SZAR Chapter 37

Nuo Wei was flustered by Chu Ci’s sudden anger. What he had said was the kind of flattering, polite words that many military females would say before deployment, but his lord clearly wasn’t buying it.

Nuo Wei thought a moment and added, “Maybe not just double… three times? Four times should be possible too?”

Unlike the flattery that many females used to curry favor, words spoken only to get pheromones from their lord, Nuo Wei spoke seriously. He was the youngest major general in the Empire, and war was his natural talent. He genuinely believed he could earn three or even four times the merits.

Chu Ci’s teeth itched with frustration. He grabbed Nuo Wei’s cheeks and pulled him outward: “I don’t want money—”

Before he could finish, Nuo Wei quickly added, “The Pamir Star I’m going to has the largest known uranium salt mines, and it’s also the biggest source of Pamir gems.”

Chu Ci: “?”

What the hell?

He was feeling the sting of farewell, his anger coiled inside, and Nuo Wei decides now is the moment for a geography lesson?

Nuo Wei said, “Whatever color Pamir gem you want… I’ll bring it back for you.”

Chu Ci: “……”

Well then. His image as a gem-collecting enthusiast had clearly taken root in everyone’s mind.

Chu Ci kicked the innocent suitcase again and kept hold of Nuo Wei’s cheeks. “I don’t want those gemstones.”

Then he sat down right there on the edge of the bed. Nuo Wei followed and half-knelt in front of him. Chu Ci ran a hand through his silver-white hair and, through clenched teeth, said, “Bring this silver-white treasure of mine back to me in one whole piece, from head to toe. Do you hear me?”

Female zergs locked in battle were the most likely to suffer a collapse of their mental sea, and they needed the comfort of a male the most. Unfortunately, the front lines were too dangerous, pampered and physically weak males could not go. Chu Ci was uneasy. He pressed Nuo Wei down again and again, even grinding his teeth against the insect pattern at the back of his neck, bullying him until a thin layer of sweat formed on his skin. Then, at the critical moment, he stopped and bit his ear while making demands.

“What did I just say? Repeat it. After you repeat it, we’ll continue.”

Nuo Wei was dizzy and overwhelmed. How could he remember what Chu Ci had just said? He could only mumble incoherently. Chu Ci truly stopped, then repeated it word by word in his ear:

“I swear, every fight I do on the battlefield is for my ideals and my honor. I will not make any irrational decisions just to exchange military merits for star coins.”

The sentence was too long. Even someone fully clear-headed would struggle to repeat it perfectly, let alone Nuo Wei in his current dazed state.

He wrapped his arms around Chu Ci’s neck, confused and on the verge of breaking down, his cyan eyes staring blankly at him.

That suspended feeling, left hanging there, was unbearably strange, neither up nor down. His legs felt weak and unsteady, as if they weren’t touching the ground. Chu Ci had pushed him until sweat dampened his hair. All he could do was repeat the words in broken fragments after him.

Chu Ci pressed him, “Say it!”

“What’s so hard about saying it? We only continue after you say it!”

Nuo Wei had no choice but to follow:

“I swear…”

“Every fight is… for my ideals…”

“And honor…”

A mere fifty-odd words, yet Nuo Wei had to break it into seven or eight parts before finishing. By the end, he drew in a deep breath, his voice almost trembling with tears:

“I will not exchange military merits for star coins…”

“…not make any irrational decisions.”

“!”

The moment he finished speaking, Nuo Wei struggled slightly. Chu Ci rubbed his hair and pulled his female monarch into his arms. Lowering his voice, he first comforted him softly. After the soothing was over, Nuo Wei belatedly became shy and tried to pull out of his embrace, but Chu Ci tightened his hold and refused to let him go, threatening:

“Do you still dare to talk about fighting to the death and doubling the assets?”

Nuo Wei couldn’t even turn over anymore. Other than saying, “I don’t dare,” he couldn’t get anything else out.

Chu Ci nodded in satisfaction. “That’s more like it.”

For several days, they were so wrapped up in each other that they didn’t know what heaven and earth were anymore. On the eve of departure, they went to the hospital again to test Nuo Wei’s mental stability.

The result was unexpected.

Nuo Wei’s mental sea had gone from “Critical” to “Excellent”, from the brink of collapse to fully stable.

Doctor Kaier, who received them, didn’t quite believe it at first. Holding his glasses, he studied the medical report for a long time. Then he stood up and kicked the machine twice, making the big metal lump rattle loudly. He printed the report again before finally confirming that the level truly read “Excellent.”

His eyebrows lifted with delight. Behind his thick lenses, his eyes shone with a trace of fanatic excitement, almost like a deranged scientist from an American zombie movie.

“You two are the fastest recovery case I’ve ever seen.”

If Nuo Wei hadn’t been a Major General, and Chu Ci a high-rank A-class male, he would have dragged them off for research without hesitation.

Chu Ci took the medical report. He couldn’t understand the professional pathological data; he could only see the neat row of final evaluations—“Qualified” or “Excellent.”

And the one from a month ago had been filled with “Poor” or “Extremely Poor.”

“So there’s no problem now, right?” Chu Ci asked.

“Of course,” Kaier said. “You mustn’t question my professional standards, although this is indeed astonishing.”

When he said astonishing, his gaze subtly swept over Nuo Wei’s lower abdomen. Then he coughed and bent down, writing rapidly on the report.

“Truly something to celebrate. Truly something to celebrate.”

Nuo Wei was already feeling awkward when he noticed Kaier’s eyes flick again. After finishing his look at Nuo Wei’s abdomen, the doctor’s gaze trembled as it shifted toward Chu Ci’s trousers, even lifting an eyebrow.

