Chapter 8: The Nascent King

Chapter 8: The Nascent King

Above the ruins, green minerals glowed like the brilliant auroras of Earth, casting a mysterious and splendid beauty over the site.

If not for the geographical location and the tense standoff, this could even be considered a magically romantic encounter.

Yun Huai watched the man still standing atop the spire, playing with a green mineral stone in his hand.

After a brief laugh, the man went silent again. Yun Huai found the situation eerie, wondering if he was about to die and had encountered a ghost in the Abyss.

The war robots remained on high alert, but Yun Huai noticed they didn't activate the power they had used to bomb the meteorite.

They just protected him behind them, and the most intact robot made a gesture behind its back.

Then Yun Huai realized he was being lifted by an arm again. He sat on the sturdy elbow, hearing the robot he had fixed issue an order.

"Evacuate, evacuate, initiate self-destruct, destruction program."

Yun Huai's eyes widened instantly, and he hurriedly said, "Wait!"

The one-armed robot didn't fully embrace Yun Huai, or rather, it didn't dare use too much force. Yun Huai jumped down from its large arm, stumbled due to inertia, and ran to grab AG-0781's mechanical finger, urgently asking, "Why self-destruct?"

The robot's eyes flickered twice.

Yun Huai suddenly heard another laugh, followed by a voice that was cold, arrogant, and definitely not of an honest person: "Because it quickly assessed and thought it couldn't defeat me. Only self-destruction might create a chance for you to escape. Truly a heartlessly cold design."

The voice was atop the spire one second, and in front of Yun Huai the next. The blurred figure was fully exposed in the green light, allowing Yun Huai to barely make out the person's features.

Golden eyes, somewhat like a cold-blooded creature, but the appearance was of the most perfect human form. Yun Huai saw no strange evolutionary limbs; he looked just like a normal version of himself.

Yun Huai, having seen all sorts of bizarre species lately, momentarily thought he had encountered another Earthling.

And not just any Earthling, but one with an outstanding appearance and not to be messed with.

AG-0781 suddenly fired a silver-white energy beam similar to before, like a slender light bullet. However, the bullet didn’t hit the enemy; Yun Huai watched as the man made no move, and the trajectory twisted in mid-air, then exploded against the spire behind him.

Lu Rinan's black hair was slightly lifted by the shockwave, then fell back down with the airflow. His golden eyes turned to AG-0781: "Don't try to attack me. I worry if you break, this cub will cry."

Yun Huai: "............"

Yun Huai silently gripped AG-0781’s mechanical hand, signaling it not to move, "I am an adult."

Lu Rinan: "You are not."

"I really am an adult."

"You haven't reached the height of an adult."

A poignant strike; height was always Yun Huai's sore point.

He took a deep breath, his stomach making a slight noise, then he closed his eyes in resignation, "Because I'm hungry and can't eat enough, I have malnutrition."

He brought out his most important evidence: "The lord no longer gives me money. Since last month, I've been working and earning Lug coins to survive."

Now it was the person opposite him who fell silent.

After a few moments, Lu Rin'an asked, "Have your subsidies been embezzled before?"

Yun Huai lowered his eyes, "Perhaps, I can't remember clearly."

"Why?"

Yun Huai: "I'm not very bright, sir."

“……”

Yun Huai felt a slight irritation because he found this suddenly appearing creature somewhat overbearing, yet he suspected it wasn't a ghost. Thinking of Tang Sisi, he ventured, "Are you here for deep abyss exploration?"

Lu Rin'an raised an eyebrow: "Why do you ask that?"

Yun Huai, reminded of Tang Sisi’s green eyes by the mineral, said, "Because I met a very beautiful explorer before, and she said she was coming here."

Lu Rin'an hummed softly: "Am I better looking than her?"

Yun Huai: "?"

He said in disbelief: "What are you, talking about?"

Lu Rin'an hissed softly, then his golden eyes flickered for a moment, as if suppressing some restless nature.

"You misunderstand. I’m in a delicate phase which makes me compulsively compare myself to others, ensuring I’m in a superior position," Lu Rin'an explained, "Especially since I find you very attractive, I want to be the first in your eyes."

“……”

Lu Rinan paused for a moment, then added, "I wouldn't normally say something like this. I'm not a pervert who spouts nonsense upon first meeting."

Yun Huai's eyes were full of doubt, so you mean to say normally you'd just think nonsense silently in your mind?

He slightly soothed AG-0781, which had been on high alert. AG-0781 and the other war robots remained motionless, standing guard beside Yun Huai.

Yun Huai thought this strange person could be communicated with, but only to a limited extent, since the other seemed somewhat abnormal, with the only deceptive aspect being his seemingly normal and superior appearance.

