“Huhu…”
Like a conscientious and attentive dad, Lu Hao blew the rice noodles cool before feeding them to Fang Jing’s mouth. Whenever too much soup accumulated at the corners of Fang Jing’s mouth and threatened to trickle down, he would wipe it away promptly, striving to ensure that Fang Jing remained a clean little darling even after eating and drinking to his heart’s content.
Happily, Fang Jing hopped and skipped from side to side a few more times. Lu Hao didn’t rush him either, only looking at him with doting eyes and waiting until he stopped on his own accord before continuing to feed him.
Unable to watch any longer, Lin Shen clicked his tongue twice and shook his head. With a burning gaze, he said, “Ah-Hao, this is, as expected, a bit too over-the-top with the pampering, isn’t it? Aren’t you worried that your future girlfriend will get jealous of Yuanyuan?”
“Exactly. Look at you—acting like this, being inseparable from your contracted beast every day, eating, drinking, sleeping, and doing everything together as if it were your wife. Who could possibly handle that?” Even though Pei Sui loved his own contracted beast very much, he couldn’t manage to dote on it as if it were a wife the way Lu Hao did.
At the mention of this, Xie Zhinian couldn’t help recalling, “Right, how are things going between you and that Liya?”
Military academy students weren’t exclusively male; there were female students too, since frontline areas naturally needed nurses and personnel for various administrative positions.
Abilities were hereditary. As an old saying went, how many soldiers return from ancient battlefields? Many military academy students began juggling both romance and studies during their school years.
Lu Hao was naturally no exception. Liya, the girl he was interacting with, had been introduced by Lu Hao’s mother, but Lu Hao didn’t like her. He had already told Liya so a few times, but alas, this woman knew how to pursue him relentlessly, staging chance encounters with Lu Hao every time in places like the cafeteria, playground, and dormitory area.
With the frequency of these chance encounters, outsiders who didn’t know the truth began to view them as a couple who had agreed to meet up.
Lin Shen didn’t particularly like Liya, but speaking ill of a buddy’s girlfriend was truly something he couldn’t bring himself to do. He could only say tactfully, “Based on Liya’s temperament, she definitely won’t be willing to let you put most of your energy into Yuanyuan. When the time comes, if she asks you the kind of question where she and Yuanyuan fall into the water at the same time and she asks who you’ll save, you’re going to suffer.”
And it wasn’t an exaggeration—that woman was entirely capable of pulling off something like that.
Clearly, their relationship hadn’t even been made official yet, but Liya was already asserting her dominance and refusing to let any other women get close to Lu Hao.
There were too many people in the dining area. Out of consideration for the girl’s face, Lu Hao didn’t want to be too blunt, so he answered vaguely, “If something like that really happens, I’d only be able to choose one.”
He would definitely save Yuanyuan!
However, to Lin Shen and the others listening, they assumed as a matter of course, “That’s true, human lives are definitely more important. But seriously, with you treating Yuanyuan this way, maybe your future girlfriend really will get jealous.”
Listening to Lu Hao and the others’ conversation the entire time, Fang Jing only understood a fraction of it.
“Chirp?”
Tilting his small head, Fang Jing opened his large eyes wide, filled with question marks. Girlfriend? Wife? What kind of creatures were those?
Lu Hao glanced at his three friends. “What are you all talking nonsense about? Why would anyone get jealous over this?”
Answering a completely different question, Lin Shen pointed at Fang Jing. “Ah-Hao, what is the little guy tilting its head supposed to mean?”
Glancing at Fang Jing, Lu Hao couldn’t help the corners of his mouth curving upward. “It’s probably wondering what kind of creatures the girlfriends and wives you guys mentioned are.”
“I know the answer to this one. Let me handle it.”
Lin Shen was very enthusiastic. “Yuanyuan, a girlfriend is the person your master will pursue in the future. They will hold hands, go on dates, eat together, and watch movies. In short, Ah-Hao will treat her very well. As for this wife thing, she is the legal partner after getting a marriage certificate. She will call Ah-Hao husband, and in the future, she will be Ah-Hao’s closest and most important person in life.”
What?
Weren’t these just Dao companions and fiancées?
He understood this!
Fang Jing was extremely shocked. He even forgot to eat the rice noodles Lu Hao held up to his mouth, his eyes wide open as if he had received a massive blow.
