SZAR Chapter 108

Qu Xia lingered over the egg for a long while before finally letting go.

He cradled it in his arms, excitement plain on his face: “Admiral, they’ve gone!”

“Looks like my acting wasn’t too bad.”

Erwen: “……”

Not wanting to crush the male’s enthusiasm, he muttered vaguely, “The wind in the forest is strong. Go back inside.”

This area had already been checked, but the encirclement hadn’t withdrawn. From the satellite view, dense red dots could still be seen.

Erwen worried that the military would find him on a second sweep. He hadn’t returned to his body and remained in the form of the egg.

Qu Xia absolutely adored this egg.

Its surface was smooth and warm, big and round. No matter how he looked at it, it was adorable. He couldn’t put it down, playing with it in his hands before leaping onto the bed and placing it on the soft mattress.

Erwen rolled uncomfortably to the side, but Qu Xia reached out and scooped him back.

“Where are you running off to?” Qu Xia held him firmly. “What if you fall and break?”

Erwen said, “The egg isn’t that fragile. It won’t break. You can place it however you like, even if it falls a couple times, it’s fine.”

Qu Xia wrinkled his nose. “Nonsense. Eggs need careful handling.”

In his previous life, Qu Xia had always handled even a chicken egg with extreme care. He had also seen photos in the original owner’s space. When the original owner was still an egg, the maternal and paternal adults had treated it like a treasure. Thick cushions were placed everywhere; nobody dared let the egg bump or fall.

Erwen said calmly, “If it were fragile enough to break from a fall, then this female wouldn’t even need to be born.”

Qu Xia had been reaching for snacks on the bedside table, but at those words, the jelly he was holding plopped to the floor.

He was a little shocked. “What do you mean, ‘wouldn’t need to be born’? Why would you say that?”

Qu Xia had many classmates studying medicine and had seen newborns in the neonatal incubators. Each new life was delicate and fragile, requiring careful, attentive care. If a child had congenital problems, sometimes the entire ward ran back and forth, exhausted, just to snatch them back from death.

And yet now, Erwen said it so plainly: “wouldn’t need to be born?”

Erwen didn’t understand why Qu Xia was so agitated and kept his tone calm: “The growth environment for females is harsh. Fragile females do not survive to adulthood. We are born strong; the weak are meant to be eliminated.”

This was a principle almost all females followed.

Qu Xia’s brow furrowed little by little.

He recalled the twisted family rules in Erwen’s household.

There was a strange contradiction in the admiral himself: he strictly adhered to rules, demanded perfection in everything. Qu Xia had heard from Sylph that Erwen had once raised someone named Nuo Wei, similarly rigid, never willing to take a single misstep.

Yet with Lock, the little female who had come from that junk planet, the admiral was surprisingly permissive, as if making up for something.

Qu Xia thought to himself that Erwen must already know. He knew that following this rules would make a young female suffer. He didn’t want that. He felt guilt toward his previous child, but the rules of the world pressed down on him, the discipline of generations echoing in his ears. All he could do was repeat, over and over, using these family rules to control the young… perhaps just like how he had been treated as a child.

Qu Xia couldn’t help but recall the photos in the space.

Back then, Erwen had still been a boy, his face not yet free of youthful innocence, yet he already carried the grown, composed look of the man he would become. The way he held him was like a straight wooden rod; upright and pleasing to the eye, but utterly unnatural for someone of that age.

Qu Xia wondered if Erwen’s parents had been the same as him, recording thousands of rules into the robots, never letting him sleep in, never letting him eat junk food, squeezing every second to the fullest. This was how Erwen became the prodigious, top-scoring admiral.

Perhaps, for Erwen, a female who wasn’t exceptional simply had no chance of living properly in this world.

Suddenly, Qu Xia felt a pang of sadness.

He lifted his face. The egg had slowly moved, already nudging toward the edge of the bed. Erwen stubbornly refused to share the bed, but Qu Xia reached out, pulled him back, and held him tightly in his arms. Then he lowered his head, burying his face in his arms as well.

