Chapter 35: Listening In
Zhu Hui boarded the aircraft at the last moment.
The inside of the aircraft was quiet. Even the sound of a pin dropping could be heard. A series of gazes with a strong presence fell on him, but the person in question was not at all uncomfortable.
Just as he was walking to the back row as if no one else was there, and was about to take an empty seat, the Sentinel in a hooded sweatshirt next to the empty seat suddenly smiled. “No matter how much I hear about it, it’s nothing compared to seeing it with my own eyes… Youth is truly full of vitality.”
It was a middle-aged man’s voice with a great deal of affinity.
Although his perception had been disturbed by the Guide, if one were to observe carefully and boldly, one could still find that Zhu Hui’s lips were red and not quite normal.
Zhu Hui sat down with a calm expression and said, “Thank you for the compliment. But Consultant Qiu, you should pay more attention to your own health.”
In the previous encrypted communication, Qiu Ye had mentioned that he would be coming to participate in this outdoor practical activity. Zhu Hui hadn’t seen him when he was waiting for Xu Xunyue, and he himself was the last to board the aircraft.
It was easy to guess when Qiu Ye had arrived at the gate.
It could only be said that the other person, being middle-aged, was very tactful and didn’t come over to say hello on the spot, but waited until everything was over to make a joke.
Qiu Ye knew that Zhu Hui couldn’t say any heartwarming words—oh, now there might be a “Xu Xunyue excluded” tag, but it had nothing to do with him—anyway, he was used to it, so he cheerfully switched to another topic.
“You should already know, right? The place we’re going to this time is the A1 to A5 zones of the Endless Snow. The activity requirements are the same as in previous years. The terrain there is very suitable for your spiritual body…”
The Endless Snow, as its name suggested, was a place with so much snow that one couldn’t see the end of it. In the Imperial Capital, there might be thirty days a year without snow, with sunny or cloudy days. But here, it snowed heavily like goose feathers every day of the year. The heavy snow never melted, and it could pile up to a person’s knees on the ground.
Its terrain was a plain, with no gullies, valleys, or mountains. It was said that if you went deeper, you would see the sea, but that was not a sight you would see at the boundary line.
Zhu Hui unconsciously rubbed the hair tie on his hand, turned his face, and looked out the aircraft’s window.
A gray-white expanse.
At this time, the aircraft had already ascended to an altitude of over ten thousand meters. Zhu Hui was not sitting in a seat right next to the window, so looking out like this, his field of vision would only have a dull, grayish-blue sky and clusters of tangled clouds that stretched to the horizon, with no scenery of the land.
According to the aircraft’s speed, they should have already flown away from the center of the human world—that is, the Imperial Capital, which was not very vast.
This was the sky of the Central Districts. Occasionally, a flock of birds in formation would fly by, flapping their wings.
The Sentinel sitting next to the window glanced nervously at Zhu Hui, his lips moving as if he wanted to ask something, looking both nervous and confused.
But Zhu Hui didn’t speak. He just stared at the window, at the vast sky and the clustered clouds, his gaze becoming more and more focused, his pupils motionless.
Using Super-sense.
Whoosh—
The image magnified.
One, two, three.
The clouds flowed rapidly, as if they had been pushed aside, and his field of vision also rushed forward, but it took a turn without any warning.
The view suddenly opened up, and a small black dot appeared at the end of the frame. It quickly expanded and approached, and soon it was clear that it was a white aircraft.
Four, five.
The field of vision continued to advance, passing the birds flying alongside the aircraft, and saw the glass window on the side of the aircraft.
Following some kind of telepathic connection, the constantly advancing scenery suddenly stopped in front of a window. His gaze turned again, probing inward.
Six, seven.
The Guide with the low ponytail appeared in the frame. He also seemed to have sensed something and looked from afar at the source of the gaze.
A smile flashed in his eyes, and the corners of his lips lifted slightly.
Eight.
In Zhu Hui’s magnified and fixed field of vision, those ice-blue eyes, as attractive as a vortex, blinked gently at him.
Nine—
“!!”
The senses that had been stretched to their limit were suddenly withdrawn, and the world instantly returned to normal.