“Yuanyuan, what’s wrong? Eat your noodles.” Lu Hao called out to Fang Jing, trying to summon back his wandering focus.
For some unknown reason, the mere thought that his pooper-scooper would have a Dao companion in the future made him realize that the pooper-scooper wouldn’t treat him this well anymore, wouldn’t sleep with him anymore, wouldn’t take fragrant baths with him anymore, and certainly wouldn’t wait on him at the dining table anymore. In short, all these things he did for him and all those actions they shared would be done for someone else in the future.
Even if the pooper-scooper treated him just as well as he did now in the future, it would ultimately be different. This kind of preferential treatment would no longer be uniquely his.
His share of good treatment, which could rank first right now, would have to drop to second place. Once the pooper-scooper had children, he would have to drop even further behind the kids, his status plunging step by step until it finally hit an expendable, negligible position.
Once someone experienced something better, looking back at other substitutes inevitably made things feel a bit lacking.
Fang Jing didn’t want to change his pooper-scooper, nor did he want the pooper-scooper to treat anyone else well.
To put it bluntly, he was just a possessive person. What was his belonged to him, and nobody else was allowed to lay a finger on it.
If the pooper-scooper treated him well, that special treatment couldn’t be transferred to anyone else.
Yet, thinking like this was wrong!
It was selfish.
He understood the logic completely, but he just felt uncomfortable. He didn’t want anyone else to steal away his pooper-scooper.
Staring straight at Lu Hao, Fang Jing reflected a miniaturized shadow of Lu Hao within his pupils. “Chirping chirp…”
Pooper-scooper, could you please not take a Dao companion?
What was so great about a Dao companion anyway?
Once you had a Dao companion, you would have to spend cultivation resources—no, in the interstellar era they didn’t talk about cultivation resources; everyone just talked about money.
Right, if he married a wife, the pooper-scooper would not only have to give money to his wife and support her, but he would also have to raise a son in the future. Would he still be able to afford to support him?
Maybe once the pooper-scooper had kids, he would even have to help babysit. If he didn’t watch the kids properly, the pooper-scooper would blame and scold him.
He really couldn’t keep thinking about this. The more Fang Jing thought about it, the sadder he felt.
Perhaps because Lu Hao was the first person who cared for him and looked after him when he arrived in this world, he instinctively grew dependent on him, holding an extraordinary possessiveness toward this person. He couldn’t help wanting to get closer and wanting to touch him.
Selfishly, Fang Jing wished that the pooper-scooper wouldn’t marry a wife at all. Wasn’t having him keep him company enough?
“What’s wrong?” Seeing that Fang Jing still wasn’t eating, Lu Hao knitted his brow slightly, scooped Fang Jing into his arms, and rubbed his head. “Don’t you want the noodles anymore? Or is there something you don’t understand?”
“Chirp, chirp…”
Pooper-scooper, will you marry a wife, get a girlfriend, and then stop cuddling with me and stop kissing me?
Completely unable to understand, Lu Hao even after half a month of getting along would never have guessed things had gone in that direction. In fact, right now he couldn’t even guess what sort of issue could possibly make a foodie completely lose interest when faced with delicious food. “Sorry, Yuanyuan, I don’t understand. What on earth is wrong with you?”
“Chirp, chirp, chirp…”
The pooper-scooper’s heart has changed! The moment girlfriends and wives were mentioned, his mind wasn’t even here anymore, and he didn’t even know what he was thinking. Right now, his head was probably filled entirely with that girlfriend named Li-something-or-ya.
Clearly, they used to have great tacit understanding before. Whenever he gave a little chirp, the pooper-scooper would know what he was thinking whether he was hungry or impatient. But right now…
Stuck in a sensitive period, Fang Jing didn’t bother to think that normally, apart from being hungry and demanding food, what else could most of his chirping possibly mean? Anyone could tell what he wanted.
Fang Jing didn’t care about all that. Back in his old days at the sect, he was the close disciple and junior martial brother held in the palms of his master and senior martial brothers, cherished like a precious treasure.
Upon suddenly learning that in terms of importance, one, two, or even three or four people would rank ahead of him in the pooper-scooper’s heart in the future, and that he would no longer be the pooper-scooper’s most important existence, the gap in status could easily be imagined.
Overwhelmed with sudden sadness, Fang Jing leaped straight off the table and bolted out under Lu Hao’s stunned and shocked gaze.
“Yuanyuan!”
