Ever since Yan Ji successfully entered the reserve legion, he seemed a bit overwhelmed.
Before the Christmas holiday, the school arranged a round of midterm exams. Apart from one practical simulation course that carried the most credit weight, there were also three theoretical courses. Because he had been assigned to carry out a mission in the Folded Zone, he had already missed a lot of the course content. He borrowed notes from his roommate Jia Jin, but even looking at them made his head spin.
Upon graduation from the Joint Military Academy, the placement of Sentinels was tied to their GPA. Even though emphasis was placed on combat skills and combat power levels, that didn’t mean those three theory courses were unimportant. Yan Ji wanted to be directly assigned to the Sequence A Legion after graduation, and that required a GPA of at least 3.5. S he had barely slept while preparing for the exams in the past three days.
Sometimes Yan Ji would walk back from the training hall drenched in sweat, only to be met head-on by cold, dry wind, causing his damp hair to cling to his forehead in stiff, frozen strands.
He didn’t have the energy to care anymore.
It was already evening by the time he returned to the dormitory. He quickly took a hot shower, scrubbing the dust and sweat from his body.
His black hair was like the unkempt fur of a wolf left in the wild for too long, with messy tufts sticking up at the temples. Fortunately, Yan Ji had thick eyebrows, striking eyes, and sharp, angular features. His bangs hung loosely across his forehead, which did not look unsightly at all. In fact, it added a bit of untamed wildness.
Among Sentinels who were all nursing dark circles from studying, he still stood out.
Yan Ji went straight to the cafeteria and hastily settled his dinner, then packed an extra meal to bring back for Jia Jin as thanks for the borrowed notes.
When he put down the takeout, Jia Jin, who was currently practicing quantum wave-speed reading as a review method, looked up. “Thanks. How much was it?” Jia Jin waited for a moment but didn’t hear Yan Ji respond.
He unwrapped the disposable chopsticks that came with the meal, turned his head, only to find that Yan Ji was staring at his communicator with a heavy expression.
Jia Jin called him several times, but there was no response.
Suddenly, a hand patted his shoulder, and Yan Ji seemed to come back to his senses. “What’s wrong?”
Jia Jin asked, “How much was it?”
Yan Ji answered absent-mindedly, “Oh, let me check…”
Yan Ji: “Thirteen yuan.”
“I’ve transferred it to you.”
A little worried, Jia Jin asked, “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re in a bad state. Don’t study too hard.”
Yan Ji didn’t say anything, only lowered his head in silence.
Jia Jin tried to comfort him, “Didn’t you already join the reserve legion? Even if your GPA’s not enough, you can just spend a year or two building experience in the Sequence B Legion after graduation. You’ll definitely be transferred up eventually.”
The corners of Yan Ji’s lips were tightly pressed together. After a while, he turned to Jia Jin and asked, “Why do you think… Xin Hexue stopped replying to my messages?”
Jia Jin immediately choked on his food.
He had almost forgotten that his roommate was a love-brain idiot.
No, he was probably still stuck with a one-sided love.
Jia Jin looked completely bewildered. “How would I know? I don’t even have the Major General’s contact information.”
Yan Ji narrowed his eyes dangerously. “You want his contact information?!”
Jia Jin: ?
‘Did I say that?’
He felt like something was stuck in his throat, but still said, “I mean… who wouldn’t?”
This was, after all, a 3S-level mental power Guide, who had topped the “sexual fantasy subject” rankings for years in a row…
Jia Jin had to explain things to Yan Ji. Clearly, this young Sentinel from the Northern Frontier had been too isolated from information until now, displaying a level of confidence not even the second son of the Wei family had.
Jia Jin launched into a long-winded explanation, then even pulled up the gray interface of the Deepsea Forum to show him.
This section was filled with pink bubbles and yellow trash, with thousands upon thousands of posts that couldn’t avoid mentioning Xin Hexue.
