Chapter 22

When Feng Ran returned home, Shen Shiqian was completely sober and was sitting on the sofa with a new sheet, waiting for her. If she hadn't changed his clothes, she would have suspected that the two robots were just going through the motions and hadn't actually carried him back.

It seems her pheromones really do have a calming effect, but it's clearly not the homosexual markers that are working. It's troublesome and hard to explain. She lingered in the entryway for a while, feeling restless, before finally walking over to Shen Shiqian.

Shen Shiqian found it hard to describe his feelings at that moment. Alcohol could numb one's mind, and the pheromones of rum in the wind obviously had the same effect. He was defeated in the battle with it. In the pursuit of pleasure, his memories and time and space became disordered. He actually started to miss a dead person, just like the group of people from the Academy of Sciences.

Sometimes it was "Feng Ran" sitting on him, looking at him with mockery and contempt, pulling his tie tightly and asking him why he thought of her. He struggled to explain but was so tightly strangled that he couldn't make a sound. Sometimes it was Feng Ran innocently approaching him, her eyes shy yet full of expectation. But in the end, the scene shattered, and the image of Feng Ran running away in fright was imprinted in his mind.

The impression was too deep. After waking up, he glanced at the faintly healed bite mark and fell into self-doubt. Could he really love Feng Ran? What kind of love did he want to give Feng Ran? Could Feng Ran really accept it?

Shen Shiqian looked at Feng Ran, and the guard she had finally lowered was put back on. She stood still after entering the living room from the entrance hall, watching him from a distance.

Shen Shiqian: "Ranran, I'm sorry, did I scare you just now?" He tried to be gentle and patient. "During my sensitive period, Xisen said that I might be a little sensitive to your pheromones, but you usually control yourself very well and this has never happened before."

Feng Ran didn't react much. She didn't expect Shen Shiqian to explain first, but even if he could find all sorts of excuses to downplay the matter, she didn't care much. After all, she was the one who caused it all. Shen Shiqian was just making things up with his pitiful 35.

But what if it were Shen Shiqian, who was marked and modified by her and became an Omega?

Sirius, the Empire's First Alpha Marshal and a figure of unparalleled glory, has become an Omega who can only moan and groan beneath her? It does seem quite fulfilling. In the past, she could have attributed such wicked thoughts to the aggressive nature of Alphas, but now she is no longer an Alpha. Although she hasn't precisely calculated or verified the compatibility, Feng Ran has a premonition that she will truly become an Enigma after her second differentiation.

Would Enigma be this aggressive? Feng Ran wasn't sure, but the sense of accomplishment from that hypothetical situation was indeed hard to explain. However, she probably wouldn't go that far. There was neither love nor hate involved. She and Shen Shiqian wouldn't go that far. Rather, she wouldn't go that far with anyone. The example of the general and the crown prince was the best illustration.

“I’ve been so focused on getting closer to you lately that I’ve neglected this point. I won’t do it again next time. Even though we’ve decided to get married, I won’t do this kind of thing until you’re an adult and until you’re willing to accept me.”

He didn't mention Feng Ran's actions at all, completely excluding her from the role of the victim. For some reason, Feng Ran wasn't happy. Even though this should have been the first time someone had so unconditionally and blaming her, she wasn't happy at all.

He casually tried to move on from the matter: "So, can you forgive me?"

Forgive what? Did he do anything wrong? Shen Shiqian's subservient posture seemed eerily strange to Feng Ran, like a discordant murmur. The scene before her was fragmented; the Shen Shiqian she knew wasn't like this...

But she couldn't remember. Her head felt like it was about to explode, and the pain made her want to cry. She clenched her fists tightly behind her back, trying to hold onto her reason.

Cold sweat trickled down her temples, clinging to her hair. Feng Ran felt weak, but she took a deep breath and looked at Shen Shiqian with renewed energy: "I understand."

"But have you ever considered that I'm not always able to control myself well?"

Even Shen Shiqian himself often had a faint bitter smell about him, so Feng Ran's control was so strong that you couldn't smell it even if you got close, which made him an anomaly.

Feng Ran: "So, let's keep our distance, okay?"

"I'm tired, I'm going back to my room to rest."

With those words, the girl left without looking back.

Everything has returned to square one.

Shen Shiqian didn't know how to feel. Feng Ran would occasionally reveal a bit of indifference and decisiveness like this, so tough that he couldn't get close to her. At this time, she was very similar to her in her previous life.

Is this a form of punishment? In the end, nothing changed from what he did. The only thing that changed was that the person Feng Ran hated changed from Luo Le to him. If the future cannot be rewritten, how will Feng Ran take revenge on him?

The reason why "Feng Ran" saved the Empire's life in a critical moment was unknown to all. Feng Ran, a top-level wanted criminal who had lost her family and become a lonely person, appeared dignified and polite in her few communications with the military. She was even considered approachable. She allowed the Empire's undercover agents to deliberately approach her. Her only weakness was the Empire's target, her intelligent system - Xing Tong.

After a few attempts to play the tiger's tail, Feng Ran completely lost patience with this childish role-playing. He designed a list of all the Empire's spies and undercover agents and posted it on the screens of major prisons, scaring the undercover agents into resigning and running away. The Empire also dared not make any further moves.

Shen Shiqian was very worried because all his efforts had come to nothing. If the outcome remained the same, but the target of retaliation changed to him, that would be fine, but he couldn't afford to gamble with the future of the empire.

/

Feng Ran and Shen Shiqian returned to the peaceful state they had when they first met. Because the Grand Marshal's vacation was over, the military needed to carry out a new round of exploration operations on the newborn planet, so he was extremely busy as soon as he returned to work, and sometimes he even stayed at the military headquarters instead of going home.

