Clearly, starnet couldn’t charge anything now.
His terminal couldn’t be recharged, and neither could his quantum guns or other weapons.
Xie Chi: “…Tsk.”
Were these high-tech pitfalls never going to end?
Even though he wasn’t the type to blame the heavens for his misfortunes, he was starting to suspect that fate itself was out to get him.
Xie Chi ran a hand through his hair in frustration. He didn’t even have time to look up information on the ABO system and pheromone disorders. He hurriedly sent all the downloaded files to the background, then turned off the terminal screen to save power.
“Knock, knock.”
Just then, someone suddenly knocked on the door.
Xie Chi immediately schooled his expression, hiding his frustration, and calmly opened the door.
Looking at the middle-aged man holding a thermos, Xie Chi blinked in confusion. “What is it?”
The middle-aged man smiled warmly. “Captain Xie, His Highness ordered that you’re not to leave your room for the time being. I’ll bring you your meals for now. This is your lunch. I just picked it up from the cafeteria. Eat it while it’s hot.”
“Oh, thanks.”
Xie Chi didn’t know who the man was. He used his gaze to turn on the terminal glasses and snap a picture of him for a search, then reached out and took the food container.
Once the door closed, Xie Chi carried the thermos to the dining table. Only then did his expression change again.
Frowning, he eyed the old-fashioned thermos as if it were a formidable enemy, unsure what to do with it.
Three thousand years in the future, human labor was incredibly expensive. Hand-cooked meals were found only in upper- and middle-class homes. Assassins like them, who operated on the fringes of society, mostly relied on nutrient solution for their three meals a day.
So every assassin in the organization dreamed of making enough money to retire, go home, and enjoy a life with a wife and hot meals waiting for them.
Growing up in that environment, Xie Chi had the same dream.
People 3,000 years ago could have hot meals without even needing a wife?
Xie Chi tried to open the food container, but after picking up the antique smart brain he’d thrown on the bed and searching it for a while, he couldn’t find an open button. He then tried feeling around the thermos, but couldn’t find a fingerprint or iris scanner, either.
In the end, following the smart brain’s search result, which said “Thermos lids should be unscrewed clockwise,” Xie Chi managed to open it.
The container had three layers. The top held potatoes and pork belly stir-fried until crisp, the second had rice, and the third contained seaweed and egg soup with so little seaweed and egg that they were nearly invisible.
It wasn’t a particularly balanced lunch.
Blizzard City was short on supplies and relied heavily on imports. Yan Wanqiu had only just arrived, so expensive fruits and vegetables were never going to appear in the camp cafeteria.
But Xie Chi treasured the meal. Awkwardly, he unfolded a pair of chopsticks, speared a piece of potato, and took a cautious bite.
The crispy potato was fragrant with meat and full of flavor. Xie Chi’s eyes lit up.
Delicious.
Yan Wanqiu might be brutal and short-lived, but he was surprisingly thoughtful. Even while keeping Xie Chi under house arrest, he’d remembered to have someone bring him food.
.
Night. The outskirts of the city.
The Night Owl Underground Casino.
“Bang!”
A muffled gunshot rang out. The casino’s glass doors shattered, and cold wind swept inside, carrying away the warmth.
At the sight of the uniformed squad outside and the black gun barrels pointed at them, countless gamblers leapt from their tables in a panic and ran. Steel balls and chips scattered in every direction.
Black boots gleamed coldly in the reflected light of the night snow as they stepped on the playing cards strewn across the floor.
A white-haired man stood in the doorway, blocking everyone’s path. He held a machine gun in one hand.
The scarred man in the back office hurried over with a group of hired thugs. Seeing who had come, he was both shocked and furious. “Yan Wanqiu! Do you know where you are? You dare come after the Night Owl Society, the biggest underground organization in Blizzard City? Do you think you’ll survive the freeze season here?”
The casino was choked with a jumble of pheromones. Yan Wanqiu already had a headache from all the noise, and his pheromones, which had yet to settle, grew even more volatile. The pressure of a top-tier alpha radiated from him.
