“I am your husband, Shao Yijue.”
As a top-tier Alpha, lifting an object weighing several hundred pounds was no difficult feat, but when that heavy object fell directly upon oneself while still requiring the protection of another person, things became somewhat troublesome.
Shao Yijue had to secure the right posture and assess the situation.
Fortunately, he quickly found a suitable angle. Pressing his lips together, he exerted a burst of strength to shove the massive crystal chandelier aside.
The servants swarmed forward, wanting to help, but found no space to step.
Just as Zhou Mangzhou attempted to sit up, Shao Yijue immediately commanded, “Don’t move.”
There were far too many fragments on the ground, and Zhou Mangzhou was barefoot, his two legs exposed quite clearly from beneath his nightrobe. Set against the surrounding crystal shards, he looked like a delicate white flower amidst a mountain of knives, and his situation was perilous indeed.
Crystal fragments rustled down from Shao Yijue’s body. He bent down, scooped Zhou Mangzhou up by wrapping one arm around his waist and threading the other beneath the bend of his knees.
Zhou Mangzhou instinctively grasped Shao Yijue’s clothes, unusually well-behaved for once, as though he had yet to snap out of his dream.
Thus, holding his Omega, Shao Yijue walked steadily upstairs.
“Clean this up.” He issued a cold instruction downward.
The servants stood with bowed heads, not daring to utter a sound.
Zhou Mangzhou was placed on the edge of the bed, which was the first bed he had lain upon since arriving in this world, stark white without a single speck of impurity, resembling a field of snow.
The man before him resembled a snowy peak, ice-cold and aloof, save for the gaze directed at him, which contained a faint trace of melting snow.
Shao Yijue pinched Zhou Mangzhou’s earlobe.
It was only then that Zhou Mangzhou snapped back to reality, looking at the man before him with trembling, palpitating sorrow.
Shao Yijue looked as though he had been stung by that gaze. “0019?”
Zhou Mangzhou did not understand what he was talking about.
“Don’t be afraid.” Shao Yijue soothed his emotions. “I will repair you.”
“Repair what?”
Shao Yijue snapped his fingers beside his ear. “Can’t hear a thing at all?”
Zhou Mangzhou could read lip movements, but he remained silent. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hear a thing; he could hear sounds as long as they were exceptionally loud, such as thunder or the crystal chandelier crashing to the floor.
Shao Yijue stood up, pulled a pen-sized folding device from his trench coat pocket, and unfolded it into an L-shape. After entering his fingerprint, a translucent light screen suddenly materialized.
This was his portable personal control terminal, referred to as a personal terminal, which was capable of connecting to the core programs of the vast majority of androids.
“Connect to android designated Z-0019.”
After a brief search, the light screen displayed connection successful.
Zhou Mangzhou stared blankly at the light screen in Shao Yijue’s hand, reaching out a hand as if wanting to touch it. Shao Yijue caught his wrist, reacting naturally by saying, “Stop acting up.”
Zhou Mangzhou withdrew his hand, feeling bewildered, hesitant, curious, and caught in a tangled web of love and hatred after a long separation, to the point where he couldn’t even determine what he was actually doing.
He fixed his gaze entirely on Shao Yijue, a pent-up frustration swelling within his chest with no outlet to release.
Meanwhile, Shao Yijue stared at the light screen, checking his spouse’s somatosensory system and scanning for malfunctions, and concluded that the issues were minor. He then checked the language system; repairing this would be considerably more difficult, likely requiring a few days.
He casually tapped open 0019’s personal panel and clicked into the emotions column, intending to investigate why his Omega had lost control, only to be struck dumbfounded upon seeing the various emotional indices.
Joy, anger, sorrow, thought, grief, fear, and fright, every single index had exceeded ninety percent.
At the very bottom, there was even an love emotional index standing at one hundred percent.
Shao Yijue’s brow furrowed slightly. Under the fluorescent light, his long, thick eyelashes cast two light, butterfly-wing-like shadows. He looked at Zhou Mangzhou with incomprehension and worry, as though Zhou Mangzhou had contracted an incurable disease.
Zhou Mangzhou: “…”
An android with emotional indices exceeding ninety percent was either a defective product or mentally unstable.
Fortunately, being an android, emotions could be artificially intervened and controlled.
The generation of emotions was typically related to the secretion of dopamine, neurons, and trace elements in the brain, so as long as one controlled the secretion volume, emotions could be managed. The equilibrium mode was a panacea developed and designed precisely for this purpose, similar to a sedative, though not potent enough to knock someone out instantly.
Shao Yijue reset the emotions column to equilibrium mode with a single click, knowing that total control would take ten minutes. He put down his personal terminal, squatted in front of Zhou Mangzhou, and stared into his eyes.
“Do you recognize me?”
Zhou Mangzhou froze, his gaze sweeping sequentially across the man’s prominent brow ridge, deep eye sockets, majestic peak-like nose bridge, and lips as beautifully curved as a bow, perfectly suited for kissing.
His contours and every single line of his facial features were things Zhou Mangzhou could draw out in his sleep.
How could he possibly not recognize them?
Seeing the utter bewilderment in Zhou Mangzhou’s eyes, Shao Yijue said slowly, “I am your husband, Shao Yijue.”
He knew that his Omega could read lip movements.
Zhou Mangzhou parted his lips, silently repeating, “Shao Yijue?”
“Correct, I am your husband, Shao Yijue.” Shao Yijue said this while simultaneously inputting information into Zhou Mangzhou’s cognitive system.
