Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Lu Cian, worn down by Lily's relentless pestering, finally agreed to make the dish. Unfortunately, a key ingredient was missing, and there was no substitute. Even the most skilled cook couldn't make a meal without the right ingredients.

Upon hearing of Landon's return, Lily, as if injected with a stimulant, immediately sought out Lu Cian, dragging him along to retrieve the ingredients and pleading with him to cook.

But when they arrived, Landon was nowhere to be found.

If they didn't find Landon before dinner, Lily would once again miss out on the dish his boss made.

"No way!" Lily adamantly refused to let that happen. "Boss, aren't you curious what the Heir Apparent and the others are discussing? Let's go eavesdrop!"

Perhaps they could find an opportunity to sneak in, get Landon to hand over the Space Button, and he could find the ingredients himself.

For a bite to eat, Lily was truly going all out.

After all, eavesdropping on a meeting, especially in a military context, could be construed as leaking classified information or even colluding with the enemy, which would warrant court-martial.

Lu Cian looked hesitant. "That doesn't seem right. It's not much more time. Why don't you find your Landon tomorrow morning? Once I have the ingredients, I'll make it for you right away, how about that?"

Lily naturally wouldn't agree; waiting another day meant one less meal!

"Boss, don't be scared. The Heir Apparent is very kind. Even if he finds us, it'll be fine. I'm already quite big; I'll undergo my second evolution soon, and once I evolve, I'll be an adult. Adults can attend meetings with them. I'm just getting a head start."

Lu Cian was speechless. Wasn't it just recently that he was so terrified of Nair Inan he could barely speak? And now he was telling him there was nothing to be afraid of?

Not being an adult meant not being an adult. What was this unevolved little bug trying to act like a big shot for, talking about getting a head start? How was this any different from a child secretly trying on adult clothes?

Lily observed Lu Cian's expression, saw that he remained unmoved, and immediately began shaking his arm, whining, "Boss, you're the best, most amazing, most reasonable boss in the world! Please come with me, please, please!"

Lu Cian was shaken so hard he felt like he was going to throw up his lunch. He finally gave in. "Stop shaking me, stop shaking me! Fine, I'll go, alright?"

Hearing Lu Cian agree, Lily gave a "success" gesture to his younger followers and dragged Lu Cian towards the meeting room.

Actually, Lily had been mistaken about one thing earlier: even if he became an adult, he might not necessarily be qualified to attend the meeting.

...

Inside the meeting room sat the captain of each small squad, only about a dozen bugs in total.

With so few bugs sitting inside, trying to sneak in from the outside would likely not be easy. If there were hundreds of bugs inside, the two of them blending in wouldn't be so obvious, but with only a dozen bugs, two short figures quietly walking in would be immediately exposed.

"Lily, what are you doing here? And who is that bug with you?" Landon's hawk-like eyes fixed on Lu Cian, his gaze incredibly sharp.

It startled Lu Cian.

Lily whispered, "Landon, you can't be mean to him. This is my boss, and he's also the Heir Apparent's friend. He's very important!"

"Also, Landon, did you forget? I sent Xiao Sen to wait at the door to ask you for ingredients, but you didn't give them to him, and I came all this way for nothing!"

Lily sounded a bit miffed towards the end, as if Landon had committed some heinous crime.

Hearing this, Landon's expression softened. He first apologized to Lu Cian, then handed the Space Button to Lily. "Here are the things. Take your friend and leave first."

Having gone through so much trouble to get in, Lily suddenly didn't want to leave. "Landon, can't I just sit aside and listen? I'm almost an adult!"

Landon's unyielding tone rang out, "No. Even if you become an adult, you must first become a squad leader to be qualified to attend the meeting."

Hearing Landon's words, Lily was a bit disheartened, but then he saw Lu Cian beside him and perked up again. "Landon, he's the Heir Apparent's honored guest! Doesn't he have the right to listen in on the meeting?"

Landon was taken aback by the question, as he didn't know what kind of honored guest this friend was and wasn't sure if the other party could attend this meeting.

Lu Cian, observing from the side, understood the situation. He wasn't without discernment. He tugged at Lily's clothes directly and said, "Since we have the ingredients, let's go. Lily, didn't you say you were in a hurry just now?"

Lily was indeed in a hurry, but the opportunity to attend a meeting was rare and hard to come by, so he hesitated.

Nair Inan, at the head of the table, had already spotted them. Realizing that one of them was Lu Cian and that he hadn't seen much of him outside of mealtimes these past few days, he motioned for Damon to call the bug over.

Seeing the Heir Apparent's approval, Landon readily allowed Lu Cian to enter.

Lily smirked at Landon in defiance, intending to follow Lu Cian, but Landon blocked his path. "The Heir Apparent didn't call for you. You can't go in."

Lily: "..."

Lily was about to explode with frustration!

Sometimes he really liked Landon, but other times he was incredibly annoyed by him.