“I’m coming after you?” He sneered.
“You sent men to ambush my guards at the thermal ore deposits and steal the ore we’d mined. Did you really think I wouldn’t come after you?”
Yan Wanqiu’s voice was sinister, his killing intent undisguised. Even the scarred man, who had spent years out in the world, couldn’t help shuddering.
But then he remembered what the boss had told him. They absolutely couldn’t hand the thermal ore over to anyone. He stuck out his neck and kept shouting, “You’re nothing but an abandoned pawn in exile. Blizzard City belongs to the Night Owl Society, so all the mineral deposits belong to us! The boss says only we get to mine the thermal ore. From now on, every guard of yours we see gets killed, one by one… Aah!”
“Bang!”
Before the scarred man could finish, another gunshot rang out. The man who’d been shouting a moment earlier had his head blown apart, blood spraying everywhere.
Yan Wanqiu calmly pointed his gun at the others.
He had never come to negotiate.
If the Night Owl Society had dared to take advantage of his pheromone disorder to kill his men, then he would strike back while the society’s leader was away.
Trying to intimidate him? They ought to know their place.
“Ah! A murder!”
Screams erupted from the crowd, plunging the casino into even greater chaos. The jumble of pheromones inside surged to a new peak.
Yan Wanqiu pressed his lips together, uncomfortable, overcome by a strange heat.
Unlike the headache that came with his pheromone disorder, this heat seemed to come from somewhere deeper, a restless agitation.
A whole mess of foul-smelling pheromones.
At the most inopportune moment, Yan Wanqiu remembered the fresh, sweet-and-sour scent from that morning.
The only thing he liked about that damned shadow guard was his pheromones.
His expression unchanged, Yan Wanqiu lowered his gun and ordered coolly, “Smash the place to pieces. Leave no one from the Night Owl Society alive.”
According to the intelligence from the Shadow Guard Camp, the Night Owl Society’s leaders were heading to Frostice City tonight to seek an alliance. Those left at the casino were no more than a rabble, easily dealt with by the squad he’d brought.
As he spoke, Yan Wanqiu picked up a mask someone had dropped on a table. He covered his nose with it as a makeshift filter, pressed at his throbbing temples, and prepared to leave first.
Then he suddenly realized something was wrong.
Wait…
The intelligence had come from the Shadow Guard Camp, whose former leader was Xie Chi.
“Rumble!”
A boom sounded outside. The moment Yan Wanqiu sensed something was off, he leapt back, barely dodging a streak of blue-white electricity.
The current struck the wall behind him. With a rumble, it blasted a huge hole through the casino wall.
Shock flashed in Yan Wanqiu’s eyes.
What kind of weapon was that? It fired electricity instead of bullets.
And with that kind of power, had the Night Owl Society brought in artillery?
Outside the casino, the crunch of hurried footsteps rose from the snow. One shadow after another advanced under the moonlight.
More than a hundred Night Owl Society members, all fully armed, surrounded the casino. At their head stood a burly man holding a gun that looked like a rifle. The muscles and veins in his arm bulged, clear evidence that he’d just withstood the weapon’s tremendous recoil.
A coil of electromagnetic wire wrapped around the gun, protected by a transparent casing. The muzzle glowed red from the heat, and wisps of white vapor drifted into the moonlit air where it met the cold.
The man with the gun sneered. “Second Prince, making trouble on the Night Owl Society’s turf like this is a bit disrespectful, isn’t it?”
One of the battered thugs recognized him and grew instantly excited. “Second-in-command! They just said they were going to wipe out the whole Night Owl Society!”
The shadow guards Yan Wanqiu had brought grew restless, too.
They’d come with only a little over fifty men for a swift attack. They were now outnumbered, and the enemy’s weapons were bizarre. Some of the guards were already thinking of retreating.
Taking in the scene before him, Yan Wanqiu realized he’d been betrayed by Xie Chi once again.
“Heh…”
He let out a cold laugh. His eyes turned scarlet, and a chilling, intensely oppressive wave of pheromones burst from him.
Cold sweat broke out on the second-in-command’s forehead. His knees nearly buckled beneath him.
