Fang Jing pointed toward the house ahead. “Hao-Hao, is this your home?”
“No.”
“Huh? Not your home? Didn’t you say you were going to take me home?”
“That’s right. This is our home, but it’s not just my home anymore. Yuanyuan, from now on, this is your home too. No one has the right to kick you out. This will be the home where we live for the next three years. In this home, you can do whatever you want without feeling restricted.”
“Really?”
“Of course.” Lu Hao kissed Fang Jing again, knowing very well how much Fang Jing enjoyed his affection. “Let’s go, we’re going home. Once we get things sorted out later, I’ll take you to the campus supermarket to look around and buy you some delicious snacks.”
“Yay! I want to eat ice-cold, sweet ice cream, and lots of snacks too.”
Lu Hao gave Fang Jing’s forehead an affectionate tap and smiled. “Did you learn about those from the videos again?”
Before leaving, Lu Chen had told him not to leave the campus for the time being because outside media were currently keeping a close eye on him. There was no help for it; the top student of the First Military Academy contracting a pet beast was indeed major news. He had also seen many discussions online about him and Yuanyuan. Leaving the school gates at this juncture was something Lu Hao was firmly against.
“Yuanyuan, I’m really sorry. We can’t leave the school for a while, so we can only check out the supermarket on campus. But don’t worry, whatever they have outside, the campus supermarket has it too.”
“Hao-Hao, do they sell ice cream and biscuits at the supermarket too? The people in the videos said those things taste so good. I want to eat them, so you have to buy them for me.”
“Alright, I’ll buy them for you.” Lu Hao loved it the most when Fang Jing spoke to him in that taken-for-granted tone. Speaking too formally instead made him mistakenly think Fang Jing was distancing himself and still holding a grudge over before.
Wagging his tail happily, Fang Jing acted clingy and gave Lu Hao a peck on the cheek. “Hao-Hao, you’re the best!”
With a crisp teenage voice that stretched out the lingering ending notes without any deliberate affectation, it made Lu Hao’s ears tingle and his tone soften by several degrees. “My Yuanyuan is great too, such a good boy.”
Lu Hao placed Fang Jing onto the sofa before setting about organizing the contents of his military pack.
There was a sweeping robot in the apartment, and before leaving, Lu Hao had already set the daily cleaning program. Even when he wasn’t around, the place remained completely free of dust.
Taking out another set of casual clothes, Lu Hao turned and entered the bathroom.
“Hao-Hao, what are you doing? Why are you closing the door?”
Back on the flight cruiser, because conditions were limited, Lu Hao had always taken speedy showers lasting less than ten minutes. Fang Jing hadn’t even finished his post-meal dessert before Lu Hao came out wearing his bathrobe.
Now that he was back in his own home, Lu Hao wanted to properly soak in a hot bath for a while. He first washed his undergarments, and as the water filled the tub, he tossed in some bubble bath tablets with a floral fragrance.
Having not taken a proper bath for a whole month, Lu Hao began to enjoy the cozy tranquility. Just as he let out a comfortable sigh of contentment, Fang Jing’s voice echoed from outside, followed immediately by the sound of the bathroom door opening.
Standing stark naked beneath a layer of bubbles, Lu Hao stared in disbelief. “Yuanyuan, how did you get in here?”
“Hao-Hao, what are you doing? You haven’t come out for so long. Didn’t you come in here to take a dump?”
Lu Hao paused for a moment.
Who said he came in here to take care of biological functions?!
Curiously eyeing the bathtub full of bubbles, Fang Jing twitched his nose and trotted over with great interest. “Hao-Hao, what is this? It smells so good and looks like a lot of fun. Can I play in it?”
Lu Hao replied, “Yuanyuan, I’m taking a bath. Go wait for me outside, okay?”
Ignoring the question, Fang Jing answered instead, “I want to play too! Hao-Hao, I want to take a bath too, I want to soak in this fragrant stuff.”