If the Heir Apparent could allow a guest bug to listen in on the meeting, it meant this meeting wasn't as important as he thought. Why was Landon so rigid?

No matter how much Lily liked Lu Cian, he had to admit that the other party was not a Shelley Clan bug. No matter how distinguished a guest bug was, they were still an outsider.

There was nothing for it. Landon wouldn't let him in, so Lily couldn't enter. In the end, he could only leave dejectedly.

Walking outside, Lily looked at the Space Button in his hand, and a wave of sorrow washed over him.

He should have listened to his boss when he advised him earlier. Now, he hadn't gotten the chance to listen in on the meeting, and he had lost his boss to it as well.

His delicious food!

...

At Damon's signal, Lu Cian sat next to Nair Inan. The other party didn't say anything when he came over, but continued the previous topic.

Lu Cian also didn't try to show off or speak out of turn, quietly sitting there as a background presence.

"Heir Apparent, we heard some rumors on our way back. The Insect Emperor was furious about the female officer's lax supervision on Planet Larenha and is reportedly planning to convict her."

"Conviction? Is that all the Emperor knows? He won't even give that female officer a chance to redeem herself through meritorious service. Isn't he afraid of disheartening the female officers?"

"Heh, how could those female officers be disheartened? Female officers who achieve merit are assigned male consorts," a female bug said sarcastically.

"It's quite amusing, actually. The reason that female officer was lax in her supervision was reportedly to please her male consort. She took a week off, and without her keeping them in line, the bugs under her naturally became undisciplined."

"Hahaha, the Emperor must have turned green with rage when he found out the whole story, right?"

"Absolutely. He probably wanted to kill that bug. I heard he plans to condemn her as a slave and throw her into the female slave trading center."

"Doesn't she have a male consort? Won't he try to save her?"

A bug sneered, "All male consorts are the same. Forget a female officer; even empress consorts brought back from noble families aren't valued by them. They're just sacrifices in power struggles. That female officer can wait for her male consort to save her, she'll be waiting to cry."

"You're right. Even if her male consort were willing to bail her out, she'd be demoted to a female slave, with no freedom whatsoever, living like bug excrement. She'd be better off dead."

"Those female officers don't have your backbone. Maybe some bugs would rather live like bug excrement."

"Pah, what cowards!"

"......"

After finishing their gossip, they finally got down to the day's main business.

Nair Inan said, "We need to leave the outpost as soon as possible. The Insect Emperor has his eyes on me. After such a huge humiliation, he won't rest until he completely removes me, this thorn in his side."

After speaking, Nair Inan rubbed his temples and continued, "How many of our tribe members do we still have?"

Damon began to report: "Sixteen squad leaders, each with sixty bugs under them, plus twenty-five unevolved bugs, twenty..."

"And one thousand and eight tribe members."

The meeting room immediately fell silent. Thinking of their remaining kin, every bug's face showed sadness.

Nair Inan's face also showed a momentary look of bewilderment, followed by confusion, sorrow, and despondency.

Lu Cian had felt some heartache when he heard them talk about the extermination of the Shelley Clan before, but since the event hadn't happened to him personally, he couldn't truly empathize.

Now, with the old wound being reopened, Lu Cian finally understood the depth of national and familial hatred that Brother Nan bore, and his heart ached even more for him.

An entire clan. He heard that the insect race had a particularly large population. A clan would have tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of bugs. Now, only a little over a thousand remained from tens of millions.

It was truly tragic!

Although Lu Cian later learned that many bugs had surrendered directly, others, a portion of them, preferred death over submission, some had fled the tribal lands in advance, some were traveling abroad and had not returned, some had died in battle on the day of the incident, and some had scattered and fled after the tribal lands were breached, their whereabouts still unknown.

A vast tribe, instantly disintegrated.

Some tribe members did not return to their tribal lands, not because they lacked a sense of belonging to the Shelley Clan. They had lost their homeland and were filled with uncertainty about their future.

The tribal leader had passed away, and there was no leading bug to guide them in revitalizing the Shelley Clan. They could only scatter and eke out a living.

Nair Inan planned to slowly gather those tribe members back once they found a place where they could live long-term and settle down.

The most important thing right now was to find a long-term home and re-establish their Shelley Clan territory.

The spaceship they had used to escape was a discarded one they had found after much searching, barely made usable by several bugs patching and hammering it together.

Such a dilapidated spaceship, without even large-caliber artillery, would face certain death against the royal family's pursuit.

The Insect Emperor believed he understood the Shelley Clan and thought that with their pride, even in their decline, they would never ride such an inferior spaceship. Ironically, they evaded capture precisely because of this.

After years of fleeing, betrayal by trusted aides, and imprisonment, Nair Inan had long shed the Shelley Clan's former arrogance. Even living in a slum now would not faze him.

But this was not a long-term solution. The female officers raised by the Insect Emperor were not incompetent; they would eventually find their hiding place.

They needed to carefully consider: where could they live a stable life?

This was the purpose of this meeting.