Free Web NovelWhether it was managing a race or a nation, neither was an easy task.
Wen Yuzhi had always known that Daddy worked hard and was busy, but knowing it was one thing. Personally stepping in and dealing with it himself was another matter entirely.
When Mansendis first handed those files over to him, Wen Yuzhi was almost completely at a loss.
He had never dealt with state affairs before, nor had he ever studied anything in this area. That meant there were many things «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» Wen Yuzhi had to start learning from the very beginning.
Mansendis allowed the cub to consult books and reference materials, but he did not allow Wen Yuzhi to directly ask the Saint Clan around him.
Because Mansendis knew the Saint Clan under him very well. They had no problems at all when it came to handling affairs, but when faced with a cub, they could never help softening.
Mansendis knew perfectly well just how much Selet had been holding back during lessons, and how slow Wen Yuzhi’s progress had been in this area.
And Selet was honestly in a difficult position too.
It was not that he wanted to keep going easy on him.
But when the little highness blinked those eyes, tilted up that face, and looked over at him pitifully, Selet simply could not harden his heart enough to treat Wen Yuzhi the same way he treated other Saint Clan soldiers.
Once there was one moment of softheartedness, there would be a second, and a third...
That was how Selet’s bottom line had retreated step by step.
To prevent anything similar from happening again, Mansendis had specifically added a restriction, making it so the cub could not run off to seek outside help and could only complete the work independently.
These past few days, Wen Yuzhi had been in the study consulting all kinds of materials, and had also looked through some of the solutions Alvin and the others had used in the past for these matters. freewebnøvel.com
Only after he had a general idea did he write down his own opinion.
And now was clearly the time to test the results of everything he had been learning lately.
Wen Yuzhi looked at Mansendis with a tense expression.
The silver-haired sovereign set down the file in his hand and gave this evaluation—
“Passable.”
From the standpoint of actual implementation, the content mentioned in the file was still rather immature. At a glance, it was obvious that the one proposing the plan still lacked enough understanding of this kind of matter, and the suggestions themselves had not been developed in much depth either.
But for a newcomer handling government affairs independently for the first time, Wen Yuzhi’s performance was still acceptable. At the very least, his attitude had not been perfunctory.
It was only his lack of experience that had left the details vague in many places.
But those things could all be learned gradually later. Mansendis was not especially bothered by it, since this was only homework for the cub to practice with.
After hearing the word “passable,” Wen Yuzhi let out a sudden sigh of relief.
This was his first time dealing with government affairs, and also the first time he had ever stood in the position of a superior to formulate a plan for those below. Being rated passable already left Wen Yuzhi quite satisfied.
He reached out, wanting to take the file back.
But Mansendis pressed a hand down on top of it.
Under the boy’s puzzled gaze, the silver-haired sovereign calmly said, “Daddy still wants to look at it again later.”
Hearing that, Wen Yuzhi did not think much of it.
Little did he know that as soon as Mansendis turned around, he slipped the file into a drawer at one side. Besides the file he had just put in, the drawer also contained the reflections Wen Yuzhi had written after his safety lesson.
Mansendis knew that within other races, some parents would put up their children’s certificates or praised homework in the most visible place in the house, or carefully preserve them as important marks of their child’s growth.
Because of the Saint Clan’s unique structure, they did not really have schools in the traditional sense. Underage Saint Clan all completed basic courses in the rearing center, and once they reached adulthood, they immediately entered the military.
For the Saint Clan, the battlefield was the best school, and soldiers tempered through blood and fire were often stronger as a result.
Royal-bloods, meanwhile, did not enter the rearing center. They had their own mode of education—like the little classes Wen Yuzhi was attending now, taught one-on-one by individual instructors.
The advantage of that system was that it made it easier to tailor the teaching plan to each different royal-blood.
The disadvantage was that there was no school to issue things like certificates.
So naturally, Mansendis had no chance to be like the parents of other races, proudly putting his child’s awards up on the wall for every guest who came to visit.
But even without certificates, Mansendis still kept Wen Yuzhi’s homework. Homework completed personally by the cub could serve just as well as a witness to his growth.
Wen Yuzhi still did not know that these two assignments—which he would one day regard as black history—were currently lying in a drawer in the study. And this kind of honor was something even classified documents had not yet earned. Yet these two pieces of homework, little more than child’s play, had been specially singled out and stored away by the silver-haired sovereign.
At the moment, Wen Yuzhi was watering those little trees, taking the opportunity to walk off his meal.
Ever since Wen Yuzhi got into trouble that one time, Mansendis had become almost excessive in how carefully he protected the cub.
No matter where he went, Mansendis would not let the child leave his sight.
Even if—
This tense, overly watchful state in the silver-haired sovereign had continued for a very long time.
Wen Yuzhi also knew that Daddy was like this because he worried about him, because he was afraid he would be taken away again, so he had always cooperated. For the past half year, he had stayed by Daddy’s side as much as possible, like a clingy little tail.
Wherever Daddy went, he followed.
It was just that sometimes Mansendis had to stay busy handling government affairs, while Wen Yuzhi had other things he needed to do. At times like those, the silver-haired sovereign would have bone spines accompany him.
With the bone spines there, if anything unusual happened around Wen Yuzhi, Mansendis would be able to sense it immediately.
