Chapter Ninety-Eight: At Thirty, and at Forty

Rose snatched her hand back as if it had been shocked, then reiterated, “I don’t like women.”

Liang Bing looked at the blush spreading over Rose’s face and gave a soft, amused laugh. “If you don’t like women, then how do you plan to control me, the Demon Queen?”

“I, I…” Rose had no idea what to say.

Seeing her stammering helplessly, Liang Bing lay down beside her, and with the ease of long habit, pulled the blanket over them before gathering Rose into her arms.

“If you don’t like women, I can wait slowly. Tonight, we’ll just sleep.”

As she spoke, she kissed Rose on the cheek, then snapped her fingers. Darkness swallowed the room.

In Angel City, at the Sky-Base King’s castle.

“Zhixin, it looks like your teacher isn’t home,” Yunyang said.

The two of them had already searched the place thoroughly. In that vast castle, not a single person could be found. Yunyang, ignoring Zhixin’s attempts to stop him, had even rushed eagerly into He Xi’s bedroom, wanting to see whether she was asleep.

After all, it had to be admitted that He Xi was truly beautiful. Even if he had no improper thoughts, simply catching a glimpse of her sleeping face would have been worth it. He might get beaten for it, but Yunyang felt he would still come out ahead.

“Teacher may be busy with something important, or she may be in the middle of an experiment. Let’s wait a little longer. Contacting her now might disturb her,” Zhixin said as she sat down on the sofa.

Yunyang didn’t mind at all. He plopped down beside her, opened his gene engine, and happily began his game time.

After playing a single-player game for a while, he grew a little bored. Glancing at the coffee table in front of them, he saw that there was nothing there.

He stood up, walked over to the storage rack holding the tea leaves and teapot, looked at the same tin of tea leaves from last time, and chuckled to himself.

Then he pinched out a generous amount and filled half the teapot.

This tea was supposed to be precious, wasn’t it? If it was precious, then they ought to drink more of it, right? Otherwise, who knew when they’d get to drink it again? They might as well enjoy it all at once.

Zhixin lifted the black tea in front of her and took a sip. The moment the rich, heavy flavor filled her mouth, she immediately understood what had happened.

Thinking of how dearly her teacher treasured this tea, she couldn’t help but glance at Yunyang in surprise, though she said nothing. In her heart, however, she was already imagining the ways teacher would kill him.

Yunyang caught Zhixin’s look and put on the air of someone who had never seen the world before. “This tea really is delicious. It must be very expensive. I should drink more.”

“Yes, it’s very precious. You should drink more. Don’t waste it,” Zhixin said, and a flicker of amusement passed through her eyes.

After that, neither of them spoke. Zhixin slowly savored the tea in her cup, while Yunyang kept playing his game, occasionally gulping down another cup before returning to the screen.

It wasn’t until Yunyang had been utterly crushed by a Souls-style game and could no longer take it that he finally tore himself away from it. Looking at the serene Zhixin across from him, he asked, “Zhixin, aren’t you bored?”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head.

“In that case, since you’re not bored, let’s pla—” Halfway through the sentence, Yunyang suddenly realized that Zhixin had said she was not bored, not that she was bored. He stopped so abruptly that he nearly choked on his own words.

After collecting himself, he said, “Since you’re not bored, then let’s play games.”

“Games? The kind that use a gene engine?” Zhixin was familiar with the games Yunyang meant. After all, he had already spent quite a long time playing with the angel Breeze and the others.

Thanks to Breeze’s enthusiastic recommendation, she had been hearing about it whether she wanted to or not. Almost all the angels knew about it by now, and plenty of them played, though Zhixin was not one of them.

Now that Yunyang had brought it up again, she couldn’t help asking.

“Yes. Want to play? Let’s play a fighting game. I’ll send it to you,” Yunyang said, seeing her interest.

With that, he opened a data link and waited for Zhixin to connect.

Zhixin received his request and found it difficult to refuse.

And so, the two of them began their duel.

The situation was this: Yunyang, as a veteran, utterly crushed Zhixin at first. He laughed without restraint every time he won, but after a while he felt that bullying a newcomer was a little too much, so he even taught her combos and how to use awakening skills.

But with Zhixin’s prodigy-level learning ability, once she understood how the skills worked, she quickly became adept at them.

After that, Yunyang’s grin slowly vanished. Later on, his face had even begun to look a little green. He felt like a complete idiot. Why had he taught Zhixin anything at all? Now he was getting crushed in return. He had only brought this misery on himself. How foolish could he be?

After fifteen straight losses, Yunyang coughed twice, silently took a sip of tea, and said, “Zhixin, don’t you still have something important to do? Maybe you should contact your teacher.”

“Or…” Zhixin still wanted to play a few more rounds, because humiliating people was just too much fun.

But before she could finish, Yunyang cut her off. “No ‘or.’ Important matters come first. Zhao Xin has things to do too. We can play again when we get back.” In order to save himself from further abuse, Yunyang sold Zhao Xin out without hesitation.

