By the time the roasted chicken skewers returned to Yuli’s hands, her hands and face had already been wiped clean.
Fair, tender, and white, like a freshly peeled hard-boiled egg. She could be said to be receiving very fresh, very heroine-like treatment.
The spaces between her toes felt cool and refreshed. When Yuli lowered her head to look, the red-haired young man was half-crouched in front of her, wiping the grains of mud from the soles of her feet.
He seemed very accustomed to serving her.
His distinct-knuckled fingers clasped her ankle, his expression serious and focused, as though he had already done this for her countless times and it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
Even now, in front of his squadmates, he did not feel that there was anything inappropriate about it.
His squadmates seemed to feel the same.
The scene was so brazen, as though they could hardly wait to announce it to the whole world, that Yuli covered her mouth, her gossip-fueled imagination about to burst out…
Th-this was practically the rhythm of successfully rising to the position of his lover!
“Guide Lier, Guide Lier!”
“I’ve come to fulfill my promise, Guide Lier.” Banwei came trotting over, devoutly holding out a chicken leg and chicken neck with both hands. “Don’t worry, I broke them off before eating. They’re clean.”
His eyes shone brightly, revealing a mysterious sort of confidence. “But can you still eat them now?”
“Uh, I can’t.” Yuli really could not eat any more.
She glanced at her roasted chicken. Her appetite was what it was; even if she had not eaten breakfast, she could only manage half a chicken at most.
But someone else could eat it.
She pinched up the chicken leg with her clean fingers and held it out toward Tuolan. A little embarrassed, she asked softly, “Do you want it?”
“Hm?” Tuolan lifted his head from his concentrated cleaning.
“If you can’t finish it, I—” Nearby, Banwei was still smugly working out his own perfect plan, when the abacus beads suddenly shattered. He shouted urgently, “Captain, that’s my chicken leg!”
Tuolan’s beautiful pupils, which had returned to normal, slowly turned into molten-gold vertical slits again when he saw the scene before him. He curved his eyes at Yuli and smiled.
“Wait for me.”
He completed the final step of cleaning her, then walked over to the side and washed his hands with the remaining clean water.
“Mm.” Yuli held the chicken leg and answered in a low voice.
She tried her best to ignore the furious, bristling boy nearby.
All her chicken had been given up by the red-haired captain. Yet before she started eating, she had not even thought of breaking off a leg for him. That was terribly rude. Fortunately, she had a new one now.
After Tuolan washed his hands and returned, Yuli was still holding the chicken leg halfway up, and her wrist had begun to ache.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Lili.”
He casually flicked a few drops of water onto Banwei’s face, stopping his noisy performance of complaining pitifully nearby.
“Not very long.” Yuli hurriedly extended the chicken leg, indicating that he should take it.
However, what he grasped was her.
His hands were still wet, his palms carrying a cool mist of water. His clearly defined finger joints clasped around her wrist. Yuli looked utterly bewildered, while the red-haired young man had already bent down and, quite naturally, begun eating from her hand.
He tilted his head at precisely the right angle, allowing Yuli to see his clear, flawless profile, as well as the glittering earring among his strands of hair.
The close-range assault of his beauty made Yuli’s pupils tremble. For a moment, she fell into the same dazed, petrified state as Banwei.
Holy shit, he was way too good at seducing people. Original Yuli, you—you—you had it so good!
Yuli completely overturned her earlier thoughts. She could not help beginning to calculate: since she had inherited the original owner’s sins and karma, as well as the original owner’s fate of dying as cannon fodder…
It would not do for her to shoulder the entire mess without getting any of the benefits, would it?
Then inheriting a little lover from her should not be too much to ask, right?
……
“Too much! This is way too much!”
Banwei returned to the campfire, huffing angrily. By now, the campfire had been extinguished, and after finishing their food, the other squad members had begun cleaning up the site.
“The captain went too far! He not only ate the chicken leg, he didn’t even leave the neck for me!”
Banwei scrubbed himself carelessly and went over to help. He did not forget to complain to Lanxing along the way.
“And then he flicked water at me—right in the face! I hate having my face wet the most!”
“You can apply to change squads.” Faced with his companion’s grumbling state, Lanxing calmly offered a suggestion. “As an A+-rank Sentinel, as long as you ask, Commander will agree.”
High-ranked Sentinels were not abundant even in the Central White Tower of the past, much less now at Base A07.
At the base, not only did many squad captains lack A-rank strength, even among the elite squads led by the five S-rank Sentinels, not all the members were A-rank.
