ISMW Chapter 19

The grand banquet on the Imperial Star of the Galactic Empire finally ended at eleven o’clock at night.

 

At the end of the banquet, Yun Xunlan had a small glass of cypress leaf wine with Yun Xunguang.

 

Afterward, Yun Xunguang had Ni Chun and the guards escort Yun Xunlan back to the North Palace first.

 

As the guard who best adapted to Yun Xunlan’s pheromone pressure, Yu Chen was undoubtedly chosen as the lucky one who could ride in the same car as Yun Xunlan. He got into the car under Fu Yanxi’s four-time jealous and envious gaze, and then sat beside Yun Xunlan at his command.

 

Once again, the two were so close.

 

Close enough that Yu Chen could smell the faint cypress leaf wine breath exhaled by Yun Xunlan.

 

In reality, though, Yu Chen experienced the simulated pressure generated by the young man’s pheromones every day in pressure resistance enhancement training, feeling and resisting its strong suppressive force repeatedly, endlessly, as if at close quarters.

 

Time after time…

 

Over and over again…

 

As if he had never maintained a sufficient distance from Yun Xunlan.

 

He could face each pressure enhancement training with composure, yet now, sitting truly at Yun Xunlan’s side—at a moment when he wasn’t being suppressed by pheromone pressure—he felt somewhat awkward.

 

He hadn’t experienced this emotion during their previous two close encounters.

 

Yu Chen believed this might be because the car’s interior space was too small compared to the spacious living room of the North Palace.

 

What Yu Chen hadn’t expected was that Yun Xunlan could compress this already cramped space even further—he raised the partition between the back and front seats. Then he called Yu Chen’s name: “Yu Chen.”

 

Yun Xunlan’s voice wasn’t clear and bright, but rather a magnetic slight huskiness, his speech both light and slow, very much like the slow, deep breathing of someone lost in passion. So when he called Yu Chen’s name without adding any title, Yu Chen had the illusion that Yun Xunlan was speaking to him in bed.

 

He guessed that Yun Xunlan might be drunk, which was why he called him this way.

 

Yu Chen kept his gaze straight ahead, staring at the partition that blocked Lodi and Ni Chun from view, and answered: “Your Highness?”

 

“When it’s just the two of us, you don’t have to call me ‘Your Highness,’ just as I won’t call you ‘Major Yu Chen,'” Yun Xunlan told Yu Chen, showing he was soberly aware of what he was saying. “Wenxi calls me ‘Yun Xunlan,’ you can call me that too.”

 

This was the third time.

 

Yu Chen thought to himself, both Pei Xingting and he firmly believed that Yun Xunlan had chosen him because of his perfect score in War Psychology. Yet to date, Yun Xunlan had met with him privately three times but had never once mentioned tutoring.

 

Each time Yun Xunlan met with him, he only said things that were vague, irrelevant, and difficult to understand.

 

Yu Chen had many questions he wanted to ask Yun Xunlan: for instance, why did you look at me when naming the mech? Were you looking at me?

 

Or, for example, Jian Wenxi can call you “Yun Xunlan”—what is his relationship with you? And what is my relationship with you? Why can I also call you “Yun Xunlan”? Did you raise the partition just to create a space where only the two of us exist, then call me “Yu Chen,” and then have me call you by your name?

 

However, Yu Chen couldn’t ask any of these questions.

 

His position made it inappropriate.

 

He also shouldn’t refuse Yun Xunlan’s request, even though addressing each other by their full names was equally inappropriate.

 

Because he himself had already done too many inappropriate things.

 

For instance, he became Yun Xunlan’s guard in order to access the 3S mech through Yun Xunlan, yet just now, in front of the 3S mech projection, his gaze had unhesitatingly chosen to follow Yun Xunlan’s silhouette.

 

So Yu Chen answered: “Alright.”

 

But he didn’t say the three syllables “Yun Xunlan.”

