SZAR Chapter 126

When Qu Xia woke up, a handsome face loomed over him.

An unfamiliar man snatched the rattle from his hands, shaking it above his head, then exclaimed, “Baby, are you stupid or what? Why aren’t you crying?”

Qu Xia blinked: “?”

The man looked vaguely familiar, and a moment later, another poised and elegant figure hurried over. He grabbed the man by the collar from behind and flung him aside, scolding, “Glore, if you make him cry one more time, I’ll throw you out.”

Qu Xia blinked again and remembered who the familiar man was.

The late emperor of the empire, the father of the original owner — His Majesty Glore.

He looked around. He was lying in a baby cradle surrounded by soft cushions. The poised figure picked him up from the bed, dressed him carefully, and said gently, “We’re going to draw lots now.”

Qu Xia had seen photos of the little prince’s selection ceremony before: a small platform circled with blankets, surrounded by mountains of antiques and treasures. He set him on the center of the platform. The treasures around him were taller than he was when standing. Qu Xia scanned the scene and immediately spotted the person he had been looking for.

Erwen still looked like a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old youth, but already bore the upright, serious demeanor of the admiral he would become. He stood straight as a young pine, eyes fixed forward, unwavering.

Sylph nearby was much more relaxed, smiling as he shook the rattle, trying to attract the little prince’s attention.

Qu Xia ignored Sylph. He wobbled to his feet, took a tiny step, and then lunged forward—

Screams erupted all around.

Qu Xia landed squarely in Erwen’s arms, nearly knocking the young man off balance.

Erwen’s eyes went wide.

Clearly, he had no experience holding a child, let alone a precious prince like Qu Xia. His whole body stiffened like a steel plate, dumbly holding Qu Xia, utterly unsure what to do.

Qu Xia clicked his tongue in wonder, thinking, ‘So this is what Erwen was like as a child?’

All precise and composed now, yet put a kid in his arms, and he became completely stiff.

Glore snapped photos wildly from behind, laughing: “Ah, Erwen, my son really likes you!”

He winked mischievously: “Let’s arrange a betrothal, shall we? You’ll marry my son in the future, okay?”

Erwen pressed his lips together.

He looked down at the tiny little creature in his arms, fragile and unable to withstand even a gust of wind. Before he could speak, the empress delivered a sharp smack to Glore and scolded: “Your son just turned one month old, and Erwen will enlist next year. What kind of betrothal are you talking about?”

Glore dared not argue.

The empress forcibly pulled Qu Xia from Erwen’s arms and placed him on the platform: “Little one, you can’t grab that. Grab these instead!”

Qu Xia lunged again, wrapping himself around Erwen’s neck and refusing to let go. He turned to his parents, his vocal cords still undeveloped and unable to speak, so he could only mouth the words: “I—want—this—one—”

This one!

The empress pulled him down again: “Little one, you can’t grab that. Grab these instead!”

Qu Xia: “……

He yielded to the authority of his female father.

The little prince randomly grabbed a jade pendant and was then taken away to rest.

The baby just ate and slept, slept and ate, unable to do anything. Even if Qu Xia tried to go to Erwen, his parents would block him.

When he was five, Glore asked Qu Xia: “Little one, do you want to learn a talent, like a musical instrument or something?”

Qu Xia firmly replied: “I want to learn military strategy!”

— Hurry, let Erwen come and teach me military strategy!

Glore’s eyes went wide, and he practically fell off his chair. He flatly rejected the idea, and it ended there.

When he was seven, Glore asked: “Little one, you’re going to school soon. Do you have a school in mind? How about the royal noble school your father attended?”

Qu Xia said: “I want to go to the elementary school attached to the Empire’s First Military Academy.”

— Then I’ll go climb Erwen’s walls.

Glore was shocked, shaking his head repeatedly, and the matter was dropped.

Qu Xia: “……”

………………

Days passed, and Qu Xia could not find a single opportunity to get close to Erwen. He had even tried contacting Erwen through a private light-brain, but his messages vanished into the void. He worried: “Maybe Erwen just gets too many private messages.”

As the strongest young major general in the military, Erwen had countless admirers; it was understandable that he didn’t see Qu Xia’s messages.

