Free Web NovelEvery move Wen Yuzhi made was under the Saint Clan’s watchful attention.
This selection of personal guards was no exception. It could be called the most important event within the Saint Clan in nearly a hundred years. fгeewebnovёl.com
After all, Mansendis had never formed a personal guard corps, because he himself was already far too powerful. And in the two hundred years that followed, the Saint Clan had never produced a second royal-blood.
As a result, the once-glorious and illustrious institution of the personal guard corps had nearly fallen into disuse.
The Saint Clan had originally assumed they would never again have the chance to witness the grand spectacle of a personal guard selection with their own eyes.
Who would have thought they would welcome a little highness instead?
Little highness was still young, still an underage cub. From the upper-ranked Heimo all the way down to the lower-ranked Ge De and Tas, every one of them agreed that little highness needed the protection of personal guards.
And so, the personal guard corps system, which had nearly been pushed to the margins, finally saw its moment of glory return once more.
When it came to Wen Yuzhi’s safety, Mansendis valued it more than any other Saint Clan member. The full list of candidates had already been delivered to him in advance.
No one would have imagined that the silver-haired sovereign, busy as he was with state affairs, would still specifically set aside time to review the files sent over by the military. Mansendis had personally investigated every single candidate in that stack.
Among the candidates were quite a few Saint Clan members who had once been locked up in the supervision facility.
They had once been the group on all of Dark Tower Star whose mental seas were the most badly damaged. But after Wen Yuzhi combed through and soothed their mental seas, their recovery had been swift as well.
As soon as Mu Luo confirmed that there were no problems, they immediately returned to the military, rejoined training, and after passing through round after round of selection, they ultimately fought their way onto the final candidate list through sheer ability.
Woke was among them.
Now, standing in the formation, those smoky-gray eyes of his were bright and shining. The gloom that had once lingered there was gone, replaced by anticipation for little highness’s arrival.
The moment Wen Yuzhi stepped down from the hovering car, he spotted Woke among the Saint Clan soldiers at a glance.
With Heimo all around him, one single Ge De standing among them made Woke stand out especially clearly. Besides him, Wen Yuzhi also saw Yiluo and Feier in the line.
They too had passed the earlier rounds of selection and had been fortunate enough to stand here.
Seeing those familiar faces, Wen Yuzhi was obviously happy as well.
He nodded in the direction of the Saint Clan soldiers, then followed lightly at Mansendis’s side with brisk steps.
At the moment, they had to climb a long flight of steps up to the platform at the very top.
Seeing the cub beside him half-skipping as he walked, the silver-haired sovereign feared that if Wen Yuzhi was not careful with the steps underfoot, he might fall. Without saying a word, Mansendis took Wen Yuzhi’s hand on his own initiative.
Father and son walked side by side, the same silver hair, the same golden eyes, the same white formal wear. The instant their similar features appeared in the same frame, anyone could tell they shared the same bloodline.
For some time now, Wen Yuzhi had been kept almost constantly at Mansendis’s side. Whether it was an important meeting or an ordinary outing, Wen Yuzhi followed beside him. The Saint Clan had already grown used to seeing father and son appear together in the same scene.
And Mansendis’s attitude had undoubtedly sent a signal through every level of the Saint Clan.
That signal was that Wen Yuzhi would, without question, become the Saint Clan’s next crown prince.
And while Mansendis was still on the throne, he was already deliberately trying to expose Wen Yuzhi to the core of power.
Whether it was letting him handle confidential files or taking him along to attend all kinds of meetings, Mansendis’s intention to cultivate the cub was something nearly every Saint Clan member could see.
At that moment, two seats had been set on the high platform, one large and one small.
The larger one, needless to say, belonged to Mansendis. The smaller one beside it was Wen Yuzhi’s.
He had grown some, but there was still no comparing his height to that of an adult Saint Clan member. So even the chair Mond had prepared for him was a size smaller.
Though the smaller chair looked a little less imposing, if the chair were too big, Wen Yuzhi would have to either step on a stool or be lifted up by Mond and the others before he could sit in it.
Wen Yuzhi felt that he had grown up now. Since he cared very much about his dignity, he naturally did not want to be carried around in public.
What he did not know was that in the eyes of the Saint Clan, no matter how much little highness had grown, he was still an underage cub.
Little highness sitting in that smaller chair was unbearably adorable. freewebnøvel.com
The Saint Clan in the livestream instantly started taking screenshots like mad.
That was right. Since the Saint Clan as a whole had been closely watching little highness’s selection of personal guards, the military had specifically opened livestream access for the event. Little bee robots had been scattered around the edges of the square.
No matter where they were stationed, every Saint Clan member could now watch the selection through the livestream.
This was also a kind of pressure.
In front of the camera, they could display their strength to all their kindred.
But because the whole thing was being publicly broadcast, if they lost, then it would not just be humiliating themselves in front of the King and little highness. They would be disgracing themselves before all their kindred as well.
With that thought, every one of the candidate soldiers on the field was itching to fight. No one wanted to lose. No one wanted to miss this chance.
And the Saint Clan members who had come out of the supervision facility were even more ablaze with battle intent than the others.
Clearly, they wanted even more than the others on the field to become little highness’s personal guards.
They had personally experienced despair, then been fortunate enough to crawl back out of hell.
No Saint Clan member was ignorant of what kind of place the supervision facility was, or what it meant.
Once someone was sent there, that was, within the Saint Clan, effectively a death sentence.
And once these Saint Clan members had been locked inside, they too had known very clearly what fate awaited them: to become beasts devoid of reason, then die in agonized madness.
Yet at the moment they were drowning in despair, it had been little highness who saved them.
Soft mental energy soothed the sharpest pain in the world.
Little highness looked at them without fear, without disgust. Clearly still only a cub, yet still using that gentle tone to coax them.
“Don’t cry anymore. Don’t be sad... do you want some candy? If you eat something sweet, your mood might get better faster.”
The crimson color slowly faded from their eyes. One after another, those Saint Clan members, gaunt to the point of looking almost skeletal, lifted their heads in a daze. And only when their eyes met little highness’s gaze did they realize, through the clarity of that cub’s pupils... that they had actually been crying.
Tears fell from their eyes.
At the same time, a swollen, aching feeling spread through their chests.
They did not know what kind of emotion it was. To the Saint Clan, who had known only slaughter, it was something utterly unfamiliar.
But from that moment on, it was as though a little flower had grown inside their hearts. Its stem swayed lightly, tender and fragile, and yet it made them unable to resist wanting to protect it.
They wanted to go to little highness’s side. They wanted to protect little highness.
The emotion boiling inside their chests suddenly made these Saint Clan members, cold as ice sculptures, seem to come alive.
They stared up at little highness on the high platform with burning eyes. The desire to protect him, to submit to him, was naked and sincere.
In truth, looking across the Saint Clan below, almost every soldier there felt the same.
They were willing to follow little highness, offer him their hearts and scales, and fight for him.
The high-ranking officers in the military saw this too.
It was impossible not to be shocked.
The degree to which little highness was loved far exceeded that of any royal-blood the Saint Clan had ever had before.
If a vote could be held, they would discover that Wen Yuzhi’s support would rank first by an overwhelming margin. In the hearts of the lower-ranking Saint Clan, adorable and gentle little highness was already the finest royal-blood in their eyes.
They were more than willing to support little highness as their crown prince.
“Do you see?” Mansendis said to Wen Yuzhi.
“In the future, they will become your trusted followers and your confidants. They will also be the sharpest blade in your hand.”
“Zhizhi, have you decided whether you want to raise that blade?”
When Mansendis said this, his tone was calm.
And yet every word he spoke, every step he took, was guiding Wen Yuzhi and pointing the way for him.
There could not be another father in the world more devoted than he was, one who practically wanted to break apart every lesson and knead it into the finest pieces before handing it to his child.
Wen Yuzhi looked at the Saint Clan below.
He could not see every face clearly, but he knew that at this moment all of them were looking toward the high platform.
What they were looking at—
was him, their future sovereign.
At that thought, Wen Yuzhi suddenly understood why Mansendis was saying all this to him.
Mansendis was asking whether he was ready to lead this blade.
They would obey his orders. They would cut down his enemies. They would become the sharpest sword and clear a path for him.
But at the same time, once he took up that sword, Wen Yuzhi would also have to shoulder the responsibility of wielding it.
Then...
was he really ready?
Ready to bear this trust and this duty?
Thinking that, Wen Yuzhi looked at the Saint Clan below and dazedly lost focus for a moment. But under Mansendis’s gaze, his eyes grew firmer and firmer.
“I’ve decided...”
Wen Yuzhi took a deep breath and slowly said, “I’ve grown up now. When things happen, I won’t shrink back. Daddy... I want to help you. And I want to become your pride too!”
Mansendis wanted to say, You already are my pride.