Over the next few months, Zhao Xin was almost driven to tears, because whenever he wanted to get into bed and sleep, he had to accompany Zhixin for ten rounds of fighting games. As a game disaster who could be bullied even by Yunyang, his miserable fate could well be imagined.

At Yunyang’s insistence, Zhixin could only reluctantly place a call through her teacher’s secret communication line. After exchanging a few brief words, she told Yunyang that her teacher was no longer in the Merlot Celestial Court and had already gone to her retirement world, Urling.

Yunyang was stunned. If He Xi wasn’t here, then what on earth had all this beating been for?

He had completely forgotten that it was he who had encouraged Zhixin to play games in the first place, and that it was also he who had transmitted the fighting game to her.

“All right, all right. Where is Urling? Let’s hurry there,” Yunyang said eagerly, desperate to avoid any more humiliation.

And so, the two of them passed through the wormhole gate and arrived in near orbit around a planet not unlike Earth. Yunyang did a quick scan and discovered that this world was also over seventy percent ocean. The only difference was that it had three continents, all covered in green vegetation, with tiny white buildings scattered here and there among the trees.

Yunyang figured those must be the angels’ castles. That much he could understand. What he couldn’t understand was why the north pole—yes, that had to be the north pole, at least as he saw it—actually had vegetation. There wasn’t a trace of ice or snow anywhere. Heaven knew how the angels had managed that. He could only console himself by thinking that their technological might must be terrifyingly advanced.

“The manly woman is here to see you. Zhixin came back, and she brought someone with her,” He Xi said, sounding a little indignant.

“Who? Zhao Xin? I can’t believe your little disciple has already brought home a boyfriend to meet the family,” Kesha teased, deliberately emphasizing the word little.

“Nope,” He Xi said, wagging one finger.

“Stop keeping me in suspense. Is it Yunyang?” Kesha’s eyes lit up when she heard that it wasn’t Zhao Xin.

“Hmph.”

“You’re already an old aunt, and you’re still trying to act cute. Disgusting,” Kesha said at the expression on He Xi’s face, even making a show of feeling sick.

“Oh, I admit I’m old, but I still look pretty good. Zhixin even told me that little punk Yunyang looked around my bedroom. Tell me, do you think he might be interested in—” He Xi touched her face and adjusted a strand of hair.

Though she did not finish the rest of her sentence, the understanding built over ten thousand years meant that He Xi knew Kesha would grasp exactly what she was implying.

Sure enough, Kesha’s expression shifted several times before she finally smiled and rested a hand on He Xi’s shoulder.

“A celestial body, after all, is perfect in the known universe. That’s understandable.”

“Yes. I should go take a look at that little boy. What if this old aunt of thirty thousand years really does get herself another handsome man?”

He Xi’s expression turned dreamy. She clasped her hands before her chest, looking every bit like a young girl longing for love.

Kesha cast a sidelong glance at her, but said nothing. Instead, she settled back onto the sofa.

Then she watched as He Xi opened a wormhole. Just as He Xi was about to step out of the space, Kesha called after her, “Bring him here. I’ll hand over the silver armor to him myself.”

Under Zhixin’s guidance, Yunyang flew at an easy pace toward He Xi’s castle. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to fly faster; it was that the angels surrounding him in dense layers had almost blocked him in completely.

From time to time, other angels would swoop over, bump into him, circle once, and exclaim, “A handsome man! I’m finally seeing a real one!”

“Mhm, and he’s actually pretty good-looking too.”

Some were even more outrageous, flying directly in front of him and asking, “Little handsome man, do you have a guardian angel? If not, what do you think of me?”

Or else:

“Handsome man, how old are you? You don’t look over a hundred.”

Looking at the angelic chorus echoing all around him, Yunyang couldn’t help feeling a little black-bellied. What were these people, anyway?

He had never imagined angels could be like this. The image of pure and noble angels in his heart had been shattered into pieces.

What angels? They were clearly nothing more than a crowd of older women out here promoting themselves.

“Pfft. These are all retired angels, the older generation. Most of them are over ten thousand years old, and most of them don’t have handsome men,” Zhixin said, unable to suppress a laugh as she watched Yunyang being teased by her elders. She also took the opportunity to explain their basic background to him.

“Little Zhixin, a woman’s age is a secret, you know.”

An angel flew over from the side, scooped Zhixin out of Yunyang’s arms, and rubbed her cheeks as she spoke.

After hearing Zhixin’s explanation, Yunyang’s eyes changed completely when he looked at these angels. So they really were a bunch of older women.

As the saying went, women at thirty were fierce as wolves, women at forty fierce as tigers. Then what would these ten-thousand-year-old women be like?

Wouldn’t they be something even more terrifying?

For a moment, Yunyang felt that even his black armor might not be enough to protect him.

After all, there were simply too many angels here. A rough glance suggested there must be over a thousand already, and more seemed to be arriving endlessly from behind them.