The two big men had eaten their fill, so they naturally ordered a second round.
Yu Yan’s claim that he wasn’t picky about food was no exaggeration. For the extra order, he simply let You Fuzhou choose.
After all, he truly wasn’t fussy. More importantly, this was a chance to learn what You Fuzhou liked to eat.
Once the meal was done, You Fuzhou turned to Yu Yan. “Have you thought it over?”
Yu Yan nodded without hesitation, his eyes curving into a gentle smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’m S-Class.”
You Fuzhou rose to his feet. “Follow me.”
Along the way, they ran into quite a few people. Everyone greeted them, but no one asked where they were headed.
The deeper they ventured, the scarcer the people became. By the final corridor, only two Sentinels stood guard, paired with a single Guide.
Yu Yan could tell at a glance that all three were A-Class. Such an extravagant setup just to watch a door… it spoke volumes about how much You Fuzhou valued the room beyond.
When the trio spotted You Fuzhou with Yu Yan in tow, they froze for a moment. The Guide’s eyes lit up. “Has Mr. Yu come to check on Miss Rong’s condition?”
You Fuzhou inclined his head. “I’ve brought him to see her.”
The Guide stepped aside with barely contained excitement, as if she wanted to say more but held back, wary of adding pressure. In the end, she stayed silent, watching hopefully as You Fuzhou led Yu Yan inside. You Fuzhou’s White Lion remained in the corridor, curling into a ball and appearing to doze off.
Anyone with eyes could see that You Fuzhou’s spiritual body was in far better shape than before.
An S-Class Guide… the reputation was well deserved.
Most crucially, he had even convinced You Fuzhou to accept his guidance.
Truly impressive.
Worthy of S-Class.
Oblivious to their thoughts, You Fuzhou scanned his access key and opened the door. He ushered Yu Yan into Rong Yao’s room.
As the door clicked shut, soft lighting along the walls flickered to life. A medical pod against one wall came into view.
Though it was a sickroom, potted flowers adorned the space, and decorative paintings graced the walls. The entire room had been made warm and inviting, as if Rong Yao—lying motionless in the pod—hadn’t been unconscious for three years but could awaken any moment to fresh blooms.
A quick scan with his mental power told Yu Yan the flowers were fresh from yesterday. If You Fuzhou couldn’t tend them himself, he must have asked someone else…
How deeply he cherished Rong Yao was obvious to anyone.
Yu Yan glanced over and saw You Fuzhou staring fixedly at the medical pod, frozen in place.
His mental fluctuations were unsteady, tangled with a storm of complex emotions—dominated by regret and pain.
Unobtrusively, Yu Yan extended his mental power to steady him, then spoke softly. “Can you tell me… what happened?”
You Fuzhou snapped back to the present. For the first time, he faced the pivotal event of his life with a calm heart.
He knew Yu Yan was doing something to help, but he made no request to stop. He loathed himself, yet he understood that losing control wouldn’t harm just one or two people.
When You Fuzhou didn’t reply right away, Yu Yan added, “It’ll help me find a solution in her spiritual world.”
You Fuzhou said, “I know.”
He lowered his eyes, his voice softening. “I just don’t know where to begin.”
Outwardly calm and silent, only Yu Yan knew the full weight of You Fuzhou’s emotions he was shouldering.
Agony that could shatter a mind… no wonder it had infused an S-Class Sentinel’s fluctuations with self-destructive urges.
Without a single anchoring thought, You Fuzhou would have been lost long ago—driven mad or dead.
Yu Yan amplified his mental power to soothe him. “If you’re willing, start from the beginning… Why doesn’t she share your surname?”
Yu Yan had a knack for guiding conversations, and You Fuzhou picked up the thread. “My father was a second lieutenant on Ares Planet, an officer. My mother came from a collateral branch of the Dans Family—barons. It was a marriage of convenience, no love involved. Just to preserve good genes and high Sentinel-Guide compatibility.”
This was no secret. Everyone knew You Fuzhou’s parentage and origins.