 

Who would have thought that this brief “alright” would be like a quick guide to mind-reading, simultaneously transmitting the secret manual to the silver-haired alpha as the sound entered his ears.

 

So Yun Xunlan understood that silent thought and began to gently explain the first question Yu Chen was puzzled about—why did you look at me when naming the mech? Were you looking at me?

 

“Yu Chen, I’m sorry, when I named the mech, I used the ‘chen’ character from your name.”

 

Hearing this, Yu Chen immediately turned his head to look at the young man beside him, meeting a pair of golden eyes that were also watching him.

 

They were beautiful phoenix eyes, long and narrow, with an upward tilt at the outer corners. Hidden in the double eyelid fold above the outer corner was a small blood-colored mole, and between the opening and closing of his long lashes was an indescribable charm and spirit.

 

At this moment, these eyes contained only his reflection, as if he were the anchor point where Yun Xunlan’s gaze settled, every glance toward him saying: Yes, I am looking at you.

 

However, what Yu Chen actually heard was another apology.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

The silver-haired alpha apologized to him again: “I used another character from your name without your permission. Do you mind?”

 

Those eyes gazing at him had irises with radially arranged gold, like high-energy particles radiated by a fixed star, pure and intense.

 

Yu Chen looked back at the young man’s face, favored by the creator, like a solitary traveler in deep winter craving the warmth bestowed by sunlight, unable to look away for a moment: “I don’t mind. The character ‘chen’ is not exclusive to me; anyone in the world can use it.”

 

The silver-haired alpha smiled faintly: “Yes, it’s not exclusive to you, but when I was naming the mech, I only thought of you.”

 

“I had this feeling the first time I saw you.”

 

Yun Xunlan said: “You’re like the last falling star in the night, telling me dawn is near.”

 

After tonight, the entire galaxy would know that the Galactic Empire Third Prince’s 3S mech was called “Jian Xing Chen,” but no one would know that the “chen” character in the mech’s name came from the other half of his name.

 

—Except for the two of them.

 

Yu Chen’s steady breathing and heartbeat hadn’t yet had time to become disordered by this semantically obscure statement when he heard the young man speak again: “Yu Chen, may I ask what the ‘chen’ character in your name means?”

 

“It means ‘to be immersed.'”

 

Yu Chen took an almost imperceptible deep breath and said softly: “My… father loved my mother very much. He said my mother had eyes like the ocean, and he wanted to be forever immersed in that sea.”

 

“Chen ni” is a Chinese phrase meaning to indulge or abandon oneself excessively, to sink into a certain state and be unable to extricate oneself.

 

After listening, Yun Xunlan gazed at Yu Chen’s deep blue eyes and softly expressed his feelings with an alcohol-soaked, slightly husky voice: “I think your eyes also look very much like a sea.”

 

“Even more so than your pheromones.”

 

—Too ambiguous.

 

Whether it was this last sentence or every sentence Yun Xunlan had said before, they were all too ambiguous, Yu Chen thought.

 

If their conversation had occurred between an alpha and an omega who could smell each other’s pheromones, or even between an alpha and a beta who couldn’t sense pheromones, it would already qualify as flirtation.

 

The only reason they were still separated from the word “flirtation” by a layer—a thin membrane seemingly blocking all ambiguous atmosphere—was because they were both alphas.

 

They were alphas who, even though they could sense and smell the pheromone scent emitted from each other’s glands, were destined by physiological instinct and nature to only have relationships of competition, mutual exclusion, and suppressive opposition.

 

Yu Chen didn’t understand whether Yun Xunlan could realize this point.

 

He felt that Yun Xunlan probably couldn’t.

 

The Prince completely didn’t know how to maintain an appropriate social distance with people.

 

Because the silver-haired alpha asked him: “What do you think my pheromones are like?”

 

After hearing Yun Xunlan’s question, Yu Chen also felt that perhaps he himself couldn’t realize—or rather, deliberately chose not to realize—how ambiguous their conversation was.

