Realizing the sheer audacity of what he had just done, Aseya hastily recoiled, bringing their brief, stolen kiss to an abrupt halt.
Huh? Is that it? Lu Li thought, his mind racing. He hadn’t nearly had his fill yet.
His wife’s lips were incredibly soft, and perhaps because they had just finished sharing that strawberry ice cream, they still carried a faint, lingering trace of sugary sweetness.
“Aseya, I want more!” Lu Li declared, completely unvarnished and direct in voicing his demands.
Aseya was left thoroughly dazed by Lu Li’s absolute lack of a filter. Wait a minute… why am I the only one turning red here? Why isn’t the Male Lord experiencing a single shred of embarrassment?!
The general was genuinely staggered by his master’s thick skin.
“Uh… Master, the Military Command suddenly pinged me with an urgent matter. I will escort you back home first, and then I must report to headquarters immediately.”
Ultimately, Aseya opted for a tactical retreat, desperate to escape the suffocatingly intimate atmosphere.
The moment the words left his mouth, Lu Li knew with absolute certainty that Aseya was fabricating a blatant excuse. However, he didn’t have the heart to tease his flustered general any further.
After all, they had a lifetime ahead of them.
It was best to grant Aseya a bit of breathing room to sort through his thoughts and fully reconcile the rapidly shifting boundaries of their relationship.
“Alright then, I’ll head back home first.”
The moment Aseya dropped Lu Li off at the estate, he made a beeline for Military Command without stopping to rest.
To his surprise, an actual crisis had managed to find its way to his department during his brief absence.
“General Gaya, General Aseya is officially off-duty today.”
Before Aseya even crossed the threshold of his office suite, the strained, desperate voice of his adjutant, Thace, drifted through the corridor.
Hearing Thace’s automated deflection, Gaya let out a cold, mocking sneer. “And who’s to say he isn’t simply hiding in his quarters to avoid facing me?”
Enduring Gaya’s overt skepticism, Thace swallowed an immense wave of inner bitterness. Why would he do that, General Gaya? General Aseya is genuinely occupied with personal matters today!
Can someone please just escort this plague out of my sector?! Thace screamed frantically in his mind, acutely aware that he was merely a low-ranking adjutant caught in the crossfire of titans.
“To what do I owe the immense honor of General Gaya gracing the First Legion with his presence today?” Aseya’s calm, detached voice cut through the air just as Thace was beginning to spiral into absolute despair.
Oh, thank the heavens… General Aseya, you’ve finally arrived!
Aseya flashed a brief, reassuring glance toward Thace, silently signaling for him to dismiss himself from the room.
“General Aseya certainly has a fine appetite for leisure. I received word that your newly matched Male Lord brutally assaulted my noble brother today.” Recalling his idiotic, bloated male sibling, a flash of deep, unadulterated contempt rippled through Gaya’s eyes.
Gaya was Stefe’s half-brother. However, they did not share the same birth-father; unlike Stefe, who was the precious offspring of the household’s legal Ci jun, Gaya was born from a low-ranking Ci shi.
So he really did march over here regarding that incident, Aseya noted silently.
Gaya narrowed his eyes, continuing his assault. “Assaulting a protected male… that is a severe, capital offense, General Aseya.”
Aseya remained entirely unfazed by Gaya’s veiled threats.
“If the General has journeyed all this way merely to discuss that specific altercation, then I must ask you to return. The authorities will handle the investigation in due course.”
“I am more than capable of protecting my own Male Lord. There is absolutely no need for General Gaya to squander his precious concern on my household.”
Hearing Aseya’s absolute, uncompromising shield over his master, Gaya didn’t feel inclined to press the issue any further.
In truth, his objective for the day had already been perfectly fulfilled.
He merely needed to make a formal, highly visible appearance at Aseya’s office to go through the motions. This way, he could easily provide a clean, satisfactory account to his noble father and his brainless brother.
Meanwhile, back at Lu Li’s residence.
Knock, knock.
Assuming Aseya had finally sorted through his embarrassment and returned early, Lu Li eagerly threw the front door open, only to be met by a lineup of intensely familiar faces.
It was a delegation from the Male Protection Association.
“We meet again, Lord Lu Li.”
“The Association has received a formal, high-priority grievance filed by the noble Stefe. He alleges that you assaulted him to the point of critical injury, citing intentional, malicious bodily harm against a protected male,” Frode stated, his tone professional yet weighed down by the circumstances.
Critical injury? What an absolute, shameless clown, Lu Li thought, holding back a scoff. That kick of his had resulted in minor, superficial bruising at the absolute worst.
Granted, he had utilized a hundred percent of his physical capacity, but he certainly hadn’t struck the fool hard enough to threaten his life.
If anything, he brought it entirely upon himself the moment he spoke disrespectfully about Aseya, Lu Li mused. If I had known he was going to be this dramatic, I would have broken a few ribs before letting him crawl away.
“Whatever do you mean, President Frode? This is a case of absolute, unadulterated slander,” Lu Li stated, his expression morphing into a picture of righteous, unyielding integrity.
“You are more than welcome to review the public surveillance footage. My physical intervention was executed purely under the doctrine of self-preservation.”
“It was Stefe who raised his hand intending to strike my person first. I merely engaged in legitimate self-defense; I simply hadn’t anticipated that my reflex would carry such force.”
“Ultimately, I suppose a fraction of the blame rests on my shoulders for overestimating his resilience. Tell you what, I will personally cover the entirety of Lord Stefe’s medical expenditures.”