Zhu Hui took a deep breath and silently reached up to cover his face, which had turned red at some point.
Thump, thump, thump…
His heartbeat was so loud that he thought his heart was going to jump out of his chest.
…Super-sense duration: nine seconds.
Just now, unintentionally, he had actually broken his own record for using his talent in this way.
On the other aircraft.
Xu Mengwei looked at the Guide in the next seat, who was smiling with his lips curled, and was completely bewildered.
He had a gut feeling that Xu Xunyue’s smile was related to Zhu Hui, but that Sentinel wasn’t here at all. Wasn’t that Sentinel on the other aircraft that had started earlier?
There was such a long distance between the two aircraft. What was Xu Xunyue smiling at out the window?
Perhaps this was a little secret between bonded Guides and Sentinels that others couldn’t understand…
He always felt that after his senior got married, he had a much more human touch.
When the Guide Academy’s aircraft arrived at the Endless Snow A1 outpost, some of the Sentinels had already finished their inspections and were standing with their teammates, chatting in low voices.
To some extent, Zhu Hui’s choice to wait for Xu Xunyue at the White Tower gate was indeed a very wise one. After all, at the gate of the Endless Snow A1 outpost, in such a noisy, restless, and crowded scene, it was obviously not appropriate to go and have a private chat with Xu Xunyue.
Now, the arrival of the other aircraft had made the scene even more lively, breaking the unique tranquility of the Endless Snow.
The snow here was of a whiteness that could not be reached in other places, new and magnificent, with a visual impact like an artist’s painting, making the people in it feel small. But everyone knew that the beautiful snowfield concealed endless dangers. Its A-series designation only proved that the boundary line had not changed, but it could not prove that the cataclysmic creatures lurking within were easy to deal with.
A cataclysm zone was a cataclysm zone. These old cities had taken the lives of many soldiers and civilians in the early days of the Poseidon Era, unlike the peaceful and prosperous Imperial Capital, or the White Tower, which symbolized eternity and hope.
For the next five days, the young students of the White Tower would need to wander along the boundary line of the Undeveloped Zone, collecting biological samples, measuring the content of cataclysmic factors, and searching for traces of cataclysmic creatures in the border areas and eliminating them.
In recent years, the aggressiveness of cataclysmic creatures had become stronger and stronger. They had evolved from never taking a step out of a cataclysm zone and not actively attacking humans fourteen years ago to now being terrifying creatures with a certain consciousness and logic, who would actively make moves similar to “patrolling their territory.”
Among them, the most difficult to deal with were, of course, the cataclysmic beings, which had been increasing year by year with the passage of time. They were humans who had been completely contaminated and transformed.
…
Countless teams of Sentinels and Guides, fully equipped, entered the edge of the Endless Snow A1 zone, which had been designated for the practical activity.
This was also what they might have to do after graduation.
The outpost near the Endless Snow was of a moderate size. Although there were not many soldiers inside, the facilities were complete and the training was good. They carried out their daily duties according to the rules, but they had also allocated a small portion of their strength to guard several obvious entrances and exits in rotation.
The two aircraft from the White Tower were parked in the sky above the practical area, and the accompanying teachers began to use the aircraft’s own flight system to monitor the situation on the ground below.
This monitoring was not the same as surveillance. The accompanying teachers could not directly see the students’ side of the picture. That kind of technology might have been established in the pre-Cataclysm era, but the current technology could not do it. The terminal connected to the flight system would only display small dots representing the students. The dots of different teams had different colors to distinguish them.
Once a signal of forfeiture and request for help appeared, the accompanying teacher would activate the small lifeboat on the aircraft and rush to the location where the signal was sent.
If a student’s physical condition declined significantly, the small dot representing them would also flash. This was a form of alarm, to prevent students from being unable to send a forfeiture signal in time when they were overwhelmed by a crisis.
The dull sound of various machinery operating to maintain the system’s functions echoed in the aircraft.
“Team One’s condition is good.”
“Team Two’s condition is good.”
“Team Three’s condition is good.”
“…”
“Team Sixty-Two’s condition is good.”
