After being nowhere to be seen for days, Mother Xin's daughter had finally come home. She sat alone on the sofa chewing sugarcane. The stalk in her hand was as long as a standard dead iron straight sword, and every time she bit off a mouthful and snapped it away, it looked like she was swinging a blade.
*Spare a thought for your poor teeth!* Mother Xin could tell at a glance that Xin Yaoqiao was fuming. She made several laps through the living room, passing from the balcony to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the bedroom.
Finally unable to hold back, she asked with gloating amusement, "Is that sugarcane of yours still sweet?"
"..." Xin Yaoqiao sat up straight, glared at her mother, and stiffened her neck. "Sweet!"
"Putting on a brave face, are we?" Mother Xin leaned in with a chuckle. "What happened? Did he upset you? Finally realized you can't handle him? Hahaha, come on, spill it—what did that fellow do?!"
Mother Xin thought, *Hurry up and tell Mama so I can have a good laugh and blow off some steam.*
On that front, Xin Yaoqiao naturally couldn't tell the truth. She couldn't admit that Han Qingyu wanted to sneak into the former site of Research Institute 2, much less that she had abandoned all principle and chosen to help him.
After a moment's thought, she had no choice but to pin the blame on the outreach troupe. She claimed that several dozen girls had stopped halfway through dance rehearsal to watch Han Qingyu's combat sparring, only for him to chase them all off. He had left them feeling indignant and slighted, and now he was stuck having to apologize.
"Shallow!" Xin Yaoqiao pushed herself up on the sofa, sugarcane in hand, adopting a look of righteous indignation. "He's just good-looking and great in a fight, that's all. They don't even know him, haven't even talked to him, yet they threw themselves at him like that... That's just completely blind, isn't it, Mom?"
Mother Xin looked at the earnest plea in her daughter's eyes, knowing full well she was fishing for validation, and fired right back, "You're acting as if you weren't just as shallow and blind back then."
In truth, she had another half-sentence waiting: *Don't forget you ran off to see him in person just from looking at a single photo in his file! You were far more shallow and blind than any of them.* But on second thought, since this was her own flesh and blood, she held her tongue.
"That's completely different for me," Xin Yaoqiao protested.
Mother Xin raised a brow. "Oh?"
"What do you mean, 'back then'?!" Xin Yaoqiao puffed out her chest. "I'm still shallow and blind right now!"
Mother Xin: "..."
Curled on the sofa, Xin Yaoqiao burst into giggles, then explained in all seriousness, "I've already spent time with him, gotten to know him, and learned all his flaws, yet I'm still shallow and blind... Which means my kind of shallowness and blindness is reliable!"
Over the past few days, Xin Yaoqiao had even learned about Han Qingyu's nickname, the "dead iron straight man," and had heard about quite a few of his past exploits. Sometimes it annoyed her, but at other times, just thinking about it made her smile.
"Scientifically speaking, there actually seems to be some logic to that." Mother Xin considered her daughter's words, smiled, and gave a nod.
Having never interacted with Han Qingyu herself, she had always assumed he was the purest kind of warrior—the sort wholly devoted to protecting Azure, completely free of earthly distractions.
Even when her daughter hadn't been able to keep from revealing his obsession with source energy blocks, Mother Xin merely assumed it stemmed from the crushing weight of responsibility and an earnest longing for strength.
"How about this? Bring out all the source energy blocks you've saved up, and I'll go talk to your father, your maternal grandmother, and your paternal grandmother. The rest of us will scrape together a bit more to add to the pile..."
"And then just give them straight to him?!"
Xin Yaoqiao asked in bewilderment. Immediately, a vivid picture sprang to mind: her mother, wearing a stern face, dumping a mountain of source energy blocks before that dead iron straight man and declaring imperiously, *Our Qiaoqiao has taken a liking to you—completely blind, mind you... This is the betrothal gift. Take it! Our family has immense influence, understand? Just dare to refuse, and see what happens!*
*Ooh, that actually doesn't sound half bad. Pretty thrilling, even.*
*A tyrannical young lady from a prominent clan forcing a dead iron straight man into marriage! Ha! Then he'd put on the red bridal veil and marry in all reluctant and aggrieved... and I could slowly coax him around until it turned into love.*
Just imagining the scenario dissipated more than half of Xin Yaoqiao's frustration.
