Yes, the eggshell disappeared and it didn’t leave any trace behind. This meant that they couldn’t report their findings at this time unless they find something different about this baby. Otherwise, the Inspection Committee of the research institute would request for the evidence to prove their discovery.

Unless…

“No way! We cannot dissect the baby!” Nan Cheng exclaimed, turning to shield the protective cover.

The life detector and all the other various equipment for testing life forms stored in here were already the best. The only way that they could dig deeper than they already have was through discectomy

“What are you thinking?” Lan Xiao asked disapprovingly. “Even if we agree to it, it’s impossible. This is a fresh life, not a corpse. How could we dissect him?”

When the others turned to Nan Cheng with strange looks, she realized that she just said the wrong thing. She quickly backpedaled and said, “Sorry! Sorry, everyone. That’s not what I meant at all! It’s just… I feel so much sympathy for this child.”

Chen Wei smiled bitterly. “Boss, what should we do now?”

They were all in a bad mood. They thought that they had accomplished something great but it turned out that their hard work was all for nothing.

Lan Xiao shook his head and sighed. “Let’s forget about getting credit. We’ll just continue to work hard in the future. After we bring this child back, we’ll perform a more thorough test on him. If we still find nothing, then I guess we just have bad luck. As for him…”

“I’ll adopt him,” Nan Cheng said without hesitation. She wasn’t sure why but when she laid eyes on this child, she felt an instant connection to him. She knew that she had to protect and take care of him no matter what.

Lan Xiao laughed at her. “You’re having a child out of wedlock!”

Nan Cheng blushed furiously, but her stance on the matter remains unchanged. She said stubbornly, “So what? Since he doesn’t have a mother, I’ll be his mom.”

Lan Xiao looked at her with pity in his eyes. “I told you you’re silly – you just don’t want to admit it to yourself.”

“And I told you you’re not allowed to call me silly,” Nan Cheng said with a glare.

Lan Xiao stepped forward and place a hand over her shoulder, tugging her into a hug. “I was gonna say that since we found this child together, we’ll share the responsibility of caring for him. Yes, he needs a mother, but he also needs a father. We can get married and then later announce that we have a child. Having a child before marriage isn’t uncommon these days. It’s kinda like boarding the train before getting the tickets. Also, I believe that someday, this little guy born out of an egg will show us his special side.”

Nan Cheng was stunned into silence. She knew she was supposed to be moved by his words, but for some reason, every time she sees the guy, she just wanted to punch him.

“Hahahaha!”

The other people in the room busted out laughing. Lan Xiao has always had this certain charisma that could make the people around him trust him.

Lan Xiao turned around and said to his team, “If someday, in the future, this child shows any special traits, I will share the rewards of this discovery with everyone.”

Li Tingyin shrugged and replied, “One less reward is not a big deal. I just thought that since you guys are going to adopt him, shouldn’t he have a name?”

“Name?”

Nan Cheng went blank, finally realizing that she was woefully unprepared to be someone’s mother.

“Why don’t we call him Lan Cheng?” Lan Xiao said.

Nan Cheng snapped back to her senses when she heard his suggestion. She turned to him with a frown and argued, “I was the one decided to adopt him first so why can’t we call him Nan Xiao, huh? The child doesn’t have to follow the father’s surname.”

“Wait! Boss, Nan Cheng, don’t you find this a little messy? Your names are both two syllables and if you simply joined both your names together, your family of three would all have similar names. It would be so hard to differentiate,” Chen Wei reasoned.

“Okay, how about I give him my surname and you give him his name?” Lan Xiao proposed.

Nan Cheng’s red lips curled in distaste. “Why can’t it be the other way round?”

Lan Xiao smiled indulgently. “Because the surname ‘Nan’ sounds nicer, don’t you think? Don’t you remember telling me that the surname ‘Nan’ sounds pretty good when we first met?”

“We’re about to land, please return to your seats, everyone,” the pilot announced.

Three days later at the Ancient Spirit Beast Research Center.

“Everything is normal. Too normal. All the results are still the same. We added several data to analyze, including cell count, but they’re all normal. From his genes, he is a human being but there was some unclear component about it that makes it too complicated for our equipment to analyze clearly. However, this sort of condition has only one out of a thousand chances of happening on humans – it doesn’t mean anything,” Chen Wei reported the latest findings to Lan Xiao.

“Looks like I’m going to be a father!” Lan Xiao put on a facade of a bitter smile.

They’ve been back for three days and so far, the child hasn’t cried or made a fuss. Even through all the tests that they performed on him, he was quiet and smiling. This child definitely had an ineffable affinity with them seeing how quickly he became the darling of the entire research institute.

However, to keep the Inspection Committee from making their way over, Lan Xiao announced that the child would be his and Nan Cheng’s son. They wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t be dragged into the fraud incidents that seemed to be trending right now. It was also a good thing that they have all these data in their possession as well as Lian Xiao’s influence in the research institute.

After much discussion, they decided to name the child Lan Xuanyu. Nan Cheng believes that this would give him an imposing appearance.

To give the child a legal federal status, Lan Xiao and Nan Cheng got married a month later. After the news of the wedding had spread, they then announced that they had a child before their marriage.

They also made sure that Lan Xuanyu had his official birth certificate that stated Lan Xiao as his father and Nan Cheng as his mother.

The only thing that Lan Xiao was looking forward to in this arrangement was the child turning six. Everyone at that age would have to go through the Spirit Awakening ceremony and Lan Xiao couldn’t wait to see what type of spirit the child would awaken.

In a world like Soul Land and the planets that the Soul Federation occupied, other than those two Spirit Beast planets, every child at the age of six must awaken a spirit of their own.

Spirits were also a characteristic of the people of Douluo and each of them has a spirit of their own. Awakening a spirit was a pivotal point in the lives of the Douluo people.

It would definitely be interesting to see what spirit a child born out of an egg could awaken.