Chapter 2: Bonding Heat
The manor’s gate had been left unlocked, and the main door of the house was equipped with a smart recognition system linked to Xu Xunyue’s personal terminal.
Even without a butler, a first-time visitor could easily meet the owner of the house.
Xu Xunyue tapped a few commands into the terminal on his wrist. Just as he selected a white noise track to play, he received a notification that someone was at the door.
“Sir, you have a visitor ^^”
The smart system displayed a playful emoticon and sent the security camera feed to his terminal.
A tall, lean Sentinel stood outside the door, his hand in a tactical glove raised slightly. Behind him was the boundless snowy night, with snowflakes like shredded cotton rustling down, completely covering the footprints in the snow.
The snow had gotten that heavy.
The Sentinel’s lips moved, releasing a puff of white air. He raised his hand, bent his knuckles, and pressed the doorbell.
Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding… The sound reached Xu Xunyue.
Just then, an unusually large snowflake drifted down, wobbling as it collided with the snow-dusted camera lens—
Xu Xunyue unlocked the door.
The Sentinel suddenly looked up.
“…”
It was dark outside, but those amber eyes were exceptionally bright in the night, like a wolf’s—cold, sharp, and predatory.
Through the screen, past the specks of snow on the lens, Xu Xunyue knew exactly where he was looking.
It was, of course, the security camera under the study window on the second floor, shrouded by the swaying, barren branches.
For some reason, the Sentinel’s gaze seemed to linger for a little too long.
Creek.
The first-floor door was pushed open, and the figure on the screen moved out of the camera’s range.
Listening to the soothing white noise—the slow, yet lively crackle of a wood fire—Xu Xunyue casually turned a page in his book.
This wasn’t, in fact, the first time he had seen Zhu Hui.
According to Imperial tradition, everyone was required to attend a biennial review conference. At this meeting, the Emperor would announce promotions for certain individuals. The promoted would then have to speak in order of rank, detailing their accomplishments and shortcomings over the past two years, serving as both a role model and a personal reminder.
The most recent conference had taken place in the first half of this year, and it was there that Zhu Hui became “the youngest Chief Sentinel in history.”
Xu Xunyue hadn’t been required to attend, having already resigned from his post as Chief Guide, but the Emperor had still sent him an invitation.
So he had sat in the last row of the hall, occasionally chatting with the Minister of Finance during the lulls between speeches, inquiring about each other’s recent affairs.
Throughout the event, many different voices had echoed through the hall—men and women, old and young, belonging to Guides, Sentinels, and ordinary people. By then, Xu Xunyue was already “crippled” and had little interest in such events, so he put on a bored expression, rarely looking up, let alone listening intently.
But he did notice the voice of that young Sentinel—cool, concise, and with a touch of audacious arrogance:
“Everything I have done, all the praise I have received, is still not enough. The dawn is still far off, at the horizon where the deep sea meets the sky.”
“My only regret is that I could have been stronger, could have fought harder, and done more for this era.”
The applause from below was thunderous.
On the stage, the Sentinel was tall with long legs, dressed in the standard academy uniform seen everywhere in the White Tower, yet he wore it with the air of the Empire’s number one military officer.
At that time, Zhu Hui was, without a doubt, the Empire’s new star, his record filled with merits and completely unblemished. Even if he was arrogant, he had the right to be. When a young man like that was willing to work himself to the bone, what could anyone else say?
And if they did have something to say, they would only say it quietly behind his back, or wait until he made a mistake and was no longer so dazzling.
“I never thought a Sentinel who looks so cold could say something like that,” the Minister of Finance had remarked to Xu Xunyue as Zhu Hui walked off the stage. “Just like you back then… Oh, in the blink of an eye, eight years have passed.”
And in another blink, this year was almost over too.
And Zhu Hui had transformed from a high-level Sentinel with a flawless record to one with a less-than-perfect one.
A few months ago, he had led a squad on a special mission issued by the Emperor. Aside from himself, no one in the entire squad survived.
It sounded tragic, but in the Poseidon Era, death was everywhere. Once you joined the military, you had to be mentally prepared. Too many tragedies happened in a year, and this incident, placed among them, didn’t seem quite so severe.
Besides, the Emperor hadn’t said a word about it.
Zhu Hui wasn’t suspended or disciplined. Instead, a few months later, he was handed a baffling and sudden marriage contract.
Gossipmongers claimed that if the annihilation of his squad was the first stain on Zhu Hui’s life, then the marriage to Xu Xunyue would be the second. It was a punishment in disguise.
After all, their compatibility rating was only 60.01%.
Despite the fact that Zhu Hui was, to date, the only Sentinel whose compatibility with Xu Xunyue exceeded 60%—a fact that seemed romantic but held no practical significance.
