Chapter 259
Chapter 259: Who Can Pretend Better Than You? The Big Golden Dragon Finally Gets To Touch His Cub
“Yeah, I agree with the one above: Jiang Tea Tea is just trash, a piece of trash pushed out by Chong Ming, the Commander in Chief, to calm people down and put on a show!”
“The common citizens of the Zhenlin Empire are pitiful. They trust your Commander in Chief and Prince of the Blood so much, yet your Commander in Chief and Prince of the Blood treat you like the Insectoid Race, hunting and burning your family members.”
“You need to understand, your relatives were infected with the Super Virus because Chong Ming is bad at running the country and his supervision is lacking. He should be the one taking responsibility and supporting all your infected family members.”
“Infected Hosts like to eat fresh meat and drink fresh blood. Since you can’t feed them beastmen or pure humans, you can feed them aberrant beast meat instead and keep them all together in cages. The Zhenlin Empire is such a huge system, there is no way it can’t afford to raise a bit over twenty thousand Infected Hosts. That would be much better than hunting them down and burning them all at once.”
“If the families of the Infected Hosts miss them, they can still go visit. Even if they have already turned into hideous Infected Hosts, at least if they are kept together somewhere, the families will still have something to hold on to!”
“Yeah, the one above is totally right. If they’re all locked up together, the families can still have a bit of hope. If they are hunted down and burned in a mass operation, there will be nothing left to hold on to.”
“Hope, hope your head! You bastard, you dog. Even if I poured every vicious word in the whole M31 Star System on you, it still wouldn’t be enough for how mad I am.”
“Listen to yourselves. Is that even something a human would say?”
“Do you really think everyone in the Zhenlin Empire is an idiot with no ability to understand or think?”
“You actually managed to come up with the idea of locking up Infected Hosts and feeding them aberrant beast meat. Your butts are bigger than your brains, yet you sure love to think up things.”
“You are not just stupid, you are evil. Deep down you are hoping the Zhenlin Empire will be dragged down and ruined.”
“More than twenty thousand Super Virus infections, if they got out, would be living bombs, walking Infected Hosts. Yet you come up with these rotten ideas, telling us to keep them penned up, and then try to stir us up, trying to make us think that Commander in Chief Chong Ming is bad, and that healer Jiang Tea Tea is bad too!”
“What exactly is so bad about healer Jiang Tea Tea? How is she some fake useless beauty? The things she gives out to us in the draws are free. Even just a tiny bit, after we drink or eat it, our spiritual power gets smoothed out and ordered.”
“You people know nothing, yet you stand here pointing fingers, thinking we will be bewitched by you and go join you to attack Commander in Chief Chong Ming and healer Jiang Tea Tea?”
“Let me tell you, your low-level word tricks will only make us more united. They will not make us question anything about Commander in Chief Chong Ming!”
“Report, report. Report all those who are not even from the Zhenlin Empire. Report all those IPs that are not ours. Let them act smug, let them be cheap; we are still reporting them!”
“I am willing. From the day I learned my child was infected with the Super Virus, I have been willing to unconditionally support every decision of the Nation. No one can shake that.”
“Me too. My child was infected and had a brief moment of clarity. The Commander in Chief sent people to pick me up to see him. My child was in so much pain, he was begging to die. Rather than going through hopeless treatment and living without any dignity, it is better to let him die and lessen the burden on the Nation.”
“Our Nation has come this far with great difficulty. Commander in Chief Chong Ming handles countless matters every day. For an infection event like this, he could clearly hand it over to people below him to watch, but instead he personally supervises it.”
“Healer Jiang Tea Tea does not wear any protective gear and has always been at the front line of healing. As someone directly involved, I will not allow anyone to slander them.”
“Right, we will not allow anyone to slander our Nation, our Commander in Chief, or our healer!”
“Report them. I have already reported them…”
All those trolls online who tried to confuse others and give crazy ideas were all reported, post after post, without missing a single one.
Jiang Tea Tea took the remaining eight sets of the thirteen herbs and gave them all to Cheng Yuan, telling him to use an earthenware pot to boil them, and explaining the order to add them and the strength of the fire.
