Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"I hope you don't have any suicidal thoughts. If you have any issues or are confused about anything, we will arrange for a doctor to provide you with psychological counseling immediately."

Fu Han let out a cold laugh: "Psychological counseling? I think it's brainwashing."

The officer shrugged, as if to say, "Say whatever you want."

He tapped on the holographic device in his hand and continued: "According to the data, you live with your aunt's family members, and your relationship with them seems less than harmonious. However, you are close to your grandmother and sister, and your sister has been suffering from a novel strain of fever since last year, right?"

Fu Han stared at him menacingly, "What exactly are you trying to say?"

The other gave a slight smile: "As long as you cooperate with the Federation to complete the reproduction task, your sister will receive the best treatment resources on Baiyao Star, and your grandmother will receive a generous monthly stipend."

Then his tone took a sharp turn: "But if you choose suicide, the Empire will revoke all welfare benefits for your family. On the contrary, they will be imprisoned, and your family will be held criminally liable for your failure to fulfill the reproduction obligation. Given all this, I hope you'll think carefully before doing anything drastic."

Fu Han tightened his grip on the remote control in his pocket and met the officer's gaze: "So you're threatening me?"

"Consider it a reminder. And you'd better not think about harming your breeding partner, after all..." At this, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly, and the smile made Fu Han very uncomfortable, "Lord Lanxiu is a force to be reckoned with," he said.

Fu Han snorted at his deliberate, cryptic remark. He didn't think there could be anything remarkable about an old man over a hundred.

However, according to his original plan, he intended to detonate the quantum bomb on his body once the hovercraft left Noah City's territory. Even if he couldn't blow up the entire hovercraft, he would die together with these white bastards. But now everything had to be reconsidered; he couldn't implicate his maternal grandmother and sister. He couldn't care less whether his aunt's family lived or died.

When the officer brought Fu Han to Lanxiu's residence, the butler robot informed him that Lanxiu wasn't there, giving Fu Han—who still hadn't come up with a plan—a temporary sense of relief.

After the officer departed on his hovercraft, Fu Han saw no one in the living room and sat down on the sofa.

He took in the minimalist, almost empty living room. Aside from a few tropical plants by the floor-to-ceiling windows, there were almost no decorations. Even the sofa he sat on was plain grayish-white fabric without any pattern. The walls and floor were uniformly cold white, giving the illusion of entering a vast, icy wasteland.

It was different from the ostentatious, money-reeking home he had imagined; it seemed overly plain.

The butler robot was a lifelike maid with light golden curls and sea-blue eyes. As she walked, her heels clicked crisply on the floor.

He had to admit that Baiyao Star's technology in robot manufacturing was quite advanced. If not for the data display hanging around her neck, Fu Han wouldn't have known she was a robot when he first came in.

Not only were her expressions natural, but she also did clumsy things, like now.

"Oh, sorry, madam!"

Fu Han sat on the sofa, watching the butler maid spill coffee on his pants for the third time because her hand slipped. He even wondered if the robot was doing it on purpose.

But she immediately knelt down, reverently wiping the stain from Fu Han's pants with a handkerchief, her face full of guilt on the verge of tears. Fu Han felt she might indeed be clumsy.

Or rather, her program had set her personality to be this clumsy.

Fu Han seemed to be getting a glimpse of that old man's peculiar taste.

Fu Han reached out and tapped the attribute settings on the butler maid's neck, but a password input box popped up, preventing access. Fu Han looked up at the butler maid: "What's the password?"

She scratched the top of her head, thinking, then rattled off a long string: "I swear by the name of the God Novara that I will cherish Lord Lanxiu all my life. In life, I offer him my entire body; in death, I sacrifice my entire soul for him. If I ever violate the divine will, I will dig out my heart and eat it myself to atone for all the sins of betraying Lord Lanxiu."

Fu Han: "..."

Butler maid: "And the password requires voice input, madam."

Fu Han: "..."

After staring back and forth with the butler maid for a few seconds, Fu Han exited the attribute settings with an unhappy expression, directly entered the background program, found the code for the attribute settings, and deleted the code for the maid's clumsy personality.

After the modification, Fu Han handed the coffee cup back to her: "Try it now. It should be fine."

Although the coffee had been spilled three times already, the robot didn't get tired. The butler maid quickly brewed another cup and brought it over, this time placing it steadily on the coffee table in front of Fu Han without spilling a single drop.

The butler maid covered her mouth in excitement, almost crying tears of joy. It was the first time she had successfully brewed a cup of coffee and delivered it without mishap. She couldn't help but reach out and hug Fu Han, but the next second, she sprang back like a cat that had stepped on its tail, stumbling back several steps, then knocked the coffee cup off the coffee table with a crash, spilling it on the floor.

Fu Han was bewildered by her sudden overreaction.

"It's over! It's over! I hugged madam! When Lord Lanxiu comes back, he will surely punish me. He hates it when others touch his things without permission. Wuwu, what should I do..."