Lu Hao told him, “Let’s wait until I’m done, and I’ll find a small basin for you to soak in, alright?”
“No.” Fang Jing flatly refused. With a strong push of his hind legs, he leaped right into the bathtub with a loud splash.
“Yuanyuan!” Lu Hao hurried to scoop him up with his hands, but before he could grab him, he felt something brush against that area of his body that couldn’t be described in detail. Lu Hao’s expression shifted drastically as he swerved his right hand to grab straight toward his unspeakable spot.
Plucked up by the scruff of his neck, Fang Jing was dripping wet and covered in foam. With a vigorous shake, Fang Jing sent soapy water flying, making Lu Hao—who was standing closest—take the brunt of it.
Realizing he had splashed foam all over Lu Hao’s face and head, Fang Jing laughed happily. “Hao-Hao, let me down! I want to swim.”
Lu Hao wiped the foam from his face. “You little rascal, who told you to…”
He wanted to say, who told you to swim right toward that spot?
It wasn’t just men and women who needed to keep a proper distance from each other.
“You can swim, but you aren’t allowed to swim toward my crotch, and you’re definitely not allowed to look around or touch things in there.”
“I was not looking around.” Fang Jing didn’t think there was anything wrong with two guys bathing together. They were both men; what he had, others had too, and it was just a matter of size and length. Why couldn’t he look?
Still feeling uneasy, Lu Hao knew the little guy had zero credibility in front of him right now, especially since the small beast that had just swum to his crotch and kicked his brother with its hind legs was none other than him.
Was that part of the body meant to be used for things like that?
Anxious and unconvinced, Lu Hao lifted Fang Jing up and set him on the edge of the bathtub. “Yuanyuan, you are not allowed to turn around and look. Don’t move until I’ve put my shorts back on.”
Forced to turn around, Fang Jing played with the bubbles. “Hao-Hao, I saw it already.”
Stepping out of the bathtub, Lu Hao almost tripped. Whether out of embarrassment or anger, his face turned unusually red. “What did you see?”
“Just a man’s trademark.” Bold and completely honest, Fang Jing praised him, “Hao-Hao’s is huge.”
Lu Hao felt like he was about to faint!
It seemed his list of things to educate the little guy on had just gained another item.
“Yuanyuan, you can’t just say things like that casually.”
“I’m not saying it casually. Hao-Hao’s really is big.” When Fang Jing used to be carried down the mountain by his senior martial brother to slay demon cultivators, he had once accidentally caught sight of a few disciples from the Joyful Sect messing around. After stealing a quick look and comparing it to himself, Lu Hao’s equipment was indeed much larger than anything he had seen before.
He wasn’t making things up; it was a factual result based on comparison. “Hao-Hao’s is naturally bigger than anything I’ve ever seen before. Yuanyuan wasn’t talking nonsense.”
Blushing as red as a monkey’s backside, Lu Hao hurriedly grabbed a pair of shorts to put on before sitting back down in the bathtub. Reaching out, he hauled Fang Jing over so they were looking eye-to-eye. “Have you seen other people’s before? Has Yuanyuan ever left Fire Cloud Star?”
Oh no, he slipped up and said too much.
“No way! I’ve seen other contracted beasts’ before. Theirs are all so tiny, like little pink birds, little squirrels, and little white cats, but none of them are as big as Hao-Hao’s.”
Utterly speechless, Lu Hao asked, “Why on earth were you looking at those things on other people?”
Curling his finger, Lu Hao gave Fang Jing a gentle flick on the forehead and threatened him, “You’re not allowed to look around at that kind of thing in the future. Looking too much at those things will give you styes.”
“Styes? What are those?” Fang Jing realized there were so many things he still didn’t know. In the past, he had only ever used seclusion as an excuse to slack off, and now his brain couldn’t keep up anymore.