With no way to reach him directly, Qu Xia could only gather bits and pieces of information from the StarNet. He learned that Erwen had joined the First Army and steadily risen to the rank of Major General. He had traversed barren planets and even visited the Empire’s far north. Qu Xia saw photos of Erwen online: the young man handsome and full of vigor, silver-white uniform hugging his lean body. Qu Xia could even recall the soft feel of those muscles when relaxed.

He sighed at the window, thinking: “When will I grow up?”

Grow up, be granted a title, become a true prince, and then he could use the forced match again, bypass his parents, and make the admiral his female monarch.

Qu Xia tore off a page of the calendar and thought: “Twelve more years.”

Twelve more years, and he would awaken for the second time.

But before that calendar page could be torn off, news of a frontline defeat arrived. Qu Xia saw on the news the blood-stained stretchers, saw the handsome young man limping, silently shooing away the reporters, then sitting by the shelves. His lips had lost all color, and when he looked up at the sky, the dark teal of his eyes was filled with desolation.

Qu Xia suddenly realized: “I think I already know this story.”

He had once been closely linked with Erwen’s mental sea, knowing all of his secrets and burdens. The admiral’s youth had not been smooth sailing, he had suffered multiple defeats, great and small, each one leaving tiny scars in his mental sea. Qu Xia had asked him once, but Erwen had brushed it off lightly: “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s in the past.”

Qu Xia had not pressed further then. But now, seeing the images from the frontline, he finally understood just how brutal those times had been.

Behind that calm and composed exterior lay one injury after another.

Qu Xia picked up his light-brain again, wanting to send something to Erwen, but in the end, he gave up in despair and deleted all the texts he had drafted.

Erwen was not his friend, he couldn’t see private messages.

Feeling heavy-hearted, Qu Xia scrolled down the page. At one point, his finger froze abruptly, and his whole body stiffened.

⟦ The Aettris family announces a marriage alliance with the Kyler family; the Empire’s Major General may marry the second son of the Kyler household. ⟧

Qu Xia clenched his light-brain tightly.

Kyler… Kyler… He remembered this Kyler!

In the dark basement of Erwen’s house, behind the devices on the torture rack, on those brass nameplates, he had seen this name more than once.

Qu Xia’s fingers trembled slightly.

Years of peaceful married life had almost made him forget: besides himself, Erwen had once had a truly cruel and violent male lord, one from the Kyler family.

Suppressing his unease, Qu Xia continued scrolling, seeing the comments, full of mixed opinions.

【 I remember the young master of the Kyler family had a terrible reputation, right? 】

【 It can’t be helped. The Major General’s defeat this time was humiliating; the Atris family urgently needs a wedding to save face. 】

【 Major General Erwen probably won’t be able to handle it… 】

Qu Xia jumped off the bed and ran straight to Glore’s bedroom.

His male father was soundly asleep, holding his female father close, when suddenly the door slammed. Glore jolted upright in bed, and seeing Qu Xia, he let out a sigh of relief and scolded, “Little one, are you trying to scare your father to death?”

Qu Xia set his face seriously. “I want to do a rank assessment.”

“A rank assessment?” Glore paused slightly, then smiled. “Little one, I understand you’re eager to grow up at your age, but you’re still too small. Your rank won’t be high yet.”

A newborn insect cub could technically be evaluated for rank at birth, but it was meaningless. The cub’s mental sea is too undeveloped, and testing rank prematurely would harm their self-esteem, like making an elementary school student take the college entrance exam; the result is bound to fail. Only after a cub’s first awakening would a proper evaluation take place.

Qu Xia looked up at him and repeated firmly, “I want to do the rank assessment!”

After all, this was their precious cub held close in their hand, how could they deny this request? Glore hesitated, then sighed: “Alright, we’ll do it. But if your rank comes out low, no crying, okay?”

The next day, Glore received Qu Xia’s report. He stared at the thin sheet, his handsome brows scrunching unevenly, then turned to his precious cub hesitantly. “Little one, I think the machine might be malfunctioning. Do you want to try again?”

How could it be S? How could it possibly be S? A juvenile cub, how could it possibly measure as S?

Qu Xia gave him a glance, then climbed back into the machine.

The staff pressed the activation button with a look of disbelief, their eyes fixed on the progress bar. When the red line shot past the A-rank threshold at full speed, they heard Emperor Glore quietly sobbing in frustration.

The esteemed emperor covered his face with his hands, looking a bit shattered, muttering to himself, “How… how is this possible? How could my little one surpass his old man while still in elementary school?”

