"Go back and tell Xie Jing that the internal turmoil among the Dolphin Clan Beastmen on Mother’s side has escalated," Zhan Heng said with absolute certainty. "Tell him to calm the restlessness in his Spiritual Sea, and the moment he can revert to his Beastman Form, he needs to cancel the match. Once he has dealt with the internal issues of the Dolphin Clan Beastmen, you can arrange more blind dates for him."
Zhan Heng glanced at Zhan Ci from the corner of his slightly upturned phoenix eyes. "It will probably be very difficult for my Female Master and me to have any cubs. Does Housekeeper Zhan Ci want to see the Zhan Family’s bloodline end? Xie Jing needs to hurry up and find a Female Master to form a bond with, so that both our Zhan Family and the Xie Family of the Dolphin Clan can have heirs as soon as possible! Am I wrong?"
Zhan Ci pursed his lips, revealing a practiced, polite smile. "You are absolutely right, Lord."
Zhan Ci truly felt speechless about this job! He was just a housekeeper! Although he had been saved on the battlefield by Zhan Heng and Xie Jing’s Father and had taken the Zhan surname, he was still just an elderly housekeeper, not one of Xie Jing’s actual elders! It was obvious that after spending so much time with the female Gu Weilan, Xie Jing had developed feelings for her, completely forgetting his original determination to cancel the match. Zhan Ci knew full well that trying to persuade Xie Jing to cancel the match immediately was an impossible task. He wouldn’t listen at all! Sigh—let it all burn!
By the time Zhan Heng returned to the villa, he had already transformed back into his Little Qilin Beast Form.
Gu Weilan had long since woken up and was currently lying on her stomach in bed, doing her homework on her Light Brain. These days of stability—where she didn’t have to constantly hide and could peacefully do her homework—were something she truly relished. Those who had never experienced displacement would not appreciate happiness that was so easily within reach. Having come from the Apocalypse, Gu Weilan was deeply grateful for this relatively peaceful environment.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. The sound coming from the bedroom door was rather strange. She shuffled over in her slippers, but when she opened the door, there was surprisingly no one in the hallway. Meanwhile, Zhan Heng looked up, and upon realizing that she wasn’t looking at him at all, he raised a front paw and gently pressed it against her slipper.
Only then did Gu Weilan notice him.
She scooped up the Little Qilin in his Beast Form, lightly tugging at a tuft of fur under his neck. "Why aren’t you canceling our match anymore? Let’s hear it!"
Unable to speak, Zhan Heng could only rub his head against her hand.
Gu Weilan narrowed her eyes, tossed him onto the bed, and began petting him all over with the villainous flair of Lady Shi Ji. "Oh, so you’re not going to talk? You’re just a Little Qilin, what can you possibly do? Do you really think you can escape my grasp? Are you going to talk or not? Hahahaha..."
Zhan Heng’s eyes went wide. In his shock, his black pupils dilated so much that they almost entirely consumed his round beastly eyes, reducing his red irises to nothing more than a thin ring.
Seeing him weakly struggling to push her away, Gu Weilan broke into a triumphant smile. "Speak! Speak, and I’ll let you go!"
Zhan Heng was speechless.
Was it that he didn’t want to speak? He literally couldn’t! He was at the Eleventh Rank of the Dark Element, while Gu Weilan was only at the Fifth Rank of the Light Element. The vast difference in their Beast Rank levels meant that he couldn’t receive any soothing from her at all. When Xie Jing had snitched on him, he conveniently left out the fact that he was only able to speak because he had been soothed by her. Without receiving any soothing himself, and unwilling to just let some unknown female enter his Spiritual Sea, Zhan Heng had no choice but to rely on medication to help him endure his Spiritual Sea’s riots.
Anyway, male Beastmen had a chance to endure a Spiritual Sea riot once a year, which would build up their resistance to spiritual corruption. However, if they failed to endure it, they would descend into madness. Well, he would cross that bridge when he was on the verge of madness! He actually felt pretty good today, regardless!
Zhan Heng could only rely on snuggling up to Gu Weilan while she slept at night to alleviate the restlessness in his Spiritual Sea. That was why he was in such good condition today—he had managed to maintain his Beastman Form for half an hour and even successfully negotiated a matter.
Gu Weilan, however, didn’t see it that way. She pinched his Qilin face, rubbing and squishing it vigorously. "Not going to talk, huh? Refusing to communicate with me? Or... did your brother intentionally snitch on you just to throw you under the bus?"
