After separating from Milton, Gu Qing arrived at the small villa provided by the Male Protection Association and began inspecting his surroundings. Although his strength in this world was restricted due to his severe injuries and the extreme scarcity of spiritual energy—and his natal sword could only remain sealed within his body—his vigilance and sense of control as a Sword Venerable were still etched deep into his bones. He immediately instructed the Heavenly Dao little ball to check the entire building, inside and out, for any surveillance devices, mental-wave detection, or abnormal energy fluctuations.
The Heavenly Dao little ball was usually nonstop chatter, as if it never ran out of energy, but when it came to matters like this, it was unexpectedly reliable. After several rounds of scanning, it popped out excitedly. “Whew—done scanning, done scanning! This place is so clean you couldn’t find even half a speck of dust. Aside from a few ding-dong visitor alert devices at the front door, there isn’t even a single strand of surveillance hair! Hahahaha, it’s so safe you could roll around on the floor!”
With everything prepared, Gu Qing sat down and began using his optical brain to study the language and culture of this world. Yet as he flipped through article after article, his thoughts drifted unconsciously. In the past, he had tempered his sword path in extreme solitude. The title of Sword Venerable had not come from innate talent, but from years upon years of bitter cultivation. He had once gone into seclusion for a hundred years atop a frozen mountain peak where snow never melted, icy winds cutting into his bones, heaven and earth sunk in utter silence—only the long resonance of sword intent keeping him company.
Now, that world had been broken by an ever-chattering ball of light. The Heavenly Dao little ball, a tireless little thing, constantly babbled in his ear—reporting time, interrupting him, making random comments. Sometimes, while he was meditating, it would suddenly shriek, “Gu Qing, wake up, wake up! The heart-mantra you were reciting just now had the exact same rhythm as that song ‘Ten Thousand Threads of Love’! Did you secretly listen to the star-net playlist? Hahahaha—should we submit it to a competition?”
Even worse, it wouldn’t behave itself when he slept. Sometimes, just as Gu Qing entered a state of mental stillness, a stream of muttering would echo through his sea of consciousness. “Sigh, sigh, I really miss those days in the hospital~ Back then the general came almost every day. He said it was ‘inspection,’ but he was totally probing you~ Hmph~ I loved watching him pretend to be calm while his eyes were glued to you!”
The little ball grew more and more excited, small points of starlight flickering in his sea of consciousness. “Waaah, that time was so fun~ There was new drama every day, and we even got to see the general blush live… Now this crappy villa is as quiet as a temple. I’m so bored I’m about to get internal injuries!”
Gu Qing opened his eyes and looked out at the nightscape of the star city beyond the window. He had never imagined that one day he would be accompanied by a chatty Heavenly Dao little ball, reliving life in a world of information overload and relentless pace.
Unbidden, images of the days under Milton’s supervision at the hospital surfaced in his mind.
On the surface, that insect perfectly embodied the image shaped by military rank and battle honors—calm, restrained, methodical. But Gu Qing knew that coldness was not arrogance from on high, but a form of self-protection, a deliberate distance kept from the world.
He had observed that every time the general entered the room, his expression remained unreadable, yet his gaze was always on high alert—as if Gu Qing’s very existence were an anomaly that had to be treated with extreme caution.
Clearly, he was nothing more than a weak, naive, well-behaved little creature, incapable of harming anyone. And yet it was precisely that seemingly harmless, lamb-like appearance that caused fine cracks to appear in the general’s icy composure.
Earlier, Gu Qing had deliberately guided Milton closer, using the opportunity to observe his reactions. In that moment, Milton’s face flushed, his expression flustered. Though he tried to hold himself together, he was thrown completely off balance, even starting to question his entire existence as an insect.
Gu Qing had always preferred quiet and kept his distance from others, yet he couldn’t help glancing a few more times at an insect like that. Perhaps it was because he so rarely encountered the “calm on the surface, exploding on the inside” type—clearly on guard, yet unable to do anything about him; clearly aware that he wasn’t simple, yet constantly rendered speechless by that “I’m very well-behaved” façade.
Thinking of this, he let out a low laugh.
Those days… really had been quite interesting.
Everything here was so new, yet also filled with indescribable pressure and challenges. A thousand years of cultivation had made him accustomed to aloofness and detachment, to isolation from the world. But now, every step he took required compromise with this complex, chaotic society—even integration into it. For him, such a life was both tempering and trial.
Ever since parting at the hospital that day, Gu Qing had completely disappeared from Milton’s world.
There were no messages, no updated medical reports, not even any new entry or exit records in the Male Protection Association’s system. Everything stopped at the exact moment marked “discharged.” —That was far too abnormal.
Even the lowest-ranked male insect would leave traces in daily life, whether through shopping, transportation, or basic community access logs. Yet Gu Qing’s records were spotless, as if for the past few weeks he had not stepped outside his home even once. —How was that possible?