There were far more student teams than accompanying teachers. One teacher needed to monitor multiple teams. This safety report had to be conducted every two hours to prevent accidents caused by a single person’s momentary negligence.
Team Nine, where Zhu Hui was, was naturally handed over to Xu Xunyue. He not only monitored all the dots on the screen, but also had the locator on, and had activated the locator’s listening function.
Time passed quickly.
The students had entered the practical area at two in the afternoon, and the first day was often the safest. Until night began to fall, their condition was very good, and no team had any accidents.
Xu Xunyue had already heard Zhu Hui instructing the team to rest.
However, after instructing his team members to rest, Zhu Hui himself went out to patrol again.
Under the darkening sky, he idly fiddled with the blue and gold hair tie on his wrist. While patrolling, he suddenly reached out and took out a few hard, paper-like things from the inner pocket of his jacket.
And so Xu Xunyue, who had activated the locator’s listening function, heard the following sounds.
First, the soft rustling of the hair tie being rubbed, then the sound of some kind of card being flipped, and finally, the familiar voice of Zhu Hui.
He was muttering, his voice very low and light.
“Brother, I miss you so much.”
“Luckily, I had the foresight to print out your pictures and carry them with me, otherwise I would really miss you to death.”
“The pictures are not as good-looking as you in person.”
Xu Xunyue was slightly stunned.
…His pictures?
The academy only prohibited students from carrying extra communication tools and weapons, and would not restrict unimportant paper materials during inspections. Pictures could of course be brought.
He just didn’t expect Zhu Hui to have brought them without a word.
Zhu Hui did have his pictures. After they got married, whether at the academy or in his office, Zhu Hui had taken them right under Xu Xunyue’s nose, and Xu Xunyue himself had seen them.
He remembered that Zhu Hui had taken pictures of him writing lesson plans, making drinks in the kitchen, reading in the study in the afternoon…
Right, they didn’t seem to have a picture together.
Thinking of this, Xu Xunyue frowned.
That’s right, they didn’t. It wasn’t that they had deliberately avoided taking one, it was just that both of them had forgotten to think about it.
There were two types of marriage certificates in the Empire: a paper version and an electronic version, but neither required a wedding photo like humans did in the early years.
Because they had gotten married through a marriage contract, they hadn’t even gone to the relevant department to get a paper marriage certificate, which required both of them to go together. Later, when the time came, their personal terminals automatically received the electronic marriage certificate sent by the relevant department.
Of course, a marriage certificate didn’t require a photo, but it didn’t mean they couldn’t have one. If they took one, it could still be put on it.
But Zhu Hui was currently engaged in a practical activity, and the two of them were separated. They really couldn’t solve the problem immediately. They would have to wait a few more days.
We’ll take one when we get back, and get the paper marriage certificate by the way.
Switching the terminal page, his finger slid down and flipped through. Xu Xunyue also found a picture of Zhu Hui in a pile of documents and lesson plan pictures on his terminal.
Because its style was different from the other pictures, it looked particularly out of place.
Zhu Hui biting a straw and drinking the drink he made, leaning against him and feigning sleep with his hair messed up, holding his book and falling asleep while reading…
Speaking of which, they had only been married for nearly a month. For people who didn’t like to take pictures, it was normal not to have a picture together.
But in just nearly a month, they had already integrated into each other’s lives like this.
“…”
Just then, through the locator’s listening function, Xu Xunyue heard Zhu Hui’s voice again.
He heard the sound of a picture being held close, the soft rubbing sound of it touching skin, and Zhu Hui taking a deep breath, as if he were smelling something.
…Is he doing that kind of thing?
Xu Xunyue’s three-dimensional thinking instantly completed the picture on Zhu Hui’s side.
His Sentinel… seemed to be kissing the picture he had brought with him.
The picture first touched the tip of his nose, then his lips, and finally pressed against his cheek, trembling slightly with the breath that sprayed onto it.
And after kissing, the Sentinel took another deep breath, as if by doing so, he could smell his partner’s sweet pheromones.
“Is brother monitoring me?”
Zhu Hui continued to mutter.
“Does brother miss me?”