Yan Wanqiu seized that instant. He moved like a ghost, appearing right in front of the man. Instead of reaching for his gun, he acted on his most primal violence and impulse, clamping a hand around the man’s neck and wrenching his head clean off.
The man who’d been swaggering a moment earlier became a headless corpse without even getting off another shot.
Yan Wanqiu was on the verge of losing control, his pheromones surging wildly. He didn’t even think to pick up the gun on the ground. Warm blood splashed across his mask and white hair. Like a demon crawling out of hell, he laughed maniacally beneath the cold moonlight.
“Ha… How ridiculous. I should’ve killed every last one of you from the start.”
He muttered to himself, his red eyes sweeping over the people temporarily immobilized by his pheromones. He took in every expression of terror.
Yan Wanqiu tossed aside the headless corpse and strode toward them without a care. “Come on. Didn’t you all want to kill me? Why have you stopped moving?”
A sweet, metallic taste rose in his throat. His reason told him that if this continued, he would fall into another bout of pheromone disorder. But his mind only grew more alert. Even the headache and heat had eased. Every cell in his body screamed for bloodshed.
Yan Wanqiu swallowed the blood and ran his tongue over his sharp canine.
“Die. All of you.”
.
Inside the encampment.
“Splash…”
Steam billowed through the bathroom. After finally managing to heat some water with instructions from the starnet, Xie Chi stood by the tub in his bathrobe, waiting for it to fill.
After all that effort, a thin sheen of sweat had formed on his skin. The bathroom was filled with the sweet, fresh scent of an alpha’s pheromones.
“Uncle Nie said Yan Wanqiu went to deal with some local troublemakers. I wonder if he still remembers he wanted to check whether I’m a gay alpha.”
Xie Chi muttered to himself.
“Hopefully he’s forgotten. Please don’t think of me.”
The shadow guard who’d brought him food was Nie Huaiyi. According to the history books, he would become one of Yan Wanqiu’s most well-known shadow guards.
Yan Wanqiu had left in such a hurry that he hadn’t explained why Xie Chi was under house arrest. Nie Huaiyi and the two guards stationed outside the door were reluctant to talk to him, and Xie Chi had had to work hard just to pry out that little bit of information.
As Xie Chi wondered whether to look up how to feel attracted to men on the starnet while the tub filled, a jumble of footsteps suddenly sounded outside.
Even the two guards watching him hurried away.
Xie Chi strained to listen and made out fragments like “Night Owl Society,” “His Highness is injured,” and “Get a medic.”
His spirits lifted.
Was there an internal conflict? Did that mean they really wouldn’t have time to deal with him?
Just as Xie Chi stepped out of the bathroom in his bathrobe and went to the door to listen more closely, a tremendous bang rang out. The wooden door was kicked open.
The heavy stench of blood hit him.
Xie Chi was quick on his feet. He jumped back the instant the door was kicked in, avoiding the impact.
Frowning, he looked up, about to ask what the intruder wanted. But before he could speak, a sharp gust of wind swept toward him.
Xie Chi raised his arm to block it on instinct.
The blow against his arm was unexpectedly light.
He caught the other person’s arm in a lock and looked up in confusion. The moment he saw who it was, he froze.
The intruder wore a bloodstained white mask. Blood on his long white hair had long since congealed in the freezing air outside, matting the strands together.
His clothes were in tatters, leaving almost his entire chest bare in the cold air.
The man held an old-fashioned electromagnetic gun in one hand, while his other arm was caught in Xie Chi’s grip. His breathing was ragged, and his firm chest rose and fell with each breath, faintly red from the cold.
A little lower, Xie Chi could make out the defined muscles along the man’s lean waist…
Xie Chi jerked his gaze away as if burned.
The man’s pheromones filled the air. They had a woody scent, too, but unlike Yan Wanqiu’s cold, aggressive pheromones, this man’s were much gentler, with a sweet, warm finish.
Xie Chi’s cheeks immediately began to burn.
W-was this the male alpha wife Yan Wanqiu had found for him?