The only one who was not especially happy about this was probably the white wolf.
Its fear of Mansendis had seeped straight into its bones. In front of Mansendis, this “wolf king,” it always kept its tail tucked tightly, head lowered, barely daring to breathe.
And the bone spines carried Mansendis’s scent. Whenever they were around, the white wolf no longer dared casually pounce onto Wen Yuzhi. The whole wolf became exceptionally obedient and docile.
The bone spines, however, paid no attention to the trembling white wolf. In their understanding, the white wolf was no different from Wen Yuzhi’s other toys. If one really had to say what was different, it was only that this toy could move and make noise, and that the cub happened to like it quite a bit.
As for whether that toy was afraid of them, that was not something the bone spines cared about.
At the moment, they were carrying five, six, seven, eight little watering cans. One little green can hung from each section of bone spine, making for quite a spectacular sight from a distance.
In the past, what those bone spines had skewered were enemy heads. freёweɓnovel.com
But now they were already thoroughly practiced at carrying little green watering cans and following behind Wen Yuzhi.
When this scene was filmed by a little bee robot and uploaded onto the Saint Clan’s StarNet, every Saint Clan who saw the video thought their eyes had gone bad.
Otherwise, how could they have possibly seen bone spines—things that butchered enemies on the battlefield—carrying... um... something shaped like a watering can?
Wen Yuzhi, though, felt that having the bone spines help made watering much more convenient. He did not need to keep going back and forth to refill water anymore.
Trees grew quickly.
Half a year had passed, and what had once been thin little saplings had now become straight, upright young trees.
Wen Yuzhi watered them, then wiped the little tags hanging from them clean.
When he reached one tag without a name written on it, his movements paused slightly.
Every little tree here had a name. This one alone did not, because when he planted it, Wen Yuzhi still had not known Xi Heyan’s name.
Later, even after he learned it, he never wrote it on there.
After all, whether he wrote it or not was no longer important. The names on the tags were meant to distinguish which tree belonged to whom, and Wen Yuzhi knew that the little tree with the one nameless tag hanging on it was the one he had given to Xi Heyan.
Now this tree had grown too, but there was still no word from him.
At the time, the message Selet sent back was that they had not found anyone. The Saint Clan searched all across Blackrock Star and did not find a single living person. Along the way, they killed quite a few stray beasts, but never discovered any trace of human activity.
The barren wind and sand of Blackrock Star were enough to cover every trace on the ground in a single night.
No one knew whether those people were alive or dead.
And the Saint Clan could not stay there too long. After an entire search turned up nothing, Selet led the Saint Clan soldiers back to the Ninth Star Sector on the seventh day.
What Wen Yuzhi received was a result that he did not know whether to call good or bad.
Selet and the others had not found anyone, but they had not found any remains either.
It was possible those people had died in the laboratory explosion. It was also possible they had left Blackrock Star.
Wen Yuzhi had tried sending messages to Xi Heyan through the light-brain, but every message vanished like a stone sinking into the sea. He never came online again.
Whether emotionally or rationally, Wen Yuzhi did not want anything to happen to this good friend of his.
But half a year had gone by, and there had still been no reply. In Wen Yuzhi’s heart, certain guesses had already started to take shape.
There had been so many stray beasts in the laboratory back then, along with that steadily decreasing countdown, and then the pictures Selet later sent back—that laboratory already flattened to the ground.
The hope in Wen Yuzhi’s heart that those people were still alive had been gradually diminishing.
So every time he saw this tree, he could not help sighing.
.........
Elsewhere, a man in a black combat uniform was walking along when he suddenly felt a slight chill down his back.
But by the time he wanted to examine the feeling more carefully, it had already vanished again.
...Was it just his imagination?
Xi Heyan was not entirely sure.
But none of the doubt in his heart showed on his face. He only pressed his lips together, wore a cold expression, and walked into the repair shop ahead.
“Hello. Can this be repaired?”
He placed a damaged light-brain on the counter.
At once, a mechanical arm extended from behind the counter. From Xi Heyan’s angle, he could see past the counter and make out that the arm was attached to a small dwarf-like figure.
The person was very short, but was fitted with a whole mess of mechanical parts.
Those parts were enough to let him move around like a normal person, or even more nimbly than one.
At the moment, he picked up the light-brain with that mechanical arm.
“The chip is damaged?” he asked.
Xi Heyan nodded. “Yes.”
In the explosion at the laboratory half a year ago, they had already been unable to escape. In that critical instant, Plum Blossom K had thrown out several energy barriers in succession.
Naturally, all the money for those barriers was charged to Xi Heyan.
But the money really had been worth it.
The explosion had been so powerful, yet despite being right at the center of it, they had still survived. Unfortunately, Xi Heyan’s light-brain had been damaged in the blast.
Nothing else really mattered, except that the most important chip inside had been ruined.
Xi Heyan had tried many methods and still failed to repair that chip. This repair shop was already the tenth or so place he had gone to.
Its owner was said to be the most famous repair specialist in the black market, known as Mechanical Revenant. According to rumor, there was nothing in this world he could not fix.
Xi Heyan lifted his eyes to look at this Mechanical Revenant and named his price.
“As long as you can repair the chip, you can ask for whatever payment you want.”