If the family of any infected person needed to talk to their child, they could pour the medicine down after it was cooked and let them regain a short moment of sanity.
Cheng Lin Yue had already watched Jiang Tea Tea cook it once, so she went with her uncle to help boil the medicine.
Sui Xuan Chu, Cheng Xiao Ting, and the other four men went with the guards in the quarantine zone and acted as temporary inspection personnel.
Jiang Tea Tea followed Chong Ming to see Zhong Li He and Kong Que back to the hotel where they were staying. She honestly could not figure out why she had to go along to send them off.
After they sent off Zhong Li He and Kong Que, Chong Ming did not go straight back to the Imperial Military Headquarters. Instead, he returned to the Imperial Palace, taking all the government work with him.
In his bedroom, there was only one wall between them. After she finished eating and drinking, washed up, and changed into her pajamas, she went to say a word to him and saw him tilting a nutrient injection into his mouth.
She froze for a moment, then reached out and knocked on the open door. His study was connected to the bedroom, and he was there handling government affairs, not hiding anything from her at all.
Chong Ming put down the nutrient injection that he had not finished pouring into his mouth, lifted his eyelids to look at her, and said: “You go to sleep first. I still have to work for a while.”
Jiang Tea Tea walked into his study and glanced at the nutrient injection he had set down: “I came to ask you to eat with me.”
The corner of Chong Ming’s mouth curved slightly: “Didn’t you already eat?”
Jiang Tea Tea’s face did not change: “I’m hungry again!”
Chong Ming answered her: “Go sit over there and wait for me a few minutes. When I finish the things on hand, I’ll eat with you.”
Jiang Tea Tea raised an eyebrow. Her black hair fell to her waist, and she was wearing loose sleepwear as she walked over to the sofa in his office.
His office was only a little smaller than his bedroom. It was all cold colors, nothing but cool tones. But it did not bother her. [She was a tree. A tree only needed a bit of sunlight and a bit of soil to shine. It could live anywhere.]
She sat cross-legged on the sofa with bare feet, turned on her light-brain wrist terminal, and scrolled through the pages while waiting for Chong Ming.
She soon came across the hot search topics about Chong Ming and herself. Many planets, many nations, including the Insectoid Race, were all waiting to watch the Zhenlin Empire fall and become a joke.
The internet was full of all kinds of filthy talk; there was everything you could imagine. Chong Ming had not ordered anyone to stop it, to suppress the public opinion or the discussions.
Jiang Tea Tea sneaked a glance at Chong Ming. The StarNet friends were right; he was so busy every day that he did not even have time to eat and could only rely on nutrient injections to fill his stomach. If you told this to others, who would believe it? No one would.
Jiang Tea Tea tagged the comment that called her a fake useless pretty face, reposted it, and added: “Ahhh, yes yes yes, you are right, I am a fake useless piece of trash. You, the kind of trash that is not trash, dare to get on the arena with me? If I can’t take you down in one minute and kill you, then I really am trash!”
“PS: Once people become Super Virus Infected Hosts, their bodies rot from the inside out. Only their brains stay a little bit okay.”
“There is a detox agent that can let the brain regain reason and clarity for a short time, but it cannot make the body recover. It cannot make the organs recover.”
“Let me ask you, if it were you, if it were your family members, after using the detox agent, having a short time of reason and of pain, able to clearly feel every part of their body, all their organs rotting and giving off a terrible smell, would you really let them keep living in pain and lock them up just to stay with you?”
“No, you would not. You are just standing there talking without feeling the pain in your backs. You are just shooting off your mouths.”
“No matter how bad His Highness Chong Ming is, he is not someone you people get to talk about!”
“Even if I am trash, you have never fought me. I am still not someone you people can judge.”
“Watch your mouths and stop creating so much bad karma with your words. The Beast God will still bless you. If you keep running your mouths, be careful, bad luck will flood your lives!”
Jiang Tea Tea sent out that long paragraph in one breath. Like a blast of artillery, it shot straight onto the StarNet hot search and stirred up heated discussion and support from many netizens.
