Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The System Intervened

That arrogant, self-satisfied bastard mouse had wanted to show off.

Now he was trapped—and she was about to die with him.

A shrill alarm erupted inside Su Yan’s skull, so loud it felt like it rattled bone.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep…

A mechanical female voice followed, crisp and merciless. “Fetus detected in life-threatening danger. Host, activate the Blink skill? Fifty points will be deducted in advance per use. Maximum three uses per day.”

“Use it! Use it! Use it!” Su Yan screamed in her mind.

It wasn’t thought. It was instinct—her body reacting like a snapped trap.

The world folded.

In the next instant, she and Lin Lang vanished from the bear’s paw-domain.

The bear’s strike still crashed down, and the force of it pulverized the ground into a crater that spat dust and shattered stone.

Su Yan’s heart hammered as understanding hit her like cold water: the childbearing system might not care whether the host lived or died…

…but it would protect the child.

At any cost.

As long as she was pregnant, she had the system’s protection.

Lin Lang blinked hard, disoriented. When he opened his eyes again, the air felt different—cooler, thinner, touched by the edge of open space.

They were at the boundary of the Senyu Beast Forest.

“What…?” Lin Lang spun, eyes sweeping the trees and the dark beyond. “What happened?”

His voice turned bewildered. “Did the Beast God show himself?”

At the final moment, he’d prayed—begged—for the Beast God to protect Su Yan in his arms.

And then, impossibly, they were here.

“Probably,” Su Yan said, forcing steadiness into her voice.

She had no clothes, so she stayed in mouse form. She wriggled out of his pouch, climbed up his body like a living branch, and perched on top of his head.

Higher meant farther sight.

In the direction of the Mouse Clan tribe, shapes stampeded—beasts fleeing in frantic waves, the distant thrum of chaos bleeding through the forest like smoke.

Lin Lang reached up, lifted her down carefully, and cupped her in his rough, warm palm. His skin was scraped and heated with exertion, and the pulse in his wrist beat fast under her tiny weight.

“This should be safe,” he said. “Wait here.”

His voice hardened, stripped down to something raw. “If I don’t come back within a day… find another beast husband. If I do come back, then you have to be my female.”

Su Yan’s throat tightened. She hated promises made under a hanging blade. “And if I refuse?”

Lin Lang’s grin was crooked, too bright for the danger. “I’m about to go die. Can’t you give me one nice sentence to hear first?”

Su Yan swallowed. She remembered the way the earth had risen for him, how stone had obeyed like it was part of his body.

Yellow-grade earth talent.

A litter of mouse pups with that gift… maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

“All right,” she said.

Lin Lang’s grin flared, almost boyish for a heartbeat.

He looped the leather pouch around her mouse neck—the dowry—then carried her to a towering tree whose trunk rose like a pillar into the sky. He placed her into a hollow high above the ground, sheltered by wood and shadow.

“Stay here,” he said. “If I don’t come back, those crystal coins will get you to another tribe. You’ll be able to live quietly for a while.”

Su Yan stared at him, uneasy. It sounded too much like a farewell.

“Then be careful,” she said. “Don’t be stubborn. Better to live than die. Save your strength, wait for an opening, and when the time comes—repay every grudge.”

Lin Lang chuckled. “Our Yan Yan is smart. You can really talk.” His eyes gleamed with reckless warmth. “Fine. I’ll live. I’ll come back, and you’ll give me a whole litter of smart mouse pups.”

Su Yan’s small white ears twitched twice. She didn’t answer.

Lin Lang shifted in a blur into a huge blue-black mouse beast. He looked back once, gaze catching on Su Yan in the hollow, then turned and sprinted away—fast as wind, vanishing between the trunks.

The hollow went quiet.

Su Yan slipped the dowry pouch into system space.

It was one of the childbearing system’s built-in functions.

Inside was a growable space about one cubic meter in size, able to hold anything that wasn’t part of the host’s body.

In other words, a place meant for storing her child.

If she had to travel or face danger, she could temporarily put the baby inside, sealing them away from harm.

The system really did exist to serve the child.

Which meant that if the system shop ever opened, it would probably be filled with formula, diapers, and every other thing a baby needed.