The silver necklace around his slender, white neck flashed with a faint glow.
At a time like this, Ning Jue calling for a video chat meant only one thing besides his routine check-in—Yu Jiu could think of no other reason.
The moment the necklace lit up, Lu Shiyue’s expression soured even further. He choked off his ongoing argument with Gu Xun midway, stopping dead in his tracks to stare fixedly at Yu Jiu’s next move.
Yu Jiu was merely answering a call and going through the motions to appease the protagonist; why on earth were they all looking at him with such bitter resentment?
Ning Jue’s enlarged, handsome face appeared on the floating holographic screen. A faint veil of weariness hung between his brows as he lowered his gaze to look at Yu Jiu. Within the depths of his icy-blue eyes swirled an overflowing, gentle tenderness that even he himself found hard to notice.
He looked like a young man falling passionately in love for the very first time, gazing with deep devotion upon his beloved.
They had been separated for nearly three days. Ever since he brought Yu Jiu out of the instance, his little boyfriend had never been away from him for this long.
Ning Jue seemed to be suffering from severe separation anxiety. He anxiously sought comfort from Yu Jiu; only those clear, bright green eyes could quench his craving.
He even wanted to forcefully blast through the instance, finish up the side quests, and reunite with Yu Jiu as soon as possible.
Yu Jiu’s pretty, pure little face appeared on the other side of the screen. Ning Jue’s gaze as he looked at him was nearly greedy.
His little boyfriend’s cheeks were flushed, the tip of his petite nose tinged pink, and his translucent green eyes brimmed with shimmering moisture, looking back at him with an expression of absolute trust.
His dense, curly eyelashes fluttered like tiny paper fans.
The stray hair across his forehead seemed to be blocking his view, prompting Yu Jiu to use his slender, white fingers to brush away the dark locks clinging to his brow.
Ning Jue didn’t miss a single movement of Yu Jiu’s, the gentle expression in his eyes threatening to overflow.
Until he caught sight of Yu Jiu’s swollen lips.
His mouth was red and puffy, the vermilion tubercle swelling as though it was about to break skin. It was a nearly vivid red, and his lips were parted slightly, faintly revealing a tiny tip of a wet, crimson tongue.
These were clearly the marks left behind by someone sucking on them manually, and they must have been kissed for a very long time; otherwise, his mouth wouldn’t have swelled up to this degree.
His delicate, petite body had been pressed into someone’s arms with the back of his neck clamped down. Their lips and tongues had entangled, every single inch of his mouth thoroughly plundered.
His soft whimpers and struggles had been completely useless; like a frail, helpless kitten held tightly in someone’s arms, he had melted into a puddle of water.
Not even the sweet moisture lingering at the corners of his mouth had been spared, licked completely clean by a man far taller and stronger than him.
Ning Jue repeatedly warned himself to stop dwelling on it; perhaps Yu Jiu had injured himself by accident.
Yet he had only been gone for such a short while, and Yu Jiu’s mouth was already swollen to look as though it had been toyed with mercilessly.
Deep within the clothes where he couldn’t see, were there even more similar red marks?
Distorted emotions of suspicion and jealousy continued to swell within him. He couldn’t stop his mind from picturing Yu Jiu being pinned into someone’s arms and kissed.
The gentle expression on his face was on the verge of cracking.
He looked for all the world like a cuckolded husband.
Should he ask Yu Jiu about it?
Yu Jiu was timid and sensitive; if he asked, his little face would probably turn pale with fright.
No, he couldn’t—he would end up scaring his little Jiu.
Yu Jiu looked at Ning Jue on the other side of the screen with his unfathomable expression. In the original plot, the protagonist was the cautious and suspicious type, full of winding thoughts and overthinking things far more than an ordinary person ever would.
As a minor cannon fodder character, there was simply no need for him to try and second-guess the protagonist’s mind.
Since Ning Jue didn’t speak up, Yu Jiu had no way to initiate a topic either.
As the two stood in a deadlock across the screen, the magician nearby let out a soft chuckle.
From the moment Ning Jue initiated the video call, Lu Shiyue’s focus had already shifted entirely onto Yu Jiu.
The inner thoughts of the Blade deputy captain were easy to guess: high combat prowess yet prone to carelessly revealing his true emotions.
Lu Shiyue’s internal struggle was equally easy to understand.
His feelings for Yu Jiu were impossible to hide, yet he could not bring himself to commit an act of betrayal against his teammates.
Gu Xun’s gaze landed right at the eye of the storm.
The frail little mute possessed a slender, delicate figure, breathtakingly pretty brows and eyes, and a pure, innocent expression, as though he remained completely oblivious to the undercurrents swirling among the heavyweight figures surrounding him.
The magician’s laughter came out of nowhere, prompting Yu Jiu to curiously tilt his head to look at him.
Ning Jue acutely noticed the shift in Yu Jiu’s gaze.
