The scene descended into complete chaos. Bowls, plates, knives, and forks flew everywhere. After getting to her feet, Cheng Li stepped back, pushing Yuan Mu’s wheelchair away from the mess along with her.
However, someone grabbed hold of the wheelchair wheel. “Don’t leave. Other people are fighting because of you, yet you’re staying out of it yourself. That’s a bit unreasonable, isn’t it?”
The usually silent Yuan Mu finally spoke. Turning his head toward Cheng Li, he said, “Go hide somewhere yourself. Don’t worry about me.”
His voice was actually pretty pleasant. Cheng Li thought to herself.
“No way. I’m your fiancée after all. I have to protect you.” ‘Otherwise if you lose your life, my mining planet will be gone too.’ she silently added in her heart.
“Hahahaha! So you, Yuan Mu, actually have a day where you need someone else to protect you!” The man burst into exaggerated laughter.
Yuan Mu’s expression darkened.
A cold glint flashed through Cheng Li’s eyes. Catching a fork that came flying toward her, she hurled it straight at the man under his mocking gaze.
Pshhk!
The seemingly light and flimsy fork pierced right through the man’s clothes and stabbed into his chest.
“Aaaahhhhhh!”
“She killed someone!”
Someone screamed.
The noisy banquet hall fell deathly silent in an instant.
The man clutched his chest, staring at the fork embedded there in disbelief as he asked Cheng Li, “How did you do that?”
Cheng Li put on an innocent expression. “I just got angry and threw it. I didn’t mean to do it. I’m really sorry!”
The adults who had been standing by and watching finally stepped in.
“Take him away and treat the wound,” Yuan Zhaoling ordered gravely.
Father Cheng, still fuming, frowned and barked at Cheng Li, “Who told you to hurt someone? Apologize right now.”
Cheng Li immediately looked aggrieved. “They came to my engagement banquet just to cause trouble. I got upset and threw a fork. How was I supposed to know it would stab into him? Aren’t sentinels supposed to be incredibly strong? I’m just an ordinary person, and I’m disabled on top of that. How could I possibly hurt him? I think he’s deliberately faking it for compensation!”
The moment the words “faking it for compensation” came out, the entire banquet hall fell into eerie silence. One could practically hear a pin drop.
That was right. A disabled ordinary person with a single fork had somehow injured a sentinel from the First Military Academy. How was that even possible?
He had to be faking it, right?
They had come to someone else’s engagement banquet to stir up trouble, and now, afraid of being held responsible, they had injured themselves on purpose to avoid blame?
The more everyone thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. The looks directed at Zhao Pang and the others instantly became strange and meaningful.
Zhao Pang’s expression turned extremely ugly. Admitting they were faking it would destroy their reputation. But denying it would mean admitting they were so weak that they could not even compare to a disabled ordinary person.
Zhao Pang and his group were now stuck riding a tiger they could not get off. They had never imagined that the girl they had completely dismissed would shove them straight onto the fire and humiliate them like this.
“Zhao Pang, you ruined Ah Mu and my future sister-in-law’s engagement banquet. Shouldn’t you apologize to the people involved?” Wen Zhao finally spoke, breaking the silence.
“Hurry up and apologize! Coming to someone else’s engagement banquet to cause trouble, is that your family’s upbringing, or is that what your teachers taught you at school?” Li Jing chimed in. The way he looked at Cheng Li had become somewhat complicated.
Grinding his molars, Zhao Pang strode forward step by step. But just as he was about to reach Yuan Mu and Cheng Li, he changed direction. Bowing toward Yuan Zhaoling and Father Cheng, he said sincerely, “Uncles, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought my friends here to cause trouble.”
“Hahaha, it’s nothing serious. Just a little scuffle between youngsters.” Yuan Zhaoling patted Zhao Pang on the shoulder and lightly smoothed the matter over.
Father Cheng smiled as well, looking utterly benevolent.
