The moment Gu Qing stepped into the military headquarters, the female soldier at the front desk visibly froze. She straightened instinctively, half-convinced that some noble relative of a general had wandered into the wrong building.
After all—male insects never came to places like this on their own.
The military was female territory, a fortress forged of war and iron-blooded discipline. To male insects, it was a forbidden zone best avoided at all costs. Yet the instant she truly registered the face of the person before her, all reason collapsed, utterly overwhelmed by sheer looks.
Morning light streamed down through the high windows. Gu Qing stood at the intersection of light and shadow, black eyes deep as night, calm and undisturbed. His long hair was bound with a green jade hairpin, lifting lightly with each step. His posture was straight, his skin a warm bronze tone, his aura steady and composed—like a blade sheathed, power concealed rather than flaunted. His face was refined as carved jade: swordlike brows, star-bright eyes, features sculpted as if by a god. Elegance wrapped in chill restraint, untouched by mortal dust.
“Y-you… sir, are you here to see someone, or…?” The front desk soldier’s voice trembled, her gaze flickering with shock and disbelief.
“I’m here to apply,” Gu Qing replied evenly, as calmly as if stating the weather.
The air froze.
All around them, female soldiers turned in unison—stunned, hesitant, then silent. Their looks lingered, unhidden, caught between disbelief and awe.
—This wasn’t an illusion.
—It really was a male insect. And he had come to interview… voluntarily?!
Minutes later, the military’s efficient system completed his verification. Though he was only a D-rank male insect, in an era where abnormalities in female soldiers’ mental seas were increasing by the day, even a low-tier male insect was better than an empty slot.
Gu Qing passed smoothly and was officially entered into the system. But unlike other recruits, he was not sent to a basic training camp. Instead, he was escorted directly to the military’s main building—the core hub of high-ranking officers and special operations, a place almost no male insect ever set foot in.
The corridor was silent. A cold scent of metal and disinfectant hung in the air. Female soldiers along the way scanned him wordlessly, wariness and confusion intertwined deep in their gazes.
Gu Qing’s expression remained unchanged, his steps steady.
Then an automatic door slid open. He lifted his eyes—
Milton stood behind a dark metal desk, silver-white hair outlining sharp features, his posture like a drawn sword—cold, resolute, unyielding.
“……”
In that instant, something rippled faintly through Gu Qing’s sea of consciousness.
The Dao-of-Heaven little ball was silent for two seconds. Then it slowly popped out, excitement laced with a strange, ominous anticipation.
“Oh? It’s actually this general… oh dear, oh dear. Gu Qing, you flirted way too hard with him before—don’t tell me you’re about to… crash and burn now~?”
It drifted lazily onto Gu Qing’s shoulder, theatrically clutching imaginary melon seeds. Its voice quavered with exaggerated drama.
“I really want to know—will the general be so angry he flips the desk, or will he smile and say, ‘So you came for me after all’? Tsk tsk, the battlefield of love is opening. Sit tight, sit tight!”
Gu Qing subtly tightened his back. “Shut up.”
He walked into the office, stopped in front of Milton’s desk, and reported calmly, neither servile nor arrogant.
“Gu Qing. Reporting in.”
Milton raised his head. Their gazes met. The pressure dropped sharply, the room falling silent.
His fingers tapped against the desk. His expression was mountain-cold, his eyes razor-sharp.
Gu Qing remained unruffled. Then, quite suddenly, his lips curved upward, an unmistakable hint of pleasant surprise in his voice.
“I didn’t expect the military to be this big. What a coincidence, running into you.”
The tone was so natural it sounded truly accidental. His black eyes were clear and innocent, as though he had completely forgotten the hot spring incident, the teasing words, the flushed face, the towel threat.
Milton: “……”
His lashes lowered, hiding the emotions in his eyes. His voice, however, dropped three degrees colder than ice.
“A coincidence?”
Gu Qing smiled and nodded. “Fate can be quite wonderful sometimes.”
Inside his consciousness, the little ball was already rolling around in hysterics.
“AHHH you’re still pretending! General, do you remember how flustered you were that day, like a helpless little animal?! This flirt-and-deny routine is way too intense! I’m recording this for a Shura-field teaching case!”
Gu Qing pinched the bridge of his nose without changing expression. “Be quiet. Stop rolling around in my head.”
Dao-of-Heaven little ball: “No!! You smooth-talking, zero-accountability Sword Venerable—I love you too much, ahhh—!”
Milton tapped the folder, lowering his voice. “You’re very good at flirting and then acting like nothing happened.”
Gu Qing blinked innocently. “Flirting?”
His voice was soft and harmless, his eyes filled with sincere confusion, as if asking, Are you sure you’re not misunderstanding me?
Milton’s knuckles rapped the desktop several times in quick succession. His throat bobbed once as he forcibly suppressed his anger, eyes sharp as blades.
He took a deep breath and spoke with effortful calm.
“As a male insect, why did you choose to work for the military?”
It wasn’t a common question, because the answer was usually obvious.
Most male insects lived lives of indulgence and ease. They didn’t need to work. They didn’t need to go to war. They only needed to marry a female insect, and all her assets would legally transfer to them. Laws even allowed male insects to have multiple spouses—marry as many as they liked. If they saw a female insect they fancied, a little maneuvering was often enough to “bring her home.”
They didn’t need effort. They only needed to choose well.