His father’s lineage traced back to a general—an S-Class Sentinel. The family declined only after marrying lower-tier female Sentinels, but those potent genes lingered. Thus, You Fuzhou’s own were rated “superior.” Societal norms and pressure from above ensured his mother hailed from the elite.
In the Empire’s rigid hierarchy, nobles and officers wedding commoners—especially those without pedigree—drew sneers at best. In darker corners, it invited outright “cleansing.”
Their justification? Noble blood must not be tainted.
You Fuzhou’s ancestor who wed a low-tier female Sentinel had needed special dispensation and royal approval first.
They perched atop society, basking in privilege, yet robbed of true choice.
To claim exalted status meant obeying the elite’s edicts.
Talk of rebellion all you like under such oppression, but weapons—and truth—lay in the hands of those above.
The Empire monopolized Sentinel and Guide bloodlines near entirely. S-Class talents clustered in the royal family. Anomalies like You Fuzhou were one in a millennium.
Spot a genetic prodigy from the masses? The Empire lured them with wealth and rank.
Worried about betrayal? No lone wolves here. Embrace the Empire, accept its titles, and your kin rises with you.
No kin? They had other levers.
Through such methods, the Empire’s decayed order endured across generations.
Those able and bold enough to despise it often joined the Freedom Alliance, as You Fuzhou had.
Over time, that Alliance evolved from skulking vermin in the shadows to a power no imperial force dared assail recklessly.
It welcomed all true rebels.
Yet far more lacked the spine.
You Fuzhou once heard the Alliance’s current chair remark: “Those needing us to hand them courage—even if we do, the Empire’s might will one day devour that borrowed fire.”
Thus, the Alliance embraced only the innately brave.
You Fuzhou couldn’t say if the man was right. Politics wasn’t his forte; fighting was.
It hardly mattered. Life spanned mere centuries—live true to oneself.
As for the surname difference, it was straightforward.
His parents’ union bore him first. At three, tests deemed him ordinary—no mental core, no Sentinel or Guide.
Rong Yao was conceived around then. Deemed a failure, they divorced, unaware of the pregnancy. Only later did it surface.
No recourse. She was born in secret and registered under a distant Dans cousin so remote she’d vanish without the genealogy. She took that cousin’s husband’s name: Rong.
That connection led her to Ye Songhua, who helped her “find her brother.” By then, You Fuzhou was six. School retesting uncovered his mental core; he was a Sentinel. The families permitted their bond but hushed the sibling truth—too messy for public ears.
Young You Fuzhou sensed the wrongness but couldn’t counter the adults’ baffling rhetoric.
Even now, their platitudes baffled him. No need to refute, though.
One shot sufficed.
Why prattle?
“Later, Rong Yao’s mental core surfaced too. But with my mother remarried to a higher station, and her foster family beholden to the Dans, plus our compatibility predictions low at the time… she stayed unacknowledged.”
You Fuzhou paused there.
He and Yu Yan had settled beside Rong Yao. You Fuzhou gazed at her serene sleeping face, lost in a momentary daze.
As Yu Yan murmured, “And then?”, the words slipped out on instinct. “…It was my fault.”
Despite the mental power Yu Yan poured in to ease the self-recrimination and pain, You Fuzhou’s inner turmoil raged like a tempest at sea, waves crashing beyond easy quelling.
Yu Yan could offer no words of solace. He knew speech availed little against such profound grief.
Like a raindrop lost in the ocean, it would vanish unheeded.
All he could do was extend his mental power, silently absorbing every ounce of You Fuzhou’s suffering.
What came later was simple enough.
You Fuzhou was a Sentinel with no taste for commerce or intrigue. He set his sights on the military academy.
In fact, the talent You Fuzhou later displayed in the military allowed him to gain admission with top scores. Rong Yao, too, confirmed her high rank through year after year of tests and followed in his footsteps. Together, they entered the Ares Empire First Military Academy.
~~~
The academy’s entrance exams had no lower age limit, but there was a strict upper limit of sixteen. Anyone older needed special approval to enroll.
Just like that, thirteen-year-old You Fuzhou and ten-year-old Rong Yao entered the academy together.