 

After all, he could have given the most boring, most ordinary, most common, and also the closest to the correct answer: “Like lychee rose flowers.”

 

But in the end, he flicked his tongue and personally pierced that thin membrane, letting the ambiguous atmosphere fill every corner of the car, saying: “…Like Elianxia’s new ice cream.”

 

The silver-haired alpha’s expression froze slightly upon hearing this, exclaiming in surprise: “You’ve eaten it?”

 

Yu Chen’s voice was very hoarse: “Yes.”

 

The silver-haired alpha asked him again: “You think its flavor is like my pheromones?”

 

Yu Chen said: “That’s how it is in my imagination.”

 

He was very familiar with Yun Xunlan’s pheromones.

 

Their scent, their pressure—he had become more familiar with them day by day since the moment he stepped into the North Palace.

 

However, he had never truly smelled, through his olfactory receptors, the pheromone scent emitted from Yun Xunlan’s glands beneath the skin of his neck.

 

Yun Xunlan also said: “That’s right, you probably haven’t truly smelled my pheromones yet.”

 

The 200 star coin red envelope he had previously sent to Yu Chen in a private message on the galactic web hadn’t been claimed, and Yu Chen hadn’t replied afterward. Yun Xunlan had thought Yu Chen hadn’t gone to Elianxia to buy and taste the new dessert.

 

Thinking of this, Yun Xunlan raised his hand to lightly touch the back of his neck where the strong suppression patch was attached, then raised his eyes to look at Yu Chen.

 

Those blue eyes were like a cold sea surface shrouded in night, with surging waves rolling under the tidal effect of gravity. Yun Xunlan, not immersed in the sea, could only see the shallowest layer of desire.

 

Following the desire he read, he asked Yu Chen: “Would you like to smell it?”

 

Did he want to?

 

Yu Chen also asked himself.

 

The answer was clear: he undoubtedly wanted to, otherwise he wouldn’t have deliberately guided Yun Xunlan to ask him this question.

 

However, right now Yu Chen wanted to confirm something else—his purpose in approaching Yun Xunlan was clear, but he still couldn’t understand why Yun Xunlan had summoned him privately.

 

If Yun Xunlan wasn’t finding him for tutoring, then what was it for?

 

Yu Chen’s gaze remained fixed, staring at the silver-haired alpha’s fingertips covering the suppression patch on his neck, both answering and probing: “I want to.”

 

—If he wanted it, would Yun Xunlan give it?

 

As soon as the words fell, Yu Chen saw Yun Xunlan move his fingers away.

 

This seemed like a gesture of refusal.

 

But then Yun Xunlan moved his fingertips to a small blue sapphire collar pin at his neckline—the miniaturized satellite communication device that the youth had deliberately mixed up to exchange for an opportunity to speak with him alone.

 

Yu Chen watched as Yun Xunlan removed it and raised his hand to pin it to his ear cartilage.

 

During the silver-haired alpha’s movements, almost no sound was made, even the rustling of his sleeves was barely audible, yet Yu Chen felt as if a silent explosion had occurred inside the car.

 

It was like a supernova explosion when a fixed star was on the verge of death—violent, shocking, yet utterly silent.

 

The intertwined pheromones of white lychee flesh and pink roses spread domineeringly around him, like ejected stellar material. They were inhaled into his lungs by his breath, but instead of condensing into a newborn star, they continued to collapse and shrink, eventually evolving into a dark celestial body from which not even light could escape.

 

Yu Chen was also captured by its gravity, directly entering his susceptibility period at this moment.

 

His body seemed to be ignited by this lychee rose that bloomed from Yun Xunlan’s body. Every inch of his nerves trembled and burned, even his thoughts became scorching hot. The pheromones that urgently needed to be poured into a partner’s body during marking boiled in his glands and blood, only concealed by the military-grade strong suppression patch.

 

Yet the instigator self-righteously said: “This way there won’t be any pressure. You shouldn’t feel too uncomfortable.”

 

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