Cheng Li rolled her eyes. She and Yuan Mu must have been picked up off the street, while Zhao Pang was clearly their real son!
“Uncle Zhao, my phantom limb pain is acting up. Come pick me up.” Yuan Mu connected his communicator, informing Uncle Zhao, who had been waiting outside the banquet hall, to come in.
The moment he spoke, everyone’s gaze fell upon the empty space below his waist. Only then did they suddenly remember that this was a disabled man, a hero whose legs had been shredded by the insectoid race while protecting his classmates. Yet Zhao Pang and the others, instead of feeling grateful, had come to his engagement banquet to stir up trouble and humiliate both him and his fiancée.
For a moment, the crowd collectively condemned Zhao Pang’s group with their eyes.
But what did that matter? The young man clearly did not care. Throughout it all, he kept his gaze lowered as the servants helped him leave the banquet hall.
With Yuan Mu’s departure, the engagement banquet ended hastily.
“Fuck! What the hell is that smell?!” Li Jing suddenly cursed loudly, his face flushing red in an instant.
“A guide’s gone into heat! Hurry and use isolation spray! Who brought suppressants?” Song Yulan shouted frantically, the corners of his eyes reddening as though he were desperately suppressing something.
“Zhao Pang, get your people out of here now! You chauvinistic pigs spreading pheromones everywhere!” Wen Zhao roared angrily. His gaze locked onto a girl curled up in the corner of the crowd, his eyes fierce enough to devour someone whole.
The scene once again descended into chaos. Several sentinels had already charged toward the girl.
“All guides and sentinels, evacuate immediately! Hurry!” Yuan Zhaoling shouted. He also rushed toward the girl, grabbing the sentinels approaching her and throwing them away one by one.
As an ordinary person, Cheng Li could neither smell pheromones nor guide pheromones. Watching the sentinels lose their sanity under the stimulation of the guide pheromones and transform into beasts, she was deeply shocked.
No wonder the Alliance prohibited sentinels from releasing pheromones in public places. These were not pheromones at all. They were practically a guide’s heat-inducing drug!
Dozens of sentinels brawled into a chaotic mess. Cheng Li hid behind a pillar, holding a bunch of grapes in her hand as she ate while watching the spectacle with great interest. At the same time, she silently estimated how many exchanges her current self could survive against these sentinels.
The chaos did not last long. The girl in heat was taken away, and the irrational sentinels were injected with tranquilizers, quickly regaining their senses.
That night, after returning home, Cheng Li began cramming knowledge about sentinels and guides on the StarNet. Even though she was just an ordinary person, only by knowing both herself and her enemy could she remain undefeated in every battle.
Besides pheromones and guide pheromones, Cheng Li also learned about a guide’s bonding heat, more commonly known as a heat cycle. Every adult guide had to go through it once a month. Whenever the bonding heat arrived, a guide either injected suppressants or found a sentinel to help them through it. As for how they got through it, naturally, it meant having sex nonstop until the bonding heat subsided. If it was ignored entirely, there was only one outcome: death!
“Tsk tsk, looking at it this way, being an ordinary person is actually better.” Cheng Li muttered.
After learning about bonding heat, Cheng Li moved on to researching mental guidance. The higher a sentinel’s rank, the broader their mental sea became, and the greater the number of mental threads they possessed. At the same time, their mental sea became more prone to instability. Once that instability reached a certain point, they were not far from going insane.
Guides could help sentinels organize their mental seas, especially guides who had formed a complete mark with their sentinel. When soothing their own sentinel’s mental sea, they could do so with the greatest ease and efficiency.
Seeing this, Cheng Li could not help sighing a few times. “Sentinels and guides really are incredibly animalistic! They complement each other, complete each other. They’re practically a species born to be together.”
Compared to sentinels and guides, what interested Cheng Li more were the mechs and starships of this world. Starships were still beyond her reach for now, but mechs were sold openly everywhere.
After breakfast, Cheng Li followed the navigation system toward the largest mech shopping mall on Alpha Star.