Zhan Heng’s eyes lit up, and he stared at her with a sparkling gaze. In that moment, he felt that the clever female Gu Weilan was truly beautiful!
But Gu Weilan continued to ruthlessly ruffle his fur. "Even if your brother did it on purpose, what does that have to do with me? It’s not like I don’t have common sense! Every night while I’m sleeping, you stick right by my side to ease your Spiritual Sea’s riots, which gives you ten minutes a day to shift back into your Beastman Form! So why haven’t I seen it? Tell me! Are you staying quiet because you just want me to keep petting you?"
Zhan Heng’s defiance completely melted away under her scratches, and he put on a look of utter despair, looking just like Stinky Quanbao. He had finally experienced what it was like to have such an unpredictable Female Master.
While Zhan Heng was playing around with Gu Weilan, Zhan Ci was constantly keeping his mission in mind, preparing to gradually persuade Xie Jing.
"The female Gu Weilan has soothed you five times, and you are finally able to speak while in your Beast Form. This indicates that the female Gu Weilan’s soothing abilities can only be considered average," Zhan Ci summarized.
Xie Jing frowned, his silver eyes staring coldly at Zhan Ci.
Controlling it with his spiritual power, Xie Jing pulled up the data panel on his Light Brain. "There are currently seventy billion Beastmen across the entire interstellar, but only fourteen million female Beastmen. Due to limited financial resources, most females are only at the Third Rank of their Beast Rank when they are the same age as the female Gu Weilan.
"For slightly older females, upgrading their Beast Rank begins to slow down. Of course, females from Noble and aristocratic families are different. They possess abundant resources, so by the time they are Gu Weilan’s age, they have generally reached the Fifth or Sixth Rank.
"However, females like that tend to have incredibly arrogant and overbearing personalities.
"I’m not saying they are bad, but my brother and I have the kind of personalities where, if we encounter someone stubborn, we will simply butt heads with them.
"The female Gu Weilan is different. She doesn’t boss us around and demand that we serve her. She respects us. Because of that, I don’t plan on canceling the match anymore. But... if we want her to revoke her cancellation... I’m going to need your help, as well as my brother’s."
Zhan Ci pursed his lips. Lord Zhan Heng helping Xie Jing? Yeah, right. He wished he could monopolize the female Gu Weilan for himself! Just look at what he did when he came back and saw that pitiful male Gray Wolf in the Healing Pod! Lord Zhan Heng had injected anesthetics into the male Gray Wolf’s Healing Pod, and it was a dose large enough to leave a Beastman dizzy and vomiting for an entire day!
Zhan Ci opened his Light Brain, which displayed the current situation of both the Qilin Clan and the Dolphin Clan. "The Qilin Clan doesn’t have many members to begin with. Many males in same-sex relationships refuse to even register and form a bond because they don’t want their synthetic-gene cubs to be forced to serve as cannon fodder in the future.
"You must understand that synthetic-gene cubs cultivated in an Incubation Pod are far more prone to genetic collapse and Spiritual Sea madness than children born through traditional reproduction.
"If this continues, the Qilin Clan’s exclusive technologies and special assets will only become harder to defend. The clan’s population is dwindling, and in the last century, not a single Qilin Clan female has been born. If things go on like this, the Qilin Clan’s wealth will inevitably be coveted by other powerful Beastman families.
"If neither you nor Lord Zhan Heng are willing to form a bond with a powerful female, then the exclusive possessions of both the Qilin and Dolphin Clans will be utterly impossible to protect.
"Fortunately, the Qilin Clan has always been united, with no internal strife, and focuses entirely on external threats. However, your mother’s side—the Dolphin Clan—is not like that. They will undoubtedly force you to find a powerful Female Master as soon as possible! Furthermore, according to our intelligence, they have already selected several females with a Fertility rating of 5 or higher for you to marry. The moment you confirm the cancellation of this match, they can immediately pick one of these highly fertile Female Masters for you to match with."
Between the lines, Zhan Ci was essentially telling Xie Jing that since he was the one who had insisted on canceling the match before, he should hurry up and do it now that the three mandatory date check-ins were complete. The internal situation of the Dolphin Clan simply didn’t allow for any delays, and as the Young Clan Leader, he couldn’t afford to be capricious!
Unmoved, Xie Jing sat on the sofa opposite Zhan Ci in his Little Qilin posture, lazily lifting his eyelids: