Chapter 93: Where’s the Love Letter?
Shen Gu realized he was saying too much.
He regretted it a little.
"Okay, but don’t tell anyone. I just heard it from some people who hang around Senior Lin Yu."
"Mhm." Jian Yu sipped her soup.
Steam rose from the hot soup, veiling her curled lashes in a soft mist.
She set down her soup bowl, her expression completely harmless. "I won’t tell. I swear."
"No, you don’t have to swear." Shen Gu carefully started clearing away the leftovers.
He set them aside for someone to collect.
"So, here’s the thing."
"The Feather Clan doesn’t like the environment on the Imperial Capital Star, so he naturally doesn’t like coming back. Chief Si Xu is returning to the academy this year, but he’ll probably wait until after the opening ceremony for the Beast Taming Competition."
"Aside from Chief Si Xu, the academy assigns a batch of Awakeners to the other Chiefs every year. Then, one person from each group is chosen to be the Executive Director, who helps with training—just like Senior Lin Yu for Chief Ling."
Shen Gu had been practicing with his Soul Beast under Chief Xi recently, and his ant had already grown several sizes larger.
His mind drifted for a moment. ’I’ll wait until my Soul Beast is ten times bigger,’ he thought, ’then I’ll show Jian Yu what I’ve accomplished.’
"Chief Pei used to have an Executive Director, too. She was a student from the medicine department, a Half-awakened with Level A spiritual power."
Shen Gu scrolled through the forum and found a photo and a thread.
It was a good thing he was Xi Yu’s Executive Director. Otherwise, without special privileges, he wouldn’t have been able to dig up such old gossip.
"This is the girl. Her name is Lin Yuan. She’s tall, gets good grades, and is quite pretty."
"The year she enrolled, Lin Yuan caught the eye of a few minor nobles. She got all kinds of invitations to banquets, and she was forced to go even if she didn’t want to."
"Chief Pei happened to be passing by and saved her. He took her under his wing to develop medicine, acted as her mentor, and gave her access privileges to Zone 5 so she could hide there whenever she needed to."
Pei Yin thought he’d stumbled upon some sort of coercion, so he gave each of them a Yellow Card to drive them off.
But who would have known that Lin Yuan was actually willing? As long as the benefits were good enough, there was no coercion involved at all.
Having been born as a mere plaything, Pei Yin’s birth was never wanted.
He sees manipulation in everything and everyone. He usually can’t stand it, but he rarely gets involved.
Shen Gu recalled Lin Yu’s warning.
"You see all those people in the school infirmary getting medicine after a fight? They look miserable, but in reality, a lot of them provoke it on purpose. To keep things quiet, a noble will slap you, and then turn around and toss you a few hundred thousand Star Coins as compensation."
"The great thing about our academy is that you can just lie down before they even hit you, get a small scrape on your face, and yell, ’I’m being bullied! I’m going to jump off the roof!’ The nobles don’t want a full-blown investigation and worry about getting expelled or a demerit, so they usually just pay a lot of money to make it go away."
"Sometimes, you can’t even tell who’s really in trouble. If you try to help, you might just be getting in the way of them earning some extra cash on the side."
"Chief Pei has seen this sort of thing plenty of times and usually can’t be bothered to get involved. But of all people, that Lin Yuan looked so much like his mother."
"Someone leaked it, but the photo is gone now, so I don’t know if they really looked that similar. Anyway, everyone in the comments section guessed that was the reason Chief Pei went soft and helped Lin Yuan."
"Chief Pei even gave her the Executive Director position. Lin Yuan thought he liked her and confessed her feelings to him in public twice."
"Chief Pei rejected her, so she turned on him. During his Threshold Devouring Period, she deliberately caused him to have a violent outburst."
"Lin Yuan was very talented with medicine; she’d even developed some new ones for competitions. The medicinal ingredients Chief Pei keeps are all top-grade, so their effects are incredibly potent. And she did it during his Threshold Devouring Period, when he was at his most vulnerable."