After Lu Hao explained what a stye was, he finally resumed washing Fang Jing. “Alright, you can play now. When we get to the supermarket later, I’ll buy you some small toys so you can play with them during bath time in the future.”
At the mention of this, Lu Hao suddenly remembered, “Yuanyuan, can I ask you a question?”
With someone as highly intelligent as Fang Jing, asking probing questions to dig into his background was likely a major taboo. Lu Hao hadn’t dared to ask too much previously for fear of arousing Fang Jing’s disgust.
Yet today, he suddenly became very curious. Fang Jing seemed to understand a lot of things, but in certain aspects, he also seemed completely clueless. Listening to his voice, he clearly sounded like a teenager. In that case, after some time, wouldn’t the little guy also face the mating season that other beasts experienced?
That raised a problem: he didn’t even know what species Fang Jing belonged to, so where on earth was he supposed to find him a companion?
“What is it?” Enjoying Lu Hao’s gentle scrubbing, Fang Jing lazily swished his tail back and forth in the water, lounging across Lu Hao’s chest while listening to the steady, powerful thumping of his heartbeat. He tilted his head upward, fixing his gaze straight on Lu Hao.
Lowering his head and casting his gaze downward, Lu Hao asked, “Yuanyuan, how old are you? I mean, what is your age in years?”
“What about Hao-Hao? How old is Hao-Hao?”
“I’m twenty-two.” In the interstellar era, adulthood was still reached at eighteen, and as a college sophomore, Lu Hao had already reached the eligible age for marriage.
Already two hundred years old, Fang Jing’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief. What?!
He was actually this much older than Lu Hao?
He was old enough to be Lu Hao’s great-great-grandfather.
Did this mean he counted as an old cow eating tender grass?
Fang Jing felt deeply conflicted. Clearly, he still felt very young and small, and his master often called him his little darling. How had he suddenly become two hundred years old in the blink of an eye?
“Hao-Hao, how long can people live around here?”
“Some can live to be a hundred and fifty or sixty, while others can live to eighty or ninety. It’s not fixed; it depends on their ability rank. But not every ability user manages to live to that age, either.”
At this, Lu Hao’s mood inevitably grew a bit heavier. His father had been an A-grade ice-type ability user. Logically speaking, living to one hundred and seventy shouldn’t have been a problem, but…
This was the sorrow of ability soldiers.
When they threw themselves headlong into protecting their homes and country, what they relied on wasn’t just courage and responsibility, but guarding the citizens of the Three Stars with their very lives.
People like them either ended up disabled, or couldn’t even recover their remains after being devoured by the Zerg, while others had to endure the agonizing pain brought on by a fractured ability core for the rest of their remaining days until death.
Knowing nothing about this background, Fang Jing thought hard for a moment before answering with uncertainty, “Hao-Hao, I am probably, maybe eighteen?”
“Huh?” Lu Hao was taken aback. “What do you mean by probably maybe? Does Yuanyuan not even know his own age?”
“I don’t know.”
“When Yuanyuan was at Fire Cloud Star, how many spring seasons did you experience?”
“Eighteen times.” The videos said that only when you turned eighteen could you do adult things. Fang Jing had already made up his mind: he didn’t want to be an old cow, but being too young wouldn’t do either. Eighteen was just right, old enough to do the things only adults could do.
Cultivators in the cultivation world stopped aging once they advanced to the Golden Core stage, remaining unchanged until their lifespans neared their end.
Some cultivators even used their advancement to the Golden Core stage to completely reconstruct their facial features. Because of this, ugly people basically didn’t exist among cultivators at the Golden Core stage and above in the cultivation world.
As a prized prodigy of his sect, Fang Jing’s cultivation talent was more than enough to prove itself.
Yet at only eighteen, Fang Jing had already advanced to the Golden Core stage. Even when he reached the Tribulation stage at two hundred years old, he still looked like an immature eighteen-year-old youth.
Therefore, he was eighteen every single year!