Chapter 66: Soft Spot, Huh

Even with experience from before, the moment Mansendis faced the cub’s tears again, he was still just as flustered—just as helpless.

Hearing that faint, uneasy crying right by his ear, he pressed his lips tight. One hand supported the cub, while the other palm gently stroked the feathers on the little wings behind Wen Yuzhi’s back.

When he made that motion, the force he used was so light it was almost unnaturally gentle.

He held all his strength in, reining it down to the softest edge.

Slowly—gently—he soothed the cub in his arms.

As he soothed him, Mansendis spoke in a low voice, “Zhizhi... it’s okay. Everyone’s here.”

Then the silver-haired sovereign thought for a moment, and added softly, “Don’t be afraid. Dad’s here.”

Mansendis rarely lowered himself like this to coax someone.

But for Wen Yuzhi, it was as if he had endless patience. He seemed to save the gentlest part of himself for the child curled up against his chest.

Again and again.

He kept stroking the cub’s back with his palm, holding his child and patiently telling him that Dad was already here—right by his side—so there was no need to be afraid of anything anymore.

The room became extremely quiet.

No Saint Clan spoke. In the whole room, only Mansendis’s cold, sharp voice could be heard.

And yet he had slowed his tone, speaking low—softly—saying words meant to calm the cub.

Maybe it was because the soothing pressure along his back was the most familiar thing in Wen Yuzhi’s daily life, the same kind of touch used to groom his feathers.

Or maybe it was because Mansendis’s words finally took effect.

Little by little, the crying cub seemed to settle. The already faint sobs grew weaker and weaker, turning into quieter, smaller hiccups.

Mansendis’s movement paused for a beat, but he didn’t stop. He kept patting Wen Yuzhi’s back lightly, trying to make that trembling body in his arms feel a little better.

No one knew how long passed.

At last, Wen Yuzhi stopped crying.

It was like he’d cried himself out.

With his current size, such violent emotional surges burned through a cub’s stamina fast.

He cried for a while, got the emotion out—and then he was tired.

So he simply leaned against Mansendis like that. His snow-white cheeks were flushed, his eye-rims red. His lashes, damp with tears, hung down slightly now, fluttering once in a while.

But even exhausted from crying, his hands were still gripping the silver-haired sovereign’s clothes tightly.

He held on so hard, like some deep part of him was still afraid—afraid that the moment he loosened his grip, Mansendis would vanish.

Thinking that, Wen Yuzhi tipped his head back and reached up, carefully touching Mansendis’s face.

From the taut line of his jaw... to the pressed corner of his mouth... to the bridge of his nose...

Wen Yuzhi wanted to go higher—

And met a familiar pair of cold, golden slit pupils.

In those eyes, he saw his own reflection.

“...Dad?”

He called softly.

The tone was cautious, and threaded with uncertainty.

Even now, he still didn’t quite dare to be sure the silver-haired sovereign in front of him wasn’t something he’d imagined.

He could only confirm it in this clumsy way.

Mansendis lowered his gaze. Watching the cub in his palm look so utterly without a sense of safety, the heart in his chest seemed to prickle with a dense, stabbing ache.

Not only Mansendis.

Every Saint Clan present—watching the cub cry—couldn’t stop the pain that rose in their chests, an emotion that was completely unfamiliar to them.

For many of them, this was the first time they’d ever faced the little Highness’s tears head-on.

Every sob Wen Yuzhi made felt like it landed right on their hearts.

This pain wasn’t like the pain of mental-energy disorder.

They could endure that.

But this was different—this was the kind of sadness that dug in, sharp and deep.

Mansendis used his thumb to gently wipe away the tear tracks on Wen Yuzhi’s face.

Seeing the caution in the cub’s eyes, he answered in a low voice, “Mm. It’s Dad.”

Even after getting the answer, Wen Yuzhi still hesitated as he asked, “Then this is...?”

“This is the room you used to stay in on the warship.”

Wen Yuzhi looked around. Sure enough, at the foot of the bed, he saw that familiar moon pillow—along with the goose-yellow wallpaper everywhere around him.

And...

In the room, he also saw Mond. He saw Alvin, and Selet, and the other familiar Saint Clan.

It was those familiar faces and that familiar scene that finally made him certain.

—He really had woken up from that terrifying nightmare.

Only...

Even so, Wen Yuzhi still felt a little dazed.

Mansendis touched the cub’s slightly cool cheek. The pain in his eyes was obvious as he asked softly, “Did you have a nightmare?”

Wen Yuzhi hesitated, then nodded.

In fact, that dream...