Mother Xin, however, wasn't thinking along those lines at all. She sat down and said, "Why on earth would we give them straight to him?! I was thinking we could pool forty or fifty blocks, trade them for a metal block, carve it into a heart, drill a hole in it, and hang it around your neck on a red cord!"
Xin Yaoqiao: "..."
***
Nie Xiaozhen was the leader of Team Five in the Research Institute 2 outreach troupe. Though a team leader, she was only twenty-four years old. In general, not many women in the outreach troupe stayed active past thirty.
Most married once they reached a certain age, had children a few years later, and transferred to other posts. Many even volunteered for frontline logistics, because the vast majority of them married combat heroes—whether commissioned officers or enlisted soldiers (over ninety percent of Azure's officers rotated through the front lines).
Among them, there had been countless beautiful, poignant, or tragic stories.
Though classified as an outreach troupe—or an arts-and-culture ensemble—the truth was that because they spent their days traveling from one defense zone to another, their lives were often in just as much danger.
There had been escort squads that were wiped out to the last man while guarding an outreach troupe on the way to the next sector. There had also been troupe girls who, weeping, resolvedly picked up the apparatuses and blades left behind by fallen warriors to wage a near-suicidal stand, dying together as a unit.
Those romances of Azure—born of battlefields and blade edges, hope and despair—often carried more impulse and more blindness, but perhaps they were also all the purer for it.
"Even if he's a combat hero, that's no excuse to cross the line like that! Who does he think he is?!" Walking alongside a dozen of her troupe sisters, Nie Xiaozhen gave no thought to her exhaustion after rehearsal, still venting her indignation.
Granted, that recruit hailed as the Eraser's strongest in a decade—the legend rumored to have recently cut through a hundred-man death battle in the canyon of the Nepal trial grounds with twin blades in hand—turned out to be surprisingly handsome when seen in person.
Yet when had the girls of the outreach troupe ever been treated like that? They hadn't even had time to change out of their dance attire before rushing over with eager enthusiasm, only to be driven right out. Wherever they went, they were used to being welcomed with boundless adoration and warmth.
"Exactly! It makes me so mad!" another girl agreed petulantly. "And I'm starving to death!"
Because they had dashed off mid-rehearsal to watch Han Qingyu spar, their practice schedule had fallen behind. Forced to make up the lost time, they were only getting off now, well past dinner hour.
Dancing was exhausting work. With their stomachs rumbling, the troupe members naturally felt all the more resentful toward that arrogant, tactless fellow.
"If I ever go see him again, I'm a dog!" one girl huffed.
"Yeah, me too!" a chorus of voices chimed in.
"And we won't let him watch us, either! Next time we get the chance, let's intentionally perform wherever he's stationed, call him out by name, and ban him from watching! Target him specifically!"
"Yes! That'll show him! Great idea!"
The outreach troupe had its own independent grounds for daily life and training—a building styled like a small auditorium with a grand entrance and a roof supported by massive stone pillars. Emerging through the doors, the young women chattered as they walked arm-in-arm toward the dining hall.
Suddenly, one of them froze in her tracks.
Without letting go of the girls on either side, she brought the entire row of a dozen people to an abrupt halt.
In doing so, they blocked the others coming out behind them.
"What's wrong?" someone from behind asked.
"Look over there," the girl in front whispered, gesturing forward.
Following her gaze, beneath a pale gray stone pillar not far ahead, stood a solitary figure. Leaning with his head down against the pillar, he wore the autumn combat uniform of the Sole Witness Legion, with twin blades angled over his shoulders.
He was adjusting something in his arms—an armful, an enormous bouquet of... flowers!
"C-Could he have fallen for one of us? Love at first sight?!"
"Mhm! Did you see the flowers? Even if they're wild blossoms, finding this many in the dead of winter couldn't have been easy."
"So that's it... While he was shooing us away on the outside, he was secretly going off to gather flowers for us!"
"Look at him—he still looks so stiff and clumsy, but that directness is just so endearing!"
At that moment, in the eyes of the outreach troupe girls, the figure standing with lowered head, the blades over his shoulders, and the flowers in his arms seemed to weave together an unfolding tapestry of blood-red romance, strangely and profoundly moving.
It was moving enough that some remembered they actually were born in the Year of the Dog anyway.
And what was the harm in being a dog for a bit?
It was moving enough that more than one girl thought: *If those flowers end up in my hands, I'll say yes on the spot.*
Chapter 163