Chapter 68
Chapter 68: There’s a Little Monster in My Belly, Eating Spiritual Power Like a Bottomless Pit
“I’m the Crown Prince? Do I look like the Crown Prince?”
The first time he lied with his eyes wide open, Sui Xuan Chu felt a little guilty. The second time, he was completely used to it. His face did not change, he even joked about himself, absolutely refused to admit anything, and dragged Jiang Tea Tea down with him.
“Big Dog Huang, I’d love it if your family tomb blew up. I’d love it if I really were the Crown Prince, so I could be drilled every day by your heartthrob idols. Sadly, I’m not. If you don’t believe me, ask Sister Tea.”
Jiang Tea Tea shot him a sharp knife-like glare, then followed the line he laid out and went right along with it: “Right, he’s not the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince is someone else, and he’s in the Royal Military Imperial Academies. As for who exactly it is, we don’t know either.”
“Those people outside heard that the Crown Prince is in the Royal Military Imperial Academies, then saw the eight of us living in two rooms and even having a snowfield flying device. They thought all this was the Crown Prince’s special treatment. They have no idea this is just our reward for finishing the first round of the Supremacy Tournament early.”
“While they were guessing and gossiping, some Insectoid Race people slipped in and overheard them. The Insectoid Race figured we’d go out looking for food, so they went into the sea to ambush us. You guys don’t know this, but if Commander in Chief Chong Ming hadn’t arrived in time, Sui Xuan Chu would have been killed by the Insectoid Race as the ‘Crown Prince’.”
Huang Da Zhuang and the others stared for a long time. They were not completely convinced yet, and still asked with some doubt: “Sui Xuan Chu, you really aren’t the Crown Prince?”
Sui Xuan Chu rolled up his sleeve, stretched out his arm, and scarlet-black scales covered his forearm: “The Crown Prince is of the Golden Dragon Clan. I’m a scarlet-black Dragon Clan. If you still don’t believe me, I can even bleed a little for you to see.”
Huang Da Zhuang and the others looked at the scarlet-black scales on his arm and finally believed that Sui Xuan Chu wasn’t the Crown Prince. It was just that those people outside had taken their hard work as some backdoor privilege given by the Crown Prince.
They had been stupid enough to believe whatever they heard. They almost fell for it. Thankfully, Sui Xuan Chu and Sister Tea warned them.
Seeing that each of them was convinced, Jiang Tea Tea quickly called to them: “Come here, come here. Your idol, your heartthrob idol, felt bad that Sui Xuan Chu was almost killed because they mistook him for the Crown Prince, so they had us bring down a lot of food to make up for the trauma to our hearts.”
“Sui Xuan Chu, hurry up and take the food out. Let’s eat.”
Sui Xuan Chu took out food from his space knob storage device in a rush. He pulled out three big basins of meat, three big basins of fish, and three big basins of shrimp. Every basin was full to the brim, steaming hot.
Huang Da Zhuang and his five teammates were instantly drawn to the food. At that point, the thought that Sui Xuan Chu might be the Crown Prince was gone from their heads. Completely gone.
In their eyes and in their minds, there was only the meat in front of them, the fish in front of them, and the shrimp in front of them.
Each one of them turned into a werewolf, charging right up, mouths open like lions, and devoured the food like crazy.
Sui Xuan Chu raised his brows at Jiang Tea Tea, silently mouthing a “thanks, roommate.”
Jiang Tea Tea rolled her eyes at him. She did not just eat with them, she even took out the golden Nutrient Fruit to share.
She did not expect their tastes to be exactly the same. Each one of them said the Nutrient Fruit was only “sixty percent ripe”, sour and a bit astringent. They said they couldn’t eat it, really couldn’t eat it.
Jiang Tea Tea could not understand them at all. The Nutrient Fruit tasted clearly sour with a hint of sweet in her mouth. How did it become astringent to them?
In the end, they just didn’t know how to eat. It was fine. There were over a thousand jin of fruit. She could slowly eat it all herself.
After that meal, everyone’s bellies were round, their waists thick from eating.
Jiang Tea Tea was the only one who ate the most but still had the flattest stomach.
With food and drink inside them, in a room kept at a constant 26 degrees, they all started to feel sleepy. None of them could resist it. As soon as they lay down on the beds and closed their eyes, they fell asleep.
The super warship Chong Ming was on had dropped off Jiang Tea Tea and the others, then seemed to fly away. In truth, it switched to stealth mode and hovered right above them.