Amidst the ruins glowing like auroras, Lu Rinan wore a dark red uniform jacket resembling combat attire, with sleeves adorned with elegant patterns in the same color as his eyes, and two golden six-pointed star insignias hanging from his collar. His eyebrows were extremely dark, sharp as blades at the tips, and he was definitely over 1.9 meters tall, with a perfectly proportioned figure, almost like a mannequin. His black pants were tucked into long boots, which seemed almost too small due to his long legs.

In stark contrast to the fully armed robots, this man only carried two long swords at his waist, a rare type of cold weapon in interstellar society.

Such a "person," seemingly normal in every way, had effortlessly deflected the war robots' projectile attack a moment ago.

It was as if the space around him had been forcibly distorted for an instant.

In the fissure of the Abyss, their breaths—one light, one heavy—intermingled. Yun Huai was a man of few words, and the man opposite, who seemed like a weirdo, exchanged glances with him. Lu Rinan suddenly said, "Your eyes are very beautiful, like the Aurora Nebula."

Yun Huai silently brushed his hair over his face, slightly annoyed at his lapse in vigilance: "Thank you, you too, like a golden Lug coin."

“……”

Lu Rinan truly thought he was sick, and indeed he was, afflicted by his two-month annual nesting and mating period dominated by altered genes.

He just hadn't expected that even hiding in the crevices of the earth, he would still encounter a living person.

And not just any person, but a young, fair, barely adult who fit perfectly into the genetic aesthetic.

This led him to constantly utter words that seemed insane, like now.

"The war robots of the Ita tribe have characteristics of the Ita. They might think you're an Ita, so they protect you."

Yun Huai caught onto something strange, "How do I look like an Ita?"

Lu Rinan: "Your face."

He elaborated, "Pure-blooded Itas have excellent faces, and your face and eyes seem a hundred times better than any Ita, perfect in fact."

“……”

"In this regard, I think these robots have good taste, just like me."

Yun Huai discreetly moved aside, knowing his appearance was unusual. But this person didn’t need to 'compliment' him in two out of every three sentences and then praise himself in the other. He was even stranger and more exaggerated than Tang Sisi.

"But I'm not an Ita," Yun Huai said.

He was just a lowly repairman on a junk planet, always worried about making ends meet.

Lu Rinan nodded, "Indeed you are not. Whether pure-blooded or mixed, Itas have distinctly pointed ears according to their racial traits, which you lack. Your ears are round and cute. They can form a lethal light tail with their psychic power when angry or tense, which you cannot. You seem more rational than them."

Yun Huai couldn't help but ask, "Sir, do you like to compliment others?"

"..." Lu Rinan’s pupils flickered, "Before meeting you, I never praised anyone."

It felt as if something in the air had cracked. Yun Huai sensed his psychic power agitated for a moment. He quietly took a breath and hid a bit more behind the robot.

Lu Rinan’s fingertips itched, somewhat wanting to pull this little creature out.

But seeing that the other was really scared of him, Lu Rinan slightly held back, not wanting his nesting period genes to run wild and foolishly abduct someone.

He glanced at the surrounding energy minerals. Initially, he came here to find materials for building a nest, to suppress the impulse. His nest was almost complete, and for the next one and a half months, he had planned to calm the restlessness of his nesting period through hibernation.

This was the first time Lu Rinan had gone so far and deep during his nesting period, determined to suppress this cursed gene so it would never resurface.

Lu Rinan glanced at the pale, soft youth hiding behind the robot, resignedly changing his breathing pattern.

But it seemed as if the universe was playing a trick on him; he encountered a kid mistaken as Ita by the war robots, and instead of being suppressed, the impulse was screaming and running wild in his brain.

Lu Rinan had never found the nesting period so hard to endure.

[Look at his eyes, the rarest in the whole black galaxy, no, the entire universe. Who else has eyes as rare as yours? Like the mysterious purple Aurora. Don't you want those eyes filled with love looking at you? What are you hesitating for, you mateless and unexpressive failure! The universe will eliminate you sooner or later!]

Lu Rinan's temple twitched slightly: "Shut up."

Yun Huai silently covered his mouth.

"..." He inhaled, "I wasn't talking about you."

Yun Huai tightened his hat, with his black hair fuzzily scattered around the hood's edge.

The word "failure" echoed in Lu Rinan's mind, gradually eroding his rationality. He took a step forward, and the war robots immediately issued a warning.

"Attack! Attack!"

His nesting period genes, upon seeing the perfect target, wouldn't allow any other competitors in his sight.

Lu Rinan clicked his tongue lightly, his fingertips subtly raised. With a flick of his index finger, AG-0781 was instantly smashed against the hard stone wall. The rest followed suit; each time his fingertips twitched, a robot was flung away. The silver-white energy bullets aimed at him were twisted mid-trajectory as they neared him, exploding elsewhere.

