Chapter 8

Feng Ran felt that she had slept very soundly. When she woke up, her head was still a little dizzy, and even the pain that accompanied her every day became subtle and imperceptible in this warm and dizzy state.

The movie had long since ended, and the room was dimly lit. Basil lay beside her, holding her hand tightly. Feng Ran's usually cool body temperature was actually sweating from the heat.

There was a strange feeling I couldn't quite describe, a tickling sensation in my heart, but it wasn't uncomfortable.

She didn't pull away from that hand, but calmly felt and thought about her relationship with Basil, or rather, what kind of relationship she wanted with Basil to become.

A person as warm as the sun.

Now he's being pulled out of her world. Although Feng Ran has gotten used to all the injustices fate has inflicted on him, isn't it too cruel to experience despair all over again?

Feng Ran had given up thinking a long time ago because she knew she could never get the warmth she wanted from Qin Xin and Feng Xiqiao. Struggling and resisting would only be futile and would only make her seem more miserable. So she obediently played the role they expected of her.

But once the rebellious spirit takes hold, it's like tenacious weeds growing in a wasteland—it can't be burned out, it just keeps growing back.

Honestly, did she really have no way to resist Feng Xiqiao? She had mustered up the courage to make choices time and time again, but the real world is never the ending of a fairy tale, and there was no room for negotiation between Feng Xiqiao and Qin Xin's rejection.

She didn't understand. Wasn't she their own flesh and blood too? Why were they so biased? Why did they blame her? Why did they lock her up? Why did they abandon her...?

The only way to avoid being trapped in pain is to give up thinking about things you don't understand, but is that really the case? What she's feeling now is even deeper pain and despair.

She felt like she was exiled alone in the universe. The asteroids around her were dim, without colorful atmospheres, only bare gray meteorite surfaces. The stars were so far away from her. Was the universe really this dark and silent?

She lay alone in the rescue pod on the spaceship, the pain in her heart radiating to every ventricle and vein, so intense that she should have fainted and never woken up. But she was still alive. Medical equipment carefully assisted her breathing, but the breathing became a burden, causing pain. Pain is a stimulus, not a numb one, and she was consciously and painfully aware of her own existence.

Her palms were warm, and she felt a firm grip. Feng Ran snapped out of her icy despair. Her head felt like it was going to explode, a mix of pains churning within her. She turned to look at Basil.

It was warm and beautiful, unchanged, without any dimming or loss of warmth, but she felt inexplicably sad, overwhelmed by an inexplicable and immense loneliness.

She was unable to think, nor could she control herself.

I'm so heartbroken and desperate.

"Hmm, am I asleep too?"

The hand holding hers grew even warmer.

Basil yawned sleepily and saw something glistening in the dim light.

"Ah! Feng Ran, why are you crying? Are you feeling unwell? Ah, I really am, how did I fall asleep too?" He gently wiped away Feng Ran's tears. Those violet-like eyes were light and fragile, as if they had suffered a great injustice.

Is porcelain beautiful because it is fragile?

Basil tenderly pulled her into his arms, gently patting her thin back with one hand and stroking her head with the other. Remembering that Feng Ran seemed to have hearing problems, he leaned close to her left ear and spoke softly and gently, "It's okay, it's okay, I'm still here. Can you tell me what happened? It's okay if you don't want to tell me, I'll stay with you."

Feng Ran quietly felt the soothing effect of basil, and the calming scent of lavender seemed to be easing all her pain. She closed her eyes, wishing she could just die like that.

But this feeling didn't last long, because Basil pinched her face, making the little flesh on her face bulge out and look chubby. His handsome face was so close, his dark eyebrows were a bit messy, and he looked ridiculous from that close distance.

"Stop crying, you'll get dehydrated." He pretended to be fierce. "If you cry again, I'm going to take the opportunity to kiss you."

Feng Ran blinked hard at her stinging eyes. Although reason told her she couldn't do that, the blood in her body heated up again, as if awakening some of her instinctive aggression.

She grabbed Basil's hand, shoved him onto the sofa, held his hands above his head to restrain them, and used her knees to spread his legs, slowly lowering herself down.

She longed for it, so much, for a star radiating light and heat, the sun of her world.

Plunder, invasion, a dangerous atmosphere.

Basil was being forcefully controlled, and under the pressure, he instinctively obeyed and complied. He tasted the flavor of the wind-burning pheromones for the first time, a sweet and refreshing fruit wine flavor that was both tempting and alluring, dangerous and sweet.

A suffocating dizziness, breaths mingling, lips and tongues intertwined, occasionally escaping with ambiguous gasps and sobs.

The basil beneath him became scalding hot, so red it seemed to melt. Feng Ran released his hand without him noticing. After the sweet wine receded from his body like a tide, he gasped for breath, trembling with pleasure.

Looking at his tearful appearance, Feng Ran felt incredibly relieved. She licked her lips and smiled brightly, "Coward."

Basil stared at that smile, hummed, and thought with a jolt of madness, "That's too much of a cheat."

/

Fengran and Luo Le started dating.

However, their situations were quite special. Luo Le was extremely worried about Feng Ran, fearing that Shen Shiqian would be furious if he found out that he had been cheated on, and that Feng Ran would be punished by his family because of it. His father also seemed to be terrified of Shen Shiqian. Luo Le didn't care whether he would anger him or not, but he didn't want his mother to worry, so he excitedly started a secret relationship with Feng Ran.

He planned that when Feng Ran and Shen Shiqian got married, he would make a grand entrance like the protagonist in a heroic tale, storm the wedding, and then escape with Feng Ran in front of everyone. To do this, he had to work hard now and make all sorts of thorough preparations.

It's like a belated rebellion during adolescence, but Feng Ran is much more indifferent to it.

The only unknown she needed to consider was Shen Shiqian. She could predict the actions of the Feng family and the Sleica family because their influence and control were insignificant to Feng Ran.

Shen Shiqian is different. He symbolizes the military, and even more so, the Carlos Empire. He can arbitrarily label Feng Ran a space criminal, ensuring her a lifetime of unrest—something Feng Ran cannot accept. Therefore, until she understands Shen Shiqian's motives for approaching her, she has no choice but to comply and submit to the status quo.

But she didn't intend to hide it or conceal it. After all, Shen Shiqian didn't like her, and sometimes provocation was a form of interrogation. She even wanted to see how he would react. However, since Young Master Basil liked to have secret affairs, she wasn't incapable of playing along.

K3-1's effects seem to be one-time use. She still experienced hallucinations that day, and Feng Ran even began to suspect that she might have an undiagnosed heart condition, otherwise why would it flare up from time to time and cause her unbearable pain?

She also dreams at night, and the things in her dreams are bizarre. Sometimes it is the haggard and thin Basil, sometimes it is the dignified and elegant Shen Shiqian through the screen of the quantum computer, and more often it is the dark and quiet universe and the mechanical life coming and going in the large laboratory.

It was hard to say whether it was good or bad, but Feng Ran felt very depressed and instinctively wanted to get rid of those scenes, so he started researching new drugs again.

Xing Tong was monitoring her dosage in real time, and her language module was quite active: "Master, since Sleica's pheromones are effective, why don't you ask him for some to try in medicine? He definitely won't mind."

Feng Ran stopped what she was doing, stared blankly at the ceiling, and felt dizzy and lightheaded from the pressure on her nerves.

Basil certainly wouldn't mind; if they really did research it, the result would definitely be a miracle drug.

But Feng Ran didn't want to do that. She could always clearly recall the exceptionally haggard basil in her dream, with heavy dark circles under his eyes and half of his face flushed as if he had a persistent high fever due to some illness. Surprisingly, he didn't look out of place wearing a white coat. Was it because his blond hair had lost its luster and become dull, or because of the needle marks on his neck, making him look like a mad scientist who had fallen into a trance?

That image made her very sad; even in a dream, the heavy emotions it evoked made her feel terrible.

Feng Ran didn't want Basil to become like that, nor did she want their relationship to become impure because of the need for pheromones; she would feel indebted.

She even vaguely felt that she owed Basil a lot.

“We don’t have the equipment to do research on pheromone processing, and unique things are more addictive, aren’t they? It’s precisely because he doesn’t mind that I don’t want to hurt him.”