"Chief Si Xu has the ability of soothing and Purification. After Chief Pei lost control, he started hurting people everywhere. Chief Ling had to step in and subdue him, locking him in a containment cell. The Alliance had no other choice but to issue an emergency recall for Chief Si Xu, telling him to come back and save Pei Yin."
"And the funny thing is, after Lin Yuan was expelled, she immediately turned around and married that same minor noble who’d been pursuing her."
All for nothing.
Shen Gu’s mouth was dry from all the talking.
He took a bottle of water from beside him, twisted it open, and drank. "Thanks."
"You’re welcome."
’Wait.’
’Who handed me this water?’
Shen Gu looked up, and a flash of cyan fabric caught the corner of his eye.
Jian Yu blinked innocently.
Shen Gu stared at Jian Yu’s white fleece dress and swallowed hard.
He slowly turned his head and met Pei Yin’s ambiguous, mocking smile.
He shot to his feet.
"Ch-Chief Pei."
Pei Yin was perched on the edge of the desk. He reached out and pinched Jian Yu’s cheek.
He glanced sideways at Shen Gu. "You seem to know quite a lot."
"Just a little..." Shen Gu’s expression froze.
He shot several pleading glances at Jian Yu.
Jian Yu was loyal and didn’t let Shen Gu down.
Her round, apricot-shaped eyes fluttered, and her voice held a hint of fear. "I was the one who wanted to hear it."
"Babe, if you want to know something next time, you can just ask me directly." Pei Yin bent down and lifted her onto his lap.
He squeezed her leg. "Does it still hurt today?"
"Much better." Jian Yu glanced at the door, then back at Shen Gu.
Shen Gu got the hint instantly and made a run for it.
Pei Yin didn’t press the issue.
Too much time had passed. Even if the memory was vivid, it didn’t matter anymore.
He lowered his head to kiss the corner of her lips, his gaze falling to her earlobe.
"You don’t have your ears pierced, so I modified it for you. It clips on."
The hemostatic potion could be made into a spray for her to carry.
But the sight of Jian Yu bleeding on two separate occasions was too frightening; he had ruled out getting her ears pierced long ago.
His fingers disassembled the piece, then reassembled it bit by bit.
Jian Yu stared at his hands, not blinking once.
Plain hands against cyan sleeves—they were, without a doubt, the most romantic and elegant fingers she had ever seen.
The fingertips were clean, the knuckles a faint pink. They were hands straight out of a manga.
’They’d be very good for... other things, too.’
Jian Yu’s thoughts started to get dirty.
A hand pressed gently on her head, and she tilted it to the side.
She felt a slight coolness as an elegant, double-chained ornament was clipped onto her ear.
Pei Yin adjusted it with his fingers.
He had fashioned the chip into the shape of a pearl, pairing it with a delicate gold chain to create a long, tassel-style design.
It looked just as gentle and lovely on her as he had imagined.
"There." Pei Yin picked her up with one arm and activated the detection system on his Star Brain.
Other than Shen Gu and Jian Yu, there were no residual auras left in the classroom.
The person who sent the love letter was skilled; they had blocked all the nearby surveillance cameras.
He had been lying in wait for half the day, and only found out the letter had been delivered when Shen Gu reported it to Xi Yu.
To be able to block that many surveillance monitors, one’s spiritual power had to be at least Level 2S.
He had checked before coming. The few Level 2S students at the academy were all participating in Mecha competitions and didn’t have time to be here.
Xi Yu and the others had their suspicions.
Pei Yin had his own suspect in mind, too.
He suspected it was that brooding creep, Sheng Yue.
But those were all just earlier guesses.
The insignia Shen Gu had sent him a picture of was from the Feather Clan, so that theory was out.
There weren’t many from the Feather Clan at the academy. Si Xu was one, and besides him, there were two upperclassmen.
One of those two was currently at an exchange conference on Emperor Source Star and, logically, couldn’t be back yet.
The other hadn’t been seen, but he could be monitored for now.
As for Si Xu... he was even more unlikely.
Pei Yin had sent him so many messages, but Si Xu’s replies were always terse—even colder than Sheng Yue.
Pei Yin’s gaze dropped. He casually flipped through a book before speaking up to demand, "Babe, where’s the love letter?"