In this position, Qu Xia’s nose pressed against the egg’s shell.

The young male’s breath misted over the shell, carrying a faint hint of mint. Erwen shifted slightly and asked, “What’s wrong?”

He could sense that the male’s mood had inexplicably dropped.

Qu Xia drew a deep breath. “Nothing.”

Then, without thinking, he said, “It shouldn’t be like this.”

Even if this was how Erwen had been educated since childhood, even if it was the conduct code of his family, even if it reflected the consensus of the world and all female zergs, the standard all females accepted, Qu Xia could not agree.

He said seriously, “No egg is ever not meant to be born or deserves to be broken. If I were your parent, I would never say that fragile females shouldn’t be born. I would wrap you in blankets, surround you with cotton. I would never, ever let you bump into anything!”

Erwen could only give a muted, wry smile.

The words were so childlike, yet a strange fullness swelled in Erwen’s chest, making his entire heart ache faintly.

Qu Xia, and also Lock, both of them carried a rare kind of innocence, as if they had never glimpsed the darker sides of society. He himself had grown up in love, never tasted hardship, and couldn’t bear to see anyone else suffer. That was why, on the Garbage Star, the strategist worried he couldn’t lift trash and would cut his palms to ease the pain in his mental sea. And that was also why, on the Capital Star, when the Prince teased him lightly, Qu Xia would rush to smooth things over.

Qu Xia was genuine, he simply could not bear to see anyone sad.

But… how could there be a male like this?

Male zergs of their species delighted in oppressing and abusing females. They could not empathize with pain, could not feel pity, and certainly would never say seriously, as Qu Xia did, “I will never let you bump into anything.”

Erwen found himself speechless, his chest heavy with emotion. He thought in stunned wonder: “The female who marries Qu Xia will be very happy.”

Qu Xia would never use punishment, nor build a basement. If he were wronged, he would simply sit on the sofa, letting tears fall one by one until the female couldn’t help but go comfort him.

He was easy to care for, never picky about how tea was poured, never enraged over the temperature or taste of food. He would simply eat happily, finishing his meal in one go, then smile with eyes curved like a little hamster.

And he would absolutely be a good father, providing proper care during pregnancy, never using pheromones as leverage, and loving the child equally whether it was female or male.

Qu Xia would, just as he said, wrap the egg carefully in a blanket, hold it gently in his arms, and then let the young one grow freely.

He would never be like Erwen, serious and rigid, stingy with affection. He would tell his female and their young cub over and over again that he loved them.

Erwen thought: This really is an extraordinary male.

After a long silence, the admiral sighed, shaking off the strange thoughts, and pretended to be indifferent: “Don’t talk nonsense.”

Qu Xia frowned: “I’m not talking nonsense.”

Over the next two days, Erwen was the first to experience life as Qu Xia’s little one.

Qu Xia truly treated him like a newly hatched egg. He wrapped Erwen tightly in a blanket, leaving only the top of the egg exposed. At night, he placed him on the bed, using hands and arms to hold him close, guarding him like a precious treasure. During the day, he took him out to bask in the sun.

Their fresh supplies were almost gone, but they still had a fridge full of nutrient fluid. Qu Xia began mixing it with various juice powders, sewing a small pocket on the front of his apron and placing Erwen inside. He hummed as he stirred the mixture.

Resources on the desolate star were limited. The nutrient fluid only came in a few flavors, strawberry, pineapple, and watermelon, and Qu Xia nearly vomited from tasting them. While mixing, he sighed, lightly tapping the egg in his pocket: “Admiral, you still owe me a meal, remember?”

He was talking about the one he had promised Lock before.

Erwen wanted to nod, but for an egg, that was too difficult. So he settled for: “Mm.”

Qu Xia, thinking of his culinary skills, whispered mischievously: “It’s been so long. Can I get some interest? How about ten meals?”