“She really is my favorite, the youngest Variant 3 Level S healer. She went straight at them. So cool, so fierce, so A. I love her!”
“It’s not just you who likes her. All of us like her. What she said is so right, really so right. Why can they just judge her as they please? I’ve watched her live streams. Healing is just one of her skills. She’s amazing in a fight!”
“Commander in Chief Chong Ming has class. He is the leader of a whole country and will not stoop to the level of you trolls. But our healer Jiang Tea Tea is different. She is young, full of fire, like the rising sun. She is wild and will not swallow even a little anger. The way she snapped back like that is just so satisfying!”
“Healer Jiang Tea Tea, we support you! Next time you run into trolls like this, we’ll go curse them out with you!”
“You are the best, and Commander in Chief Chong Ming is the best. Those people from other planets, including the Insectoid Race, not a single one of them is any good.”
“Support, support, full support…”
Jiang Tea Tea skimmed through the comments. Just then, Chong Ming finished his work and walked over, holding a food box he had taken out from his space knob storage device. He set it on the table in front of her and began to lay out the dishes.
Watching him set out the dishes, Jiang Tea Tea said: “Have you seen those sneaky comments online that are scolding you?”
The corner of Chong Ming’s mouth lifted slightly: “StarNet is a network with free speech across the whole system. It has tens of trillions of users, talking about all kinds of things. I’m not star credits. I can’t make everyone like me.”
“Some are older, some are young. They like to vent their emotions, their complaints, and the things they dislike online. That is normal. There is no need to pay too much attention to it.”
Jiang Tea Tea curled her lip: “You are right, but that is you, not me. If someone does not like the sight of me, I will definitely talk back.”
[As a cultivation demon, you could not hold in your anger. Keeping it in too long would ruin your Dao heart.]
[If you are angry, you should let it out. If you are unhappy, you should snap back. Once your mood is better and you stop chewing on it inside, everything gets better.]
After he finished setting out the dishes, Chong Ming sat down next to Jiang Tea Tea: “You are not wrong either. When people curse you online and you curse them back, that is a normal counterattack.”
When she heard this, Jiang Tea Tea clicked her tongue: “You are such a double-standard dog!”
Chong Ming let out a soundless laugh: “This is called flexible application.”
[Old Mud Loach looked pretty good when he smiled.]
[He just did not smile very often.]
[With genes like his, the dragon cubs born from him should not be bad at all.]
[And there would be five dragon cubs.]
[Once she brought the dragon cubs back to the Demon Clan, she would become a legend of the Demon Clan.]
[Even Jin Lin, who had spent 1301 years on Ascension, could not compare to how explosive her legend would be in the Demon Clan.]
Seeing her stare at him, Chong Ming’s smile deepened: “Is there something on my face? Why are you staring at me like that?”
Jiang Tea Tea answered honestly: “I’m looking because you are good-looking. I was thinking, my kids, if they look like you, they won’t be ugly, and if they look like me, they’ll be very pretty.”
As she finished speaking, Chong Ming’s gaze dropped to her belly: “You are right. If the dragon cub looks like you, it will be very beautiful!”
Jiang Tea Tea was wearing a very loose set of pajamas and was sitting cross-legged on the sofa. Her top hung down and completely hid her belly.
Jiang Tea Tea lifted her chin: “Of course. Even if it is not pretty, it is fine. I will still find a way to make it pretty.”
[There was the Demon Clan’s face-renewing arts and youth-preserving arts. She could also go find a Fallen Immortal to get some Beauty Pills. If that still did not work, she could find a skin-painting demon to draw a skin to paste on. Even a sow could look like Chang’e.]
Chong Ming’s gaze moved back up to her face: “I believe you. Whatever you want to do, you will definitely be able to do it.”
“But, Jiang Tea Tea…”
Jiang Tea Tea answered: “What?”
Chong Ming’s fingers curled slightly: “Can I touch it?”
Jiang Tea Tea instinctively moved her hand across her belly and opened her mouth to refuse: “No…”
Chong Ming softly cut her off: “Jiang Tea Tea, I have been a bit tired these past few days. I want to touch it. I want to hold you.”
