“Why?”
Feng Yan didn’t understand.
Ji Li tilted his head slightly toward the bay window and said quietly, “Because I don’t need to.”
When he heard the answer, Feng Yan’s brows knit even tighter.
“Are you kidding me? Or have those old men in the Upper House come up with some better solution?”
Ji Li turned his gaze back to Feng Yan. “It has nothing to do with them.”
“Then who does it have to do with? Jiang Wangyue?”
Feng Yan threw the question back at him with a sneer, and when he actually saw Ji Li nod, he found it even more absurd.
Lan Xue, Ji Li, these two, the ones he’d thought still had some brains, had now turned out like this too.
Pressing down his anger, Feng Yan said coldly, “She’s C-grade.”
“I know. She really is C-grade.”
Feng Yan suddenly lunged forward, grabbing Ji Li by the collar and slamming him hard against the wall, his slit pupils filled with ice.
“A C-grade soothing an S-grade! And a special kind of S-grade like you Shadow Falcons, no less, do you take me for a fool?!”
Ji Li’s expression stayed calm. With a deft twist of strength he pushed Feng Yan off, straightened his clothes, and said evenly, “You don’t have to believe it. But my data, which had been edging endlessly closer to the rampage threshold, really did drop by five percent.”
As everyone knew, a C-grade couldn’t soothe an S-grade.
But what was even more impossible to change was the mental rampage that male beastmen were born with.
Suppressants could only hold it down temporarily, even the new high-potency suppressant he’d developed only stretched out the suppression time. Unless a female’s mental power soothed and regulated them, the data couldn’t possibly fall.
Ji Li’s words struck Feng Yan as inconceivable, even ridiculous, yet, of all things, he couldn’t refute them.
Clenching his fist, Feng Yan spoke in a low voice. “Even if she can soothe us for a short while, what about the future? Living a whole lifetime on this tiny scrap of soothing?”
“I have no future.”
Ji Li’s voice wasn’t loud, and it was still as flat and unrippled as ever, as though he weren’t talking about himself at all.
Feng Yan gritted his teeth, suddenly seized by a desolate sorrow.
For Ji Li, for himself, and for the countless millions of male beastmen in this world.
This time Jiang Wangyue actually managed to live strictly by the self-discipline plan she’d drawn up for herself: early to bed and early to rise, running and studying, regular to a frightening degree.
She often turned her gaze inward to examine her own mental sea, but the little puddle was still the same little puddle, without the faintest sign of growing any bigger.
If she absolutely had to name a change, it was that the water in the puddle had grown clearer and clearer.
Besides her usual meditation practice, which let her control her mental power more proficiently, Jiang Wangyue also looked over the Near-Orbit Medicine course materials that Mr. Owl had sent her.
Maybe because she’d spent eight years in her last life sprinting down the no-turning-back road of clinical medicine, she found these courses surprisingly undemanding.
A week’s plan completed in full, Jiang Wangyue stretched lazily, and while wondering whether to ramp up the difficulty a little next week, she headed downstairs to forage for food.
Last time she’d said she would show off her skills and cook something for Lan Xue, only for the latter, once he’d recovered his wits, to smoothly talk her right back up to her room.
The recovered Ji Li had vanished off to who-knew-where again, for the past couple of days Lan Xue had been coming and going like a ghost too, and as for Su Hui, Yun Miao, and Feng Yan, there wasn’t even a shadow of them to be seen.
Jiang Wangyue opened the fridge, grabbed a tube of nutrient fluid at random and bit down on it, and couldn’t help sighing inwardly at the same time.
Here she was, sitting on a stockpile of five beast husbands, and she’d somehow ended up an old wife with an empty nest, who could she even take her grievance to?
In the quiet living room, the sound of military boots striking the floor suddenly rang out.
Jiang Wangyue turned to look despite herself, and was surprised to find that the one who’d come in was Yun Miao.
How had this guy suddenly come home?
A moment ago she’d been feeling like an empty-nest old wife, and now that she’d actually laid eyes on someone, Jiang Wangyue rather regretted it.