“Baby, who are you looking at? Was someone laughing just now?”
The instinctive interrogation slipped out of his mouth. Like a suspicious husband catching his wife red-handed, Ning Jue scrutinized the environment around Yu Jiu.
Just as Yu Jiu was trying to figure out how to reply, Gu Xun’s voice rang out first.
“Captain Ning is certainly in high spirits.”
It was a remark completely detached from normal human greetings. Yu Jiu only found the magician bizarre, always uttering random, unfathomable things.
Hearing Gu Xun’s voice, the expression on Ning Jue’s face instantly shifted from affectionate to cold and stern. His icy-blue eyes locked onto the direction from which the magician’s voice had come, looking as desolate and bleak as a frozen wasteland devoid of any warmth.
He knew Gu Xun—a remarkably thorny and troublesome character.
Could Yu Jiu’s mouth have been kissed swollen by the magician?
If it really was him…
“Magician, while you are in an instance, it is best not to do anything unnecessary.”
“Mind your own business.”
Yu Jiu found Ning Jue’s voice terrifyingly cold. If Ning Jue were physically present, he had no doubt the two men would start trading blows right then and there.
That didn’t seem right, though. In the original plotline, had the hostility between these two been this intense right from the beginning?
Clearly framed as a relationship of frenemies, no matter how one looked at it now, all that remained was an inexplicable, surging hostility.
Gu Xun didn’t seem to notice the warning in Ning Jue’s tone; the smile on his face remained entirely unchanged.
“Thanks for the concern, Captain Ning. Captain Lu, what do you think?”
As if simply watching the show, the magician shifted the spearhead toward the silent Lu Shiyue standing beside him.
Yu Jiu dully sensed that the atmosphere was turning weird, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint what was wrong with it.
The usually arrogant and high-profile Blade deputy captain remained tight-lipped and silent.
The gruesome wound on his arm was still oozing blood, yet Lu Shiyue acted as though he couldn’t feel the pain at all, not even bothering to treat it.
The little mute’s reliance on Ning Jue, contrasted with Ning Jue’s gentle expression—like melting ice—toward him.
The soft, pliable texture from the cave still lingered in the palms of his hands, and the tip of his nose retained the lingering, rich sweetness of that fragrance.
Lu Shiyue could have chosen not to care.
But right now… he was no longer satisfied with just that.
Those pretty green eyes, perpetually brimming with tears, flashed before his eyes—the outer corners stained red and wet, long eyelashes weighed down by glistening, trembling tears that refused to fall.
He always seemed to witness Yu Jiu’s panicked, fragile side.
“091, why did Lu Shiyue suddenly stop talking?”
The red-haired man stood silently in the dark, the bangs across his forehead casting a shadow over his sharp, piercing gaze, making it impossible to read the emotions hidden deep within his eyes.
Naturally, 091 couldn’t possibly tell Yu Jiu about Lu Shiyue’s secret plans to poach him. What did the squabbles of a bunch of weirdos have to do with its innocent baby?
“Maybe… he is afraid someone will hear the guilt in his voice…”
Yu Jiu nodded in vague understanding. Oh, maybe Lu Shiyue just didn’t want Ning Jue to find out that he got hurt.
A silent hush spread among the men present.
Ning Jue hadn’t expected Lu Shiyue—a teammate he trusted—to be present as well.
He understood Lu Shiyue’s temperament; this out-of-character silence was entirely abnormal.
Ning Jue furrowed his brow, recognizing the malicious intent hidden beneath the magician’s words.
Once the side quest was completed and the main storyline parties reunited, he would thoroughly clear away all the annoying obstacles lingering around Yu Jiu.
“Mind your own business.”
Ning Jue repeated his previous words once more—a warning as much as a reminder. As for who the target was, only the listener truly understood.
Standing off to the side with his mind wandering, Yu Jiu remained entirely oblivious to the fact that he was standing right at the center of several men’s Shura field.
It wasn’t until Ning Jue bade him a tender farewell that he slowly snapped back to reality.
“Take good care of yourself, baby. We will see each other very soon.”
The warmth in his voice was a stark contrast to the ruthless coldness he had directed at the magician just moments before.
Yu Jiu nodded obediently, waving goodbye to the other side of the screen.
091 nearly couldn’t bear to watch from the sidelines.
“Tsk tsk, what a massive hypocrite of a protagonist.”
After issuing a warning to Gu Xun and coldly freezing out a reminder to Lu Shiyue, he immediately switched back into his doting-boyfriend persona to coax its host.
What a total hypocrite.
After hanging up the video call, Yu Jiu heard the magician speak up once again.
“I wonder what Captain Lu’s thoughts are right now?”
Gu Xun spread his hands with a smile, addressing Lu Shiyue, yet his subtle gaze remained fixed squarely on Yu Jiu.
“Captain Lu must be feeling quite terrible inside, right?”