The age of six is when most Sentinel and Guides differentiate between genders. Lian Yu can’t remember what he looked like when he was six years old and doesn’t know what the China-Russian border is, but he knew what a six-year-old child abandoned in a deserted place means.
Death is certain.
“How did you survive?”
“I don’t know… I lived alone in a cold cabin for nearly a month. I ate everything, including rotten fruits, grass, soil, and insects that fell on the ground. Later, a passing hunter took me away.” Cen Zhen smiled. Under the light, the curve at the corners of his lips looked a little gentle, “He was a strong man with stubbles all over his face, speaking Russian with a vodka flavor, covered in blood. His condition at that time was even worse than mine.”
“What kind of pheromone smell is vodka? What’s Russian?”
“Vodka is the name of a kind of alcohol.” Cen Zhen explained slowly and patiently: “Russian is a language. Where I come from, there is the concept of country, and each country has its own language. I am mixed, my mother is Chinese and my father is Russian.”
He pointed to his eyes, which were beautiful and clear blue, “I inherited them from my father, and my black hair comes from my mother.”
Lian Yu looked at his long light blond hair scattered all over the bed, his was randomly selected from the genetic sequences saved in the system, “…It doesn’t sound like you hate them?”
“I hated them for a while, but then I didn’t care anymore.” Cen Zhen said calmly. He was not used to the position of lying on his side with a man as his pillow, so he moved back. Lian Yu followed his movement and retracted his arm. “That man adopted me. To be honest, I don’t think adopted is the right word. He just gave me a place to live. The only thing that differentiates our relationship from being a landlord and a tenant is that he didn’t charge me rent.
His residence was very remote, and he never came home. He rarely communicated with me. After he introduced me to computers and mobile phones, he never took care of me again. I was always alone in the house. About half a year later, I asked about his profession. He said he was an assassin. “
This profession represents danger and rarity in the eyes of ordinary humans, but it is not so impressive on Special Planet. Countless assassins and mercenaries are cultivated by the Towers. Lian Yu nodded very indifferently and listened to Cen Zhen continue: “When I was 15 years old, he suddenly asked me about my birthday and promised to come back on that day and give me a cake… Our exchange during that year suddenly increased, and I felt that it was probably because he didn’t want to continue the job anymore and was preparing a golden basin to wash his hands.
However, on the day of my birthday, he didn’t show up. Then, several days later, a strange woman came by and gave me some scattered items and a large amount of money, saying they were his relics. “
“He died?”
“Yes.” Cen Zhen said, “Later, I locked the house and went to the police station. Because my residence registration was in China, I was sent back to the country, adopted by an orphanage, and then sent to high school.”
“Then what.”
“Then I ended up here out of nowhere.” Cen Zhen thought for a while and felt that maybe telling Lian Yu about this would make him happy, so he said: “My Chinese name is Cen Zhen, and my Russian name is Anatoli Jeria .”
Lian Yu blinked and then said: “Anatoli Jeria?”
“Um.”
“Anatoli Jeria.” Lian Yu’s eyes lit up as expected, “Can I call you Xiao-ri from now on?”
“…” Cen Zhen flatly refused: “No.”
“Then, how about Xiao-tuo.”
“……”
“Xiao-ya?”
Cen Zhen, who got called a mop and a mute, closed his eyes and turned around. (1) Lian Yu hummed twice, then reached out to take back the book with that indescribable cover. He lay on his back and turned the pages randomly, “Let me take a look, what was I doing at the age of 24…”
“It’s not written in the book.”
“No way, they don’t keep track of such an important villain like me in real time?” Lian Yu turned the page to the current plot. It is in the middle of a long emotional relationship drama. Yao Jin misunderstood Pan for taking an interest in that Student Union Discipline Department member, and they almost broke up. They reconciled thanks to the heat period. So boring, Lian Yu yawned. After turning another page, Lian Yu finally saw a new plot happening parallel to the event of the Jiao-tribe Princess becoming an exchange student at the Towers.
The annual best combo ranking competition that lasts for more than a month.
To put it bluntly, it’s just an event where a Sentinel and a Guide form a team and fight other teams. A rank will be formed for the ten best teams in the entire Towers. There are four divisions in total. This means at most forty teams can be on the ranking board.
The four competition divisions are close combat, shooting, aerial combat, and mixed melee. The close combat match was similar to the one that Cen Zhen had played in the B-level training arena. There will be a limited area, with bare hands, and whoever knocked down the opponent first would win.
Shooting, as the name suggests, involves various types of guns, types of fixed targets, and moving targets. Scores are calculated based on the comprehensive results of both the Sentinel and Guide.
Aerial combat is a simulated battle on the star network. After all, the Tower does not have that many excess battleships enough for the students to destroy.
The mixed melee is more complicated and has many rules. A rough summary is, each round consists of five teams, attack methods are unlimited in a limited area, and whichever team stands last wins. Those who can be ranked high in the mixed melee competition will often be ranked high in the other ranks too.
As the male protagonists, Yao Jin and Pan naturally signed up to participate. Of course, there were two more chapters in the middle all about Pan looking forward to Yao Jin choosing him as partner, but also felt that Yao Jin deserved a better Guide, and he was not worthy for him. Later, Yao Jin took the initiative to ask him to partner with him, but Pan was painfully hesitant. Lian Yu frowned as he read, “It’s so annoying. I didn’t feel it as much earlier since I don’t interact with him often, but now I want to twist off Pan’s head and stuff some steel bars into it.”