A Sentinel’s five senses were overly sharp. The cumulative burden of years of battle and the sensory stimuli of daily life… all of it created immense mental pressure. Without timely soothing, a Sentinel would one day descend into a berserker state.
For a Guide and Sentinel, a compatibility rating above 60% was required for mental soothing, and most Guides and Sentinels had a compatibility of over 60%.
This was a result of human evolution. A rating just over 60% meant little, but it allowed for the most basic mental soothing, which was convenient for providing aid and preserving strength. As for Guides and Sentinels who chose to bond, their compatibility was generally between 70% and 80%. A rating above 85% was rare, and one exceeding 90% was almost unheard of.
In any case, “a 60.01% compatibility rating” and “mental soothing from an Offensive Guide”… just the sound of these terms was enough to make any Sentinel wary.
The door to the second-floor study was closed, but Xu Xunyue could hear the footsteps growing clearer. He could tell Zhu Hui was coming upstairs, taking the stairs. He turned another page, smelling the scent of the previous era from the ancient paper.
The footsteps were closer now.
The young Sentinel wasn’t taking any detours, heading straight for him.
In the hallway, lit only by the moon, the shadows of all the furniture trembled slightly.
The metal handle of the door was grasped, turned, and pushed.
With a soft click, darkness poured out from the rapidly widening crack of the door like a viscous fluid.
For a high-level Guide, sight was a relatively slow sense. By the time his eyes captured the image, other channels had already transmitted the information to his brain. Xu Xunyue glanced at the page number in the bottom right corner of the book before slowly looking toward the door.
The young Sentinel’s face was devoid of expression.
Those amber eyes he’d seen on the monitor were still sharp, containing neither a feigned smile nor unrestrained disgust. Yet for some reason, they carried a piercing chill.
He was on guard.
Xu Xunyue extracted this piece of information from the shadows behind the door, but nothing more. Because of his wariness, the other man wasn’t revealing any emotion.
In front of a high-level Guide, emotional fluctuations were the greatest weakness. Many people understood this, but few could actually achieve it.
So, why wariness, of all things? Not dissatisfaction, annoyance, or fear?
Xu Xunyue observed Zhu Hui, waiting to see what he would do next, when a white blur shot out from somewhere.
The white figure was incredibly fast. Zhu Hui was still standing in the doorway, but it had already bounded forward, landing less than a meter away from Xu Xunyue.
Its snow-white fur was sleek and glossy, its amber eyes shone brightly, and its fluffy tail was held high, gently tracing an arc behind it.
It was… a snow wolf.
Zhu Hui’s spiritual body?
Looking back at Zhu Hui, his expression had also cracked. His eyes, the same shade as his spiritual body’s, were filled with astonishment.
He frowned deeply, his thin lips parting as if to say something, but after a glance at Xu Xunyue, he remained silent.
“…”
The atmosphere grew tense.
However, regardless of the tension between the two men, the snow wolf—larger and more ferocious-looking than its natural counterparts—sat right down in front of Xu Xunyue.
It was extremely curious about Xu Xunyue. Its front paws restlessly kneaded the plush carpet, and its nose twitched, sniffing the air as if confirming something, completely ignoring the frantic calls from its Sentinel in the spiritual domain.
Outside the door, all the shadows suddenly trembled.
Inside, it seemed something else had mixed into the shadow cast by the snow wolf; the blackness abruptly deepened.
Then, the fluffy white tail gave an unnatural twitch to the left, as if something had grabbed it and was pulling it.
“?!”
The tips of the snow wolf’s ears twitched. It shot to its feet, looking up, down, left, and right, before finally staring at Xu Xunyue with a bewildered expression.
Zhu Hui subconsciously took two steps into the room.
But the snow wolf let out a soft “awoo” and sat back down, lowering its tail to sweep it back and forth across its own shadow.
Xu Xunyue: “…”
Even with all his experience, having seen countless Sentinel spiritual bodies in the military, he found this situation rather comical.
He hadn’t expected Zhu Hui’s spiritual body to appear on its own, nor had he expected his own to be so eager.
The howl just now had been quiet, almost whiny, sounding like a plea for affection. But the Sentinel himself was…
No, that wasn’t right.
The Zhu Hui before him now was different from the one he’d seen downstairs, different from the one at the award ceremony.
It was still the same face—deep-set eyes, a high-bridged nose, and the sharp edge of a young student from the Sentinel Academy. But now, his cheeks were flushed, his Adam’s apple bobbed, and his chest was heaving noticeably.
His lips parted and then pressed together, then quickly parted again, over and over, as if he were struggling to breathe.