Everything that happened below was shown one by one on the giant screen in front of Chong Ming. Even their conversations did not escape his ears.
“Commander in Chief, should we interfere?” Ai, the deputy officer, was Chong Ming’s closest adjutant. He stood in the same spot, heard the same words, and watched the same images as Chong Ming. He was worried that the eliminated students from the military academies would spread the rumor that Sui Xuan Chu was the little Your Highness.
Chong Ming shrank the giant screen in front of him, then pulled over the live surveillance feed of Aceras: “No need to interfere. If the little Your Highness can’t handle something this small, what right does he have to be Crown Prince and inherit the Imperial Throne?”
Ai the deputy officer answered seriously: “Yes, Commander in Chief.”
“Chong Ming, you stinky loach, you rotten mudfish! You were bold enough to grab me and heal my wounds. If you’ve got the guts, come see me face to face!” Aceras shouted at the four white walls in his room right after his wounds finished healing.
In the face of Aceras’s cursing, Chong Ming replied, his voice going straight to Aceras’s ears from every direction: “Your Highness Aceras, I’ve been watching you all along.”
Aceras searched the room, unable to find any surveillance point: “Are you very pleased with yourself?”
Chong Ming stabbed right into his lungs with his words: “If you were me, you’d be even more pleased.”
Aceras forced down his anger: “You tore up the Bilateral Armistice Treaty, captured me, and destroyed so much of my Insectoid Race’s infrastructure and ships. That is the same as declaring war on my Insectoid Race.”
“My Insectoid Race has trillions of bugs. That is many, many times more than your Zhenlin Empire’s common citizens. You are already 150 years old. If a real war breaks out again, the ones who die more will be your Zhenlin Empire’s people.”
Chong Ming laughed: “Decades ago, your Insectoid Race killed over a hundred million of my Zhenlin Empire’s people. I already paid you back more than five times over.”
“If we start fighting again now, the side that dies more will only be your Insectoid Race, not my Zhenlin Empire.”
Aceras gave a disdainful snort: “You’re bragging shamelessly…”
Chong Ming cut him off: “I’m just stating facts. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Your Empress Mother didn’t come to see me, but your fiancée, High General Atuya, did. Guess how she begged me to save you?”
Aceras instantly lost his composure. He jumped up and ran to the door, pulling and pounding on it, trying to get out.
The door was like a huge slab of iron and stone. No matter how he pulled or slammed it, it did not move at all. There was a supernatural abilities blocker in the room. His supernatural abilities could not be used.
Chong Ming once again shrank the screen showing Aceras and switched it to the feed of the top thirty army corps in the Supremacy Tournament.
He watched for a while, then switched again. At this moment, Secretary Wen walked in: “Commander in Chief, there are a few urgent government affairs that need handling. Please take a look.”
Chong Ming’s eyes did not even move away from the screen: “The Crown Prince is free right now. Send them to him and have him handle them first.”
Secretary Wen said: “Yes.”
Chong Ming reminded him: “He’s sleeping right now. After you send the government affairs to him, call him and wake him up. Tell him to work through the night.”
Secretary Wen answered: “Alright, Commander in Chief.”
Jiang Tea Tea was sleeping when she suddenly felt her spiritual power leaking away, as if something inside her was swallowing her spiritual power.
She opened her eyes and sat up in shock, only to hear her stomach let out a thunderous roar. It was not that her spiritual power was leaking. She was just hungry.
In the dark, she lifted her hand with the light-brain wrist terminal and checked the time. It was two in the morning. It had not even been eight hours since she had eaten her fill, and she was already hungry?
[Could it be that the loss of eighty percent of my spiritual power is showing up on my human body, reminding me that I need more “fertilizer” to restore my spiritual power?]
[Forget it, the most important thing is to find fertilizer. Fill my stomach first, then think about the rest.]
Jiang Tea Tea lifted her blanket, put on her combat suit, did not even tie up her hair, and quietly left the room so she wouldn’t disturb Cheng Lin Yue.
Out in the small lounge, she saw Sui Xuan Chu sitting there yawning, leaning against the wall, scratching his head in front of the light-brain wrist terminal’s holo projection screen.
Jiang Tea Tea cleared her throat and walked over as she asked: “Why are you still up so late?”