If she’d known, she wouldn’t have grumbled about it, being an empty-nest old wife was at least a little safer.
Yun Miao still wore that same black-and-gold service uniform, his black military boots wrapping snugly around his calves, unexpectedly ramrod-straight.
Jiang Wangyue rubbed her nose and, gripping the tube of nutrient fluid, turned to slink away, only for Yun Miao to call out and stop her.
His face cold, he pulled up a document from his terminal and said, terse and to the point, “Sign it.”
Jiang Wangyue went blank.
Sign it?
Sign what?
A divorce agreement?
Seeing that she had no real reaction, the anger in Yun Miao’s chest gradually welled up, but he forced it down by sheer will and shoved the document’s contents right in front of her eyes.
Coming back to herself, Jiang Wangyue caught at one glance the six big characters: “Transfer Application Report.”
“You want a transfer out?”
The moment the words left her, Jiang Wangyue suddenly remembered that day, the high-spirited Yun Miao she’d seen on the giant screen across from the Female Protection Center.
“You want to transfer back to the 7th Legion? You want to go back to the front?”
Yun Miao didn’t expect her to know about any of this, though a little startled, his expression still didn’t soften in the slightest.
He said, hard and cold, “Since you know, then sign it.”
Jiang Wangyue frowned. “You just had a mental-power rampage not long ago. Going back to the front at a time like this, isn’t that a bit unwise?”
At the mention of the mental-power rampage, Yun Miao couldn’t help clenching his fist.
Those red algae in his mental sea had finally stopped spreading, but their presence was simply too overwhelming, a mental storm would be devoured the instant it was born, with no chance to take shape at all.
Under these circumstances, even if he went to fight on the front for a year, in all likelihood he wouldn’t suffer another mental-power rampage.
At that thought, Yun Miao said coldly, “That’s not for you to worry about. Sign it.”
Yun Miao had braced himself for Jiang Wangyue to name an outrageous price [1]lit. “open the lion’s mouth wide”, to make a greedy, exorbitant demand jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2723807_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2723807_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. As long as she’d sign, he wouldn’t mind doing another stint in the Disciplinary Center.
But what he absolutely didn’t expect was that, the instant his words fell, Jiang Wangyue actually raised her hand and signed her name at the bottom of the document.
In a few quick, sweeping strokes [2]运笔走龙蛇, writing with the flowing, vigorous motion of a “coiling dragon and slithering snake,” i.e. bold, fluid handwriting jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2723807_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2723807_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, the three characters “Jiang Wangyue” were down on the page.
Jiang Wangyue looked at Yun Miao, whose face held a touch of stunned disbelief, and said softly, “Stay safe.”
Yun Miao came back to himself, a flicker of mockery crossing his eyes. “As long as I’m not by your side, I’ll be perfectly safe.”
Having gotten the result he wanted, Yun Miao didn’t linger another second, he turned and strode out.
Jiang Wangyue stuck the tube of nutrient fluid back between her teeth, looked at the door Yun Miao had slammed with all his might, and let out a silent sigh in her heart.
Letting Yun Miao go to the front like this, it should wipe away at least a little of the hatred he held in his heart for “Jiang Wangyue,” shouldn’t it?
She handed the emptied, sucked-dry nutrient-fluid tube to a housework robot, and just as she turned to head back upstairs, the door behind her was pushed open again.
This time the one who came in was Lan Xue.
Seeing it was him, Jiang Wangyue couldn’t help the slight curve at the corners of her eyes. “You’re back?”
Lan Xue gave a light nod, his gaze sweeping over the housework robot. “You’ve already eaten?”
“Mm. Peach-flavored again, I’m getting a little sick of it.”
“Then I’ll order some other flavors.”
Jiang Wangyue nodded with a beaming smile. “I think that works.”
Lan Xue walked over to her with soft, unhurried steps and tapped open his terminal.
Seeing the gesture, Jiang Wangyue’s smile froze.
You’ve got to be kidding.
You too?
References[+]