Qu Xia jumped down from the machine, took the report from his father’s hands, and handed it to the staff. “Please enter this into the system.”

The staff hesitated, hands trembling as they input the data. The red stamp landed on the file, the information uploaded to the central system, and Qu Xia’s light-brain beeped, granting him full access to all permissions.

Though he hadn’t yet attained heir apparent or Prince title, from the moment he earned an S-rank, he once again became one of the empire’s most prestigious males, on equal footing with Glore.

Qu Xia deactivated the minor mode and headed straight for the matching interface.

In the later timeline, Erwen held high rank and influence, his honors countless, topping the matching interface leaderboard. But now, Erwen was still only a Major General. Qu Xia flipped through his information and saw his ID photo, not the cold, indifferent face Erwen used later, but him looking directly at the camera with a shy, restrained smile.

Once bitten, twice shy. The first time he had hesitated for a long while, but now Qu Xia moved confidently, navigating the matching interface like he had done it a hundred times before, and pressed the button directly.

『  Your Excellency S-rank male Qu Xia have forcibly matched with First Army Major General Erwen. Matching role: Female monarch. 』

On the barren star, Erwen suddenly lifted his eyes.

He was wrapped in bandages, blood loss having left his mind foggy. By now the bleeding had mostly stopped, but his lips were still pale, and his long, silver-gray hair lay in disarray behind him, giving him a truly disheveled appearance.

Erwen opened his light-brain and stared at the line of text for a long time.

Not news from the Kyler family?

He knew the family’s decision: after a crushing defeat in a key battle, promotion seemed hopeless. Compared to remaining a dispensable Major General in the army, the family’s more profitable choice was for him to resign and marry into a prestigious noble house.

Erwen had also heard of the Kyler young master’s reputation and could predict married life, but there was no choice left for him.

…But Qu Xia?

That soft, sticky little dumpling from the selection ceremony, the Imperial Prince of the Empire’s highest nobility, the future emperor set in stone, why was he, at this moment, sending a match invitation to him?

And that bold, capitalized “S-rank male.”

The Empire hadn’t produced an S-rank male in centuries, but the central system doesn’t make mistakes. Qu Xia was truly S-rank. Erwen knew the Aettris family was an established noble house, but he didn’t feel he was qualified to be Qu Xia’s female monarch.

Full of suspicion, he clicked the email link, added Qu Xia as a friend, and when he saw the chat interface, his pupils shrank, blood seemed to reverse flow, and his palms turned icy cold.

Qu Xia had sent him messages, hundreds of them, but he hadn’t seen a single one.

Erwen’s private messages were always overflowing; he never checked messages outside of friends, but that wasn’t a reason to ignore a male of this rank.

For a moment, Erwen thought: ‘Is he trying to get revenge?’

What could be a harsher revenge than trapping a severely injured military female in the backyard, stripping him of his position, forbidding treatment, and adding a little abuse and humiliation on top?

Emotionally, Erwen couldn’t link the little dumpling who had leapt into his arms with the cruel, brutal male lord, but reason told him that all males in the Empire were exactly like this, without exception.

Erwen forced himself upright and, using the last of his strength, replied to Qu Xia: 【 Your Excellency. 】

He chose his words carefully: 【 I’m very sorry for not seeing your messages. Thank you for the match. I will return soon and submit my resignation to the military department… 】

He didn’t know if this wording was respectful and sincere enough. But before he could edit it again, Qu Xia’s avatar flickered, and a message arrived first.

【 You don’t have to resign? Why would you resign? 】

Erwen’s heart skipped a beat.

【 But you do need to leave the military first and return to the main planet for a while. 】

Before Erwen could calm his mind, another message followed:【 You have to come back and properly heal your injuries first. 】

After so many years, finally having access again to his female’s account, Qu Xia was overjoyed, tapping away on the light-brain nonstop.

Erwen watched the messages streaming in, and he relaxed slightly. The male was willing to say so much, proof that he truly wasn’t angry at Erwen’s neglect.

Erwen raised his hand and typed: 【 Thank you for your favor… 】

Before he could send it, he blinked once, then again, staring at the screen, trying to tell if it was a hallucination from blood loss.

The little male said: 【 Come back quickly. I’ve found the best doctor for you. 】

He also said: 【 This time I’ll take good care of you, I promise! 】