It’s not like I’m lacking for funds anyway, Lu Li reasoned.
Frode hadn’t anticipated that Lu Li would capitulate to the financial aspect so smoothly and decisively. However, a mere monetary settlement was highly unlikely to appease the immense political pressure mounting from the Alden family.
Noticing the heavy, conflicted expression settling across Frode’s features, Lu Li instantly surmised that the Alden family was leaning heavily on the Association’s leadership.
“President, I suggest you carefully weigh the structural reality of this situation. I am an A-rank male, whereas Stefe is merely a B-rank asset.”
“Furthermore, while you are understandably hesitant to slight the Alden family, are you truly prepared to completely alienate the Heinard military clan? Lest you forget, I am the legal Master of General Aseya.”
“And if my memory serves me correctly, Stefe sustained nothing more than negligible, superficial impact trauma. Frankly, it barely qualifies as a minor injury; I doubt the medical scanners could locate a single broken skin barrier across his frame.”
“I have already explicitly stated that I will assume total liability for Stefe’s medical bills, ensuring he receives the absolute highest tier of restorative tech available. I guarantee he’ll be bouncing around completely unharmed within twenty-four hours.”
Frode silently calculated the political vectors in his mind before finally letting out a defeated sigh.
“Lord Lu Li, I will have the automated ledger forward Lord Stefe’s medical invoices directly to your personal terminal.”
“I shall take my leave now, Lord Lu Li.”
Frode had zero desire to muddy his hands in this high-tier dispute to begin with; he had only marched over to conduct a formal inquiry under extreme political duress.
“Safe travels. Yuanyuan, escort our guests out.”
Over at the central military hospital, the moment Stefe received the automated resolution report, pure fury consumed him. He began violently sweeping medical instruments and glass vials off the tables, shattering them against the floor.
“Why?! Those useless, incompetent parasites at the Protection Association! They can’t even execute a simple disciplinary order! What do we even fund them for?!”
The female attendants tasked with serving his needs huddled in the corners of the VIP suite, trembling violently as they prayed that Stefe’s unbridled rage wouldn’t manifest into a physical lashing against their own skins.
“Father… where is my father?! I want to speak to my father immediately!”
“Lu Li… you are absolutely finished.”
Meanwhile, sitting entirely alone within his vacant office suite, a sudden, blinding spike of agony ripped through Aseya’s cerebral cortex.
The sheer, unprecedented velocity of the neurological spasm caused the strength to instantly drain from his legs, sending him crashing heavily to the floor.
Aseya curled his body tightly into the dark corner of the room, his entire frame racking with violent, uncontrollable tremors.
Along his neck, his intricate Chong wen flared with a volatile, highly unstable luminescence—flickering frantically between blinding brilliance and total darkness, a direct, physical manifestation of the psychic chaos tearing through his mind.
His eyes completely lost their characteristic piercing, razor-sharp calm; at this moment, they were flooded with a dark, blood-red hue, betraying an abyss of agony and desperate mental resistance.
How… how could a Mental Riot trigger so abruptly? My psychic readings have been perfectly stable over the past few weeks.
With a violently trembling hand, Aseya fumbled across his desk, barely managing to yank open a drawer to retrieve a heavy-duty psychic suppressant. Injecting the fluid directly into his forearm, he waited as his fracturing consciousness slowly drifted back into alignment.
It appears… I won’t be able to return home until much later tonight. If I walk through the door like this, I will undoubtedly terrify my little Male Lord.
Aseya desperately refused to let Lu Li witness him in the throes of a psychic backlash. He wanted every single memory his master held of him to remain pristine, flawless, and beautiful.
In Zerg society, males universally loathed and reviled military females who succumbed to psychic instability.
Because during a Mental Riot, a female was stripped entirely of their higher faculties and rational intellect; there was no guaranteeing that the volatile beast wouldn’t turn its immense physical power against its own master.
To the elite males, there was zero incentive to tolerate such a dangerous, high-risk liability. Why waste energy managing a broken military asset when one could easily retreat to the soft, perfectly predictable comfort of a delicate sub-female or a stable partner?
Back at the estate, Lu Li had already finished preparing a magnificent spread of home-cooked dishes. He sat by the dining table, eagerly anticipating Aseya’s return so they could share a proper, quiet evening meal together.
Furthermore, Lu Li had already formulated a meticulous tactical plan for the night: he was going to masterfully play the pity card, feign loneliness, and smoothly smuggle himself directly into Aseya’s bedchamber to sleep under the same sheets.
After all, the experience of waking up first thing in the morning and immediately laying eyes on his beautiful wife was a high like no other. Once a man had tasted that level of domestic bliss, who on earth would ever want to retreat back to a cold, solitary bed?
Yet, Lu Li waited… and he waited. The hours bled away, and Aseya’s silhouette remained completely absent from the foyer.
Did an unexpected crisis erupt at the base? Or did Stefe use his family connections to intentionally tie Aseya up in administrative red tape?
Under normal circumstances, Aseya should have crossed the threshold long before now.
The longer Lu Li dwelled on the possibilities, the more a suffocating coil of worry tightened around his chest. Ultimately, he decided he couldn’t sit still a moment longer; he was going to march straight down to Military Command to find his wife.
Yet, the exact millisecond he threw the front door open, he collided directly with Aseya, who had just raised his hand to engage the electronic lock.