Seeing Fang Jing run off, Lu Hao turned pale with fright. Completely past caring about anything else, he abruptly stood up and shouted at the top of his lungs, knocking his chair over and drawing the collective attention of everyone inside the restaurant.
Yet Lu Hao had no spare attention for those gazes; he sprinted out after Fang Jing. But the moment he reached the doorway, there was no longer any sign of the little white ball.
The flight cruiser was massive—so massive that after Fang Jing had wandered all around out of boredom, Lu Hao still couldn’t find him.
To Fang Jing, however, this just became another form of perfunctory dismissal from Lu Hao. If he truly cared, how could it take him this long to find him?
Rumble…
Fang Jing’s stomach started growling. He had no clear idea how long he had been running out here. All he knew was that after taking a nap in this pitch-dark place and waking up from his sleep, the security grid at the exit was still there.
The world was vast, but filling one’s stomach came first. Still, he couldn’t just forgive the pooper-scooper that easily.
Therefore, Fang Jing hopped down from the ventilation vent on his own, activating the contract resonance that interstellar humans lacked, attempting to sense where his pooper-scooper was located.
The very second that contract was triggered, Fang Jing’s feet slipped out from under him, causing him to take a spectacular tumble right onto the floor.
How could this be?!
In utter disbelief, Fang Jing used his spiritual sense to look into the contract within his sea of consciousness. He slumped onto the floor, rubbed his eyes with his paws, and then sat there dumbfounded, his entire beastly mind completely blank.
This wasn’t an equal contract. Damn it, this was a Dao companion contract!
It’s over! The pooper-scooper turned into a husband.
How could this happen? How did a proper equal contract turn into a Dao companion contract?
Fang Jing’s mind was spinning with utter confusion.
A Tribulation-stage mighty expert had absurdly mistaken an equal contract for a Dao companion contract. If news of this leaked out, people would laugh their heads off and he would completely lose face.
Fortunately, Fang Jing wasn’t someone who liked to dwell needlessly on worries. Since he couldn’t figure it out, there was no point agonizing over something that had already happened.
Anyway, agonizing over it back and forth wouldn’t change anything, and he didn’t know how to dissolve a Dao companion contract either. Besides, heaven knows, earth knows, and he knows—as long as he didn’t say a word, who would ever find out?
Yet, one point suddenly occurred to Fang Jing.
Having finally managed to climb back up to his feet, Fang Jing raised a paw and scratched his head.
So, did that mean he now had a Dao companion—in other words, a husband?
And his husband had an ambiguous love interest?
Might this ambiguous love interest even become his husband’s girlfriend, and then upgrade to become his wife?
No!
How could that be allowed? He was a Tribulation-stage mighty expert after all. How could he share a single husband with a mere mortal?
If word of that got out, would he want his reputation anymore?
No way, absolutely not!
With matters of a lifetime commitment at stake, Fang Jing panicked, while also feeling a tiny bit miffed that Lu Hao had taken so long to find him.
When he finally found Lu Hao, he didn’t care about the look of instinctive relief flashing across the other’s face upon finding him. Instead, he swaggered right alongside the silent Lu Hao and returned to the room.
The moment they stepped inside, Fang Jing hopped straight onto the bay window, turning his back squarely toward Lu Hao.
That posture clearly meant they were entering a silent cold war.
Having not even managed to eat, and having spent two hours searching until he felt like turning the entire flight cruiser upside down, Lu Hao wasn’t without a temper of his own.
Small tantrums were fine; he could treat them as an appropriate way to release emotions. But running off without a word like this—making him and Lin Shen search for two hours and even drawing the attention of other military academy students—that crossed the line.
God knew that when he couldn’t find it, his mood had practically plummeted to the ocean floor.
On the way back, Lu Hao had been angry. He said goodbye to Lin Shen and the others without uttering a single word to Fang Jing. But right now, looking at his little white ball, the one feeling furious was him, yet the one softening up and feeling reluctant to let go was also him.
Lu Hao sighed silently, feeling simultaneously exasperated and amused. He wondered if he had contracted a pet beast or actually contracted a little ancestor.
Whenever the mood struck, it would get angry just like that, and it even knew how to run away from home.
“Yuanyuan, what’s wrong with you tonight?” Lu Hao looked at the back turned toward him. If it were visible to the naked eye, the air surrounding Yuanyuan right now should be a gloomy shade of grey.
Just look at how pitiful that little figure appeared!