Fu Han looked at the female robot sitting on the floor, wailing loudly, and felt a headache coming on. Just as he was thinking about deleting the 'crying' attribute from her program, the maid suddenly stopped crying, stood up with a serious expression, as if she had instantly entered a different mode.

Witnessing this whole process, Fu Han felt like he was watching a split personality.

"Madam, Lord Lanxiu's hovercraft will arrive at the docking station in thirty minutes. You have forty-five minutes to prepare. Now you can follow me to the rest area upstairs to wash up and change clothes."

"Can I skip it?"

"You have no choice. Lord Lanxiu dislikes unclean bodies."

Fu Han was led by the butler maid to the bedroom on the second floor, where he saw a large bouquet of bright red roses on the bed. Roughly counting, there must have been over a hundred, each one vibrant and emitting a refreshing fragrance.

Seeing so many red roses, Fu Han was momentarily stunned. After all, fresh flowers were a rare luxury in Noah City.

After escorting him to the bedroom, the butler maid went downstairs to prepare dinner. Fu Han took the remote control out of his pocket, looked at it, and then placed it under the pillow. For the sake of his sister and maternal grandmother, he couldn't commit suicide yet. Did that mean he had to have a child with that old man?

That would be worse than death.

The physiological structure of Bluestars is different from that of Baiyao Star. In Noah City, men marry women. But someone discovered that male Bluestars have the ability to reproduce with Baiyao Star residents. It was precisely for this reason that Baiyao Star decided to grant a piece of territory for Bluestars to live on, offering certain material support and interstellar protection.

The price was that Blue Star had to unconditionally offer the detected breeders to Baiyao Star.

To put it more bluntly, they used these unlucky ones to exchange for the remaining Bluestars' chance to continue surviving on Baiyao Star.

Fu Han lay back on the bed, stretched out two slender fingers, pinched the receptacle of a rose, and with a slight twist, broke off the bright red flower head.

He held the rose to the tip of his nose and gently sniffed. A rich floral fragrance rushed into his breath, like being in a beautiful dream.

And this dream was soon shattered by the footsteps in the hallway.

"Lord Lanxiu, madam is inside."

Hearing the butler maid's voice, Fu Han jolted upright from the bed and threw the rose away.

Wasn't there still forty-five minutes? How had he arrived so quickly? He was too tired earlier and had fallen asleep on the bed without realizing it.

No good. He still hadn't figured out what to do.

Seeing the bathrobe on the bedside table, Fu Han grabbed it and darted into the bathroom just before the footsteps reached the door. Without taking off his clothes, he turned on the shower overhead.

Warm water flowed to the floor. Fu Han set down the bathrobe and listened carefully to the sounds outside.

The person came in from the door, gently closed it, and then the footsteps went to the bed in the bedroom. After that... silence?

Fu Han pressed his ear against the door, but couldn't hear any unusual sounds. Could it be that the old man had been out all day, got too tired, and fell asleep as soon as he lay down on the bed?

It wasn't impossible. His maternal grandmother often dozed off easily, nodding off in her wheelchair in the blink of an eye. Besides, this old man was over a hundred, more than twenty years older than his maternal grandmother, so it wouldn't be strange for him to fall asleep quickly.

Thinking this, Fu Han breathed a slight sigh of relief. But it was only slight.

He took his time in the bathroom, soaking in the bath, since he had hidden in the corn pile for half the day, and his clothes were full of bits of straw, making him a bit itchy.

He changed into his bathrobe and quietly opened the bathroom door, only to see that the main light in the bedroom was off, replaced by the faint, flickering glow of candles on the table.

A vintage silver candlestick stood on the small round table by the window, its shape exaggerated, somewhat like coral, with seven or eight milky-white wax candles stuck into it, as the air was filled with a rich, creamy fragrance.

On the table were two goblets, about five inches tall, one a third full of red wine, the other empty.

In the glow of the candlelight, they looked a bit like dusty crystal lamps.

Fu Han walked barefoot toward the bed. Although he didn't want to see that old man, he wanted to check if the old man was asleep; if he was, he could sneak downstairs to sleep.

But as he reached the bed, Fu Han suddenly stopped in his tracks.

The bouquet of roses on the bed had been torn into countless tiny petals, and the thorny stems were strewn on the floor. Sensing someone approaching, the person leaning against the headboard turned his head to look at Fu Han, then broke into a faint smile that made Fu Han's heart race.

The person before him looked exactly like Novara, the guardian deity of Baiyao Star. Silver hair, emerald eyes, long hair messily falling over the shoulder exposed by his robe, his cold, pale skin reminiscent of the icy floor and walls downstairs. His body lay on a bed of roses, the stark contrast of white and red made his pupils constrict. The look in his eyes as he gazed at Fu Han was cold with a hint of pity, as if a god were mocking the mortal world. Fu Han felt his heart pounding in his chest.