He shouldn’t have left that thread of mental power in the snow-leopard plushie.
Lan Xue let out a soundless breath, the base of his tailbone was tingling, that tug of Jiang Wangyue’s had nearly made him lose control and pop his tail right out.
“Are the test results out?”
Feng Yan’s impatient voice snapped him back. He calmly pulled up the screen in front of him. Before this, Yun Miao’s mental power had already been pressing against its critical threshold, liable to rampage at any moment, that was one reason he’d been suspended, not entirely because of Jiang Wangyue. And now, the data that had been all alarm-red was fully back within standard range, the whole screen green.
Lan Xue’s hand on the console tightened bit by bit, feeling the sting in his palm, he quickly let go.
“This is impossible!” Feng Yan stared hard at the figures. He was in the suppressant business, so he knew full well there wasn’t a single suppressant on the market that could do this.
If it wasn’t a suppressant, then it could only be Jiang Wangyue. Had she really combed out the mental sea of an SS-grade like Yun Miao?
Lan Xue glanced at him and pulled up Feng Yan’s own test data. Just as normal.
Feng Yan caught on at once, his face turning even uglier. “She’s been hiding it from us!”
“Or maybe… she doesn’t even know it herself?” Lan Xue murmured under his breath.
The wreckage in the living room had long since been cleared, the snapped staircase fully repaired, the diligent little robots had returned to the corner to charge quietly on standby. Marveling at interstellar efficiency, Jiang Wangyue dug through the original host’s memories and found some filling nutrient fluid in the kitchen.
She grabbed one at random and bit into it. The thick, congee-like texture was passable enough, it was the flavor that made it hard to choke down.
What decent person drinks celery-flavored nutrient fluid?
She hesitated, but in the end the don’t-waste-food principle won out, and she gulped it down and tossed the empty tube. Never touching that again, not even in her next life!
She felt like checking on Yun Miao, but after digging through every corner of the original host’s memories, she couldn’t figure out which rooms any of the beast husbands besides Lan Xue lived in.
This original host really did have problems. Married almost a year and she didn’t even know which room her own partners slept in.
As Jiang Wangyue stood in the living room mulling it over, the front door behind her was pushed open. She turned to look, and the first thing she saw wasn’t the man’s face but those bursting, brawny pecs.
So big. Bigger than Feng Yan’s.
The newcomer had black hair and black eyes, a dark-gray shirt stretched tight over thick, powerful muscle, the cuffs rolled up to reveal solid forearms with veins standing out on them.
Black Wolf, Su Hui.
Quickly confirming his identity in her mind, Jiang Wangyue kept a calm face while inwardly a little nervous. Right, all five of her aggrieved parties were present and accounted for now.
As Su Hui slowly approached, she caught the faint, on-and-off smell of blood. You’ve got to be kidding. Another wounded man? Her little face fell. Original host, just how many sins did you rack up?
Watching the expressions flit across her face, Su Hui was full of doubts. He happened to spot Lan Xue and Feng Yan coming up from the basement, so he just asked outright, “Does your venom have any effect that turns people into idiots?”
Feng Yan, his face full of complicated feelings, frowned at the question. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Su Hui pointed at Jiang Wangyue. “Then why does she look like she’s gone all dopey?”
The gone-all-dopey Jiang Wangyue was speechless: …Thanks a lot, buddy. I’m standing right here. Trashing someone to their face, are we?
Lan Xue’s steps paused, then he walked over to stand in front of her as if nothing were amiss, holding out his hand with a smile, his voice gentle and warm. “Don’t mind him, Female master. Let me walk you back to your room.”
He smiled so tenderly that, even knowing full well he was a scheming piece of work, Jiang Wangyue couldn’t help placing her hand in his palm. The first thing she felt was that it was warm and cool at once. Just like the man himself.
Ignoring the two men’s gazes behind her, she stepped onto the stairs. After she and Lan Xue had vanished from sight, Su Hui, with absolutely no idea what had happened earlier, looked even more weirded out.
“Did that guy take the wrong meds?”
Feng Yan shot him a look, not wanting to bother talking to this big oaf, and turned and left without a word. Ignored, Su Hui didn’t mind. He looked up toward the second floor, a flicker of amusement in his eyes.
The bedroom had been tidied up, every damaged item replaced with new, and off-white gauze curtains hung at the half-open window, drifting in the wind. Once the door shut, this became Jiang Wangyue’s temporary safe harbor.
Treading over the soft carpet, she walked to the wardrobe, shoved all those gaudy, garish, messy clothes off to one side, and uncovered a black military uniform tucked in the corner. The pure-black uniform was clearly distinct from Yun Miao’s black-and-gold one. She reached into the coat’s pocket and rummaged around, finally finding what she was after.
A small black booklet the size of her palm. A Central Military Academy student ID.
Jiang Wangyue let out a breath and simply sat down cross-legged on the carpet. The original host had received her matching notification on her eighteenth birthday, but few people knew that the day before, she’d received another email, and a delivery.
“Jiang Wangyue, female, Near-Orbit Medicine.”
So the original host was in the same line of work as her. She clicked her tongue. It was just…
She tapped her bent index finger lightly against her knee. The original host’s post-marriage memories were saturated with extravagance, abuse, and violence, there was no school in them at all. Had she discovered that after marriage she didn’t need to put in any effort, and gone full slacker?
Toying with the student ID, Jiang Wangyue fell into thought.
In a corner room on the second floor, Yun Miao’s brows were tightly knit, look closely and you could still see the confusion in his eyes. His memories from the rampage were hazy, he didn’t remember a thing, he only knew that his mental sea, which had always ached, was now perfectly calm.
He closed his eyes and carefully felt out its state. The next second, his eyes snapped open, full of disbelief.
How was this possible? In his mental sea, atop the mountain peak, what were those great swaths of red plants? Why could they devour a storm that hadn’t even fully formed?
The room door was pushed open from outside, sharing an intimate collision with the wall. Lan Xue looked at him coldly. “You want a transfer off the Central Star?”
Yun Miao looked back, his expression equally icy. “And what if I do?”
Without hesitation Lan Xue deleted the test report he’d been about to send, leaving Yun Miao with one meaningful line: “I hope you won’t regret it.”
Regret? Yun Miao pressed down the irritation and killing intent in his chest. Staying on the Central Star, staying by Jiang Wangyue’s side, that was what he’d regret.
Outside the closing door, the corner of Lan Xue’s mouth curved into a mocking smile.
Idiot.