In the Sentinel-Guide world, strength was supreme. As an A+-rank Sentinel, Banwei had the qualifications to change squads.
Banwei clicked his tongue and replied without the slightest hesitation, “No way.”
Among the elite squads led by the five S-rank Sentinels, if he joined any captain’s squad other than this one, he could forget about chicken legs, let alone chicken butts. There would not even be any opportunity to hunt for food in the wild.
“I definitely can’t get into the brigade commander’s squad. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to go. They only do the most exhausting work.” Banwei counted them off on his fingers for his companion. “The Heiying Squad won’t do either. Captain Sai’en is too strict. He’s not suitable for me.”
“The Miracle Squad? The captain’s brain doesn’t work right, and the vice-captain handles everything. The vice-captain is only A-rank. Why should I listen to someone whose rank is lower than mine? No.”
“As for Bai Yan’s White Flame Squad…” Banwei hugged both shoulders and gave an exaggerated shudder. “Tsk~ A noble Sentinel squad. Their aura is naturally incompatible with us commoners.”
“Heehee, after thinking it over, it’s still most comfortable here with the captain. I’ll be generous and put up with his occasional fits.”
Lanxing looked at him in surprise but said nothing.
Who would have thought? His brain might not work, but he was quite skilled at making sarcastic remarks.
“Banwei, bring me your water.” Just as he finished speaking, Tuolan’s voice came from not far away. “Don’t say you don’t have any. I know you hate washing your face.”
Banwei: “…”
I… have to endure this for the sake of future chicken!
Their malicious captain continued, “Ten more minutes to regroup, then we’ll continue southeast.”
“Are we going back to the base?” Yuli asked, raising her face.
“Yes.” Using the cleaning water he had taken from Banwei, Tuolan wiped her hands again, then lifted her from the rock. “It should take another hour to arrive. If you’re tired, Lili, you can sleep for a while.”
Holding her in both arms was effortless for him. Yuli had actually wanted to ask Banwei or Lanxing whether they had an extra pair of shoes she could borrow for the time being.
She soon realized that this idea was unrealistic.
The two youngest members of the squad were both minors, yet they were over six feet tall. Even if they really had extra shoes, the sizes would not fit. And after hearing that there was still an hour of travel ahead, she decisively gave up and calmly curled up in the young man’s arms.
Benefits, Yuli told herself. This was the benefit of having a lover who was like a mother!
But… an hour?
She had actually been abandoned so far from the base?
What on earth had the other party wanted to do? Was this distance already enough to destroy all the evidence?
Yuli’s pupils narrowed slightly, and her lips parted a little. She wanted to ask, but had not yet figured out how.
“What is it?” Tuolan noticed her hesitation and took the initiative to ask.
Yuli thought for a while before carefully asking, “How did you discover me…? When you found me, what was I like?”
“I know, I know!” Banwei’s bad mood passed quickly. He was very fond of Guide Lier and squeezed over to join the conversation. “The captain was the first to find you. When we arrived, you were lying on the ground, and the mutated mantis had already been dead for ages.”
As he spoke, he also noticed the crucial question. His round eyes widened in shock as he looked at Yuli.
“That’s right, Guide Lier, how did you survive?”
“Ah, no, I mean, how did you kill the mutated mantis?”
From the wounds on the mutated mantis and the traces of blood, it had clearly been dead for some time. It had not been killed when the captain discovered Guide Lier.
Everyone knew that Guides had no means of attack whatsoever. A mere C-rank mutated mantis was nothing to Sentinels like them, but how had a delicate Guide survived?
Well, look at that. I asked you a question, and you threw one right back at me.
“I don’t know.” Yuli’s expression was listless. “I was sleeping at home.”
“My mental perception was injured during a mission, so my memory has been a little confused lately.”
According to Banwei’s description, it seemed somewhat similar to the circumstances surrounding the original owner’s survival after being attacked.
Could she have been the one who killed the mantis monster? Had the remnants of the original owner’s consciousness caused her potential to erupt in a desperate situation?
Yuli could not figure it out. Banwei could not figure it out either. In the end, he attributed everything to the fact that Guide Lier was, as expected, the exclusive Guide of the captain and the other S-rank Sentinels. She really was special.
“Don’t be afraid, Lili.” Tuolan smiled. His captivating amber eyes were like gold foil shattered and kneaded apart by sunlight. “You’ll remember.”
“I’ll definitely help you recover your memories.”