[His youngling and future partner were right in front of him, yet he could not hug her, could not touch her, could not kiss her.]
[His mating heat cycle was getting more and more unstable. The suppressant hypodermic syringes were useless. Injecting them was only a psychological comfort. In truth, he was relying on his own willpower.]
Looking at his rare moment of weakness, a faint thread of heartache flashed through Jiang Tea Tea. She felt he was actually quite pitiful.
[He was the top of the whole Empire, his power said to cover the entire star system, but the higher you stand, the colder it is. Other than that one friend Zhong Li He, he had no one to talk to. When you thought about it, it was really pitiful.]
[Just like the ancient Great Demon Stage elders of their Demon Clan. They looked so awesome, but in truth they were lonely for countless ages. Other than going into seclusion to cultivate, they slept in seclusion. They had no partners and no descendants. Other than themselves, they had nothing.]
Seeing that she did not speak, Chong Ming took a step back: “Then let me just touch it once, or just hug you for a little while…”
“Eat. We will talk after we eat.” Jiang Tea Tea cut him off and pointed at the table full of food in front of them.
This time she had not refused him outright, which meant there was hope that he could openly hug her and touch the youngling in her belly.
Chong Ming’s voice was hoarse as he answered with a soft “Okay,” and he did not forget to pick up a bowl and chopsticks and hand them to Jiang Tea Tea so she would eat.
Jiang Tea Tea had already eaten her fill, drunk enough, washed up, and was ready to sleep. When she saw him over there drinking nutrient injections, something in her brain twitched and she asked him to eat with her.
Jiang Tea Tea took the bowl and chopsticks: “You eat too. Eat more.”
Chong Ming nodded: “Okay.”
Of course he knew that Jiang Tea Tea had already eaten.
So every time he ate five bites, he would pick up a bite with his chopsticks and put it in Jiang Tea Tea’s bowl.
If Jiang Tea Tea picked up some food by herself, he would not add more to her bowl.
Like this, one of them really eating and the other just keeping her company, they finished the meal in about twenty minutes and cleaned everything up.
Jiang Tea Tea slipped her feet into her slippers and stood up: “All right, it’s really late today. You keep working overtime. I’m going to sleep. Good night!”
Chong Ming reached out and grabbed Jiang Tea Tea just as she was about to step away, pulling her in front of him: “Schoolmate Jiang Tea Tea, before we ate, you promised me that you would let me hug you once and touch the youngling.”
Jiang Tea Tea twisted her wrist: “I never promised…”
“You are going back on your word!”
She said: “No, I didn’t promise. I only said we would talk about it after you finished eating.”
He said: “That is a promise.”
Jiang Tea Tea raised her head and glared at him: “It was not a promise. It was me thinking about it. Now that I have thought about it, I am not agreeing.”
Chong Ming lowered his eyes to look at her, and in an instant they dimmed. His deep voice was full of loss: “If my hug and my touch make things so hard for you, then forget it. I will go back to my work.”
After he finished speaking, he let go of her hand and turned back toward his desk.
Jiang Tea Tea stood where she was and watched him, not reacting for a moment. This time he was so easy to talk to. She had thought he would force her to agree.
But his whole body looked like it had no strength at all. He did not have any energy. Was he really that tired?
[If he was too tired, would hugging him once and letting him touch the youngling charge him up so he would be full of energy again, handling everything without feeling tired?]
Jiang Tea Tea saw him sit back in his chair, tap on his light-brain wrist terminal, open up the holo projection screen, and spread out the documents in front of him to handle. The whole dragon sat there lonely and isolated, really quite pitiful.
[Jiang Tea Tea fell into a tangle. Letting him hug her once and touch her once did not seem like such a big deal. The little brats were all sleeping. He would not be able to feel that there were five of them. Maybe she should just let him touch?]
Feeling like something in her brain had hooked onto one idea, Jiang Tea Tea quickly walked over to Chong Ming’s side, grabbed the hand he was using to handle his work, and pressed it against her lower belly: “I’ll let you touch it once…”