For a split second, Zhou Mangzhou truly felt as though he had a husband.
No!
Zhou Mangzhou shook his head violently, trying to dislodge the information occupying his brain. He frowned, his temples throbbing dully, as if he were resisting something.
Shao Yijue reached out to touch his cheek. “0019?”
Zhou Mangzhou did not dodge, appraising the man before him with a skeptical gaze. He felt certain he couldn’t be mistaken, as Shao Feng’s appearance was etched almost entirely into his mind down to the exact fraction.
Yet the current situation was undeniably bizarre.
He had arrived in a new world and encountered someone who looked identical to Shao Feng, but did such coincidences truly exist in the world?
“You aren’t Shao Feng?” Zhou Mangzhou asked silently.
Shao Yijue was taken aback. “Shao Feng?”
Zhou Mangzhou locked his eyes onto his, assessing whether there were any traces of falsehood.
He was disappointed because the man before him wore a calm expression and repeated once more, “I am your husband, Shao Yijue.”
It was as if he had fallen violently ill, and Shao Feng had merely been a hallucination.
Shao Yijue genuinely believed that his Omega had smashed his head and developed cognitive disorders accompanied by emotional mania, even hallucinating him as someone else.
Such phenomena were entirely possible in androids.
The room where Zhou Mangzhou slept was a specially cleared-out treatment room with fairly comprehensive equipment capable of basic repair and treatment for androids.
A week ago, 0019 had tumbled down the stairs and remained unresponsive. A medical team had come once to treat the external injuries, while the damage to the somatosensory system and loss of language function required specialized researchers to diagnose and treat.
It wasn’t that the matter hadn’t been reported upward, but upon learning of it, Shao Yijue had indicated that he would take time to return and personally perform maintenance on his spouse.
No Alpha appreciated others touching their personal property.
Shao Yijue retrieved iodine, cotton swabs, medicine, and bandages from a side cabinet, placed them on a stainless steel tray, carried them to the bedside, and removed the bandages on Zhou Mangzhou’s head to change the dressing.
Zhou Mangzhou sat like a doll stuffed full of worries, offering no resistance whatsoever. He raised his head to look at Shao Yijue, asking with lip movements, “Are you truly not Shao Feng?”
Unsure what sort of fantasies his Omega was entertaining, Shao Yijue cut straight to the point by saying, “I am not.”
Zhou Mangzhou’s wound had already healed and scabbed over, because an android’s self-healing ability was always several times greater than that of an ordinary human. Shao Yijue dipped a cotton swab in iodine to disinfect the wound, figuring bandages were unnecessary, and turned around to look for large waterproof adhesive bandages.
Behind him sat Zhou Mangzhou, wearing a look of deep distrust.
Zhou Mangzhou refused to believe that something was wrong with his own brain. Even if this body had indeed suffered a head injury, he suspected Shao Feng was simply lying to him.
It was clearly him.
Looks could be matched, but the snow-clean, piercing aura about him could not possibly be faked.
Shao Yijue’s pheromones were faint, cold, devoid of intense aggressiveness, and carried a natural aloofness.
Yet facing Zhou Mangzhou, it didn’t seem to be that way at all.
After spraying medicine on the wound on Zhou Mangzhou’s forehead and sticking a waterproof bandage over it, Shao Yijue picked up his personal terminal, noting that the equilibrium mode’s activation had just reached one hundred percent and all emotions had quieted down.
He looked at Zhou Mangzhou.
Zhou Mangzhou acted as though he felt nothing, touching the bandage and curiously picking at it with his fingernail, wondering why someone would bother sticking a piece of paper on his head.
Shao Yijue caught his hand. “Don’t move. Take a bath and get some sleep, and your hearing will probably recover by tomorrow.”
With that, he tidied up the scattered items in the room and walked out.
Zhou Mangzhou watched as the blood-stained collar of Shao Yijue’s shirt resembled a cluster of bright red roses embracing his slender neck. Zhou Mangzhou tightened his fingers, forcing himself to look away.
I cannot soften my heart.
Shao Feng had betrayed him and was lying to him.
Zhou Mangzhou reminded himself, though his thoughts remained tangled into a messy knot.
He couldn’t fathom what reason Shao Feng could possibly have to lie to him now that things had reached this stage.
This world was deeply unfamiliar to Zhou Mangzhou, but judging by Shao Yijue’s demeanor, he seemed thoroughly accustomed to it.
“Could I really have mistaken him?” Zhou Mangzhou shook his head. “Impossible.”
Zhou Mangzhou rose abruptly, knowing he had to confirm this for himself.
He had been groggy for days, and while he hadn’t fully explored every room on the second floor, the villa’s layout made it easy to deduce which one was the master bedroom.
Pushing open the dark brown solid wood door of the master bedroom, a refreshing, bone-chilling cold fragrance rushed forth, which was the pheromones of an Alpha mixed with the scent of fabric softener.
The master bedroom was massive, complete with an en-suite bathroom, study, and balcony, featuring a full row of wall-embedded wardrobes, a two-meter-wide bed, and illumination limited to a bedside reading lamp.
Aside from two unread books on the nightstand, decorations were virtually nonexistent.
It was evident that the master rarely returned.
The bathroom light was on, and the faint sound of running water drifted out. Zhou Mangzhou walked up to the door, grasped the doorknob, and took a deep breath.
“I’m not trying to watch Shao Feng shower, I just need to verify whether that mole is on his body.”
That bright crimson, extremely seductive little mole located right beneath his left collarbone.