Everything in it had felt so real—so real it was like it had happened.

And yet those things... clearly weren’t experiences he remembered ever living through.

Mansendis watched him and asked without changing his expression, “Then can Zhizhi tell Dad what you dreamed?”

This time, Wen Yuzhi was silent for even longer.

It was like he was thinking about where to start.

To be honest, it really was a terrible dream, and if /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ he could help it, he didn’t want to relive it again.

“I dreamed I was trapped in a place that was dark and cramped,” he said slowly. “The same place as last time...”

Mansendis knew the “last time” meant the time Wen Yuzhi had asked him whether he had a partner.

After that, Mond and Mansendis had guessed that the dark, narrow place Wen Yuzhi described was inside the Royal Cocoon.

And what Wen Yuzhi said next made Mansendis even more certain that what the cub had dreamed was likely what happened during that period.

Wen Yuzhi said, “It suddenly got really cold. I tried to smash my way out, but someone came.”

“Those people said to hurry up, and take everything before the Saint Clan reacted.”

“Then I felt like they carried me somewhere else. And there... they gave me a mental energy test.”

“...A mental energy test?”

From the moment Wen Yuzhi started talking, Mansendis had been listening in silence, holding an attentive posture while the cub described the dream.

But the moment he heard the words “mental energy test,” the silver-haired sovereign finally couldn’t help frowning.

Years ago, there was a so-called mental energy test method that had once spread across the major star sectors.

The doctor who proposed it—Kegso—claimed that the more pain a living being experienced, the more it could force out the greatest potential of the body.

And that by testing mental energy this way, you could measure the upper limit of someone’s power.

But later, it was exposed that the method was extremely destructive to the mental sea. Some participants began to show adverse reactions after the test.

On top of that, because of improper procedures by the operators, deaths during testing happened again and again. The fatality rate stayed high, and the method was soon jointly opposed by various races.

Some races even stated openly that the mental energy test Kegso proposed was a crime.

Amid the condemnation, by now, that test had already disappeared from public view.

Mansendis knew how dangerous it was—so when Wen Yuzhi mentioned a mental energy test, he asked.

Wen Yuzhi didn’t know any of that. He only continued recounting what happened in the dream. “That’s what they called it. After they said it, I heard a really sharp sound.”

Even though he was already awake, just mentioning that part made the lingering pain in his mind stir again. His body trembled in fear, and tears gathered in his eyes once more.

Sensing his emotions rising again, Mansendis quickly soothed him. “Don’t be afraid. Dad’s here.”

Hearing his voice, Wen Yuzhi’s agitation slowly eased.

Then he continued, “After the sound stopped, they said they didn’t detect any mental energy...”

Wen Yuzhi very clearly skipped over his own reaction after the sound.

But even if the cub didn’t say it, it wasn’t hard for Mansendis to guess.

There were only a few ways to stimulate the mental sea—sharp, chaotic noise was one of the most commonly used.

Kegso had mentioned in his own tests that he would lock people in a sealed noise chamber, using it to observe how much the other person’s mental sea could endure.

It was an extremely vile method.

Later, when the truth about that test was exposed, Kegso and those experiments became notorious across the stars.

And when Mansendis thought of his child possibly enduring something like that in the dream...

The air around him sank.

Cold killing intent slowly surfaced in the silver-haired sovereign’s eyes.

But when the cub looked up, Mansendis buried it immediately, hiding it cleanly so Wen Yuzhi wouldn’t notice anything unusual.

Wen Yuzhi didn’t pay attention to the change in Mansendis’s expression.

He kept talking.

He talked about those people preparing to evacuate because of a sudden turn of events. About how they wanted to destroy large numbers of test subjects. About how, in the end, they planned to deal with him—this “useless defective product.”

Defective product. Dispose. Destroy.

Those words looked painfully glaring.

Yet when Wen Yuzhi repeated them, he stayed relatively calm.

Probably because Mansendis was here. He wasn’t as afraid now, and he could repeat what those people said more steadily.

But the Saint Clan listening to him were the opposite.

From the first sentence out of Wen Yuzhi’s mouth, they had already been forcing their rage down.

And when Wen Yuzhi said those people thought he was a defective product, Mond and the others couldn’t hold it anymore.

Fury flooded every Saint Clan present.

Alvin was still smiling, but the smile never reached the eyes.

Any Saint Clan who knew the adjutant understood: this usually gentle person only smiled like that when the anger had already reached the extreme.

And clearly—

Right now, the adjutant was furious.

Not just the adjutant.

Every Saint Clan in the room was furious.