Before Erwen could answer, Qu Xia felt he was overdoing it. Erwen was such a busy person, making even one meal was rare, ten would be a huge waste of his time. So Qu Xia adjusted: “Nine?”

Still muttering to himself: “Eight then, maybe…”

“Seven’s fine, hmm, six, but no less!”

Erwen chuckled again.

His cooking skills were A+, but the previous male lord had never praised them. For a female, making good food was a duty; bad food was a crime. Even his parents treated such achievements as ordinary. In the Aettris family, female offspring were expected to get straight A’s. It wasn’t something to be praised.

But Qu Xia was different. He showed his delight plainly, as if tasting the food were something he had longed for.

Erwen said, “Fine. As long as you want to eat, I can make it anytime.”

Qu Xia counted on his fingers.

For a brief moment, he thought about saying, ‘What if I want to keep eating; not just ten meals, but a hundred, a thousand, every meal from now on?’

But then he felt that would be too sudden, so he swallowed the words.

………………

By the morning of the third day, the encirclement finally withdrew.

Erwen’s disappearance was now certain. The military had scoured every corner of Pamir, finding no trace of the admiral, and everything alive inside the perimeter had been combed through. The higher-ups were nearly certain that Erwen had died on the barren star.

They weren’t surprised by this outcome. The turbulence of his mental sea combined with the crash of the aircraft. No matter how strong a female was, he couldn’t survive that.

With the main force returning home, Qu Xia finally breathed a sigh of relief. He could now bring Erwen out to replenish their supplies.

Still pretending to be a weak female raising an egg alone, he carried Erwen to the shops in the residential area, buying plenty of meat, eggs, and milk. Then, adjusting his clothes, he sat somewhere not too close and not too far from the military, listening to the locals talk about the battle.

The traitor’s forces were even bigger than expected. Several meetings had already cemented Erwen’s guilt, and his close aides were being imprisoned one after another. Qu Xia lowered his head to eat noodles as the people around him gossiped: “I heard they’re putting them on lie detectors?”

“Yeah, a few already have, but there’s a certain Major General… Nuo something. Apparently his mental sea went haywire, and he’s still in the Pamir hospital. They postponed the lie detector.”

As they spoke, the bag at Qu Xia’s chest shook violently.

He quickly reached out to steady Erwen and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Erwen paused for a moment, then sighed: “Nuo Wei… I failed him.”

He had stolen Nuo Wei’s happy childhood and could not promise him a stable future. Failing to catch the traitor before the expedition was his fault, and it implicated Nuo Wei.

Qu Xia thought for a moment.

The so-called lie detector process actually connected directly to the mental sea via waves, observing fluctuations in the mental sea. Sylph’s laboratory specialized in mental sea research, with all kinds of data and papers. Qu Xia had even done work related to lie detection.

He patted the egg gently. “Don’t worry.”

Then, Qu Xia walked over to the group chatting nearby. “Excuse me, which direction is the hospital you just mentioned?”

After getting the information, Qu Xia drove off. About a kilometer from the hospital, he saw a black-haired male boarding an aircraft. His features seemed vaguely familiar.

Qu Xia thought for a moment. This was probably a somewhat famous game developer, someone who had appeared on news programs before.

He held up Erwen, raising the egg over his head, and whispered, “Admiral, could that person be Nuo Wei’s male lord?”

Erwen was also taken aback.

The male in the aircraft carried a refined, noble aura. His brow was slightly furrowed, giving off a cold, unapproachable elegance, exactly the presence of Nuo Wei’s male master.

Erwen felt a swirl of complex emotions.

Although the gentleman’s recent actions had somewhat changed Erwen’s impression of him, he never expected that a male would be willing to travel so far to appear on the desolate, ruined Pamir Star.

Erwen nodded in acknowledgment. Qu Xia made a low hum, and the aircraft lifted off, quickly following the male at a distance.

— He had to tell that gentleman the method for guiding with lie detection.