Xing Tong repeatedly tried to understand what Feng Ran had said, but felt that its processor still had flaws. It vaguely sensed that data was flowing everywhere, so it put that sentence along with the conditional assumptions into the core program code that Feng Ran had written for it, and finally came up with a more credible explanation.

The medicinal properties of pheromones exist only in a few special individuals. The aromatic phenolic substances produced by their glands have an exceptionally strong diffusion ability; even a tiny amount of bodily fluid can emit a rich fragrance. As for the exact mechanism by which they produce a calming therapeutic effect, it remains to be studied.

However, extracting pure pheromones is a prohibited research project because the transformation and purification of gas molecules into liquid requires collecting a very large volume, which is a cruel and heavy burden on the human body.

At present, the Empire's pheromone products all use bodily fluids as raw materials. The active ingredients are mainly other drug components. The pheromones extracted from bodily fluids are just used to blend with the perfume.

If it is possible to use a small amount of glandular fluid for purification and analysis, it can also be used as medicine. However, the owner mentioned addiction. If it is truly addictive, the consequences would indeed be unimaginable. But Xing Tong thinks that compared to addiction, its owner will develop drug resistance first.

However, this assumption is unlikely, because its owner has clearly rejected the idea. After all, they are dating, and she can't bear to see Sleica get hurt, even though she herself is currently suffering from illness.

Love is truly amazing. Although Xing Tong had some basic understanding of this kind of emotion, she never expected to witness it firsthand. Since its owner had this attitude, it would also show a little more affection for Slyca.

"Okay, Master, I understand. Should I add Slyca to the special object list?"

The list only contained Feng Ran; the monitoring of special individuals was her way of gathering information about herself and understanding various anticipated events. Hearing Xing Tong mention it, Feng Ran began to think, finally belatedly realizing that she had developed a connection with someone else.

"Um……"

"Beep! Events related to a special object detected!" Xing Tong's suddenly raised voice interrupted Feng Ran's words. The literature page that was open on the terminal was pushed aside by the pixelated figure, whose expression was a little sulky. "Master, Shen Shiqian has applied to the Academy of Sciences for research on your pheromone compatibility with him."

The data on pheromone compatibility is mostly done for Alphas. There is very little research on Alphas in the Academy of Sciences' data database. Even though Alphas and Alphas sometimes appear together, they restrain their instincts and care for each other. No one cares about pheromone compatibility. Rather, they have abandoned the shackles that gender has imposed on them.

But now, Shen Shiqian actually wants to check their compatibility? What's so interesting about checking the basic statistic of 35 between Alphas?

Feng Ran squinted, his expression one of surprise and uncertainty: "Xiao Tong, can you calculate our compatibility?"

Anything that an intelligent system can do, Star Pupil can easily replicate and learn in its database. Its cloud database dimension is two dimensions higher than the various independent database systems of the Empire at this stage. It is no exaggeration to say that it can manipulate the information and data of the entire Empire's intelligent systems at will.

It can certainly operate the computing system of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and information and data acquisition is its everyday skill. However, it uses several optimization algorithms of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the resulting numerical deviations are not large. The only problem is that the values ​​are ridiculously high.

“Master…this is definitely not a problem with my operation! It’s a problem with the calculation formula of their Academy of Sciences! The compatibility values ​​obtained by the three algorithms are 97, 100, and 100, with an average value of 99.”

They're almost at the legendary destined pair. Judging from their stats, they should be naturally attracted to each other, and their pheromones are even more irresistible than those of AO couples who follow their genetic instincts.

Ah, so Shen Shiqian's estrus wasn't during his most fertile period, but rather a false estrus caused by high compatibility, right? He couldn't resist his own pheromones and became sensitive to them?

But so what? Feng Ran felt nothing for his pheromones, nor for him as a person. He was like a meticulously crafted chocolate lava cake placed in front of her, but that was all.

"Master, should I secretly lower it a little?"

Feng Ran's narrowed eyes flashed with a dangerous glint as he thought about how they would be living under the same roof for the rest of the time.

"Change it to 35."

High compatibility meant nothing to her; it was just a false heat, but it was a rare flaw in Marshal Shen's defenses.