Chapter 9: Fussy and Fragile

The bone spikes that had been swaying and sliding across the floor slowly came to a stop.

Just a communications device?

Mansendis lifted an eyebrow, and the irritation coiling in his chest eased a little.

As long as he wasn’t asking to leave the warship, everything else was irrelevant.

The other Saint Clan members let out a breath of relief too. Forget one communications device—if the other wanted hundreds or thousands, they would find them. If the ship didn’t have any, they’d go to some other planet and take them back.

In any case, they didn’t want to see that disappointed, miserable look on Wen Yuzhi’s face.

A new communications device was delivered into Wen Yuzhi’s hands very quickly.

The good news was that what these Saint Clan used was also a light-brain.

The bad news was that this light-brain model seemed far more advanced than the one he had used himself.

God knew that when he’d bought his, he had bought the latest model on the market. But compared to this, Wen Yuzhi felt like that so-called “latest model” might as well have been an antique.

He opened the search interface and tried looking up the Wen family first.

The result that came up was: no related content found.

Wen Yuzhi searched for Liang Song and Su Yu next. When he’d boarded the starship, gossip about those two had still been hanging at the top of the trending list, boiling over.

But the result was still: no related content.

Seeing that, Wen Yuzhi had a feeling that was both expected and... still somehow beyond what he’d expected.

He searched, one after another, for things he was familiar with.

As expected, every page came up blank.

“........”

After all that effort, Wen Yuzhi finally had to admit it.

He seemed—maybe, probably, possibly—to have arrived in another world.

From the information he’d just read, this place was also in an interstellar age. But unlike the interstellar world he knew, the universe here was far broader. Species flourished. Technology and civilization were highly developed.

There were humans here too. There was also a centrally controlled imperial system.

But this Empire had nothing to do with the Empire he knew.

This Empire was called Perth, and the royal family ruling it now was the Hoffman royal family.

Their ancestors «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» had been among the great leaders who once led humanity out of Blue Planet. Later, after several coups, the Hoffman family came to control the Perth Empire.

An unfamiliar country. Unfamiliar names...

Everything was telling Wen Yuzhi that this was not the interstellar world he recognized.

There was no Wen family here.

And there were no Alphas or Omegas either.

People here were more like the Betas in Wen Yuzhi’s memory—no glands, no pheromones. They weren’t troubled by heat cycles.

Instead, what mattered here was mental energy. Regardless of age or gender, as long as your mental energy met the standard, anyone could operate mechs and fight across space.

The “star sectors” Alvin mentioned were simply how regions were divided here. In total, there were nine star sectors. Different species lived in each one—some big, some small. Humans were only one of them.

And as for the Saint Clan...

What Wen Yuzhi pulled up was page after page of photos that had been censored out.

They had to censor them. Every single one was soaked in blood.

And the text underneath was nothing but exaggerated, frantic condemnation about how violent the Saint Clan were, how cruel, how mad.

One of the top-liked comments read:

“They’re a bunch of emotionless lunatics! Butchers! The most terrifying enemy on the battlefield!”

Below that comment, countless species agreed, and made wishes that they would never encounter the Saint Clan in this lifetime.

Just one glance was enough to see that the Saint Clan’s reputation across interstellar space was almost entirely negative. Brutal, vicious, monstrous—every word as exaggerated as it could be, like they were some kind of public enemy of the universe.

Wen Yuzhi stared, stunned.

Those netizens’ fervent words, that fear practically spilling out of the screen—it was like the Saint Clan really were some unforgivable villains.

And unfortunately, Wen Yuzhi was currently on a warship surrounded by these “villains,” with more than a dozen Saint Clan standing right in front of him.

He was the only human in the entire command room.

“........”

Even as calm as Wen Yuzhi was, he couldn’t help thinking, in that moment—

They don’t... eat people, do they?

........

Of course the Saint Clan didn’t eat people.

In fact, a creature as weak and troublesome as a human would never appear on their menu.

Unlike what the outside world imagined, the Saint Clan were not insane monsters who ate anyone they met on the battlefield, biting down on whoever they could catch.

They didn’t eat them. And even if a primitive one accidentally bit into the flesh and blood of another sapient creature, it would spit it out immediately.

That was to prevent inferior races from contaminating their genes.

To put it simply—

The Saint Clan looked down on every race other than themselves, equally.

Swallowing the flesh and blood of those races would only make them feel like their genes had been polluted.

As for what the Saint Clan ate in daily life...

Wen Yuzhi was extremely fortunate: he became the first human in all interstellar history who could have lunch with the Saint Clan.

And how did that happen?

It probably had to do with Wen Yuzhi’s attention being completely consumed by the information on the light-brain—so much so that he had forgotten he hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday.

When his stomach growled, Wen Yuzhi finally, belatedly, felt hunger.