Only now did Yan Ji finally realize how popular the person he was chasing really was.
Or rather…he had known Xin Hexue was great, but hadn’t felt it this clearly.
Because the section was restricted to registered adult Sentinels only, some of the vocabulary was even excessively explicit.
Yan Ji had seen something similar before. Back in the Northern Frontier, before he met Xin Hexue, he had scavenged a communicator relic off a dead Sentinel near the border. The signal in the upper-left corner was gone, but the screen had been left on a page of fantasy text written by a young Sentinel about a Guide.
The post said how much he looked forward to the Major General coldly scolding him a “horny dog,” preferably with a look like he was staring at an actual dog.
Yan Ji’s throat tightened. He had to admit…he, too, had once indulged in such vile fantasies.
But seeing those words written by other Sentinels filled him with burning rage. It was no different from the primal aggression animals feel when facing a mating rival.
“Don’t these people have wives?” Yan Ji glanced at the contents on Jia Jin’s communicator screen and said with deep disgust, “Shameless!”
Jia Jin shrugged. “Some Sentinels do end up with normal people or other Sentinels, but more than half of the eligible young Sentinels in the Empire are still single.”
He glanced at the screen again, then felt a little embarrassed and couldn’t bear looking anymore and quickly closed the communicator.
Fortunately, the Deepsea Forum was founded by Sentinels and restricted to Sentinel-only registration via ID. Otherwise, if the people from the White Tower ever saw the content of this gray section, they’d arrest all the users and throw them in Sentinel-Guide court on charges of forced indecency, using the posts as evidence of lawless, hormone-driven behavior.
Jia Jin brought the topic back. “So, you’re saying the major general isn’t replying to your messages? Did something happen before that?”
He felt that someone like the major general wouldn’t ignore someone for no reason.
Jia Jin offered a more likely guess: “Maybe he just doesn’t want to distract you from studying for exams.”
Yan Ji recounted what had happened.
Jia Jin nodded in understanding. “So you gave him flowers, confessed your feelings, and asked to spend Christmas together.”
Jia Jin was curious. “When you confessed, did the major general say yes?”
Yan Ji recalled carefully, then said, “He didn’t give a direct answer, but he didn’t reject me either. He said he really liked the flowers.”
Jia Jin casually asked, “What kind of flowers did you give him?”
Yan Ji replied, “Dryas. I brought them back from the Folded Zone. He’d mentioned them before and seemed really fond of them.”
Then he raised an eyebrow, looking very confident. “Since I gave the flowers, and he said he liked them, doesn’t that mean he likes me?”
Guides have strong mental power and are sensitive to emotional cues, and even their personalities are generally reserved. Xin Hexue didn’t need to say it directly, Yan Ji was sure the other party definitely liked him too.
Yan Ji had always held a very optimistic attitude.
Like a stray dog charging forward without hesitation, because he had nothing to begin with, even the slightest bit of attention from Xin Hexue was enough to give him motivation, enough to make him strive to shed the title of “stray”.
Jia Jin seemed to be wrestling with something, and his expression looked conflicted. In the end, he still said it: “Dryas was the token of love between the major general and Lieutenant General He Botian.”
The first Folded Zone they entered together had been filled with Dryas.
This plant was even deeply rooted in He Botian’s mental landscape.
The stray dog turned a corner and crashed into a brick wall with a loud bang.
The smile in Yan Ji’s eyes froze, and all expressions vanished from his face in an instant.
Jia Jin didn’t know whether he should tell Yan Ji his earlier suspicion that Yan Ji might be just a substitute.
It seemed like Yan Ji hadn’t even considered the possibility.
But seeing how dejected he already looked, Jia Jin chose not to say anything. There was no point rubbing salt into the wound.
His roommate should… probably learn to give up this time, right?
The young lovers just one step away from marriage met a disaster and one died in front of the other in the Folded Zone while protecting him, how could that be replaced easily?
Jia Jin felt Yan Ji needed to face reality.