But when he saw the expectant look in Wen Yuzhi’s eyes, the words reached his lips and were swallowed back down.
In the end, he chose to bend down and kiss Wen Yuzhi on the forehead.
The silver-haired sovereign said, ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) “Daddy will be waiting.”
As he spoke, he reached up and rubbed Wen Yuzhi’s hair, though Mansendis made sure not to mess up the cub’s hairstyle.
Clearly, Mansendis also knew that his child cared very much about appearances when outside. If his hair got messed up, Wen Yuzhi would start fuming again.
Much as a huffy Zhizhi was adorable, he was not easy to coax afterward.
Mansendis certainly had no desire to damage the father-son relationship they had only just built.
So he only touched him once, satisfied himself, and withdrew his hand.
“The selection has begun, Zhizhi. You can start choosing who you want as your personal guards.”
The moment Mansendis’s words fell, the matches below began as well.
Wen Yuzhi had not often watched Saint Clan fight other Saint Clan.
But once the competition started, he had no room left in his mind for anything else. His eyes remained fixed on the field below, nearly unblinking.
Though it was called a selection match, the Saint Clan did not fight the way other races did, with all that talk of friendship first and competition second.
When they fought, they held absolutely nothing back.
Every killing move honed on the battlefield went straight for the other side’s vital points.
They held no weapons in their hands, because to the Saint Clan, their bodies were the strongest weapons of all.
Their sharp wings, savage and terrifying exoskeletons, tails powerful enough to shatter the floor with a single blow—
In terms of raw physical strength, Ge De clearly held an advantage over Heimo.
But the Heimo also possessed things the Ge De could never match, namely their exceptionally high tactical literacy. They knew how to think, how to calculate, and how to seize the right moment.
The two sides crashed together, fighting from humanoid form into beast form.
In the end, out of three hundred candidates, only fifty Saint Clan were granted the qualification to walk beneath the high platform.
Yiluo, Feier, and Woke were still standing in the front ranks.
Among all those Heimo, the fact that these three Ge De had managed to overpower so many higher-ranked kinds and push their way to the front left many military officers visibly surprised.
But Woke, Yiluo, and Feier paid no attention to what those officers thought.
They came excitedly to stand beneath the high platform, heads high, backs straight. Though they were covered in injuries, every one of these Saint Clan stood straighter than the last.
Without question, this would be the most glorious moment of their lives.
They had defeated countless kindred and advanced step by step until they reached the very front.
Whether or not they were ultimately chosen as personal guards, reaching this point meant they now had the right to be seen by the King and little highness.
That made them lift their chests higher, their blazing eyes fixed on the top of the platform.
Mansendis glanced at the youth beside him.
“Go on.”
The silver-haired sovereign spoke softly.
Wen Yuzhi stood at once and stepped down from the high platform. He slowly walked past the Saint Clan soldiers, his gaze sweeping over every face, some tense, some excited.
There were fifty Saint Clan here, but the personal guard corps had only thirty places.
So Wen Yuzhi chose for quite a while before finally settling on the three Saint Clan he wanted most.
It was not an easy thing to do.
After all, every Saint Clan standing here was excellent, and Wen Yuzhi thought all of them were good.
In the end, the chosen Saint Clan were announced.
Woke was among them, and so were Yiluo and Feier.
When Wen Yuzhi chose Yiluo and Feier, he even secretly lifted his head to glance toward where Daddy was sitting.
And Mansendis did not stop him.
Since Yiluo and Feier had managed to defeat a group of Heimo and stand here, then they had the same right as any other Saint Clan member to be chosen by Wen Yuzhi.
Mansendis had never been the sort to interfere too much in his child’s choices over small matters like this.
Standing before the three selected Saint Clan, Wen Yuzhi personally fastened his exclusive badges onto them one by one.
This too was part of the personal guard corps tradition.
Each royal-blood would turn their own symbolic emblem into a badge for their guards to wear over the chest. To some extent, it also represented their identity, making it possible to recognize at once which royal-blood they belonged to.
For example, Tasiya liked roses, so her personal guard corps wore rose-shaped badges.
Because of that, the female Saint Clan in her personal guard corps had once been called thorned roses.
As for Wen Yuzhi, the design he made for his personal guards was a climbing branch.
The supple branch looked fragile, as though it could easily break, yet it was filled with vibrant life.
Wen Yuzhi liked the explanation that woman in the dream had given him.
A branch represented life.
And he wanted these life-bearing badges to rest on his personal guards as well.