The Saint Clan in the command room looked like they were each doing their own tasks, but in truth, everyone had been paying attention to the human cub’s situation the entire time.

When they saw Wen Yuzhi frown and lightly rub his stomach, Mansendis hadn’t even reacted yet. It was Alvin who thought of it first—cubs got hungry easily, especially when the other was an exceptionally fragile human.

With Alvin’s reminder, Mansendis finally realized Wen Yuzhi was probably hungry.

It wasn’t that Mansendis was careless.

It was simply that hunger meant almost nothing to the Saint Clan. They could go for months—even a year or more—without eating.

But humans couldn’t.

If humans didn’t eat, they had no strength. With no strength, they got sick. And when they got sick, they died easily.

So for humans, eating was still important.

For some reason, as Mansendis thought that, the word “fussy” suddenly popped into his mind.

This human cub...

was even fussier and more fragile than he’d imagined.

Still, Mansendis said to Alvin, “Bring some food.”

Then, as if thinking of something else, he added, “Try to find food that’s soft—something a cub can eat.”

Alvin looked at Mansendis in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected their King to be so considerate—especially toward a human.

But he didn’t say anything. He immediately withdrew to make preparations.

Mansendis wasn’t unaware of Alvin’s confusion.

In fact, Mansendis himself felt that he had an unexpected amount of patience for this human cub.

Clearly, he disliked that group of ambitious, endlessly greedy humans.

But toward Wen Yuzhi, he didn’t feel that kind of disgust.

...Was it because the fragrance coming from Wen Yuzhi could ease his mental energy rampage?

For once, Mansendis fell into thought.

Wen Yuzhi had no idea what Mansendis was thinking. He was still hesitating about whether he should ask these Saint Clan for food.

Before he could speak, Alvin returned with the prepared meal.

Naturally, this food wasn’t something the warship had. It was still bought by Saint Clan soldiers on a nearby planet.

Because of that, the residents on that planet were practically scared to death.

The Saint Clan came twice in one day. They almost thought that after dealing with the Padar people, the Saint Clan still wasn’t satisfied—and were planning to wipe them out too.

Thankfully, the Saint Clan were only there to buy things.

After the purchases were done, and they personally watched the Saint Clan warship leave, the natives of that planet felt like they’d survived a catastrophe, relieved beyond words.

Some of them posted about it on StarNet, once again stirring up panic among the major races toward the Saint Clan.

But none of that had anything to do with Wen Yuzhi.

He didn’t know that he had triggered this whole chain of events.

He didn’t know that the Saint Clan had merely gone to a nearby planet to buy some things, yet by the time it spread on StarNet, it had already turned into a story about terrifying Saint Clan committing violent “plunder” on small planets.

Right now, Wen Yuzhi was staring at the food Alvin had prepared for him.

A huge slab of meat from some creature he couldn’t identify. A drink that smelled like milk. A plate of small fruits that looked a lot like cherries...

And beyond that, all kinds of other foods.

Alvin didn’t know what the human cub liked to eat, so he had simply bought one of everything that planet had available.

Arranged in front of Wen Yuzhi in order of convenience, the items closest to him were also the most nutritious.

“Rulu beast meat is something many species’ cubs love to eat. This is juice pressed from milk-fruit—it’s very good for cub development. And this is spine-spine fruit. It’s very sweet, and it’s always been cubs’ favorite fruit. And...”

Alvin thoughtfully introduced each item.

He wasn’t only thinking about Wen Yuzhi needing nutrition—he had specifically chosen flavors cubs would like.

Even back in the Wen household, Wen Yuzhi had never seen such a spectacle. Food filled an entire conference table.

When Alvin tried to keep introducing more, Wen Yuzhi hurriedly stopped him.

“These are enough!”

Wen Yuzhi said in astonishment, “I can’t eat that much.”

That much?

Alvin looked at the spread across the table. To him, this was still far from enough for one meal. If that planet hadn’t been too small, with limited things to buy, he wouldn’t have only brought back this little.

And what was on this table wouldn’t even be enough for a newborn Saint Clan cub.

The other Saint Clan listening nearby also looked worried.

Clearly, they also thought Wen Yuzhi ate far too little.

Was a human’s appetite really that small?

But this was already an amount Wen Yuzhi had never even dared to imagine before.

Most Omegas had to maintain a slender, pretty figure. Wen Yuzhi was already considered one of the ones who could eat more—after all, he had never planned to “marry,” so he didn’t need to deliberately maintain his figure to please an Alpha.

But even so, facing a table crammed full of food, Wen Yuzhi only ate the first three items, plus a serving of steamed egg custard, before he truly couldn’t eat another bite.

He covered his distended stomach, and out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly noticed that the Saint Clan in the command room all seemed to be watching him eat.

Wen Yuzhi: “......”

No matter how strong Wen Yuzhi’s nerves were, he still couldn’t help feeling a little awkward.

“Um... don’t you... eat?”