He patted Yan Ji on the shoulder. “Don’t be too upset. Get yourself together, there are still exams in the next couple days.”
……
The last message Yan Ji had sent was three days ago.
Xin Hexue scrolled up and quickly scanned the message history.
The other party used to send over twenty messages a day, and that was probably after deliberately holding back.
Most of them were “good morning,” “good night,” “have you eaten?” and little things he saw or heard during the day.
All were trivial bits and pieces, but since Xin Hexue hadn’t replied for several days in a row, by the fourth day, he was clearly starting to panic.
He began to ask Xin Hexue why he wasn’t replying.
Three days ago
[December 22nd, 00:13]
[Yan Ji: When I gave you flowers before, you said you “really liked them”, what did you mean by that….]
[Yan Ji: Did you mean you liked me, liked the flowers, or liked the person who used to give you that kind of flower?]
[Yan Ji: I don’t want to be self-indulgent, that just makes me look cheap.]
[Yan Ji: So don’t keep baiting me without giving me a clear answer.]
[Yan Ji: Xin Hexue, you could just reject me directly. If you’re worried I’ll pester you, don’t be.]
[Yan Ji: I’m not that worthless.]
After being left on read for too long, Yan Ji, who had been getting the cold shoulder, sent another message in the middle of the night the next day.
[December 23rd, 00:14]
[Yan Ji: Why are you ignoring me?]
[“Yan Ji” retracted a message]
[“Yan Ji” retracted a message]
[Yan Ji: Since you don’t want to give me a direct answer, then let’s leave it for now. I think we both need time to think it over.]
Xin Hexue was currently enslaving a group of vines.
He pushed the bowl of porridge toward the table. “It’s cold. Redo it.”
He wasn’t sure if it was because of excessive bloodletting, but Xin Hexue could sense that the strength of vines had weakened, it couldn’t even manage to solidify into He Botian’s form anymore.
To be honest, Xin Hexue wasn’t completely sure either. He didn’t know whether the monster in front of him was still “He Botian.”
Or if it was just a new kind of monster that, after devouring He Botian’s corpse, had learned to mimic human form.
This had gone too far in terms of cross-species territory.
It was too much.
Xin Hexue pursed his lips.
He really couldn’t accept the idea of having sex with something that didn’t even have the basic structure of a human brain.
Although the vines couldn’t take solid form at the moment, they were still agile and flexible enough to act independently.
These tentacle-like structures, much like octopuses, popular subjects in bizarre literature and manga, shared a similar trait: each vine had a will of its own, much like individual arms.
So, when they weren’t fighting each other for dominance, they could cooperate like this.
Two vines moved forward, picked up the bowl, and carried it back to the kitchen to make another pot of porridge.
Outside on the balcony, the quilts were drying in the natural sunlight, and the warm air was filled with the fresh scent of evaporating laundry detergent.
The hardworking vines replaced the robot vacuum.
Tea poured smoothly from the spout into the cup.
Xin Hexue took a sip and said flatly, “…it’s too hot.”
The vines didn’t even have mouths, and unable to blow the tea cool, they spun around in circles anxiously.
Xin Hexue’s expression remained blank, without a hint of pity.
From this angle at the table, the kitchen looked bustling and busy.
Apparently, these plants weren’t afraid of fire.
The origin of these vines was the strangling tree they had once encountered in Folded Zone 122.
Xin Hexue didn’t know how this monster had managed to escape the Folded Zone.
The strangling tree after pollution diverged in appearance from tree species like Ficus deltoidea and Ficus altissima found in the normal world, but it retained some of their natural characteristics.
This kind of strangling plant was a transitional form between vines and epiphytes. In the Folded Zone monster archive, it was classified as a “semi-epiphytic mutated ficus species.”
Its root system would grow downward along the host tree into the ground, robbing the original tree of nutrients, water, and light. The extensive network formed by lateral roots and aerial roots would compress the host’s bark and vascular tissue, eventually cutting off the supply of nutrients.
