“By the way, Female master, did you ever go for a mental-power test after you came of age?” Lan Xue asked, seemingly offhand, while tidying his hair.
Jiang Wangyue dug carefully through the original host’s memories and found that this person really never had. Then again, did it make a difference whether she went or not? The original host’s mental power had been ruined in the experiments long ago, over a decade of treatment had barely scraped it up to C-grade. Surely it couldn’t have advanced by leaps and bounds this past year and bounced back to the SS-grade of her childhood?
“No. Why?”
Lan Xue smiled. “I just think you might want to get it checked.”
She nodded without much thought. “Sure.”
A female’s mental-power test had to be done at a specific institution, namely the Female Protection Center. Its headquarters was on the Central Star, as the name suggested, it was a government agency whose primary work was protecting all females. The Center had the most sophisticated testing equipment, able to link directly to the Central Mainframe, and its tests had never once erred.
The aircraft slowly descended and came to rest at the entrance of this cold-gleaming building that towered into the clouds. Holding Lan Xue’s hand, Jiang Wangyue hopped lightly down and walked into the Center, prim and looking straight ahead. It would be a lie to say she wasn’t curious, but she figured she couldn’t come off like a country bumpkin gawking at the big city, even if it was an act, she had to look the part.
The two of them walked in one behind the other, and a staff member immediately came up, all smiles. “This lady, is there anything I can help you with?”
“Where do you do the mental-power test?” Jiang Wangyue asked, getting right to the point.
The staff member sized her up without leaving a trace, and once something seemed to dawn on him, his smile faded considerably. Still, she was a female after all, and as a beastman whose true form was a gray rabbit he couldn’t afford to offend her, so he politely led her and Lan Xue inside.
The open room was quite empty, with a single stone pillar standing alone at the center, grayish, drab, utterly unremarkable.
Lan Xue stepped forward and said softly by her ear, “Female master, once you’re inside, you just need to place your hand on the pillar.”
She nodded to show she understood. The heavy door slowly swung shut, and the surroundings went instantly silent.
Wasn’t this room a little excessively soundproofed?
She glanced around, then softened her footsteps and walked to the pillar, placing her hand on it as Lan Xue had said, and waited quietly. Soon light began climbing slowly up from the base, but after crossing two graduation marks, it stopped. She waited another moment, looked down, and found it had stopped for good, only then did she lift her hand.
The testing-room door opened again. Her expression hadn’t changed at all, she just shrugged at Lan Xue as she stepped out. The staff member kept his head down, a flicker of contempt in his eyes.
As the three of them walked back the way they’d come, mocking words drifted into their ears on the wind.
“As good-looking as she is, how is she a useless C-grade?”
“She probably can’t even manage mental soothing. Judging by how high her beast husbands’ grades look, the poor things are stuck getting by on suppressants their whole lives with her. Tsk tsk, truly pitiful.”
Listening, Jiang Wangyue found herself nodding along, it really was pretty pitiful, one of them had already had a rampage. As for the result still being C-grade, that didn’t surprise her in the least.
Lan Xue’s eyes narrowed slightly, and the mental coercion of a high-grade beastman spread out in an instant. The first to be hit was the gray-rabbit staff member leading the way, he was crushed straight to his knees, his ears and tail popping out beyond his control. The two beastmen gossiping outside were the same, cowering and trembling in a corner.
Seeing this, Jiang Wangyue turned to look at Lan Xue, mildly surprised. “You’re angry?”
His eyes were deep and dark. “You are a female. No matter your mental-power grade, you are not someone they get to discuss and insult.”
Something stirred in her chest, she truly didn’t expect him to defend her so openly.
The Center’s director came hurrying out, and the moment he saw Lan Xue he nearly fainted, rushing over with an ingratiating smile. “If it isn’t Professor Lan! What brings you here?”
Lan Xue gave him a cool glance. “Accompanying my Female master for a mental-power test.”
“And how were the results?” the director asked reflexively, but the instant the question was out, his smile froze on his face, and he could have slapped himself. That Professor Lan of the Biological Research Institute had a C-grade Female master was common knowledge among the Central Star’s upper circles, and of all the rotten luck he’d gone and asked it right in front of the person concerned.
He couldn’t help sneaking a glance at Jiang Wangyue, only to find her expression surprisingly calm.
Lan Xue watched his little movement with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. “Can’t you go look it up yourself? Or is publicly discussing a female a tradition here at your Center?”
“No, no, no, it isn’t, Professor Lan, please hear me out—”
“I’m not the one you should be explaining to.” Lan Xue’s gentle, mellow voice carried a thread of cold.
The man finally caught on and hurriedly bowed to Jiang Wangyue in apology. She waved a hand to show she didn’t mind his offense.
But…
Jiang Wangyue smiled the way Lan Xue had, and said softly, “I don’t like people discussing me and my family behind our backs. Can you understand that?”
“I understand, I understand. Rest assured, we’ll handle this seriously.”
Family…
Lan Xue stared at her retreating back, fingers curling tight. He followed close on her heels out of the Center, the cold, clear wind hit his face and brought back some of his reason. This won’t do, he warned himself. She still has to be observed. I can’t let one offhand remark of hers throw off the plan.
The shift in Lan Xue’s expression, as Jiang Wangyue read it, was just disappointment that her mental power was still C-grade. See, what did she say. With the original host’s garbage grade, plus her being an outsider, as if she’d know any mental soothing.
The two stood very close, but what each was thinking couldn’t have been further apart. [1] 南轅北轍, lit. “to want to head south but steer the cart north”, to be pointed in completely opposite directions, the way these two minds were jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2723724_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2723724_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
Directly across from the Female Protection Center was a huge open-air screen. Jiang Wangyue looked up and unexpectedly saw a face she knew.
Yun Miao.
He wore that black-and-gold uniform, cap squarely on his head, the regulation belt tracing out his lean, trim waist. He looked solemnly toward the camera and said in a deep voice, “Welcome to the Military. I’ll be waiting for you in the 7th Legion.”
The 7th Legion?
Jiang Wangyue looked at Lan Xue, puzzled. “Isn’t Yun Miao with the 1st Legion?”
Lan Xue’s gaze swept over the recruitment video looping on the screen, and he said softly, “That was before. After he matched with you successfully, he transferred back from the front to the 1st Legion, which garrisons the Central Star.”
References[+]