He remained untainted by a speck of dust, showing absolute power and intolerance to defiance.

Yun Huai stepped back, his eyes trembling imperceptibly, more accustomed to dangerous situations than actual fear.

He didn't know who the other person was or what he wanted, but it certainly wasn't good. In the Abyss, he had encountered a humanoid monster, capricious and more troublesome than any apocalyptic mutant he had ever seen.

Yun Huai felt like prey being toyed with, inevitably facing death.

He retreated to the edge, where a platform faced a deeper fissure, over ten meters wide, separating it from a building half-buried underground.

AG-0781, unable to move due to damaged parts, flashed its red eyes frantically: "Danger! Danger!"

Yun Huai glanced behind him, seeing green minerals falling into the abyss without a sound.

He had reached the true depths of the abyss.

The wind from the fissure, carrying moisture and a faint stench, stirred his clothes. Yun Huai suddenly said to Lu Rinan, "Everyone who approached me in the past wanted to greedily kill me."

Lu Rinan stopped in his tracks.

"Are you the same?" he asked.

The youth's eyes were slightly elongated and monolid, his skin pale as snow, making every shade on his face strikingly visible.

Like his eyebrows, like his lips, every inch of him was clean and clear. When he lifted his eyes to look at you, the inner fold of his eyelid created a subtle, defiant arch at the corner.

Lu Rinan watched more intently, saying, "Don't move just yet."

Yun Huai nodded obediently and said to him, "Maybe you don’t want to kill me, but I don’t like you. Even your compliments can't change my opinion of you, sorry, I know someone who's a bit judgmental."

Lu Rinan's pupils constricted slightly, the phrase "the universe's failure" echoing and screaming in his mind again.

Yun Huai had been through a night of being injected with drugs, kidnapped, climbing meteorite mountains, and flying in the cold abyss with robots, feeling very hungry after only drinking a few water droplets. Both his mind and body were in dire need of rest.

His expression was gentle and harmless, but in the darkness, his psychic power threads quietly moved, slipping into the gaps in AG-0781's armor.

The next second, the seemingly defunct war robot abruptly stood up, its eyes turning an icy blue, and its arm's energy tube precisely aimed at the back of Lu Rinan's head.

Yun Huai's eyelashes fluttered lightly, surprised he could actually do it.

If possible, he still wanted to see the surface of K420, barren and desolate as it was, for it was a place with life.

His life was hard-earned, and he didn’t want to lose it in confusion.

Lu Rinan slowly turned his head, AG-0781 just a step away.

He detected a sweet scent on AG-0781, like a seductive rain on a cold, snowy mountain, soft and gentle, yet cold upon touch.

This scent drove his nesting period's fiery genes to frenzy, yearning for it, desperately wanting to embrace it. Lu Rinan's expression subtly changed, feeling an unbearable itchiness at his back, something uncontrollable about to emerge.

Then he heard Yun Huai say, "I don't want to hurt anyone. Leave, and let's pretend we never met."

Lu Rinan lifted his eyes, his golden pupils flashing with a hint of dark red, merging together like molten magma buried deep underground.

"I won't harm you," Lu Rinan's pupils intensified, his throat moving slightly as he spoke, "I just want to invite you to see my nest. It's really beautiful, I've spent a long time on it."

A profound sense of alien weirdness escaped with the word "nest," confirming to Yun Huai that despite his handsome and normal appearance, inside was a terrifying cosmic creature.

Yun Huai moved his psychic threads again, about to speak, when an irresistible wave of dizziness overwhelmed him.

Yun Huai's vision blurred, mistaking the scene in front of him for a fiery sea brimming with energy.

Hungrier now.

Wanting to eat.

Wanting to grow taller.

Yun Huai's stomach clenched tightly, his pupils trembling slightly. The next second, his fingers went limp, and he fell straight backwards into the fissure.

AG-0781 buzzed sharply, but before it could leap, a pair of huge black wings suddenly unfurled in front of it. The wings, lacking feathers, were covered in sharply curved scales, encircled by flames that seemed to melt all solid matter.

Those burning black wings soared up from the fall, and with a burst of golden-red sparks, the man hovered above the ruins, cradling the unconscious youth. He gazed down at AG-0781 from high within the dark cave, his expression now cold and haughty, a stark contrast from before.

The surrounding space trembled slightly, and the next second, all breaths vanished into the abyss.

Author's note:

Rinan to Huai: +∞ (Look at me, look at me, look at me! Spreading wings.gif)

Huai to Rinan: -∞ (I'm not looking, I'm not looking, I'm not looking… Eyes closed.jpg)

*Concept of Nesting Period in this story: Common in the natural world, male creatures build beautiful nests using various collected (or dismantled) materials to find a mate. They do this to display their splendor and demonstrate their ability to establish a family. — Excerpt from CCTV10