The blush wasn’t confined to his face; it was spreading down his neck and to his ears.
His eyes were a little red, too—a damp, wet red. His gaze held threads of burning anxiety. It flickered around the room, sweeping over his own spiritual body—which was now happily being played with into a state of disarray—before finally settling on Xu Xunyue.
If Xu Xunyue weren’t an Offensive Guide, and if Zhu Hui weren’t the first Sentinel whose compatibility with him exceeded 60%, he would have realized at that moment that these were the signs of a Sentinel being thrown into a bonding heat.
Unfortunately, he had only ever seen looks of admiration or fear, never eyes like these. Nor did he have any experience performing mental soothing for a Sentinel. Due to lack of practice, the professional knowledge about bonding he had learned as a student at the Guide Academy had long been buried in the depths of his memory.
With a compatibility of 60.01%, who would even think of a bonding heat?
Not even half a moment passed before Zhu Hui took two more steps toward him.
This time, his steps were slow. He paused after the first, as if considering what he was doing and whether he really wanted to do it, but he still took the second step.
“…”
There was no third step.
The disheveled snow wolf turned to look at him, letting out a series of soft whimpers and whines. Finally, it flopped bonelessly onto its side, vacating the prime spot in front of Xu Xunyue’s wheelchair, as if gesturing for the Sentinel to take its place, a commanding air about it.
[Come here, come here! Ugh, you’re really— This person’s spiritual body—no, him—he smells super good, he’s perfect for you!]
[What are you standing there like an idiot for? Are you pretending to be a training post? Friend, you’re about to graduate, why are you still so attached to the academy’s stupid posts? I’ve broken thousands of those things.]
[It feels super nice. Go on and touch him if you don’t believe me. Just like me. Hurry up and touch him.]
The shadows, which had twisted themselves around the snow wolf until it was splayed out on its back, relayed the emotions they had captured to their master.
Xu Xunyue: “…” Who was touching whom, exactly?
The snow wolf was very, very, very, very—he didn’t know how many “verys” it would take to properly describe it—excited. He had never heard such clear thoughts before.
Not all spiritual bodies were that intelligent or possessed clear thoughts. If they weren’t clear, Xu Xunyue couldn’t perceive them.
He could only sense the emotions of high-level Guide and Sentinel spiritual bodies, but just like with human emotions, they were always fragmented and vague.
But this big, two-meter-long snow wolf—white, soft, warm, and cuddly, according to the shadows’ description—had an unprecedentedly clear train of thought. It was practically a chatterbox.
It was hard to imagine that a Sentinel who looked so taciturn would possess such a lively spiritual body.
And this spiritual body seemed to really like him… or rather, his spiritual body.
How strange.
When he had first joined the military, Xu Xunyue never hid his spiritual body, always giving his all in every battle. The soldiers all knew his capabilities.
As time passed, the original comrades died off one by one, and the survivors were promoted. After Xu Xunyue resigned from his post and left the undeveloped zones, his personal information files slowly became highly encrypted archives.
Most of the younger generation and those who hadn’t made it into the Empire’s upper echelons only knew that the Offensive Guide’s spiritual body was something terrifying and invisible.
It was an animal’s instinct to submit to a powerful, unknown creature. Most spiritual bodies the shadows encountered were afraid of it.
And it didn’t have a very good temper. Since it was already being treated like an all-evil prehistoric beast, it might as well go all out, seizing every opportunity to play pranks. It would never rest until it had scared its target into a listless state for three days.
This kind of interaction, however, was a first for Xu Xunyue.
He was momentarily distracted, wondering if he should tell the shadows to tone it down. After all, playing with someone’s spiritual body the moment you met was a bit too brazen. But seeing how much the wolf was enjoying it, and how the Sentinel himself was completely out of it, he decided it was harmless.
His own spiritual body was rarely this happy. Let it play.
Placing the book on the table, Xu Xunyue adjusted the coat draped over his shoulders.
The wheels of his chair rolled silently over the thick, plush carpet.
The current situation was not only beyond Zhu Hui’s expectations but also his own.
He had already been suspicious of the Emperor’s motives for arranging the marriage, suspicious of Zhu Hui’s background, and suspicious of whether there was a deeper, more complex connection between the Emperor and Zhu Hui.
Zhu Hui being out of sorts was a good thing. It made it easier for him to control the situation.
To have come this far, to have paid such a high price, with so many soldiers dead—he couldn’t let any unknown factor slip by.
Although he had already dug up everything he could find on Zhu Hui, it wasn’t enough.
This high-level Guide decided to personally investigate just what was going on inside his new legal partner’s head.
And the reason for the wariness he had seen at the very beginning.