“People all have their strengths and weaknesses.” In comparison, Cen Zhen, a ‘Buddhist’ reader (2), was much more indifferent, “Besides, the current Pan has changed a lot from the one in the original text.”
“Why, his soul blackened?” Lian Yu narrowed his eyes and deliberately showed a grinning expression, “Yao Jin! If I can’t have you! I will! Destroy you!”
The lion lying on the blanket timely supported his master’s acting and let out a majestic roar. In the middle of its roar, the snow leopard slapped its head with its paw, and the lion quickly silenced.
Lian Yu: “……”
“Speaking of which, this in fact has something to do with you.” Cen Zhen turned over, his originally neatly tied pajamas were slightly messy, revealing a sexy collarbone with distinct bumps and convexities, “Your brave love story of being a D chasing an A greatly inspired Pan. He feels the distance between S and C is no longer so far away.”
As he spoke, Cen Zhen felt something strange in Lian Yu’s eyes, staring straight at his exposed collar, as if he wished his eyesight could insert into the shirt and have a closer look inside along the unbuttoned buttons. At the same time, the lion also circled the snow leopard and then lowered its head to smell the end of the snow leopard’s tail.
The snow leopard slapped its tail on the lion’s face coldly, and Cen Zhen snapped his fingers, and the lights in the dormitory went out.
“Hey! Keep talking. My touching and courageous behavior encouraged him, what happened next, why did you suddenly turn off the lights?” Lian Yu shouted in the darkness, “Don’t turn them all off, Cen Zhen, I’m afraid of the dark, I am really afraid of the dark. I’m not lying to you. I have been in a mental black hole for a long time without any light, I can’t stand it.”
“……” In the silence, a small round ball of light lit up beside Lian Yu. Lian Yu immediately said: “Can you play music? Just the sound of rain. I don’t like silence. You know, there is only absolute silence in the mental black hole.”
Because it was late at night, there was no white noise in the dormitory. When Lian Yu sneaked into Cen Zhen’s dormitory in the past, he had never played music. Cen Zhen thought about whether he could fall asleep with music playing.
“And it’d be better if you could cuddle me to sleep. How should I cuddle you? Let me think about it. How about this, you hold my neck and I wrap my arms around your waist…”
Cen Zhen turned off the night lamp.
Lian Yu curled his lips aggrievedly in the dark night, of course, he was pretending, “If you don’t want to cuddle me, I won’t force you. Leave the light on for me.”
No one answered in the darkness. Lian Yu waited a while and lit the terminal to be self-sufficient. But at this moment, an arm reached over his body and closed the terminal for him, “I don’t like light when I sleep, and I don’t like sound when I sleep.”
“……”
Then, Cen Zhen held Lian Yu’s hand at his side, and the body temperature from the Guide immediately spread over. The dry and slender hand wrapped around the back of the Sentinel’s hand, and soon it became palm to palm, and it forcefully inserted itself between the fingers.
The so-called light is just for comfort, and he doesn’t mind using other methods that are better as a substitute.
“Go to sleep.”
After saying that, Cen Zhen suddenly realized that he had agreed to sleep in the same bed as Lian Yu. Although they are doing nothing more than just sleeping under the same quilts and chatting. When he thought about it carefully, there was no reason why they couldn’t sleep together. Cen Zhen relaxed back down, and mentally started preparing himself for sleep.
The fingers of the two hands intertwined under the quilt, and Lian Yu even felt a little too warm, because he felt that his palms were about to start to sweat. He slowed down his breathing and asked softly: “Can you promise not to let go even when you fall asleep?”
“If I let go, you can turn on the light.” Cen Zhen answered him with his eyes closed. Cen Zhen’s sleeping posture was very proper. He woke up in the exact position he went to bed with, but he was not sure whether his hands could stay the same too. Lian Yu thought about it and thought it made sense, so he covered himself with the quilt and said good night happily.
Cen Zhen had already mentally prepared himself for what the two of them would be like when he woke up the next morning. So when he opened his eyes seven hours later and saw Lian Yu wrapped around him like an octopus, Cen Zhen had no reaction.
He first took out Lian Yu’s left hand from the hem of his clothes, then forebodingly took Lian Yu’s right hand out of his pants, and got out of bed with a dark face to wash up.
As soon as the sound of running water began, Lian Yu opened his eyes suddenly. He raised his right hand in front of his eyes, looked at the back and front of his palm, and made a grasping gesture. After recalling the previous touch, he stretched out with satisfaction and followed Cen Zhen into the bathroom.
*
Yao Jin was discharged from the hospital today. He has not fully recovered from the collapse after mania. However, he has not touched a single word of the coping punishment caused by abstaining from the midterm exam twice, and the excessive pressure to start working forced him to return to the Tower and immerse himself in copying the textbook.
Pan was also working hard copying with him. When Cen Zhen saw them in the library, they were chewing bread and copying the general knowledge textbooks nonstop.
Original Author’s Note:
Catfish’s acts of ‘harassment’ have now entered a whole new stage
Translator’s Note:
- Cen Zhen’s Russian name is Anatoli Jeria, and Lian Yu tries to give him a nickname by using vowel sounds in the name, and those nicknames’ pronunciation is the same as a mop and a mute/deaf in Chinese. Xiao means little and often is added in front of a character of someone’s name to show affection.
- A ‘Buddhist’ reader, is someone who accepts the plot of a story as it is and is very chill about whatever is happening in the story