But one was a Sentinel, the other a Guide, so they were assigned to different campuses.
To outsiders, they were just acquaintances—nothing more.
“Rong Yao has always been incredibly strong-willed.”
She hated waiting for someone else to rescue her, so she trained herself like a Sentinel.
But back then, they were still too young.
They spent four years at the academy.
There, You Fuzhou came to realize that the world was full of rules and restrictions he despised. Yet at the time, he never considered betraying his country.
He had grown up relying on the nation’s welfare, after all. He simply pondered how he might change those things once he graduated. In his naive way, he believed that as an S-Class talent, he had the right to sit at the negotiating table with those in power.
Until…
Rong Yao ran into trouble.
“Her identity was registered under her little aunt’s name.”
You Fuzhou lowered his gaze and let out a soft breath. “Because my mother couldn’t claim her back.”
To those people, Rong Yao was nothing more than a low-status A-Class Guide.
The circumstances were complicated, and You Fuzhou struggled to explain them succinctly at first.
After a moment’s thought, he approached it from another angle. “Perhaps because she’s a Guide—and because Rong Yao has always been more independent and opinionated than me—she got in touch with the Freedom Alliance early on. Back then… she had a crush on a Sentinel from their side. She told me she liked him, but she never mentioned he was with the Freedom Alliance.”
“That day… his identity came into question. He was wanted.”
Rong Yao pleaded with You Fuzhou to save him. “Brother… please. You’re the only one who can.”
He still remembered how her eyes had reddened with desperation as she begged him. “You’re S-Class. Only you can get him out without them scrutinizing too closely. Please, help me send him off Ares.”
To convince him, Rong Yao even used her mental power to cloud his judgment, keeping him from overthinking it.
And so You Fuzhou forgot to consider whether her frequent contact with the man might implicate her. He forgot to worry about the consequences. He agreed—and to maintain the cover, he even accepted an official mission.
The route to smuggle someone out of Ares wasn’t far at all. It was the shortest task he’d taken since being confirmed as S-Class—a simple round trip that should have taken only five days.
But what You Fuzhou didn’t know at the time was that the Empire Military Academy harbored such depravity.
A special training camp for Guides, tacitly approved by the royals and the government—a place where high-status Sentinels could claim their prizes. It was the nightmare of every lowborn Guide.
When word of Rong Yao’s connections to the Freedom Alliance leaked out—and with all the conditions aligning perfectly—she was thrown into that camp.
You Fuzhou received the message from one of her friends while he was already on his way back. The return journey normally took two days, but he pushed himself relentlessly and made it in half a day.
Even so, by the time he fought his way into the camp, all he found was Rong Yao—after a brutal slaughter—who had closed off her mental sea to protect herself, plunging into eternal slumber.
She was only fourteen years old at the time.
That day, You Fuzhou lost his mind.
He killed everyone in the camp. Ignoring his own grievous wounds, he carried Rong Yao away from Ares Planet—and from that moment on, a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Every single day since, You Fuzhou had tormented himself with what-ifs. What if he had ignored his father’s words, his mother’s threats and tears, the warnings from that royal scion? What if he had openly declared to the world that Rong Yao was his little sister? Or what if he hadn’t buried himself in training and missions, but instead spent more time out with her—letting others assume she was the Guide he’d set his sights on? Would everything have turned out differently?
He knew he shouldn’t dwell on it like this, but he couldn’t help himself.
The self-blame grew deeper with every passing day. The pain only intensified.
In his dazed moments, he had convinced himself countless times that he was one of the chief culprits behind her fate.
“…You Fuzhou.”
Yu Yan called his name softly. He lifted his hand and laid it over the back of You Fuzhou’s.
The calluses on his knuckles spoke volumes of how many punches their owner had thrown.
The physical contact stabilized Yu Yan’s guiding. He absorbed all of You Fuzhou’s soul-searing agony, then spoke in a gentle tone. “You did nothing wrong. Neither did Rong Yao. The ones at fault are those people—the empire’s iron-fisted rulers.”
So they had to be overthrown.