These vines thrived in dark, humid conditions, growing stronger while accelerating the host’s death.
With its tenacious vitality and highly developed aerial roots, it had become an undisputed killer among plants.
Xin Hexue frowned sharply. He realized that over the past seven days, the strangling tree had been using its vines to deliver “nutrients” to him.
The delivery method was questionable, but the end result was clear.
This behavior directly contradicted the very nature of a strangling plant.
This was why Xin Hexue believed the vines were being controlled by He Botian’s consciousness.
If He Botian’s consciousness still lingered in the vines…
Xin Hexue glanced at the vines that had finished their work and were trying to get close to him.
The green vines, like tentacles, nudged his hand.
Xin Hexue lowered his gaze mercilessly and enunciated slowly and clearly, “…disgusting.”
[??? Heartbreak value +5]
The system notification suddenly rang out, confirming Xin Hexue’s suspicion.
At the same time, the communicator rang with a message:
[Wei Zhuo: I need to talk to you.]
[Wei Zhuo: It’s business…about the energy fluctuations in the Folded Zone.]
[Wei Zhuo: Are you free today? I’ll come to you.]
K: [He passed by the villa three times in a week.]
All of this was captured on the surveillance camera aimed at the villa’s main gate.
Apparently, he had “passed by without entering” three times, and finally found a work-related excuse as a legitimate reason for seeking Xin Hexue out.
Xin Hexue shifted his sitting posture slightly. Even with cushions behind his waist and beneath him, his face was still pale.
Even the rhythm of his typing showed his bad mood.
[Xin Hexue: Okay.]
[Xin Hexue: Could you bring me an ointment from the pharmacy?]
Xin Hexue picked an over-the-counter, low-allergen wound ointment suitable for any part of the body and sent a picture of it to Wei Zhuo.
[Xin Hexue: Ask the pharmacist if they have this.]
Then, Xin Hexue sent a message to Yan Ji, whom he had left hanging for several days.
[Xin Hexue: Sorry, I didn’t see your message before.]
He hadn’t even finished typing the rest when he caught a glimpse of the vines out of the corner of his eye and paused.
With the appearance of this monster, things seemed to have become complicated.
Because until now, Xin Hexue had assumed that He Botian was dead. His original plan didn’t include He Botian at all.
But now, maybe he could make use of him.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, pupils like drops of lacquer, carrying a beautiful yet dangerous look.
As if he were brewing some shady plan.
K remained silent.
After seven days of baptism, the little cat had gone from a pure white lion cat to a scorched Siamese.
Its paws were pitch-black, and it struck ruthlessly.
“Bang!”
The iron shovel hit the vines with a dull thud.
Behind the villa, there was a matching basement.
Until today, it had been unused.
Xin Hexue just dug out the collar he once gave to He Botian and casually tossed it into the pitch-black basement, and the vines rushed in, fighting and scrambling for it.
A couple of the smarter ones started to realize Xin Hexue’s intention.
“Bang!”
“Bang!”
“Bang, bang, bang!”
Xin Hexue’s eyes were emotionless as he slammed the shovel down on the vines.
Like whack-a-mole, the little cat unleashed a flurry of thuds to flatten the vines.
With a soft “click”, Xin Hexue locked the basement door then turned and walked toward the garden.
But to his surprise, he saw a young sentinel standing outside the gate, panting.
Yan Ji looked like he had run all the way here.
In fact, Xin Hexue hadn’t even finished sending him the message yet.
Yan Ji straightened up and shifted his gaze away. “I was just jogging by on my morning run.”
It was already past noon.
Even he realized the excuse was lame.
So he changed the subject: “Just now… what was that noise?”
Xin Hexue casually tossed aside the dirtied shovel.
Then calmly dusted the mud and dust from his hands.
“…Nothing.”
K watched with wide eyes as the bad little cat tucked away its black claws.
