to spend these days doing the deed — such a pity…

And so, in the many years that followed, Gu Bai felt daily how that damn pervert, using the body of a baby, rubbed against him, clung to him, took advantage of him, in all kinds of sticky intimacy — it was embarrassing with a capital E.

It felt nothing like romance, more like an adult with a clingy child, okay!

What was most terrifying was — being taken advantage of by a “child” while feeling like he was the one committing a crime — who could understand that miserable feeling?! Every day it felt like he was the one committing child molestation, alright!

In that kind of state, Gu Bai just embarrassingly and hopelessly kept on going like that.

In the blink of an eye, five hundred years had passed.

·

On a beautiful, sunny morning, as the first light streamed down, the entire forest was instantly gilded in a layer of radiant gold. In nearly the blink of an eye, the forest seemed to transform from its dull gray into something dazzlingly brilliant, a magnificent rebirth.

Many elves clad in vine-woven clothing swung from vines, nimbly flitting across slender branches.

Elves were the darlings of the forest. They possessed unmatched beauty, unrivaled magical talent, and faces that would never fade.

Their voices were like the loveliest birdsong, melodious and moving—

“How many adventurers did you catch today?”

“Only three… His Highness the prince will definitely be disappointed, what should I do?”

“Okay okay don’t be sad, I caught five, I’ll give you one, okay?”

“Too bad they’re too poor, can’t even find a few crystal coins on them… don’t know if any rich relatives will come buy them back? If not, they’ll just have to be used to fill the mines.”

“Luckily they’re strong enough~ it’d be a pain if they died!”

“His Highness the prince is the best! His Highness is totally right — instead of letting them leave and bring back more bad people, might as well… um, reform them through labor! That’s exactly what us pure elves should do!”

“Her Majesty will definitely be pleased! The mother tree will definitely be pleased too!”

In these crisp voices, there were also the sounds of strong men and women tied tightly with vines, stumbling along the ground.

Some were adventurers, some were mercenaries, some were just lost — all were filthy and disheveled, extremely pathetic.

At the same time, the expressions on these people’s faces were all deeply shocked.

Elves…
Were these really elves?

Elves, the darlings of the forest, weren’t they supposed to be the purest and kindest beings in the world?!

↑
You couldn’t blame them for being so shocked.

Because those who came to the elven forest — aside from the truly wicked ones who wanted to capture elves to be slaves — most were just after the precious plants within the forest.

Though elves didn’t allow that, in the past, every time someone got caught, they’d just get driven away with arrows. Nothing truly terrible ever happened.

But this time…

They had only just arrived in the forest — when they were spotted by one elf, then surrounded by a group of elves, and finally, captured.

Really, truly — who would have thought!

Could it be, even the elves, with their noble character, had been tainted by evil?