Feng Ran accepted this situation well. Her daily routine was basically different from Shen Shiqian's. The fact that she couldn't talk to him even made her feel like she had returned to the Feng family. However, she would occasionally feel a subtle sense of loss and think that the love Shen Shiqian talked about was nothing special.

Young Master Basil's words and actions were still being closely and strictly monitored by his father, Fernand. Originally, Feng Ran could still eat with him in the school cafeteria, but because he was reported by a spy, his father said that if any further involvement was discovered, Basil would be expelled from school. So, their relationship really developed into an underground online romance where they could only chat on the terminal.

Basil cheerfully comforted Feng Ran, saying it was okay, and continued to send her a barrage of messages. Feng Ran wasn't particularly upset, but she felt disappointed. There were too many disappointing things, so she could only spend her time in the lab.

Fran didn't put a bed in the lab, but he did put a large sofa next to it, along with a coat rack. It seemed that he would take off his white coat every time he lay down, but his white coat was often covered in dust from rubbing on the floor, and it felt like it could never be cleaned properly. He should take it off.

It's difficult to find test subjects for mental drug experiments, so all the various potions he concocts are piled up in the freezer. Every time Feng Ran comes, she picks out a few that seem to have a relatively normal ratio and few side effects to drink. Fran hesitated for a long time but couldn't stop her.

What is drug deposition? She pretended not to know.

"Why don't you rescue Hilde and let him be the one to test her?"

Feng Ran had mentioned to Fran that she had neuritis but didn't specify the extent. However, Fran was still worried that she might overdose and die, and would bring up the matter of rescuing Hilde from time to time.

"Didn't you say you wouldn't betray your comrades?"

"That's different."

"What's different?"

"Regardless of the reasons or methods, at least we rescued him, right?"

It seems there isn't much affection within their pirate crew, or perhaps Fran, when he goes crazy, can use even those around him as test subjects.

Feng Ran lay on the sofa, covering her eyes which were sore and aching from the side effects, and refused him: "No, he hasn't awakened his spiritual power yet."

"But with so many drugs administered, the probability of awakening is quite high. He might even break through to SS-level after the experiment is completed."

Did you have others test the drugs on you when you were researching them before?

"No, they're not that enthusiastic, and this is my first time doing such cutting-edge research."

Feng Ran gave up on discussing these things with him. She had a runny nose, so she changed her position and covered her nose while waiting for the robot to bring her tissues.

She said in a muffled voice, "Fran, haven't you thought about what will happen if you two, all alone and locked up in the villa? Especially now that you're experiencing stress allergies to your inhibitors. I did promise you that I would help you with your research and rescue your gang, but that's only for when they're out. What happens after they're out is not my concern. My protection is only for you."

Fran felt a surge of emotion, but then she heard her say, "I wouldn't be too much to fish out Hilde and bring him back. His pheromones are too strong; they would smell terrible in my lab."

Hilde's pheromones are, to be precise, the smell of wasabi, which is comparable to wasabi in some ways. The stimulation of the sense of smell is often more intense than that of the sense of taste. Fran knows this well and cannot deny the second half of Fengran's statement.

But when Feng Ran thinks of pheromones, she can't help but miss Basil's pheromones. She has finally pieced together a complete memory from various dreams, although it doesn't seem to be a pleasant memory. Or rather, it's hard to say that the memories that appear in hallucinations are pleasant.

In her dream, her husband was still Basil. She lived with Basil. The villa of the Sleica family was extravagantly large, with a vibrant garden courtyard outside the corridor. Feng Ran sat on the ground leaning against a Roman column, staring blankly at the garden.

The weather should be very cold, with a bit of snow, but the courtyard's temperature control system kept everything warm and cozy to maintain the blooming garden. The snowflakes melted before they could fall, and the mist lingered in the air, obscuring the night sky.

She hadn't been sitting for long when Basil appeared in a hurry. He hadn't even had time to take off his lab coat or remove the hair tie that held his bangs. He gave Feng Ran a big hug with a beaming smile, but Feng Ran didn't react much. She grabbed his clothes and absentmindedly accepted his kiss.

He took her directly to a restaurant for dinner, and Feng Ran nervously asked if she wasn't going to Feng Linye's birthday party that night. Both she and Luo Le had been invited, and Feng Ran was supposed to go, but Luo Le held her hand and put something on her finger, arrogantly saying that if he didn't want to go, he wouldn't go, and Feng Ran wasn't allowed to go either.

Returning her gaze to her wrist, Basil placed a bracelet on her wrist, adorned with a simple scented bead that smelled just like Basil. Basil kissed her again. "Ranran," she said, "I'll be busy preparing for my medical school exams soon. This is a scented bead I made especially for you, so that when I'm not around, you can smell my scent and won't feel too lonely."

If you ignore the details and her cold, wooden attitude, this memory could even be described as a beautiful dream. But Feng Ran couldn't ignore that detail: there were tiny needle marks on Basil's neck, reddened from the force of the extraction, which stood out against her pale skin. That fragrant bead was made by him using his own pheromones.

Feng Ran was speechless. The needle hole seemed like a harbinger of collapse to her. If Feng Ran didn't know why Basil in her dream had become so dull and lifeless before, she understood everything the moment she saw the fragrant bead. Basil loved her, so he wanted to use his pheromones to heal Feng Ran.

She comforted herself, telling herself that such a thing wouldn't happen. Not only could she not see Basil now, but she had also changed her marriage partner. In her dream, Basil was just too concerned about her, which was why he gave so much without expecting anything in return. But in reality, she would never be so cold to Basil. As long as she showed that she was unhappy, Basil would definitely listen to her.