Milton sat in silence in his office, his uniform jacket draped over the back of his chair. Cold white light illuminated the desktop while the optical brain projection hovered midair, streams of data unfolding line by line.
At last, his gaze stopped on one item—
Storage device monitoring records.
—As long as Gu Qing put anything “he shouldn’t touch” inside, the system would flag it.
Milton tapped the interface, unlocking the permissions.
The screen switched in the next second.
【Storage Device Contents List (Past Seven Days)】
Item One—
Pot.
Item Two—
Frying pan (suspected different material).
Item Three—
Soup pot.
Item Four—
…Bowls.
Item Five—
A complete set of knives.
Milton: “…?”
His brows drew together almost imperceptibly as he continued scrolling.
【New Items】
Unknown dried plants ×3
Unknown fresh plants ×2
Unknown tubers / suspected wild vegetables / suspected medicinal herbs — classification failed
Then—
【New Items】
Unknown raw meat (unprocessed)
Unknown raw meat (cut)
Unknown bones (suspected beast type) — residual odor analysis: high protein, high fat
Milton’s finger stopped.
The office fell into dead silence.
He stared at the list for a full three seconds, and for the first time, an utterly inappropriate thought crossed his mind—
…What is he doing?
Male insect. F-rank. Pheromone deficiency. Daily activity level so low it was nearly flagged as “long-term recuperation.”
And yet—he was hoarding pots, knives, and a pile of unidentified plants and meat??
Milton reflexively pulled up the male insect behavior database.
【Typical Male Insect Behavior Patterns】
✔ Does not cook
✔ Does not process ingredients
✔ No interest in knives
✔ Psychological aversion to “raw meat”
He slowly closed the database, then lowered his head and looked again at the storage device list.
“……”
For the first time in his life, a military general sat in his office, staring at surveillance data, utterly bewildered.
—Why did he need pots? Did he know how to cook? Or was he planning to… attack someone with cookware? That was absurd.
Milton took a deep breath, forcing himself back into rational analysis. There were no explosives, no weapons, no high-energy devices.
Only pots, bowls, ladles, basins. Plants. Meat.
A male insect who seemingly didn’t even have pheromones, quietly hoarding kitchenware and ingredients in a secluded little villa.
No matter how he thought about it, something was off.
Added to that was what troubled him most—the day of discharge. That almost imperceptible trace of energy fluctuation, and Gu Qing’s evasive, panicked expression, continued to linger in Milton’s mind. Was it disguise? Or truly unrelated to him? This sense of dissonance, combined with the absurd inventory list, finally made Milton decide not to wait any longer.
Perhaps he should go visit him and see what he had been doing lately.
And so that day, he drove toward the address left in the Male Protection Association’s records. Along the way there was not a single insect, not even a building in sight. Only at the far end of the barren plains did a lone small villa stand amid the morning mist, isolated and silent, as if cut off from the world. —This place was not only remote and desolate, it didn’t even have basic security. It was nothing like somewhere a male insect should be living. Just how lightly had the Male Protection Association regarded him, to dump him in a place like this?
Milton’s heart sank. His mental power spread instinctively as he tried to probe for any other presence nearby.
He caught a faint, elusive trace of spatial fluctuation—but it vanished in the very next instant, as if it had never existed.
At that moment, inside the house, Gu Qing was seated cross-legged in a quiet chamber, eyes closed in meditation. Because of his damaged spiritual meridians, his spiritual power could not circulate smoothly, but daily breathing regulation was enough to maintain the stability of his mind and energy sea.
Suddenly, something stirred between his brows, and he opened his eyes.
“So… he’s here,” he murmured softly. Before the words even faded, the Heavenly Dao little ball exploded into fireworks in his sea of consciousness.
“Ohoho! This general is really persistent, chasing all the way to your doorstep! Sword Venerable, your charm—tsk tsk tsk—you were practically asking to be targeted~ What now? Let him investigate? Or find a way to send him off?”
Gu Qing neither confirmed nor denied. He rose, draped an outer robe over himself, and as he walked toward the window, he deactivated the attack formations around the courtyard.
“If he barges in, these would be enough to injure him,” he said calmly. “Since it’s him… let him investigate.”
“Eh?!” The little ball jumped violently, silver light trembling as the whole orb shuddered. “You’re… letting him off easy! Aren’t you afraid he’ll realize you’re not an ordinary male insect?!”
Gu Qing stopped by the window, expression tranquil, watching the familiar figure step out of the car in the distance and walk steadily toward the small house in the wilderness.
“There’s nothing much in this house to hide. If he truly wants to check, it’s better to let him see it with his own eyes… and decide for himself.”
He paused, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his lips. “Still, I’ll need to think of a way to make sure he doesn’t come again next time.”
“Pfft—what kind of bad idea are you cooking up now?” The Heavenly Dao little ball rolled excitedly at the edge of his sea of consciousness. “You just finished playing the pitiful little white flower and fooled him completely. What are you playing this time?”
Gu Qing ignored it, leisurely removing his clothes and heading toward the hot spring in the backyard.