If she did not remember, how would things proceed later?
“…” Lanxing quietly raised his eyes and looked at his captain several times.
It was happening again—the captain’s beautiful mental state.
……
The eight members of the squad appeared carefree and unruly, but in truth, their duties were clearly organized.
One person advanced ahead to clear away weeds, preventing low-level wild mutated entities from suddenly springing out, while another brought up the rear.
The rest carried the supply packs collected from the contamination zone and walked in the middle of the formation.
Yuli was being carried by the captain, positioned at the very center of the squad’s protective formation.
She noticed that, aside from the two minors clinging to the captain and walking relatively close to them, the rest of the squad members were rather like aloof, languid big cats—extremely independent, each only doing their own jobs properly.
She could sense the adult squad members occasionally observing her with curious or assessing looks. But before she could look back, their gazes would nimbly shift away.
There was no hostility, nor any intense urge to pry that would make a person feel offended. It was as if moonlight had silently fallen across her for a moment.
They did not strike up conversations or approach. They simply liked to observe quietly from the shadows.
After listening to Banwei chatter on for a while about his experiences in the contamination zone, Yuli said goodbye, buried her head in the red-haired young man’s chest, and began pretending to sleep.
It was not that she found Banwei noisy. She actually wanted to hear more and learn more of the contamination-zone knowledge she did not possess. It was just that, along the way, the Sentinels clearing the path ahead kept discovering mutated entity corpses in horrifying states of death.
After accidentally looking directly at several of them, Yuli’s stomach and nerves could not take much more. She was afraid she would vomit up the roasted chicken she had eaten. That would be such a waste.
She might as well press herself against the chest muscles of her lover-mother.
“Captain, there are too many dead. Something’s wrong.” After discovering another mutated entity corpse, the Sentinel leading the way turned around. “Could a high-level mutated entity have formed nearby and be claiming territory?”
Under normal circumstances, wild mutated entities outside contamination zones were all very low-level and would not engage in mass slaughter of their own kind. That is, unless a “king” had formed in this wild region.
Elite squads of their level had an unwritten rule: whenever they returned from a contamination zone, they would not take already established roads. Instead, they chose undeveloped wild paths and cleared out more areas.
This could both expand the map of routes in and out of the base and count as lending a hand to the low-level Sentinel squads operating nearby.
But the journey today had been too strange. This area seemed to have become a vacuum zone for mutated entities. There were only corpses and no living creatures.
Thinking about it carefully, it seemed that ever since they had encountered Guide Lier, the squad had not seen a single wild living creature.
“What, you want to go look for it?” The corners of Tuolan’s lips curved slightly.
He glanced at the girl in his arms, who had gone from pretending to sleep to gradually falling into genuine sleep, and spoke with complete irresponsibility.
“If you want to look, go yourself. I have to get Lili back to the base first.”
The curly-haired Sentinel leading the way immediately lost his enthusiasm. His bones went slack with laziness, and he shrugged.
“Then forget it.”
He also wanted to get back to the base early. He was not that free.
Besides, this area was remote enough that it did not fall within the activity range of the low-level Sentinels at the base. In the first place, they had specifically chosen this unfrequented route because they wanted to roast chicken.
Suddenly, Tuolan sniffed the air several times and frowned.
“I smell dog.”
“I smell it too.” Banwei’s reaction was even more exaggerated. He sniffed furiously at the air in both directions, then rubbed at the nonexistent gooseflesh on his body. “These elegant noble young masters are going to stink up all my fur!”
He grinned. “Captain, is Bai Yan coming to fight you for Guide Lier?”
“Heh.” A cold laugh spilled from the corner of Tuolan’s mouth. “Don’t disturb Lili’s sleep. Everyone, conceal yourselves and advance at full speed.”
He looked toward Lanxing. Lanxing was the fastest, but he had never been to the villa and did not know the way.
“Yu Zhanqi, you go.” Tuolan spoke to the curly-haired Sentinel leading the way. “Sprint there at full speed. Go to the villa and find Lingling. Tell her to meet her young lady at the base entrance.”
“Remember to have her bring a pair of shoes.”
“If she isn’t at the villa, use your time to look for her. We’ll reach the base in ten minutes at most.”
Yu Zhanqi: “…”
He now understood what all those corpses along the way had been about. He really should not have turned around and said anything extra just now.
All he could do now was pray that Lingling was not somewhere private, like the women’s restroom.
Oh—or, even more terrifying, that she was not in Commander’s office lodging a complaint.