Chu Ci almost failed to maintain his upright, model-citizen image. He very nearly threw a punch at him right there in the hospital.

………………

Although he was extremely reluctant, as the days passed, the departure date drew closer and closer.

All the early preparations for the expedition had been completed. Only some logistical finishing work remained. So Nuo Wei, who had been crazily busy some time ago, finally had rare free time and stayed at home almost every day.

Chu Ci, on the other hand, still had work. Their game’s first closed beta test had gone smoothly, and the second test was about to begin. If there were no problems this time, they would race against time to prepare for the public test. On top of that, Yi Xi had been generous with his investment. Chu Ci had gained quite a bit of additional equity out of nowhere, so some meetings that originally had nothing to do with him now required his attendance. Gradually, he became even busier.

But he couldn’t bear to waste the time before their separation. He pushed all his work to the second half of the night and spent the daytime curled up against Nuo Wei, dozing on him from time to time. After a while, however, two dark circles inevitably appeared under his eyes.

Two days before Nuo Wei’s departure, the gardening staff came to the door. They handed Chu Ci a tablet and asked him to choose what flowers to plant.

The small garden that Secretary Lin had ruined had been refilled with new soil, but the grass scorched by the high-heat tail flame of the aircraft had not grown back yet. From a distance, it looked bald and bare.

Chu Ci wasn’t particularly fond of flowers, nor did he usually take care of them. He just felt that something should be planted. Otherwise, once Nuo Wei left, this huge house would be left with only him inside, without a single living thing. It would feel too quiet and cold. Since hiring a gardener on the main star was convenient, he placed an order through his light-brain.

The tablet showed two full pages of flowers, all kinds, too many to list. He scrolled for quite a while before finally choosing Four-Season Begonia.

Its blossoms were not richly colored, and the petals were plain single layers, nothing compared to the bright beauty of other flowers. Chu Ci had no special reason for picking it. It simply bloomed frequently. Its flower language was “two months like one autumn”, it bloomed once every two months, flourishing for four or five days. After withering, it would grow wildly again, and two months later, it would bloom once more.

Nuo Wei said he would be gone for as short as two months, or as long as half a year. During that time, the four-season begonia could bloom one to three times.

Two months felt like one autumn; after three autumns had passed, it would be the day they met again.

When the gardener moved a whole garden of begonia to Chu Ci’s house, there were only four hours left before Nuo Wei had to leave.

They worked quickly and skillfully, finishing the garden before the owner departed. They shoveled away the burnt, dried soil and replaced it with fresh flowers, so that when Major General Lin En came to pick up Nuo Wei, he saw a completely new garden.

Chu Ci walked Nuo Wei out. The military aircraft was much larger than the civilian ones. It hovered above Chu Ci’s house like a dark cloud pressing down overhead.

The whole thing was painted iron gray. It was as cruel and cold as the very idea of ‘war,’ wrapped in a suffocating sense of death. It was far less pleasing than the color of Chu Ci’s eggplant. The moment Chu Ci saw that thing, his mood began to turn bad.

He clasped his hands behind his back in front of Nuo Wei and asked, “Want a hug?”

Nuo Wei immediately dropped his suitcase, turned around, and rushed into his arms.

Chu Ci had only meant to give him a light hug and then let go. After all, Nuo Wei’s colleagues were still watching from above. A simple, token hug between brothers would have been enough. But Nuo Wei held him so tightly that it almost hurt. His female monarch had always been cold and restrained, rarely showing his feelings so openly, as if he wanted to knead the person before him into his very bones and blood.

The tight embrace made Chu Ci’s heart ache. He patted Nuo Wei’s back, signaling him to let go. “Your colleagues are still there.”

Nuo Wei refused to release him and only asked, “Are you planning to give me just a hug?”

Chu Ci froze. Of course he didn’t only want to give a hug. He wanted to kiss him too, lips and tongues entwined, fiercely taking the air from each other’s lungs until they were breathless, or to bury himself inside Nuo Wei, feeling each other’s warmth with the most vulnerable skin. But…

But right at the doorway of his home, facing the huge mechanical arms of the aircraft spinning overhead, the high-pitched noise that almost pierced his eardrums, and the gunpowder, war, and smoke so close at hand. What could he possibly do?

He was about to wave goodbye. Before he could finish speaking, something soft suddenly blocked his lips and tongue.

Nuo Wei kissed him.

It was the first time he had taken the initiative to kiss Chu Ci. The kiss was urgent and clumsy. His tongue pressed against Chu Ci’s teeth, as if not knowing how to pry them open, anxiously searching for a way through inside his mouth.

Chu Ci let out a small laugh and obediently parted his lips.

But the moment he opened them, the tongue that had been so fierce just now suddenly weakened. It hesitated, licking Chu Ci’s upper palate, yet avoiding the place it should have tangled with most.

Chu Ci pushed him back against the door and took control again.

He attacked freely, laying siege and claiming ground, kissing this bold, reckless female insect who had dared to tease him until he was breathless. Only then did he let him go, pressing his forehead against Nuo Wei’s.

“Don’t you close your eyes when you kiss?”

Nuo Wei shook his head. His cyan eyes stared at Chu Ci without blinking. “I can’t bear to.”

“What’s there to not bear?”

Chu Ci, as if by accident, ran his hand over the leaves of the begonia and stripped a flower stalk bare. Then he said:

“This flower will bloom three times. You come back.”

It was a statement, firm and leaving no room for doubt. At this moment, Chu Ci was just like any other proud and delicate male zerg in this world, standing high above and giving orders.

He said, “This flower will bloom three times. You come back.”