Sui Xuan Chu stopped scratching his head and looked up at her. Since his “vest” had already been ripped off in front of her, he no longer hid anything. He complained with full resentment: “My uncle can’t stand seeing me finish the first round of the Supremacy Tournament early and getting half a month to rest. So he dumped a pile of work on me.”
“In order to make sure I do it well, he even had his secretary call me and drag me out of my sleep so I have to work through the night.”
“Roommate, tell me, what grudge does he have against me to treat me like this? Ahhh, I’m so sleepy I could die. I can’t live like this anymore!”
Jiang Tea Tea took out a Nutrient Fruit and took a bite to pad her empty stomach a little. She comforted him: “There’s nothing you can do. Your family is huge and rich, and there are very few heirs. Other than calling you, your uncle has no one else to call, unless he gives birth to a younger brother for you himself.”
Sui Xuan Chu gave a bitter little laugh: “Roommate, if you’re counting on my uncle to give me a younger brother, you might as well count on me to give him a grandson.”
Jiang Tea Tea thought about it seriously: “That could work too. Once you reach adulthood, hurry and find a partner. Have a grandson for your uncle. Then he can train his grandson instead, and you’ll be free.”
Sui Xuan Chu’s smile turned even more bitter. He felt like dying: “No thanks. With my uncle’s iron-fisted ways, he’ll train me and my child together.”
“Forget it. You wouldn’t get it even if I explained. You don’t really know my uncle. I’ll keep working. Damn, I’m so sleepy.”
Jiang Tea Tea saw him yawning over and over, eyes watery, his rims red. She finished gnawing one Nutrient Fruit, said nothing, and went to the bathroom.
When she came out again, she was holding a small tin of Green Tea Girl leaves. She filled a cup with water, tossed a few leaves in, and handed it to Sui Xuan Chu: “Here, drink this. It’ll wake you up.”
Sui Xuan Chu sniffed hard: “It smells so fresh. What is this?”
Jiang Tea Tea answered: “Green Tea Girl leaves.”
They were old leaves from her true body.
The new leaves, the tender tips, she could not bear to pick.
Sui Xuan Chu took the cup, lifted it to his nose, and breathed in. A fresh, leafy scent rushed into his nose, clearing his head and perking him up. He felt like all his scales had just been brushed clean and his whole body turned light.
He brought the cup to his lips and took a small sip. As he swallowed, the rich, fresh fragrance spread across his tongue and mouth. His sleepiness and exhaustion swept away like smoke. Even his supernatural abilities and spiritual power felt as if they had been smoothed out and combed through.
Sui Xuan Chu took two more gulps in a row, then asked energetically: “Roommate, where did you get this good stuff?”
Jiang Tea Tea lied smoothly: “I picked it in the Primeval Forest. I usually just chew the leaves dry, but I thought you might not be used to chewing them, so I brewed them in water for you.”
Sui Xuan Chu looked at the small tin in her hand: “Is that whole tin for me?”
Jiang Tea Tea handed it over: “It’s all yours. You can chew the leaves or brew them in water. It’s super good for waking you up.”
Sui Xuan Chu took it with both hands and threw a leaf into his mouth to chew. Not only did it wake him up, it was also full of natural plant-type energy.
Seeing that he was wide awake again, Jiang Tea Tea said: “Alright, you keep working. I’m going out for a bit.”
Sui Xuan Chu asked: “Where are you going in the middle of the night?”
Jiang Tea Tea replied: “I can’t sleep. I’m going out for a walk.”
A very good excuse.
Sui Xuan Chu nodded: “Okay. Don’t go too far. If something happens, just shout.”
Jiang Tea Tea pulled up the zipper of her combat suit, pulled on the hood, and walked out of the lodging while gnawing on a Nutrient Fruit, heading for the Deep Sea entrance in search of “fertilizer” to eat.
Sui Xuan Chu not only finished that cup of tea, he also chewed up all the Green Tea Girl leaves at the bottom. After he ate all of them, he suddenly felt his supernatural abilities level faintly rising.
Without overthinking it, he opened his light-brain wrist terminal, poured the Green Tea Girl leaves in the tin into his hand, took a picture, and sent it to his uncle, Chong Ming, with a message: “Imperial Uncle, my roommate Jiang Tea Tea gave me a tin of Green Tea Girl leaves I’ve never seen before. This tea not only wakes you up, it’s full of natural plant-type spiritual power. I drank a cup of tea made with it and ate more than ten leaves. My supernatural abilities level is about to break through!”