Milton’s jaw tightened, fingers pressing imperceptibly into the corner of the file. His teeth clenched as he held himself back, his face maintaining the cold authority expected of a general.
With a hint of mockery, he said, “You don’t want that kind of life? If you married a few wealthy female insects, you’d already be living without a care in the world. Why come here and suffer?”
Gu Qing paused slightly, a flicker of puzzlement crossing his face. Then he lowered his lashes, his voice gentle and polite.
“General, are you… worried about me? I appreciate it, but I don’t think that kind of life suits me.”
He slowly lifted his head, his expression calm—no fear, no anger.
“Living off another insect’s resources would make me feel like a parasite. I know that may sound out of place… but I’m used to relying on myself. Even if I die, I want to walk my own path.”
—He still looked composed and harmless, speaking gently and sincerely, yet every word left no room for rebuttal. Even that line—“I’d feel like a parasite”—sounded like a subtle counterstrike.
What was worse… for a fleeting moment, Milton found himself thinking the man made sense.
Milton inhaled sharply, snorted, and forcibly masked the agitation creeping into his eyes.
“…Suit yourself.”
—He could not lose a second time, especially to this insect. He would make Gu Qing reveal his own flaws, rather than letting himself be led around again.
Gu Qing then asked calmly, “Female insects clearly possess immense power. They aren’t afraid of male insects. On the battlefield, they can fight one against a hundred. So why are they willing to accept a system like this?”
“The insect race has three key traits,” Milton replied. “Mental power purification, pheromones, and the mental sea.”
His gaze swept over Gu Qing, tinged with suspicion.
“Mental power purification is an ability unique to male insects. It purifies the chaos within a female insect’s mental sea. The higher the rank of the female insect, the more unstable the mental sea becomes—and the more they require powerful male insects to maintain clarity.”
He paused, his voice lowering.
“Pheromones are something both sides possess. Female insects release them during heat to seek a mate, but what we truly crave are male insect pheromones. Male pheromones don’t just attract—they suppress, soothe, and even… mark.”
Gu Qing’s brows knitted slightly as he listened in silence.
Milton took a breath, a thread of frustration and anger woven into his tone.
“Once a female insect is deeply marked, the bond is absolute. From then on, their mental sea can only accept that one male’s pheromones. No other insect can mark them. That level of dependency affects their mental state—they become unable to resist that male’s presence. Sometimes they must even… kneel before him, begging for the smallest scrap of comfort.”
His gaze darkened, pain faintly surfacing beneath the cold.
“And the mental sea is the foundation of every insect’s existence. Both sexes have one, but they differ in nature.” His voice dropped lower. “Male insects’ mental seas are stable and enduring, rarely collapsing. Female insects are different.”
“Female mental seas are prone to turbulence. With age, combat exposure, and accumulated stress, they gradually spiral out of control, showing signs of collapse. In the end, they lose themselves—becoming unstable, uncontrollable, even dying. Military female insects are especially vulnerable.”
He lowered his eyes, his tone turning sharp once more.
“Currently, the only way to repair a female insect’s mental sea is through a male insect’s mental purification and pheromones. There are purification agents on the market, and suppressants for heat cycles—but they only treat the symptoms, not the cause. The more they’re used, the worse the side effects.”
“I’ve seen too many extraordinarily talented military female insects,” Milton continued coldly. “After marriage, they wanted to return to service—but first had to obtain their male owner’s permission. Even when they were allowed back, many had already been tortured into a broken state, their eyes dulled, their spirits crushed. Some even had their bone wings stripped.”
His voice hardened.
“Bone wings—ripped off without hesitation, simply because the male owner didn’t like them. That’s not just physical mutilation. It’s total psychological destruction.”
Milton’s voice dropped, heavy with resignation.
“And when their mental seas are on the verge of collapse, they can only kneel at their male owner’s feet, begging for a little mercy, a little comfort.”
Gu Qing’s gaze darkened. He said nothing.
Milton met his eyes, his own sharp as blades.
“So even though our bodies are hundreds of times stronger than male insects, even though we possess overwhelming combat power and military talent, we cannot escape our biological dependence on them. This isn’t a system someone invented. It’s an iron law written into our genes since the birth of the insect race.”
He flipped through the file, his tone returning to flat normalcy.
“And the consequences of that dependence… you can see them clearly enough.”
“I’ve seen countless female insects abase themselves before male insects just to survive,” he said, a shadow crossing his eyes. “The male insects elevated to power are mostly arrogant and tyrannical, treating that dependence as their due—some even taking pleasure in abusing female insects.”
“Even so,” Milton said coldly, “female insects still have no choice but to obey. Because we… have no alternative.”
The room fell silent once more.
And Gu Qing finally understood where the oppression and distortion he had sensed these past days truly came from—
Not disparity in power.
Not imbalance in combat ability.
But a biological dependence rooted deep in blood and bone.
At some point, the little ball in his consciousness had gone completely quiet, curled into a tight, trembling knot.
Milton let out a cold laugh.
“You’re asking all this because… what, you want to mark me? Or do you have some other plan?”
Gu Qing lifted his eyes. His gaze was clear as water, entirely unguarded, his voice gentle.
“General, please don’t worry. I have no such intentions. I only… wanted to understand why all of this came to be.”
Milton frowned deeply. The suppressed suspicion in his chest surged like a rising tide. He knew that the harmless, innocent façade before him might not be Gu Qing’s true self at all.